I just read that someone in the legislature was proposing that we have a year of the Bible. This has set off a lot of fiery reaction. It seems most of it revolves around the idea that someohow having a year of the Bible violates the establishment of religion clause. In Turkey President Obama stated that we are not a Christian nation we are not a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. "We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values. " There is a strong move to disassociate our nation from Christianity. My question to Mr. Obama if he were listening would be, where do we get these ideals or set of values and what are they? What set is it that we follow? Our founders knew well where the values and ideals came from. If we say today that they come from our Constitution I would ask which Constitution? The one that allowed Bible reading in schools until 1962-63 or the one we have had since then. Our Constitution as a "Living Document" now means whatever, whoever is in power says it means is what it means. We do not have rights from our creator but now we have rights from our government. That is the foundation for tyranny.
Congress many years ago defined what the establishment of religion meant and although I don't have that decision in front of me since I am just blogging (blowing off a little steam). I recall that some of the criteria necessary for something to violate the establishment cause were there needed to be specific rewards and punishments for compliance or non-compliance and there needed to be people in charge of making sure the laws were being adhered to. Having a year of the Bible is not even close to that. Praying in schools, reading the Bible publicly or saying Jesus is not an establishment of religion. There are no mandated rewards or punishments for such things.
The original confederation of New England States had there own Constitution of sorts which began with this statement, "Whereas we all came to these parts of America with the same end and aim, namely, to advance the kingdome of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to injoy the liberties of the Gospell thereof with purities and peace, and for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospell..." (I left some of their spelling in the quote). Now they had a set of values and they knew where they came from. Even Princeton had as one of its founding statements "Cursed is all learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ." Go Princeton!!!! My point is this, "These legislators in Washington have no historical understanding and because of that are governing without a foundation and will eventually prove the well known fact that a house built on a faulty or shifting foundation will not stand for long.
When I was in Elementary school I remember people talking about the Soviet Union and how they were so bad you couldn't even read the Bible in their schools. They adhered to Godless atheism! They were our enemy. From my casual observation it seems to me that we have become our enemy.

II Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance."
Many believe that we are moving quickly toward the end of this age. This, I believe, is not only the sentiment of those who study and love the Bible, but we see it in the literature and movies of the day. There is a general sense that we are moving rapidly toward something but many don't know what that something might be. Can the world continue at this accelarated pace toward lawlessness, sensuality, perversion, violence and development of destructive weapons, or does there have to be an end to it all? I believe there is a general feeling of impending something, most likely doom.
As I have been reading the Book of the Revelation it has been amazing to me to see many things fall into place and many scrptures intricately knit together from various parts of the Bible to demonstrate this incredible flow to the Bible even with so many authors were invovled in writing it over such a long period of time.
The quote from above that says God is not willing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance recently came alive to me as I looked at the sequence of events during the seals, trumpets and bowls described in Revelation. At the sounding of the sixth trumpet there are 3 plagues that are released on the earth through which a third of mankind is killed. After these plagues in Revelation 9:20,21 we are told that the rest of mankind did not repent, once in verse 20 and once in verse 21. God is not willing that any should perish!! What I saw in this passage is that the seventh trump does not sound, which ushers in the kingdom of Jesus on the earth and the final wrath of God on the nations, until no one on earth wants to repent. Let me say it this way, God does not pour out His final wrath on the nations at the end of this age nor does He return to overthrow the kingdoms of this world until everyone that would want to repent repents! At the end, mankind simply refuses to repent. When all that are left refuse to repent then the final wrath will come. He wants all to come to repentance. The circumstances at the end bring enough crisis to the earth to reveal every heart for what is really in it, and at the end no one else will even want to repent. He does not want any to perish, if they don't want to!!


On a little different note, I remain concerned about popular end time theological teaching because it teaches us to believe in events that the scriptures specifically warns against. When Jesus talked about his return in Matthew 24:26, 27 He warned us not to believe anyone who would tell us that He will come in secret. He says His return will be seen by everyone, both here and in Revelation 1:7, and yet the most popular end-time teaching in American Christianity is that Jesus will snatch away a bunch of people secretly and everyone left will be saying what happened? That is taught even though Jesus said when He returns to catch His beleivers in the air (I Thess. 4 13-17) it will be with a trumpet and a shout and in these other references that it will be visible to everyone on earth. Of course popular teaching divides these scriptures into separate events, but why didn't Jesus tell us about these separate events when He taught about His own return. Also the first resurrection according to Rev 20:5 is when the dead are raised to rule and reign with Jesus. Note this is the first resurrection. I Thess. 4 tells us that the dead in Christ resurrect when Jesus retrns to catch up His believers in the clouds. Is this a resurrection before the first resurrection or is it the first resurrection when those raised begin to rule and reign with Christ for a thousand years. If there is a secret resurrection and catching away it would have to be before the first resurrection which would make the first resurrection the second resurrection or some such thing.
So the first resurrection is when the believer's are raised to rule for a thousand years with Christ. Nowhere does it say that there is a pre first resurrection 7 years before that when the dead in Christ rise. I Thess. 4 and Rev 20 must be describing the same event.


