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If you build it, they will come

 

The US Embassy in Israel is expected to move to Jerusalem this month. The plan is for this to happen in May so that it will coincide with the 70th anniversary of the rebirth of Israel as a nation. The question I want to ask you today is, “If you build (or move) it, will they come?”

Who do you think will come to Jerusalem if the US Embassy is moved there? Many people wonder if President Trump will join the number of people going to Jerusalem to celebrate this special event. From what I understand President Trump has not committed to visiting Israel at this time. But my question has nothing to do with world leaders.

I found an article on the internet where Pres. Abbas (Palestinian Authority) said, “Palestine’s government will fight against Trump’s decision and not let any country to move its embassy to Jerusalem until Palestine-Israel issue is resolved,”

I am curious as to how will they fight this? What will they do to stop any country from moving their embassy to Jerusalem? Will the Palestinians physically do something to stop the American Embassy from moving to Jerusalem? Will they send tanks, rockets and other weapons into Jerusalem to try and stop this from happening?

I have no clue what Abbas will do, but I know for certain that if he does not send tanks, rockets, etc. to attack Jerusalem, someone else will sometime soon.

(Zechariah 12:2) “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling (staggering and stumbling). Judah will be besieged (surrounded, sieged and encircled) as well as Jerusalem.

(Zechariah 14:1 NASB) … For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle

The Bible tells us that nations will surround and invade Jerusalem in hopes of killing all the Jewish people. This is not nice, but it is unavoidable since it is recorded in the Bible. Let’s see what else God has to say about the End Time invasion of Jerusalem.

(Zechariah 12:8-9) “On that day the Lord will shield those who live in Jerusalem, … On that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem.

(Zechariah 14:1-4 NASB) … For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle …Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east.

Zechariah tells us that God Himself will intervene. He will protect the Jewish people and destroy their enemies. God will not simply orchestrate events to create a victory for the Jewish people, but He Himself will personally fight for the Jewish people. His feet will personally stand on the Mt. of Olives.

(Zechariah 12:10 NASB) “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

After God defeats the enemies of Israel the Jewish people look on Him who they have pierced and mourn. They probably are shedding tears of sorrow and repentance because they see their Messiah standing before them and notice that His body is pierced. It is not pierced because of a wound he received in this war. It is pierced because He is Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth. The Jewish people realize that their Messiah is King Jesus because His body is pierced (from being crucified at Calvary nearly 2,000 years ago).

First of all, I am very grateful that God Himself personally protects my people in the End Time invasion. But there is more. King Jesus personally returns to fight for the Jewish people, so the attack on Jerusalem is the End Time event God uses to trigger the return of Yeshua.

The return of Yeshua is something every person to belongs to Him should be looking forward to, so God will once again work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to his purpose.

Are you eagerly waiting for Yeshua to return? If so, keep your eyes on Jerusalem. He will set His feet on the Mt. of Olives when He returns. He will then walk down the mountain and enter Jerusalem through the Eastern Gates. The moving of the American Embassy to Jerusalem has the potential to start the End Time Invasion of Israel. Yeshua could be returning to earth sometime soon. If this is not the event which triggers His return, there will be an invasion on another day and I can’t imagine it taking too long for this to happen. Pack your bags and get ready to go to Jerusalem.

If you would like to learn more about Israel and the End Times invite Rabbi Ron to speak today.

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God vs The gods of Egypt

By the time Moses arrived on the scene, around 1500 B.C., the Hebrews had been in Egypt for more than a hundred years. The days of Joseph serving as vizier to the pharaoh were long gone. The Hebrews had grown from an extended family of about six dozen to a couple million, but they were suffering under the rule of a nation that no longer valued their presence except as forced labor.

So Yahweh set the next phase of His plan in motion. After guiding the life of Moses from infancy to adulthood (you don’t think he survived that trip in the reed boat by accident, do you?), Yahweh appeared to Moses in his exile and tasked him with bringing Israel out of Egypt. And the way God had him do it was a clear message to the gods of Egypt.

Moses’ first encounter with Yahweh was in Midian. That was at Horeb in the northern Sinai, later part of Edom (contrary to long tradition that puts the mountain in southern Sinai), the har elohim, or mountain of God. Get this:  The burning bush incident was the first time since Eden that a human had come face to face with Yahweh on His holy mountain. There is no question that the bene elohim, the Fallen “sons of God,” the seventy rebel angels God allotted to the nations after Babel, knew about this meeting. It was a very clear message from Yahweh to the rebels:  I have reestablished my mount of assembly on the earth.

The time had finally come. God called Moses back to Egypt to bring His people, Israel, to the place He’d claimed as His own—Canaan.

Yahweh chose to convince pharaoh and the Egyptians to not only let Israel leave, but to encourage them to go. He did it by hardening pharaoh’s heart through a series of increasingly severe trials until the people of Egypt must have been begging pharaoh to let His people go.

There are several studies you can find online that draw links between the ten plagues Yahweh inflicted on Egypt and specific Egyptian gods. For example, the first plague turned the Nile River to blood. This is said to have been directed at Hapi, the god of the annual Nile flood. Plague number two, frogs, was aimed at Heqet, a fertility goddess worshipped since the early dynastic period—the time of Narmer and the first kings of Egypt, about 1,500 or 1,600 years before Moses.

