See? Perfectly Reasonable!

All we have to do is give in to all their demands.  Why didn't we think of that before?



Just remember that when he talks about letting them have Sha'riah law, they don't mean to have it just stay in their little neighborhood.  A major tenet of Islam is that Allah must rule the entire world and all, I mean all,  -- may I have your attention -- ALL people must convert to Islam or die or be made slaves.  No plurality, no compromise.  No live and let live.

The Bigger Problem

"Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance." 
             -- Francis W. Porretto

Once again I run across a tidbit from Liberty's Torch that becomes the seed for a post here. Francis managed to encapsulate an idea in just seven words.  Sometimes, really great quotes don't get the appreciation they deserve. Maybe this one little sentence struck me so significantly because I have enough worldly experience.

Maybe it set off bells and whistles in my head because I've had to deal with the truth of that statement so much lately.

At the risk of boring my more intelligent readers, I feel like expounding on the quote above. I guess another reason for this is that I've got several decades of experience that growing older does not guarantee growing wiser; at least not in a society that coddles ignorance and stupidity.  Recently I've had to encounter the most egregious sin of stupidity.  Willful ignorance.  While lately I have seen this attitude most irritatingly in people quite older than myself, I try to mitigate my angst by seeing an underlying attitude of: "I'm old, I've paid my dues, and I'm not long for this world anyway."

Believe it or not, I've spent enough time thinking about this that I now have two categories of willful ignorance. In the first kind, the subject is confronted with facts that are so upsetting to his worldview, that he dismisses the new information and quickly moves on to something else that distracts him from having to really ruminate on it.  It may be in the back of his mind, able to resurface later if brought about by another event.  But the subject sort of subconsciously suppresses it because the cognitive dissonance is just too uncomfortable to deal with presently.  In this primary level, at least there is hope that the subject will accept the truth in the future.  When I encounter this in an individual, I can easily smile and drop the subject, thinking to myself, "It's okay, he/she's just not ready yet."

But the second level of willful ignorance is where I have to fight the demons that set my blood to boiling. It's when the subject makes clear and very declarative statements to the effect of: "I don't WANT to know." And more importantly, the statements are made with a smile and a smugness as if delivering divine wisdom from on high.  This is where I DO need grace from the Almighty, because I feel like slapping the ever-loving shit out of the jerk.

Getting back to the main idea; both of the levels of ignorance above are most often born out of miseducation.  Ignorance in its pure form simply means that you don't know, but you have not been indoctrinated in any particular direction, like a juror in a fresh venue with no prior knowledge of the case.  The problem comes from being purposely "educated" to believe things that seem very plausible, have been seemingly accepted by the vast majority, and are typically very difficult and time consuming to falsify or prove on one's own. Amusement of all kinds is the modern American sport. Ignorance is bliss. "I'll take the blue pill."

Why?  Well, as much as I don't like leftist/progressives, I'll quote one here.  Gloria Steinem said, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."  Of course, truth won't piss you off until you are forced to come to grips with it.  It's like the child of any age who's parents finally throw him out of the house to go fend for his self. The Eastern Airlines employee or air traffic controller who finds out that the union doesn't really have his best interests at heart. The college graduate who finds out that there is no one looking to hire someone with a masters degree in "Graffiti's Social Importance."
So many more examples I would like to give here, but I'll move on.

People don't cling to false things they believe to be true because of evidence or logic.  They cling to those things because of their emotions.  Kevin Baker over at The Smallest Minority has many uberposts on his blog, along with some long-running exchanges with hoplophobes that help prove this point.  I remember sifting through long threads on his site as well as others, and being dumbfounded at the extremes to which anti-gunners will go to defend their position against all evidence and logic which demonstrates their position to be blatantly stupid.

One reason emotion is such a big issue is because nobody likes to find out they've fallen for a lie.  Short-term lies on the personal level are one thing. Someone in your personal world lies to you, but you eventually find out. Most of your anger can be righteously directed at them, and once you've calmed down you can at least feel good about yourself for discovering the truth.  But the big lies that will really rock your world are just too painful to deal with for a lot of people. Big lies that you find out you actually talked yourself into because they sounded so good.  But it was wrong.  And in the realization it was wrong you become angry. You are angry because it made you feel stupid.

The bigger the lie, the more stupid you feel, and thus the angrier you get.  The force multiplier to the tune of 10X is the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself.  There's not one individual you can blame for knowingly defrauding you.  If you got taken in by Bernie Madoff, you've got someone you can focus your anger on.  But who are you going to take to court or see in shackles over the Social Security Ponzi scheme?

Nothing perpetuates and protects ignorance as much as believing that you already know the truth. Oh, I believe that there are indeed absolute truths. But they are the things which I am always willing to put to the test.  Any test. Over and over.  But when you've come to the conclusion that "the argument/debate is over," then the only thing you have proven is your ignorance. 



Minor Rabbit Trail:  It's so easy to be like one of the sheep in this parade.  It's cool to feel like you are connected with a popular movie star.  It's so easy to let people like Leo and Algore and Bernie the Commie Sanders do your thinking for you, instead of asking the epistemological question: Are they right? How do they know?  What are the arguments on the other side?  If the argument is over, why the need for the march?  Back to my screed.

The things I am willing to argue passionately for are the things I am sure are true, with the caveat that I know I am human and that there may be information yet that I do not have.  But show me someone who is unwilling to entertain a reasonable and intelligent argument, and I'll show you a willfully ignorant and downright stupid fool.

Camping's Doomsday Fail

Yes, I know the book was written by Robert Fitzpatrick.  Read on.

If time were not an issue, I would really like to take this "Doomsday Code" book and debunk each and every issue one at a time. There is so much wrong with the book that explains how someone can come up with such egregious nonsense about prophecy, that it could not all possibly be dealt with in a single post or even a three part series.  It would take nearly the same number of pages as the book (about 380) to explain all the error.  This post is going to have to stay narrower in scope than that.  It's still a very long post.

First, I don't expect anyone who is not interested in Biblical prophecy to understand much of what I'm going to explain because many of the concepts, references, and language will be foreign to the average Christian, let alone a non-believer.  If you are not familiar with terms like pre-tribulational, post-millennial, dispensation, preterist, eschatology, replacement theology, and the like, you will be lost in this essay. For this essay to be an easy read, you would need to be familiar with the arguments surrounding these terms.