The second popular teaching is that the antichrist will not appear until the Church is taken out of the earth because the Church in the earth and the Holy Spirit in the Church are what is preventing the antichrist from being revealed. However, Paul instructs the Thessalonians to not believe that the Day of the Lord has come until they SEE the man of lawlessness revealed. Paul directly told the Thessalonians to not let anyone deceive you (II Thes. 2:3) that it will not come unless you see the antichrist appear. Not he will appear after you are taken away, but you will see him. If we are taken away and then he appears we will not see him. That is in direct contradiction to this passage. (If you read II Thess. the first chapter you will see that Paul explains to these gentile believers that when the Lord returns he will reward the righteous among them and punish the wicked who are opposing them. He does not say you will be taken out of the way to receive your reward so the antichrist can come and then 7 years later Jesus will return to punish the wicked. He talks of one return with both rewards and puishments.)


So two of the things the scriptures warns us not to be deceived about have actually become two of the pillars of the end-time teaching of our day. I guess the reason He warned us is because of the likelihood that we would be deceived in these two areas. Remember to read what the scriptures actually say and not cram your theory into a few proof texts to verify the conclusion you have reached because you like the idea. I once believed the teachings that I am renouncing today until I simply read the Bible for what it said. Someone simply said show me where it says the Church will be raptured before a 7 year tribulation. I read the Bible and could not find those statements anywhere. Matt. 24:29-31, "But immediately after the tribulation of those days...He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather His elect..."

I hear there are a lot of claims being thrown around that say Christianity is based on an ancient myth. That Jesus' resurrection is itself a resurrection of a myth espoused long before Jesus was born. Leaving the credibility of the prior resurrection stories to someone else, let's look at the reliability of the claims of Christianity. There could have certainly been prior myths or fables of a resurrected one just as there were prior claims of heavenly beings (gods) having relationship with women (Roman and Greek mythology, along with one view of Genesis 6). Does that in itself mean there could be no Virgin birth? The important point is not whether the idea that Jesus resurrected was the first time it hit the earth but rather is there reason to believe what is told is true on its own merit. There can certainly be foreshadowing or prophetic revelation to enhance the truth or demonic imitation to distract or discredit the genuine. So let's look at some of the claims of the Bible.
First, did Jesus exist, or in other words, is there a Historical Jesus? We have the gospel accounts. In addition there are other "non-Biblical" references to Jesus such as Josephus or Tacitus among others. The truth of Jesus of Nazareth's existence is easily verifiable if you believe any of the writings of antiquity. That His life was remarkable is noteworthy in that we still call this year in many parts of the world 2009 A.D. (Latin-Anno Domini- in the year of the Lord). Two thousand and nine years since he was born. He left quite an impression. The real question relates to His resurrection.
He was crucified under Roman supervision since the Jews were not allowed to execute anyone on their own authority at that time. To discount Christianity in that first century, which many wanted to do, all they had to do was produce the dead body of Jesus. The Romans should have been able to do this since they performed the execution and kept watch at the burial site. If someone claimed that John F. Kennedy, for example, rose after his assasination and is really the Messiah, even now 46 years after his death we are still close enough to the event to disprove it. The Jewish leaders at that time desparately wanted to discredit this new movement (Christianty). Producing the evidence of Jesus' body would have done the trick. It didn't happen.
The remarkable prophecies in Psalm 22:16, 17 and Psalm 69:21 among others regarding His death add credibility to His place in history and the passage in Hosea 6:2 seems to prophesy of His resurrection on the third day. Here the idea is spoken of well before Jesus was born. Does that mean He could not have risen or died that way? Maybe it means that all of history was pointing in some way to this momentous occasion and He was the fulfillment.
Not only were the authorities of that generation not able to refute the account of His resurrection, all of His disciples willingly gave up their lives as principal witnesses to the fact that He indeed did rise from the dead. In Acts 1, when a successor for Judas was chosen, the main purpose was to be a witness of His resurrection (Acts 1:22). Many people will die for something they think is true. We have seen people give up their lives for religious cult beliefs thinking they would obtain some special place in eternity. However, people do not give up their lives for something they know is false. The disciples claimed to be eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection. If they were not, they knew they were lying. If they knew they were lying they would not have died for a cause that they knew was false. They gave up their lives because they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, a remarkable event in history. Paul said if Jesus did not rise from the dead, eat and drink for tomorrow we die which being interpreted means, you might as well party because there is nothing but this life and so live it in whatever way you want. When you're dead you're dead!!
So these two facts, that the contemporaries of Jesus could not disprove his resurrection and the fact that His disciples confessed to be eyewitnesses of the resurrection and gave up their lives for that cause give incredible credence to the claims contained in the New Testament that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. And you know what? He's coming back in glory to take over the creation He redeemed through His death and resurrection.
Here's a random thought on the global warming controversy. When I went to school I was told there was an ice age (first I was told 3 and later told that most research would guess 1 now). And that during this time there were glaciers as far south as Wisconsin. I've been to Wisconsin. All the glaciers are gone!! Doesn't that mean that the globe has been warming even before cars and coal burning power plants? And I am actually glad Wisconsin glaciers are not to be found because the glaciers would not be conducive for cows to graze on and I really like Wisconsin Cheese. I'm sure there are fewer Polar Bears in Wisconsin, but the dairy industry really got a boost!!!

