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

Pursuing Knowledge

Perhaps because there is so much stuff, or garbage, in the world that passes for knowledge, there seem to be many churches in the breathless "charismatic" wing that eschew good scholarship for feelings and for things that can neither be measured for their quality or abundance.  I've been in far too many congregations that avoid scholarship like it's leprosy.

The dumbing down of the modern western world has been going on for decades now.  It used to be fairly subtle because it had to be.  Today, people are so devoid of real knowledge that the vast majority of people not only don't know what to believe, they just don't care.  This is a problem that stems directly from language being hijacked by evil forces.  Whether we care to admit it or not, propaganda is just as important in warfare as bullets or bombs.  The Vietnam war is the most perfect modern example of that.

We live in a world where "science" is now an abused word. The vast majority of people not directly associated with a scientific field don't understand it at all.  It used to be that science was the pursuit of truth.  This is no longer the case.  Today the only time truth wins out in regard to scientific inquiry is if enough hard data gangs up on and beats the living snot out of some guy with a theory.  And the problem there is; if nobody is there to see it happen, did it happen?  Other than reality forcing its way into the mind of some "researcher," stuff that gets referred to as science is really just somebody's agenda being touted with select supporting data.  Any data that doesn't support the story line of the "researcher" get dismissed.  Data that seem to support the idea being pushed get enhanced or worse.

Again, I lament the fact that there was a time when debate was a cherished tool in education.  Back when education meant teaching students not what to think, but rather, HOW to think.  How do you recognize a false premise?  How do you recognize when someone is making a bad argument by sticking two premises together that have nothing to do with each other?  How many adults, let alone children have ever heard of the word syllogism?  What is even worse is that we now have people with graduate degrees in some scientific fields who have graduated without the benefit of being educated in logical thought processes.  If they are in the hard sciences, they may experience the truth of the process in the results, but they would be hard pressed to explain or describe the process.

Another problem is specialization.  So many fields of science are highly specialized. Most people have no idea what a big problem this creates.  Without truly great thinkers to connect the dots, much of scientific knowledge is never put to its best possible use.  The flip side of that coin is the fact that scientists in a particular field can specialize into oblivion, meaning that there is no real value to their research and any knowledge gained is superfluous.  No, I don't buy into the idea that knowledge for knowledge's sake is sufficient.  And yes, let me burst your bubble: There IS such a thing as a stupid question.

Specialization in the world of science has also created the problem of not daring to question.  An ear, nose, and throat specialist will not question the diagnosis of a gynecologist even when common sense might suggest that something isn't quite right.  Meanwhile at the other end of the specialization spectrum we have the broad title of "scientist."  The way this gets abused is when a report comes out telling the world that "Ten thousand scientists have signed on to a resolution calling for reduction in global green house gases," or some such rot.  With some investigation we find out that  among the ten thousand "scientists" a handful have degrees in some hard sciences such as astrophysics or biology, but have no formal training in meteorology or climatology. All the rest are trained in the soft sciences such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc.  Some of them might even simply have advanced degrees in theology.

The vast masses of people who've never been educated beyond high school level, which in the past twenty years means they are barely literate in functioning, have no clue where to begin in questioning what is and is not scientific.  Which means that if the media tells them that "scientists say that if we don't reduce carbon emmissions to X levels by Y time, the planet will suffer catastrophic results," the people will just accept that crap because, well, "scientists" said so.

One of the biggest myths ever perpetrated on the world is the idea that scientists always pursue truth without allowing any other agenda to influence them.  Scientists are fallible human beings with emotions.  They want to be liked as much as anyone.  They also want to get paid and live comfortable lives.  And scientists will believe what they want to believe, even in spite of evidence, just like people without advanced degrees. This is true to the Nth degree when it comes to evolution.

There have been millions of scientists in the world since Sir Isaac Newton, but how many of them have ever stood out?  How many have ever become household names?  Bet you can't name more than three.  I'm sure Einstein comes to mind.  Why?  Because his pronouncements radically transformed the world of physics.  He was lucky enough that his discoveries made so much sense in explaining the physical world and were also provable.  But more importantly, his ideas did not gore anybody's sacred cows.  Had his ideas been too radical compared to the prevailing "accepted" theories, who knows how long it might have taken before his theories caught on.

For those who really pursue truth, it can be extremely lonely out on the edge of the frontier.  Not only is it lonely, it can be downright dangerous.  It was dangerous for the founding fathers to stand up to Great Britain in their day.  It's dangerous today to stand up and say to the ignorant masses in this country that there is no magic ATM behind the capitol building in Washington DC pumping out billions of dollars for us to keep going the way we are going.  It's dangerous to stand up to the union goons who have landed their "secure" jobs in government who believe that the people out there working in the real world should have to struggle to pay their big salaries and benefits.