Second, one would need to know the history of end-time prophecy failures going back to 1988.  Amazingly, the author of the Doomsday Code defends the failures of those predictions.  Robert Fitzpatrick is not an original thinker.  It has become obvious to everyone who follows heretical teaching, and especially heretical teaching about prophecy, that Fitzpatrick is nothing more than a hired pen for Harold Camping.  I may simply refer to the false doctrine of this book from here on out as belonging to Camping.

Thirdly, I would like to make the main issue of this essay to be understanding how such bad doctrine comes about and thrives. How does the believer rightly discern truth from Scripture and avoid looking stupid and carrying the Lord's name in vain. That is where the focus of the believer ought to be.  And yes, that really is the meaning of the third of the ten commandments

Let's start with an amazing quote from Fitzpatrick's book:

"For one thing, we need to understand that every word of the Bible, in the original language in which it was written, is the word of God. In 2 Timothy 3:16, we read: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:"
The original Greek, translated in this scripture as “given by inspiration of God,” carries the idea that scripture is “God breathed.” It's as if each word came from the mouth of God. God also took care to be sure that the Bible was preserved in tact [sic]- every word of it - down through the ages. He raised up a class of Jewish scribes who faithfully and accurately copied out the exact words, checking and rechecking so that there would be no error. If we come across a scripture that appears to contradict something else we have read in the Bible, we need to dig (and pray!) a bit deeper for understanding. . . .  By examining the way a word is used elsewhere in the Bible, you may be better able to understand the sense in which it is used in a scripture you are studying. This approach to the Bible works because the Bible is a cohesive whole, all coming from a single source.  [from page xxii of the Introduction]

The problem is, Fitzpatrick proceeded to ignore all of that advice in writing the rest of the book.  In reading the book I discover that "Replacement Theology" and worse abounds.  This is the idea that the "Christian" church has replaced Israel in God's plan throughout the pages of the Bible and history.  This is a direct denial of what Paul wrote to Timothy in the above quote, it denies the clear teaching of Paul in his letter to the Romans, and denies the prophecies of Scripture about Israel that have yet to be fulfilled, such as Ezekiel 38, and of what was just quoted from the book.  An important rule of proper Biblical interpretation is that you cannot interpret the meaning of one verse to be in direct opposition to the meaning of any other verse.  For clarification's sake, we are talking about the understanding of meaning, and not interpretation of translation.

Another indispensible rule of interpretation is exegesis versus eisegesis.  Eisegesis is essentially reading the meaning that you want into the text.  Fitzpatrick actually prepares us for the fact that he is going to commit this crime in chapter two on page 15:

"The intended meaning of a scripture will be its spiritual meaning: that's what God is teaching us. Sometimes the spiritual meaning is extremely difficult to understand, especially because the apparent meaning ontradicts it."

Whenever somebody claiming to be a Bible teacher starts in with something like that, he had better have lots and lots of scholarship, reason, and logic to back up what he's trying to prove.  Even the most respected Jewish sages and Bible scholars in the Christian world know that a basic rule of interpretation is that any deeper, or "spiritual" meaning should never, never contradict the plain meaning of the text.

 Torah scholars going back centuries believe that there are four levels of meaning embedded in the Torah. Jewish scholars use the word PaRDeS, the Hebrew word for orchard,  to remember these four levels. The first is Peshat; the plain, literal reading of the text. It is most often understood to be "simple" or the simple path.  The idea is that while you can enjoy all the other stuff along the path, the path keeps you from getting lost.  If you stray too far out into the weeds, you lose the correct way.  When you start coming up with interpretations where you change words or redefine them from their plain meaning, you can make the text say anything you want to and devolve into a bunch of nonsense.  The following three levels of exegesis must follow from the first level and not contradict it.  This is the heart of exegesis, the meaning of which is to draw out the meaning that the author intended.  All proper Biblical understanding flows from the idea that we are to avoid reading into the text what we would like for it to mean, and instead, we search out to understand the meaning as God Himself intended.

The next level of understanding is Remez. This refers to "hints" or more deep and allegorical meaning of the text without changing the plain meaning of the text.  For example; many of the events of Joseph's life directly hint at the events of Yeshua's (Jesus') life.  That doesn't mean that Joseph or the events that happened to him or Egypt, or Jacob and his sons are to be taken as anything other than literal events, but those events were a foreshadowing of the coming, suffering, Messiah.  The same applies to Moses.

The third level of understanding is called the Derash, which means "to dig", and a teaching on this level is referred to as a "midrash." Most of what we know to be the Jewish religious traditions are the result of midrashic explanation of the Torah.  Yeshua agreed with the vast majority of the midrashic teaching that was followed by the pharisees of His day.  Only where it departed from the plain meaning of the text of Torah did He correct them.  Most midrashic teaching is based on broad understanding of quite a few texts of Scripture and not some extrapolated conjecture based on just one or two verses.  Midrashic teachings on Scripture are always considered debatable and never carry the weight of infallible dogma.  However, some of it has become so well accepted as truth over the centuries that nobody has a reason to question it.

The fourth and last level is called Sod (rhymes with "mode") and is the esoteric level,  really deep meaning that the sages derive.  An example could be the belief that women are just naturally more spiritual than men and that is why they are exempt from many of the rules such as wearing tzitzit and praying three times a day at specific times as the orthodox do.  This is where the Qabbalistic writings come from and they are not intended for those who are not deeply grounded in basic Torah study, even though they too, are never supposed to violate the Peshat understanding of Scripture.

There is so much wrong with Camping's interpretations of Scripture because he so blatantly violates the rules of exegesis.  In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black we have this quote from page 210:

"These false apostles, deceitful workers, are church leaders who appear to be ministers of righteousness but who are actually ministers of Satan! Just as the early church was being “seeded” with tares - people who looked like true believers but were not - the early church was also being infiltrated by false apostles. Now you may be wondering if this situation which occurred ages ago may have been corrected, so that the church could go on to a glorious future until the end of time. Sadly, that is not the case."

Then, incredibly, on page 211, he quotes the passage from 2 Thess. 2:1-4 which explains why he is wrong about the Doomsday prediction.  I will come back to that passage in a moment, because that is the passage which I will use to prove why Camping is wrong and how badly he departs from exegesis.