There have been divergent views over the centuries concerning the immediate state of the soul after death. Some believe it to be in an unconscious state and others that the soul goes directly to heaven or hell. Some contend that in the days before Jesus death and resurrection that the soul went to a kind of holding tank (Sheol, Hades) which was divided into a place for the righteous and the other for the unrighteous.

There are scriptural reasons for both views so I will do my best to briefly touch on those and give you some scripture through which you can form your own conclusions. This is not an area that I have spent a lot of time on since I figure whether you are unconscious or directly into heaven or hell the next moment you remember either way is the eternal reality that you enter.

Psalm 115:17 (NASB) says "The dead do not praise the Lord Nor do any that go down into silence." Psalm 88:10-12 mentions similar things such as "Will the departed spirits praise Thee? ...Will Thy wonders be made known in the darkness? And Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" Psalm 6:5 says"For there is no mention of Thee in death; In Sheol who will give Thee thanks?" These verses and some others seem to indicate that death, (Sheol, Hades the grave) is a place of silence.

Resurrection is seen as bringing someone, body, soul and spirit, from a place of rest (unconsciousness) back to life, either for eternal reward or eternal punishment.

In Luke 16:19-31 Jesus tells a parable about a poor man named Lazarus and a rich man at whose gate he used to sit hoping to get some crumbs from the rich man's table. Jesus says that the poor man dies and is carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom and later the rich man dies and it says he is buried and finds himself in Hades and that he is in torment. So the poor man finds himself in peace and rest and is conscious having been taken away by the angels and the rich man finds himself in torment and thirsty wishing he could just get a drop of water. Although Jesus is telling this parable to make a point, I believe that his point is made in the context of reality. There really is a place we go immediately after death.

There is a very obscure passage in Ecclesiastes 12:6,7 that seems to say that at death the body returns to dust but the spirit returns to God. This would imply that there is a conscious state at the time of death. In the parable about Lazarus Jesus says that there is an immediate distinction at the time of death as to whether you will begin to experience eternal reward or punishment.

In II Corinthians 5:5-9 Paul talks about the relationship between the body and the spirit. He says to be at home in the body is to be absent from the Lord and to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. Also in Philippians 1:23 he talks about dying in terms of leaving to be with Christ.

Personally I know of at least two people who had a death experience but their spirit was very much alive. One of my friends saw Jesus and was sent to finish her work, the other saw his body in the hospital room but saw writing on the wall telling him his work in this life was not finished. In both cases there was a conscious existence after the body had shut down. Heaven, being with Jesus, and Hell a place of torment appear to be those places where we go immediately after death. Hades (Hell) itself will actually be thrown into the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20:14) at the Great White Throne judgment. This Lake of Fire is actually called the Second Death. So it makes sense that Hades (Hell) is a present temporary holding place for the dead awaiting the final judgment in which Hades itself will be thrown into the lake of fire. Most scriptural evidence leads me to believe that the body goes to the grave but the soul goes to either Paradise (Jesus told the thief on the cross that he would be with him in Paradise that day) or Hell (depending on your Bible translation).