It's not easy to stand up in a congregation of Christians and say, "You know what?  You just aren't getting this right."

Many times, my lovely wife and I have lamented that we wish we didn't know everything we know now.  It's no fun at all not having anyone to worship and fellowship with because the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians just want to believe what they want to believe and not learn anything more.  I can relate to how lonely the prophets must have been when God gave them a message that made them seem like nothing but doom and gloom party crashers compared to all of their contemporaries who were speaking nothing but positive and pleasant things.

Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus The Christ) said that the end times (ahchereet hayameem) would be like the days of Noah.  Noah had many months to build the ark and preach to the people.  He tried to get them to turn from their wicked ways, but in the end, only he and his sons and their wives escaped.  According to the book of Jasher, about 700,000 people perished in the flood.  (The Bible itself refers to the book of Jasher as being authoritative, and so far, I have found nothing in it that contradicts Scripture.)  This tells me, along with much of Scripture that there are going to be many, many people surprised in the end to find out they weren't really saved at all.

Ever since I became saved and was subsequently disillusioned about the hoaxes of evolution, leaders who are still touted as heroes, and doctrinal heresies in the Church, I have made it my mission to always question.  Question everything.  "Is this really true?"  "Am I willing to suffer the slings and arrows of being called extreme because I won't go along with everybody else?"  "Am I deceiving myself?"  "HOW do I know this is true?"
"Am I willing to give up eternal bliss in the future in order to be liked and popular in this life?"

The vast majority of people simply will not tolerate any challenges to the conventional and accepted tradition in the churches.  "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!"

Tail Wags Dog

Couldn't really come up with the cleverest title for this post, but I might write about it again sometime.

There is an ongoing lecture series called TED and I stumbled upon it in a couple of other blogs.  The one I saw today, over at Theo Spark, hits on something that Twyla and I discuss occasionally.  Our relationship to the internet.

The young lady in the video says she studies something called cyborg anthropology.  She has some good insights and observations about this phenomenon.  Mainly, that there is a lot less personal introspection going on now. However, I don't agree with her conclusions because, as is typical, she comes from a humanist, materialistic perspective that isn't going to end well.  I know that it is an irony of ironies that I sit here typing about this problem on a blog, knowing full well that I'm publishing to the world wide web.  Trying to spread my opinion about something because I think it's important.

Obviously, I like the internet. It's like having far more than all the world's libraries at your fingertips.  It is a tool.  It can be incredibly useful, or it can be badly abused.  I have to wade or slog through a lot of garbage some days to find information that is worthy or useful, because most of what fills the web is just crap.  It's hardly any different than television in that regard.  I haven't seen any regular TV, broadcast or cable since early 2007, and I really don't miss it.  There are only so many hours in a day, and there just isn't much of anything I can see in what is supposed to pass for entertainment that is worth watching there.  Sure, we have Netflix, but we watch it when it doesn't interfere with whatever else is more important.  But we also find ourselves hitting the delete button a lot sooner and more often than we might have years ago.

The great advantage of the web is that I can scan through the crap a lot faster to get to the good stuff. There is some really excellent stuff if you know what to look for.  Just as a library is totally useless to someone who's never been taught to read, the internet is just a wasteland to someone who has never been taught how to think critically.  If you don't understand epistemology, you can fill your head with all kinds of junk that can cause more harm than good. For instance: I didn't fall for the global warming hoax as it was getting started years ago, because I had a solid understanding about physics and the scientific method, and I asked meteorologists who actually studied climate and weather what they thought, rather than asking sociologists or economists what they thought about climate.

I will admit that part of why I think the way I think could be attributed to my age and the technology I grew up without.  But because I do spend a lot more time thinking, I don't think so.  The reason I say that is because I observe people.  There are many clichés or sayings.  Some are almost always true, but some are just generalizations that have to be taken in context.  For a couple of generations at least, there has been a war on wisdom.  You can no longer say that if someone has lived to be seventy or eighty or older that they must be wise.  I know and have known some very wise old people, but I've met and talked to some old folks that stunned me with their willful ignorance, which I call real stupidity.  And now that I think about it, I might have said the same thing had I lived a couple of hundred years ago.  I just know that back before people bought into the idea of trading their freedom for nanny state government, it would make sense that if you didn't make wise decisions every day, you weren't likely to live long.  Yep, we creationists understand and agree with the concept of natural selection, in spite of what you may have heard from evolutionists.