See this quote from page 229:

"Incredibly, the entire focus of these annual feasts is on the Lord Jesus. It is so sad that, even today, many Jews all around the world are so careful to keep these feast days but are unaware of their significance."

Let me tell you what is sad.  That people who claim to be followers of the Messiah have abandoned God's appointed feasts on His designated calendar and cannot begin to understand their true significance because they have trashed thousands of years of hard earned Jewish wisdom and understanding and bought into some idea that Yeshua came and created a whole new religion.  But Camping's doctrine gets even worse.

In spite of what he wrote in the introduction, Fitzpatrick goes on to say the following on pages 266-267:

"Many people read Mark 13:32 and understand it to mean that the timing - the day and the hour of the rapture - cannot possibly be known because not even the Son of God knows it; but the scripture can't have that meaning.  [Warning! - Warning! - Warning! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!  Where's the html code that let's me make this insert flash?]  The Lord Jesus must know the timing. Remember, it was He who wrote the Bible. He is the Word of God and He is God. It was He who told Daniel to “seal the book” to the time of the end; and it was He who unsealed that book (the Bible), as we read in Revelation 5. It was only after the book was unsealed in these latter days that we learned the timing of God's plan. The Lord Jesus, therefore, must have known the timing; but if that is so, we must search to understand the meaning of the scripture telling us the Son does not know of “that day and that hour.”

I've been in the world of Christendom long enough to understand most all of the doctrinal positions from original sin to transubstantiation in the eucharist.  I understand the trinitarian doctrine, but when you carry it to an extreme that causes you to contradict direct statements of Scripture, such as the one above, then there is a serious problem with your doctrine.  You don't search to understand (read re-interpret) the Scripture to make it work with your doctrine and your desire to know something that God has repeatedly made clear that you cannot know.

While we cannot know the day or the hour, we can pay attention to the signs.  Yeshua did give us the signs to look for so as to know that the time is getting closer.  He told us to watch and pray.  I could go through a list of things, but many of them could be considered vague or ambiguous.  I don't need many or even a few to demonstrate why Camping's prediction was doomed to failure.  My example also proves pre-tribulationalist doctrine wrong as well.  There isn't going to be two second comings of Messiah as required by pre-trib doctrine; some secret catching away and then some months or days or years later Messiah comes back to administer justice.

Paul made it clear that there was one event that the believers could look for that had to happen before the "catching away of the saints" (in Greek it is called the harpazo).  It helps to make sure that we understand the full context of Paul's statement.  In Paul's first letter to the Thessolonians, he is explaining how the new believers need not worry about the fate of those who have died.  He does this by giving the details of what will happen when the Lord comes back for his own and brings about the resurrection of the dead.  The key details make it clear that everyone can know that the event is happening.  "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; . . ."  This statement is in agreement with the angels who spoke to the disciples at Messiah's ascension. That Yeshua would come down the same way he went up.  Other Scripture confirms that the conquering King Messiah would touch down on the Mount of Olives.  The point here is that Paul is talking about the triumphal return of Messiah at the "end days."  Paul continues: "and the dead in Messiah shall rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord." (1 Thess. 4:16-17)

We can surmise from the text that someone or some group was causing the believers in Thessolonica to worry that they had missed the return of Messiah.  By this time in the first century, there were already heretics who were teaching all sorts of bizarre doctrines about Messiah and the way of salvation.  People who tried to blend beliefs from the pagan religions or that you had to prove complete adherence to all the Jewish traditions in order to earn salvation.  The problem is, it didn't stop even after Paul's first letter.  Therefore, he had to write a second letter, reasserting his authority and warning that those who taught false doctrine about the return of Messiah would suffer judgment "on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, . . ."  And continuing in his second letter on this very same subject, he now gives the Thessalonicans more details about the second coming so that they can rest assured what to look for and how not to be fooled by false prophets.  Here is the text:

"Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him, that you may not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come."

Let's be perfectly clear in our understanding  of the subject.  Paul uses three distinct features to make sure that we are talking about one, single event.  The coming of Messiah; or in Greek the parousia.  The gathering together to Him; which is in Greek the harpazo, or "catching away."  Both of these features being part of "the day of the Lord" which is a very specific phrase repeated throughout prophetic Scripture to describe when God comes to earth in final judgment.  Bear in mind that Paul spent time with these people as he described in the first letter, teaching them and building them up as a congregation.  He expected them to understand what he was saying.  He chose his words carefully (or you could say the Holy Spirit was choosing the words carefully since this was meant to be Scripture for all believers into the future and we were all supposed to learn from it.).  Paul continues:

"Let no one in any way deceive you, for *it* will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction."

Stop and be sure  you understand what the pronoun *it* is referring to.  One should not need an advanced degree in language to comprehend that *it* is referring to the event described in verses one and two of the second chapter of 2nd Thessalonians.  Any reader who does not understand that, needs to seek remedial reading instruction as soon as possible.

Verse three also tells us what the two things are that must occur before the parousia, harpazo, and the "day of the Lord" can happen.  While the apostasy might not be something that everyone can agree on in easily definable terms, the "man of lawlessness" is pretty much understood by all believers to be THE anti-Christ, or the final archtype Antichrist.  He wasn't the first of his kind.  Paul wrote those verses being fully aware of Antiochus Epiphanes and what he did in the Temple at Jerusalem.  Such was considered an "abomination of desolation" which required the cleansing and re-dedication of the Temple.  The miracle of that re-dedication is why we celebrate Channukah today.   But this Antichrist is defined by Paul in verse nine as having all the power of Satan, being able to perform miracles and wonders.
In verse four, Paul explains that this Antichrist, this man, will exalt himself above all gods and will take his seat in the Temple, declaring himself to be the only god.  Such an event would be another "abomination of desolation" and fitting the description given by Messiah Himself in Matthew 24:15 as part of the answer to the direct questions of the disciples about the sign of His coming and the end of the age.  Read the whole 24th chapter of Matthew.

Paul thus exhorts the believers at Thessalonica that unless this event of another evil man, the final evil man with the power of Satan, coming into the Temple and desecrating it happens for all to see, keeping with the prophecy of Messiah Himself, there would be no return of Messiah.  End of story.