Just a final, final thought about the evolution thing. The question is, has evolution stopped? If it hasn't and it takes millions of years to develop all these new parts there should be parts of new organs, never been used before. and new limbs and body parts just hanging around waiting for their chance to get hooked up into the biological system. You know something waiting for its connection into the circulatory system and nervous system. My suggestion is a gland about halfway up the ribs that can shoot some good smelling stuff in your armpit when you lift your arm. Now that I have thought of that just sit around and wait a few million years and one of my ancestors should mutate it right into existence. This is gonna be great! Maybe it will be called the Edna gland, you know named after me Ed Ne- nonen.
Hey Jodie has set this site up to recieve moderated comments. I don't have it fully figured out what to do on my part just yet, but if you send in a comment that is publishable, I will do what I can to include it on this blog.
Someone sent a question about where people are presently that have died. So I will address that in the next day or so, if time permits. Also, we hope to include an article that I wrote years ago on Demonology in the Ante-Nicene Fathers which talks about the origin of demons their effects and what invites and resists their control. It's somewhat bizarre but it is a survey of the literature of the early Church Fathers, up to the Council of Nicea.

Just a final thought on the science vs. non-thinking Christian debate. It is amazing to me how little logic is used in the evolution theory. I mean what is really supposed to happen. A one celled life form somehow develops from nothing, complete with all the millions of bits of information that are in each cell. That information is absolutely committed to replicating itself, but somehow it produces a multi-celled life form.
Next, so the life form somehow forms a muscle (just for argument's sake). The muscle just hangs around continuing to be produced for say millions of years waiting for something like a tendon to develop and of course attach itself arbitrarily to another body part that somehow formed. Well they need to attach to something so say somehow a bone forms (poof!) , But it turns out to be the jaw bone but this muscle always grows to the length of a leg. So these parts just float around in the life form for billions of years waiting for a chance meeting and a chance formation of thousands of other needed parts and for these parts to somehow all connect perfectly to make life easier.
So, say I decide I want to breathe through the top of my head because I like to swim and don't want to have to totally surface to breathe. Because I desire to do this somehow this triggers a process in me that begins to develop the needed parts. The problem is evolution says that this development is random (non-directional, chance mutations). If its not random then that means it has purpose or direction. that would imply there is inteliigence behind the process. So how did the one-celled life form decide it needed a leg. Like to the first life form what's a leg anyway and even if I decide I want one how do I change all the genetic programming in each cell (by chance) to form a leg and then somehow form other legs and appendages that I am not programmed to produce. And if evolution is depending on random changes, if in one generation I would produce offspring that somehow had more or less chromosomes than I have (How Does That Happen?) and is making progress toward having legs why wouldn't it in the next generation randomly change direction and become an arm instead of a leg, or maybe even a speg (that's a body part I just made up that hasn't been formed yet)? And for some life form that has never seen eyes (note the ironic use of language, seen eyes, get it), how does it go about forming them, reprogramming its genetic material over millions or how about billions of years to produce something that has never existed? If it continues to develop each needed part to develop an eye, that means there is purpose, intent, direction, may I say intelligence behind the design.
Those that say Christians deny science to believe that God created forget about the mathematical improbabilities of the development of these random body parts and their integration together in a fully functioning creature. If evolution is a slow process we should see billions of transitional forms all around us. In fact why would there even be specific kinds of plants or animals, we should all be in transitional stages. For instance we should see a reptile/bird that has a wing on one side and a leg on the other. Or feathers on one wing and hair on the other, you know real transitional forms.
Sometimes I like to think about how the blood vessels first formed and hung around for millions of years deciding how they would be able to reach every part of the body and then reconnect with the heart after of course the heart is formed. You know what blood vessels don't decide anything, they don't think! That would mean somehow the blood vessels were intelligently designing the body. There is no reasonable genetic reason for all the parts of the human body to develop randomly from mutations to form a system of organs that interrelate and work together. It is illogical to the highest degree. Every cell must be reprogrammed. Notice I use the word reprogram which in itself implies intelligence and purpose. Its hard to use another word to describe the systematic reorganization of genetic information for the purpose of reproducing something unlike yourself that can survive better than yourself.
If you want to take a giant leap of faith believe evolution. The theory is unique in that it was concluded by many scientists to be true before they could observe or specify how it took place. Usually you observe what takes place and form conclusions. With evolution we have the conclusion first, it is true, now we have to figure out a process by which it could have happened. Was it micro-evolution or punctuated equilibrium? We will stuff the evidence into our conclusion even if the evidence would tell us something different. So much for reason, logic or rational thinking. If a princess kisses a frog and it turns into a prince we call it a fairy tale, but if a frog over billions of years becomes a prince that is somehow good science. A sound thinking 5 year old could probably straighten out the science world if they were able to listen to sound reason. You know, like, Hey The Emporer doesn't have any clothes on!! Or we can stand in our smug intellectualism and deny the obvious, all the while thinking ourselves to be quite wise.