We do find some great nuggets of gold in the internet from time to time.  Twyla and I spent three hours this past Shabbat watching Walid Shoebat teaching at a prophecy conference somewhere.  It was absolutely wonderful.  Here was a former Arab muslim terrorist, turned Christian, who was explaining the prophetic passages regarding eschatology because he had the right background knowledge.  Of course he is fluent in Arabic, and because he grew up in Bethlehem, he knows Hebrew.  More importantly, he knows and understand not only the geography and the ancient names of the places in Scripture, he understands the Eastern mindset and culture of the Bible.  In three hours, we had many misconceptions corrected, and gained tremendous new insights we couldn't have gotten any other way.  And that was just scratching the surface.  Yes, I like the benefits of the internet.  But I've got a little farm to run.  There are never enough hours in the day.  There is always wood to gather and cut, composting to do, soil preparation, planting and nurturing seeds, and much more. I'm actually glad that it's hard to impossible to get a cell phone signal up here in the mountains. Our lifestyle is such that we have plenty of opportunity to think and think deeply about everything.

Some of the worst effects that I see in this technological age are counter intuitive.  I've seen people glued to their cell phones.  You've seen them.  They need a couple of extra batteries on standby.  There may be some examples of businesspeople who really do need that kind of constant communication, but they tend to keep it brief and to the point.  You can tell by overhearing them that they see it as a necessary evil.  But we've all been somewhere in public where we had to listen to some idiot talking loud enough  to be heard across a football field about the most inane things. Then texting came out, and teenagers turned it into an olympic sport.  Don't get me started on the idiot parents who let their non-income producing progeny run up hundreds of dollars of cell phone bills.

You would think with all of this "connectedness" that people would be, well, connected.  Just the opposite.  This kind of stuff is what has led to a lack of intimacy.  Some people have 500 names in their cell phone or PDA/cell phone combo, but they don't have one really good, intimate friend.  And the people you meet through the internet?  They are just virtual people.  You might have found their pattern of electrons interesting for a while and thought you had enough things in common with them to be good friends, but the minute they express enough opinions you don't like or start harshing your mellow, you can just cut them off with the click of a mouse.  But even if you don't delete them from your list, they can just get lost in the sea of contacts.

Because something inside us longs for real connection to other people, we keep the communication at a place where we won't offend anybody, even when we never intended to be offensive.  The problem is, nobody really gets to know anybody else.  Somehow the whole backwards, upside-down concept of self-esteem has created a whole class of people who think they have a right to never be offended, or have their beliefs challenged.  Modern technology makes it way to easy to abandon conversation.

Do I cut people off?  You betcha.  Look at some of my past posts.  Once I discover someone has Peterson Syndrome, my interaction with them is likely to end quite soon.  And there are plenty of people that you run across on the web that you know pretty quickly are not going to be worth attempting to engage.  Not because I don't think the person is worth my time or effort, but because the moment they are offended by my challenge, they will cut me off, dismissing me as an idiot.  It doesn't keep me from trying occasionally.

I will readily admit that I'm in a very small minority.  As you can tell from my previous posts on Knowing God, I'm a total believer in the Bible.  I actually love the moniker, "People of the Book," which the Muslims use to describe Christians and Jews, but not for the reasons they do.  I like the phrase because the vast majority of Christians and Jews are NOT people of the Book in the sense that they really don't believe that it is the inspired Word of God.  Such a phrase separates the wheat from the chaff.

Even if I wasn't a Bible believer, I can look around and see the writing on the wall.  The technological bubble that 90% of us live in or have access to is about to burst. Our debt is way past sustainable. Cities and States are about to declare their bankruptcy.  It won't matter how good the technology is, because hardly anyone will be able to afford it, even if the price is cut in half, or down to a quarter.  I'm reading now where gasoline could be over $5 a gallon in the next twelve months.  The Feds have stopped all offshore drilling and even shut down one of the largest coal mines and we produce about 50% of our electricity with coal.  We haven't built a nuclear reactor in over 30 years.  Every sane and logical economic analyst that I can read is pointing to a coming catastrophe that will make the "Great Depression" of the 1930s look like a minor setback.

We are about to experience being forced back to a lifestyle of dealing with people face to face as neighbors, that is, if we can survive through the riots and other societal breakdown. We will go from cyborgs to savages and the lucky and prepared might get to live to tell about it.

I don't expect to have an easy time of it at all.  But I can look forward to a complete collapse because I also expect to see some additional signs that God has had enough of all this as well, and that He's coming back.  If I see a third Temple being built in Jerusalem, I will be full of hope, because that means it won't be long.  There can also be much blessing in the hard times, because a lot of people who had previously been oblivious to the signs and the message, will start taking it seriously.  Hunger and difficulty has an amazing way of focusing your attention.