In wrapping this whole issue up, I can state with the utmost confidence that I don't need to re-define any plain readings of Scripture to make it say what it doesn't say. I  come to the clear conclusion that while "no man can know the day nor the hour" of the return of Messiah or the actual moment that begins the "day of the Lord," I not only can, but I am exhorted by Scripture to know and watch for the signs that must take place before Messiah returns.  So, all you pre-tribbers out there reading this: you have been warned.  You see, the Scripture teaches that Messiah's return, and our "catching away" or rapture, and the beginning of the "day of the Lord" cannot happen until the events that Paul and the Messiah described.  Those events cannot happen until a Temple has been built and is in service in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.  The "Holy place" is the Holy of Holies.  You can allegorize it away as being or representing something else, but you do so to your own detriment.

The biggest problem with this whole mess is that it gives skeptics of the Bible something to laugh at.  They won't say that Harold Camping and Robert Fitzpatrick were wrong about what the Bible teaches.  They'll say that all of those Christians who believe in that silly Bible are all a bunch of idiots.  They will mock God and ridicule the Bible.

All those who claim allegiance to Messiah are called upon to study and show themselves to be faithful disciples, understanding the Word of God properly and leading others to salvation, not creating opportunities for evil to seem successful.

If you can't understand how to use the comments feature, you can email me with your questions, comments, or criticisms at the address in the sidebar.

Shalom Y'all

Three Days, Three Nights

When did Yeshua die and when did He rise?

When I was still identifying with Christians, I would encounter skeptics and later on Muslims using the same questions to point out that Christians were either stupid, inconsistent, or both.  I would often sidestep the problems or simply chalk it up to a lack of faith on the part of the skeptic.  I didn't want to have to recognize and deal with my own error or the laziness I had for dealing with that error.  It was pretty silly considering I was also teaching apologetics; teaching why you could trust the Bible on everything it said, but I didn't want to deal with certain issues because it would cause ill feelings in the church itself.  I liked the traditions and didn't want to change them either, and I certainly didn't want to risk the alienation of friends and family by pointing out error and correcting it.  I'd already gone through that when discovered that the pre-tribulational view of eschatology was wrong and I had family members get very angry with me for pointing out where Scripture made it clear that it was wrong.

Now that I've taken on Christmas and Easter as not just being pagan, but in direct violation of God's Word, I should also tackle the issue of Yeshua's death and resurrection and how important it is that we get this right.  I can't just put it on the back burner of insignificant details any more.  I've invested too much time and energy into telling people that the biggest difference between belief in the Bible and the Messiah versus all other religions in the world is that the Bible is verifiable truth in history.  These aren't just fantastic stories or myths designed to illustrate some "greater truth."  If the Bible is not telling the actual truth about people, places, and events, then I'm an idiot and no one should listen to me.  So if I pass off traditions of the church that are proveably false and which skeptics can use to discredit the Bible, I'm not doing God any favors.  And while it is one thing to pass on bad information in ignorance, it is evil to pass on lies when you know they are lies.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Yeshua HaMashiach, or the man that many in the Western world refer to as Jesus Christ, was not crucified and did not die on a Friday.  He also did not rise from the grave on Sunday morning.  Yeshua, the promised Messiah was crucified on a Wednesday afternoon during the same time that the Passover lambs were being slaughtered.  In keeping with prophecy, both in the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the words of Yeshua Himself, he would be dead in the grave for three days and three nights.  In case you have never thought of it before, you can't get three full days out of Friday night to Sunday morning at sunrise.  If the Friday night to Sunday morning scenario is how it went down, that would make Jesus out to be a liar.  That's not what I am out to prove.  I'm out to prove that God and His Word are true and that the traditions of men are at fault.  Now, if you love your denomination and your tradition more than you love God and the truth, this is going to be very difficult for you to look into.  I wouldn't be surprised if I've lost some readers into the first paragraph.

In order for us to understand how this error occurred, we need to understand history.  We also need a better understanding of the Hebrew, Biblical roots of the faith.  Since the Roman Empire hijacked Christianity in the fourth century, several things have happened.  First is that much understanding of the Tanakh, or "Old Testament" became lost to the Gentile converts.  Secondly, a lot of pagan beliefs and practices got blended into church practices with a veneer of new meaning to make it palatable to believers.  Third, an insidious hatred of anything Jewish or of "The Law" crept into the churches. And finally, the calendar and almost everything about reckoning time became corrupted from God's way to man's way.

How many times have you wondered why the Jews keep the Sabbath on Saturday?  I know that as a kid, I always thought it odd that the Calendar shows Sunday as the first day of the week.  Why is that?  Because it is.  Know why it's called Sunday?  In honor of the Sun god.  You can call him Osiris, but it actually goes back to Nimrod, a grandson of Noah. In Hebrew, Sunday is simply Yom Rishon, or "day first."  I like how the Spanish language preserves the proof of what some of these days actually are.  Saturday is Sabbados, not hard to figure that one out.  Monday is really "moon day" as the Spanish confirmes by calling it Lunes, as in lunar. Explaining all of this background may make for a somewhat lengthy post, but all of this information really helps to comprehend how we got to this tangled mess.

Because the vast majority of Gentile Christians don't understand the Torah or the rest of the Old Testament that well, they will gloss over or miss, or just flat out misinterpret many details in the New Testament.  The issue over the death and resurrection of Yeshua is a wonderful example.  People read that they were in a hurry to get the body of Yeshua down off the cross because Sabbath was approaching.  All days begin and end at Sundown in the Biblical way of reckoning.  Why?  Because starting in Genesis, God said, "There was evening, and then morning, one day."  Now the problem for Gentiles untrained in the Scriptures is that they assumed that all Sabbaths are the seventh day of the week.  Not so.  God appointed several feast days and the two most notable feasts are the Passover and Sukkot (Feast of Booths or Tabernacles) in which the first and seventh days are "High Sabbaths" and they occur according to specific months and dates, instead of according to the week.  We just experienced it this month with Passover.  We observed the High Sabbath starting at sundown on Monday the 18th (going into the 15h day of Nisan)  Then we celebrated Shabbat on Saturday, and then we had a High Sabbath the very next Tuesday.