Professing themselves to be wise they became fools...Romans 1:22

Hey Folks, I'm starting a Blog. I've been stirred to do this by a few friends and members of my family. I'm looking for your topics of interest. However, I must certainly vent on occasions when I hear some of the insane arguments brought against Christians in these days.
Just today I heard some comments on talk radio implying that Christians don't believe in science. It either has to be science or the Bible. Some of the best science and logic I've seen recently was in the Truth Project. For myself I can concur with the Truth Project in that I have been to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota 3 times. Never have I heard anyone declare regarding the faces of the Presidents in the side of the mountain, "Oh, look what wind, rain and erosion have done to the side of that mountain. That looks a lot like George Washington up there, etc. It's amazing what evolutionary processes have done to create such exact replicas of 4 U.S. Presidents." They are designed, and therefore we logically conclude that there was a designer. I've never known anyone by any logic to imagine those faces to have evolved and yet they are much less complex than any living thing.
There are so many simple questions regarding evolutionary logic that should be asked. What did the first thing that evolved eat since there was nothing else in existence? Which came first blood or blood vessels and how did they find each other? If the evolution of organs and body parts is arbitrary (without design), how did the eye find its location in front of the brain why not lodge in the belly button? How did all those nerves get connected in with the entire nervous system? How did finger nails find their way to the end of your fingers? Any question is legitimate if every development is mindless, purposeless evolution. In fact when I hear people discuss evolution they usually discuss it with purpose and thus imply that intellect was motivating the process. Such as a large mammal used to wander near the ocean until it began to wade in the water and it loved it so much that it became a whale. That is a summary of an old magazine article I read. Well that shows intent. Even with intent how can that happen? Humans are supposed to be the most highly evolved. Let's see you start breathing through the top of your head and grow fins. Oh, I forgot the old evolutionary trick. It takes too long to be observed. And then if you ask why the millions of transitional forms are not in the fossil record the excuse is that it changes too quickly to show up in the record. Evolution is a lot like Santa Claus. You know he's out there you just can never see him in action.
If we want to be a little more technological, how can we explain slow gradual development of cells when we see the principle of irreducible complexity that shows us that in order to function, at all, cells must have all of their components in place and functioning. You can't add a piece at a time because a cell won't function unless all its pieces are in place.
How did bones develop arbitrarily to have marrow inside that coordinates with the blood system or how did we get various types of skin such as lips with their sensitivity right where we needed them if all these things developed arbitrarily (without design)? All of these body parts and organs seem to be in place with a purpose.
Some evolutionists have at least been honest enough to say that the fossil record does not fit micro-evolutionary theory and have thus proposed punctuated equilibrium (formerly callled the hopeful monster theory, Really!). Thus we have gigantic leaps in the evolutionary process such as a bird laying an egg and out pops a reptile. The only problems with this is it has never been observed and there is no genetic reason for it to happen. It takes a gigantic leap of faith to believe that kind of speculative theory.
Here is what we do observe. Monkeys have monkeys, humans have humans and butter beans produce butter beans. This is consistent with what we would expect genetically and it happens to fit the Biblical description that each plant and animal was created with seed in it after its kind.
What is usually pawned off as evidence for evolution are changes within a kind of plant or animal such as the production of new species of dogs or changes in physical structures of bird's beaks or fruit flies. Here is the bottom line. We don't observe one kind of plant or animal producing another kind. Dogs do not produce cats or even dats, half dog and half cat. Dogs produce dogs birds produce birds and fruit flies produce fruit flies. Natural selection takes place in that there are adaptations within kinds of plants or animals to adjust to certain conditions within their available gene pool. Within a species plants that grow deeper roots in an arid environment would tend to become dominant. Why? Because the others die! That is truly natural selection. Survival of the fitest. It does not explain the beginnings of life or the change from one kind to another.
Well I'm done with this initial vent. In the future I may address such topics as the early Church Father's teaching on the origin of demons or how we believe today the very things the Bible warns us against regarding the end times.
I said I was done but here's one more vent. We get ridiculed for being unscientific and based only on faith, but have you heard of Directed Panspermia. This is a theory that has gained some credibility in the "Scientific circles" regarding the origin of life on this planet that basically says we were brought here in seed form by aliens and planted on this earth. Aliens brought us here! Now that's science!! It is amazing what people will believe as long as its not in the Bible.