We have plenty of direct information in the gospels that tell us that Yeshua's crucifixion took place at Passover. This point is beyond argument.  The problem comes from Gentiles who started running the church in the fourth century tryin to impose things into the understanding of the events and introducing pagan rituals and customs into the celebration of Christ's death and resurrection. Remember that the religious leaders were hanging on every word of Yeshua, looking for a chance to discredit him as Messiah.  By the time of this Passover things had reached a boiling point because the people were all believing that Yeshua must be the Messiah.  Interestingly enough, Yeshua had made his triumphal entry on a donkey four days prior in fulfillment of the prophecy in Daniel 9, and that was the same day that all the households of Israel were to choose a lamb to take into their houses for the three day period of inspection to make sure that the lamb met the flawless standard for sacrifice.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Yeshua has to celebrate the Passover Seder with His disciples a day early because He has an appointment with destiny. To what is us would be Tuesday night Yeshua gathers with His disciples in the upper room and conducts the Seder.  Wednesday is the fourteenth of Nisan.  Preparation day to the Jews.  This is unique to the Passover feast.  It is the last day to make sure that all the leaven (Chametz) has been cleared from the house.  This is the day when the lambs are slain at the time of the afternoon sacrifice at the Temple.  Yeshua was arrested in the middle of the night or in the early dark of morning of that Wednesday.  By the time the morning sun was well above the horizon, Yeshua had endured a kangaroo court trial by a handful (not a quorum) of the Sanhedrin, and been to Herod's palace.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of lambs were bleating in the Temple courtyard awaiting their slaughter for the Passover feast.  Women everywhere were rushing about making whatever final preparations were necessary because the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Matzot) was about to begin at sundown.  Now the crucial thing to remember that the leaders wanted to catch Yeshua in a lie or in violating Torah.

Matthew 12:38-40 "Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas (Jonah) was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

Three days and three nights.  You can't lie down on Friday night, get up Sunday morning and call that three days and three nights.  No amount of verbal or linguistic gymnastics by either Catholic or Protestant theologians is going to get around that.  There is no need to, unless your purpose is to preserve tradition over the truth of Scripture.

According to the gospel text, we know with certainty which day it was on the Hebrew calendar (God's calendar), because John 19:31 states: "The Jews therefore, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away."  This means that the crucifixion took place on the 14th of Nisan, regardless of what day of the week it was. There is only one "day of preparation" on the Hebrew calendar.   But first an explanation for those who might be wondering: why the breaking of the legs?

Crucifixion is so incredibly slow and painful a death because it is the slowest, most agonizing form of asphyxiation.  However, the body still retains the overwhelming desire to survive so to take a breath is involuntary.  In crucifixion this means pushing one's feet against the stapes.  By breaking the legs of the victim, he can no longer push himself up to take a breath, and the pulmonary edema speeded up to hasten the death.  Torah demanded that none of the bones of the Passover lamb be broken (Exodus 12:46).  Scripture prophesied that no bones of the Messiah would be broken (Psalm 34:20).

As Yeshua was being raised up on the cross the priests in the Temple were slaughtering lambs as fast as they could as twighlight was approaching.  It must have been about this time that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were getting permission to take the body and a shroud, and hope they could get the body in Joseph's tomb before the High Sabbath was upon them.  Then they needed to get back home to observe the Passover, have the Seder meal and begin the Sabbath rest of the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  At sunset of that Thursday evening, that Sabbath would be over and then the women could purchase and work on preparing the spice mixture that they intended to use on the body of the Messiah.  But they would only have the daylight of Friday to do all that.  Then they needed to observe the weekly Sabbath that began at sundown on Friday night.

Luke 23:50-56  "And behold, a man named Joseph, who was a member of he Council, a good and righteous man (he had not consented to their plan and action), a man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who was waiting for he kingdom of God; this man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.  And he took it down and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid Him in a tomb cut into the rock, where no one had ever lain.  And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath was about to begin. And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment."

A lot of information is crammed into the verse above, but the events are in chronological order. Luke is known for being a very careful historian.  He doesn't mention anything about spices being brought by Nicodemus or Joseph. Maybe they did.  The time element here is important.  There wasn't time to do anything with the body because the sun was setting on the day of preparation.  There was only enough time to put the body in the linen shroud and lay it in the tomb.  The women followed along so they could know exactly where the body was and deal with the spices and wrapping of the body when there would be more time.  Luke doesn't explain religious procedure here because the assumption is that the reader understands all of that.  The women returned home, but they didn't start working on preparation of spices and ointments as soon as they got home.  When they got up the following morning, on what we would call Thursday, they were observing a High Sabbath.  It would be Friday morning before they would begin working on the spices and ointments and tearing up the cloth strips for wrapping the body and getting everything set to go back to the sepulchre.  Even though the text doesn't say it explicitly, it stands to reason that they all knew that a guard had been posted until at least the third day if not indefinately.  But there was not enough time on Friday to both get the anointing stuff and bindings prepared and go to the tomb and work on the body before the weekly Sabbath arrived, so they would have to wait until that Sabbath was over as well.  Even though the sabbath ended when three stars were visible in the sky on Saturday night, who would go to a tomb at night?  The women planned on going to the tomb at daybreak of the first day of the week, Yom Rishon.

Looking at the timeline again, we see that Yeshua would have been dead Wednesday night and placed in the tomb.  That's Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night; Thursday day, Friday day, and Saturday day until sundown.  Three days, and three nights.  And because Messiah is the Lord of the Sabbath, it would make sense that he rose from the dead at the end of the Sabbath day, not on Sunday morning, well into the first day of the week.  No need to push the resurrection to that artificial time frame.  The women couldn't come to the tomb until that time, but that is no reason to assume that God raised Him from the dead just before the women showed up hours after the first day of the week had begun.  We are told what the women saw after the fact, not that they witnessed the resurrection. There was an angel there to tell them He was gone, but the guards had all vanished by this time.

Another important piece of evidence to this case is the fact that for the first 300 years following the resurrection, the above scenario was accepted and taught by the early ekklesia (church).  Epiphanus, Victorinus of Petau in 307 AD, Lactantius, Wescott, Cassiodorus, and Gregory of Tours. Later, Finis Dake and R.A. Torrey also believed in a Wednesday crucifixion.  This is because they took the time to study Scripture and understand the God appointed Feast and how it was all observed by the Jews.

There are a couple of good essays that cover the same information with other details that you can find here and here.

Why the church changed to celebrating Easter is another issue that should be dealt with at length in another post.  Why the protestant churches still celebrate pagan holidays with pagan symbols and rituals is still another issue that we need to think about.

In His Name

This is the next installment in the series that began with Why I Am Not A Christian.  You can return here to click on the subsequent essays: Two, Three, Four, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10.


Lots of Christian denominations in the breathless "charismatic" wing will go on wild rants about invoking the name of Jesus.  Such rants, er, I guess I mean "sermons" are usually a mile wide and an inch deep.  And since it brings the subject to mind, it usually compares to the practice in many independent congregations to engage in what I call "broken-record" worship.  Now, before someone accuses me of being too critical, let me ask God, right here in front of the witnesses (No, not you JWs) who read this blog, to correct me if what I am about to say is wrong.  I just don't see how taking a little chorus of a song and repeating it over, and over, and over for a thirty or forty minute stretch at 110 decibels is somehow honoring to God.  To me, it invokes images of new age cults engaging in repetitive chants in order to empty their minds and achieve oneness with their navel or whatever.  I'd rather sing some stodgy old hymns that have great and meaningful lyrics that you have to actually think about and tell an important story or attribute of God than to sing the same line, "I am a friend of God" or "Better is one day in Your house" eighty-five times or for thirty minutes, which ever comes first.

If that isn't bad enough, imagine a preacher who spends 40 minutes talking about what the five smooth stones were saying to each other in David's pouch about which one of them get's to kill Goliath.  No, my imagination isn't good enough to come up with a whopper like that.  I remember being stunned by being surrounded by people shouting "Hallelujah!" and "Preach on!"  and wondering for the life of me what could possibly be edifying about any of this.  The reason it comes to mind over fifteen years later is because of the sheer stupidity and spectacle of it.  It wasn't like I walked out of that service (probably long before he was finished) thinking to myself, "Wow, this is understanding that is going to make such a difference in my Christian walk."

In a world that is hurting for answers, the last thing they need is mindless nonsense being associated with the Real God.  People need to hear the evidence for why they can trust the Bible.  They need to hear reasonable answers to skeptics about the Bible being just a bunch of myths invented to enslave people to a religious system.  People need to know that science doesn't conflict with anything the Bible says about history or anything else it addresses.  Real advances in the hard sciences show that the Bible can indeed be trusted.  There are facts and evidence that explain why the universe appears to be so old while the Bible claims an age of about 6,000 years.  People should have the opportunity to hear the logical, systematic explanations for why the atheist position isn't just illogical, but downright stupid.  By the way, I distinguish between atheists who don't really care about the argument, versus those who are militant in their religious fervor against God.

There are many, but not all of those associated with charismatic congregations who have this idea that if they simply attach the name of Jesus to whatever they are doing, and it seems like a good thing, God will bless, condone and sanctify it.  This stems from a serious misunderstanding of what it means from the ancient Biblical concept of "in My name."  We need to have the proper understanding of the phrase.

From the time Yeshua inaugurated His ministry and chose His disciples it was clear that he was no ordinary Rabbi.  But the modern, western, Christianized mind should never make the mistake of thinking that He did not teach in the exact same manner as all the sages who came before Him.  In case you haven't been keeping up with this series, let me pause here to fill in some things and repeat some things because they are well worth making clear.  There are Rabbis and there are Sages.  Sages were the top Rabbis.  They weren't appointed by anyone (unless you want to count the Holy Spirit).  They reached their status because they were recognized by the people as exceptional Torah scholars who practiced what they preached.  Just as a catholic nun would hold up Mother Teresa as a standard for piety and devoutness, a sage was the Rabbi everybody was hoping would be willing to take you on as a disciple, because everybody around knew that this guy had the answers and lived out everything that he preached.  The thing that probably shocks the mind of a modern westerner is the fact that when a Rabbi took you on as a disciple -- from the time of Noah until maybe a thousand years ago, the disciple lived with their Rabbi or Master.  It was nothing new or weird or different that the disciples of Yeshua of Nazareth spent all of their time with the Master.  It was a twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week deal.  They slept in the same houses, they ate all their meals together.  Every waking moment was spent learning how to do everything exactly the way their Master did it and memorizing the words that He spoke. Keeping in mind that you first had to have memorized the Torah and pretty much the Prophets and the Psalms.

That is such a foreign concept to modern people.  Imagine living and learning in such constant closeness that the only things you don't do together are bathing and defacating.  Sorry if that seems too graphic for you, but I want to be faithful to the facts.  No wonder that the gospels tell us that Yeshua spent a lot of time finding a solitary place to pray. So, what does this have to do with the point about "in My name?"

In order for anyone to have any respect for a man invoking the phrase, "in the name of . . ." the listeners would have to know that the person was a disciple in good standing of the Rabbi whose name they were using for authority.  Otherwise, what you were saying had no more importance than the sound of a chicken clucking.  Today, there are people in the churches who use the name Jesus as if there is some kind of celestial voice recognition software floating in the ethersphere and if you just say that name you get some kind of spiritual respect.  But we are given a wonderful real event in the book of Acts which demonstrates that such would be faulty thinking.

In Acts 19, Paul has come to Ephesus, a city in western Turkey and greatly devoted to the worship of Artemis.  Paul used the synagogue as his local base of operations, reasoning from the Scriptures about Messiah with the local Jews who had settled there after the big Babylonian diaspora.  Adonai was giving credence to Paul's message by performing extraordinary miracles through his hands.  Knowledge of this activity naturally spread through the area to the point that even some Jewish exorcists were willing to try using the name of Yeshua "whom Paul preaches."  Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva tried to do this to a man who was possessed by a demon, and with disastrous results.  The demon says to these pretenders, "I recognize Yeshua, and I even know about Paul, but who are you?"  Then this demon-possessed man beats these guys badly enough to send them running, naked and bleeding.

Before I move on, please note the wording by the demon.  "I recognize . . ."  This isn't a casual phrase.  The demon is acknowledging Yeshua's identity in the same way that the demon in the man at the Capernaum synagogue cried out, "I know who you are -- the Holy One of God." (Luke 4:34)  This title is one repeatedly used in the book of Isaiah to refer to the God of Israel.  It doesn't easily translate from the Hebrew because there is no equivalent word "of."  English translators stick "of" in there to make it read better for us, but those Jews in the synagogue on that day heard a demon recognize that they were all standing in the presence of God Almighty.  They all knew what it meant and they were amazed at His power and authority.

Back to Acts 19: Let me give you an analogy.  Let's say a bunch of thugs take over a small town.  A couple of guys from the neighboring town decide to take it upon themselves to go save those poor people from this oppression.  They are outnumbered and out-gunned, but they decide to try to look official and when they ride into town they even announce themselves as being there "in the name of the Law."  Problem is; the thugs already know who are and are not the duly appointed law men in the land and they know that these guys are just playing vigilantes.  The thugs simply make sport of these guys and send them off wounded.  The thugs know that they can get away with this because those guys lacked both the power and authority to get the job done.

There is this passage in Matthew 7 that always bothered me when I was calling myself a Christian.  "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"   Matthew 7:23

What law was he talking about?  He seems to be clearly saying that invoking his name and even doing very good things and even miraculous things is not good enough if I am practicing lawlessness.  Which laws?  Who's laws?

Problem was, I hadn't yet learned to take the Bible as a whole.  The answer was right there all along.  Not even in another book or epistle, but in the very same sermon that the Master was giving at the time.  All I had to do was go back to chapter 5 of Matthew, early in this sermon.  "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law . . ."  Matthew 5:17  So, how do we define those who practice lawlessness?  Those who deny that we need to keep Torah.  If I were to try to define Matthew 7:23 as referring to any other law and especially man-made law, the verse would not just be meaningless, it would be stupid.

By coming to the understanding of Scripture as a cohesive whole, I can see that in order to legitimately operate in the authority of God, I have to follow His rules and guidelines.  Notice in Matt 7:23 the assumption is that, come the judgment, there will be such people.  I don't want to be one of them.  I would rather risk having God say to me at the judgment, "That was nice of you to observe and keep all those commandments and teachings of Mine, but it really wasn't necessary."  rather than hear Him say, "You've got no excuse.  I think I made myself pretty clear  in that sermon on the mount, and in Luke 16:17 and in plenty of other places in My Word."

Choose carefully.  Choose wisely.

In the next installment, we will ponder the meaning of Yeshua's sinlessness.

I Should Have Known

But then again, how could I?

I thought I was going to move on to ELS codes, but after thinking about it for quite a spell, it seems to me that this issue of someone like Paul  is what I need to deal with and get it over with.

I didn't chase after Paul.  He came to my Blog, I didn't go to his to try and proselytize for my side.  I won't go to his blog and comment there, because, quite frankly, I don't see any point.  From here on out, I expect there will be those who won't like my tone or some such thing. While my rhetoric will be sharp and uncompromising, and I will not entertain warm and fuzzy methods of persuasion, I am not trying to hurt feelings for the sake of scoring points.  Eternal destinies are at stake.

I started out making it clear that I had spent most of my youthful years of development coming to a dedicated belief in evolution.  I was so very gung ho about evolution that watching the movie Inherit The Wind was almost a religious experience for me. Watching Clarence Darrow just make an idiot out of William Jennings Bryan had me pumping my fist in the air.  I actually grew up believing that the movie was a documentary.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not defending Bryan, he went into that trial completely unprepared and with little understanding of what he was dealing with.  This is very much like most people who claim the title of Christian today.  The vast majority of Christians don't understand the importance of having reasoned, logical answers that help prove Christianity.

I thought and pondered, pondered and thought, gathered notes and copied links to websites regarding ELS codes in preparing for my next post, but I couldn't stop thinking about Paul my commenter.  In Knowing God: Part 3, I made the point that he reminded me of other people who just seem to be able to pull one part of their brain out and isolate it from the conclusions that logic demands in order to maintain something else they want to believe.  I almost started to go back over the scientific evidence and facts to show that Paul doesn't even understand the science, because he simply parrots stuff that he has heard or read and can't explain it in his own words.  But there is the rub.  If he truly understood the science, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, he would KNOW that the stupid stuff he's been told about energy being added to an "open" system doesn't overcome the chaotic nature of entropy.  I can use the simple analogy that if you pour gasoline on a bonfire, it doesn't result in carbon crystallizing into more complex shapes that contain coded information. I dare anyone to take a power supply for a computer and create a voltage and current amplifier system so that you can just vary the current input for days, weeks, or years on end and then explain to me how that will result in more complex, or any kind of programming language being developed inside the CPU.  Build yourself a little terrarium and set it out in the sun and then show me how, other than adding heat to the enclosure, you ended up with more complex structures just because of the sun's radiation. No, going over the science again and helping to actually understand how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics works is not going to change Paul's mind, because some guy with a Ph.D. who Paul respects more than the Bible is going to tell him that's how it is, and Paul will just accept it.

Now, because I try my best to think logically, and would like to think that anybody who would take the time to read my posts values logic as much as I do, I figured a few responses to Paul would at least send him away thinking for a while. I try to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who claims to be a follower of Christ, that their loyalty is to the Creator and what He has to say about His own creation, and that a follower of Christ understands that man is inherently flawed.  Problem is, I forgot that just like in the issue of firearms and hoplophobia, there are people  who can seem reasonable at first, but upon further inspection reveal themselves to be happy with a condition of cognitive dissonance.  Then again, maybe the human mind is so complex that we'll have to come up with a new label.  Or maybe I just don't understand Paul's condition, or the last option is that Paul is just crazy or evil.   WHOOAAAAHH!! Did I just say that?  Not that I wanted to.  To go to Paul's website, you would think he's such a nice guy.  Far nicer than me.  He has six kids.  I'm sure he's a loving father and his kids and his wife adore him.  What in the hell is wrong with me for picking on Paul?

You know, I've got other people I like and respect in the blogosphere.  Let me use Kevin Baker as an example.  Kevin runs The Smallest Minority.  Kevin and I think the same about a lot of issues regarding personal liberty, firearms and government.  I like Kevin and consider him a friend.  In the interest of full disclosure, I've never met him.  I feel I know him based on his rather candid writings.  Kevin is a self proclaimed atheist.  Religiously, he's my polar opposite.  How could I possibly like him so much?

I would much rather be in a combat situation with Kevin Baker than with Paul.  Kevin is an engineer by trade.  A logical thinker.  His essays display a deep, thoughtful character.  I have read so many of Kevin's essays and the sources he cites to explain how he comes to the conclusions that he does.  His writing reflects a deep desire to find real objective truth, regardless of feelings or wishful thinking.  Kevin says he is an atheist because as far as he has wanted to search, he has found no reason to believe in a deity.  Thus proving that you cannot and will not find something that you are not looking for, even if it is right in front of your face.  This is profoundly important.  While I may feel regret in the idea that I won't see Kevin in the next life, I understand that the worst thing I could do would be to preach at him about his soul when he sees no need and would merely be irritated by my efforts.  If the subject of the afterlife came up because Kevin was sincerely interested, I would have no doubt that his logic and engineering type mind would demand that he make some decision either way, but I can tell from his writings that there would be no sitting on the fence or compartmentalization when it came to deciding on what is real and what makes sense.  In that regard, I feel confident that given all the good evidence, Kevin would choose the right way.  I respect that about Kevin.  Regardless of his decision, I respect that.

Not so with Paul.  I wouldn't trust Paul as far as I could throw him. Paul says he's a Christian. He found his way to my blog, and has gone out of his way to defend evolution as if it can somehow be compatible with a belief in Jesus of Nazareth.  Mind you, Paul doesn't just speak of some passing, shoulder shrugging acknowledgement of Jesus as a figure of history.  I don't get the impression that Paul's Jesus is like that of the Unitarians or the Mormons or some strange cult, but I'm not really sure.  According to Paul's blog, he claims to love and glorify Jesus.  But when I take in the whole picture of Paul and what he writes on his blog and in my comments section, I have to say, "Nonsense!"  Or at least I have to understand that the Jesus Paul worships is a God of Paul's own making and not that of the Bible.

Yeshua HaMashiach who was prophesied about for thousands of years and proved Himself to be God incarnate, referred to the Torah as being Holy and incorruptible. Eternal and transcendant over even the world itself.   The very Word of God. The Gospel of John declares that the Word of God and Jesus are one and the same entity.  If the Bible is a liar and cannot be trusted, then Jesus is a liar and cannot be trusted.  At every turn, Paul would take the words of fallible, sinful men with limited knowledge that they in turn learned from men of limited knowledge about a theory that was dreamed up by men who's primary goal was to explain the world in such a way as to eliminate a Creator.  In any argument with me about science or origins, Paul would choose  Darwin, Dawkins, Gould, Hawkings or anybody else but Jesus Christ to make his case.  Yet he tells the world from his blog that he loves Jesus.

I made the points in my earlier posts that Genesis doesn't leave us any room to compromise with evolution.  As if He knew that the controversy would arise before and after Charles Darwin, God went to the trouble to define each of the days of creation as having evening and morning, i.e. regular 24 hour days. He went to the trouble of waiting until day four to create the sun, moon, and stars.  He specifically made the point that until man sinned in the garden that there was no bloodshed, no death or dying.  He created all the land animals and man on day six, so there were no millions of years between them. There is a lot more there that  Does all of this sound absolutely bat-$h0t crazy to an evolutionist or someone who has been indoctrinated in the government schools?  Of course it does.  I don't mind being thought of as crazy to people who think that man knows better than God. I quit worrying so much about that when it dawned on me that over the centuries, science has had to revise its thinking about so many things. At the same time, while man has had to adjust his interpretation of what the Bible means, at no point has anyone been able to point to something the Bible says and say, "We know THAT can't be true, because of THIS."  The Bible obviously conflicts with the interpretations and theories of scientists who only allow for a materialistic explanation of the universe, but the Bible doesn't conflict with things we know to be established fact. Believe me, I've pissed off several guys with Ph.D.s when I made them admit that fact.

 Evolutionary scientists love to crow about how science is "self-correcting," even though it can spend decades or longer wallowing in whatever the most accepted theory is before they are dragged, kicking and screaming, into a better understanding of the evidence.  Problem nowadays, as evidenced by movies like EXPELLED, and even lots of cases I studied before that movie, any heretic who presents hard evidence that goes against the dogma of neo-darwinian evolution is fired and ostracized from mainstream academia, without anybody demonstrating why the evidence is bad.  There are perfectly good explanations as to why the creation story of Genesis works with the science we know to be fact today.  Creationists don't need to be embarrassed by what the mainstream scientists think they know.

Paul's insistence on defending evolution raises the big question.  Why?  What's his motivation?  To help people accept that they can have a warm, fuzzy, non-judgmental Jesus who doesn't care what they think, regardless of the evidence? In order to do that, you have to dismiss the Bible as nothing more than allegorical stories and poetry and just a tiny smattering of wisdom.  The rest just shouldn't be taken seriously.   Is he trying to get evolutionists to say, "Hey, I can have evolution and Jesus too!"  Why bother?  If evolution is true, and it renders the Bible just so much religious nonsense that can be taken or left with or without the salt, then why waste my precious time?  Since Darwin's time, and actually even before that, the champions of evolution theory have made the main body of their argument not about scientific evidence, but rather about how crazy creationists are for going against the conventional "thought" of those who accept evolution.

Think of this another way. Imagine this improbable scenario.  Paul says he loves his wife.  And to everybody who sees the family that seems to be true. But there are some "well respected" people in academe who say Paul's wife is a good for nothing whore and he's wasting his time giving her any devotion or attention.  Out in public, Paul doesn't want to be thought of as being less intelligent than the average guy by disagreeing with those "well respected" guys in academe, so he actually defends those guys, while at the same time saying he loves his wife and is completely devoted to her.  Does this make sense?

Since Paul would never consider heresy against his beloved champions of evolution by considering anything the Bible has to say as being authoritative, I suppose Paul cannot be offended when I say that he brings to mind the passage where Jesus says that many will come in "that day" and say to Him, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and heal the sick and do this and that in your name." And Jesus will look at them and say, "Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.  I never knew you."

You know, I will be very careful to not offend an unbeliever, because my goal should be to bring him to God. However I must do so while being faithful to God and not compromising the truth.  There are lots of believers who need to be disabused of errors that have been taught as the traditions of the churches over the centuries. I know I am constantly learning, and have regretted being taken in by some stuff in the past, especially when it comes to keeping the commandments and understanding eschatology.  I can be understanding and deferential up to a point, but when someone shows his self to be hell-bent on taking the teaching of man over the teaching of God, I have to draw the line.