Those match up well enough, but when we get to the third and fourth plagues, the connections are iffy at best. The plague of lice or gnats, depending on the translation you read, doesn’t match up well with any known Egyptian god. The plague of flies is paired by some with Khepri, a god of creation. But Khepri had a scarab beetle for a head, so that’s not a good match, either.

Some of the pastors and teachers who’ve published these studies are very intelligent people whom I respect. However, and with all due respect to those pastor-teachers, they’ve overlooked an even bigger supernatural conflict, and understanding that confrontation will show you why trying to link the ten plagues to specific Egyptian gods is looking in the wrong direction.

More accurately, it’s looking at the wrong pantheon.

Yes, Yahweh demonstrated with the ten plagues that His power was superior to that of the gods the Egyptians trusted to keep the Nile flowing and the crops growing. And we know for a fact that Yahweh put a hurt on the gods of Egypt the night He took the lives of Egypt’s first-born.

How do we know? He told Moses.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.

Exodus 12:12 (ESV), emphasis added

How likely is it that Yahweh told Moses that He was about to punish imaginary beings? What would be the point? How would that demonstrate His power and glory?

No, something happened in the spirit realm on the night of the Passover. When Yahweh passed through the land of Egypt, taking the lives of firstborn humans and animals, He simultaneously carried out His sentence on the bene elohim, the entities who’d rebelled and made themselves gods in Egypt.

Here’s a fascinating detail we never hear about in church:  It appears there was a very old tradition in Egypt, an ancient myth dating back centuries before the Exodus, that a day was coming when the first-born of Egypt would die. The pyramids of the 5th Dynasty king Unas, c. 2350 B.C., and the 6th Dynasty king Teti, c. 2320 B.C., are inscribed with this line from a well-known inscription called the “Cannibal Hymn”:

It is the king who will be judged with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on this day of the slaying of the first-born.⁠

Similar phrases are found on other coffins from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, including a variant that reads “this night of the slaying of the first-born.” Some scholars believe the context of the Coffin Texts and the Cannibal Hymn points to the first-born belonging to the gods, although that’s not a view shared by all Egyptologists.

What does it mean? Scholars aren’t sure. But it seems that by the time of the Exodus, there was a very old tradition in Egypt of a future nightmare event when the first-born would be killed.

Consider this possibility: Maybe the Coffin Texts and the “Cannibal Hymn” were an ancient warning to Egypt of that coming day of judgment. And forty years earlier on Mount Sinai, Yahweh revealed to Moses that He was Him-whose-name-is-hidden, I AM WHO I AM—the One who would someday fulfill the prophecy of the slaying of the first-born.

That’s speculation, of course, but fascinating. And we’re not at the best part yet.

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Scholars today, 3,500 years later, still argue about where the Red Sea crossing occurred. We won’t get into it here. If it hasn’t been settled by now, we’re not going to put the question to bed in a couple of paragraphs. Besides, that’s not important right now. What matters is what Yahweh told Moses to do next.

Then the Lord said to Moses,

“Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea.

Exodus 14:1-2 (ESV, emphasis added)

Okay, this begs some questions:  Why did God tell Moses to turn back? Why did He command Moses to camp facing Baal-zephon? What is Baal-zephon? And mostly, what was Ba`al doing in Egypt?

You know Ba`al was the Canaanite storm-god and the king of their pantheon. He’s mentioned in the Bible from the Book of Exodus through the gospels. Ba`al, which is properly pronounced bah-awl with a glottal stop like, “Uh-oh,” was the main thorn in the side of the followers of Yahweh for about the next 1,500 years, all the way down to the time of Jesus.

But during the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt, roughly 1750 to 1550 B.C. (give or take a hundred years), foreigners from Canaan called the Hyksos ruled northern Egypt. Their capital was at Avaris in the Nile delta, and they worshipped the gods of the Canaanite pantheon headed by Ba`al.

Why is that relevant? Stay tuned. We’ll get to that next month.

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Festival of Purim

(Esther 9:24 TLB) Haman (son of Hammedatha the Agagite), the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted to destroy them at the time determined by a throw of the dice;

(Esther 9:24 NLT) Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews, had plotted to crush and destroy them on the date determined by casting lots (the lots were called purim).

Haman, hated the Jews so much that he decided to kill, annihilate and wipe them out. He needed to pick a day to do this, so he rolled some dice, or cast some lots (purim). In the eyes of man, Haman’s selection of a date to wipe out the Jewish people appears to be simply a matter of chance. But when I read Proverbs 16:33, it seemed to me that Haman may not have been in complete control of selecting the date.

(Proverbs 16:33 CEV) We make our own decisions, but the Lord alone determines what happens.

(Proverbs 16:33 TLB) We toss the coin, but it is the Lord who controls its decision.

(Proverbs 16:33 MSG) Make your motions and cast your votes, but God has the final say.

(Proverbs 16:33 NLT) We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall.

This proverb teaches that when we make our decisions, the end result is not simply at act of our decision making. We may, investigate the facts, cast a vote, roll some dice, or toss a coin, but God has the final say in what happens. He may blow upon the dice or coin and cause them to fall when He decides. Even though things appear to be the work of man, or random chance, God is quietly working behind the scenes, determining how things fall, or what happens.

This is one lesson we see in the Book of Esther. God’s name is never mentioned in the entire book, but God appears to be working behind the scenes all the time. Esther, a Jewish woman, just so happens to become Queen in the Persian Kingdom. Her cousin Mordecai, just so happens to hear some men plot to kill the King. One night, when the King cannot fall sleep, he calls someone to read to him. This reading just so happens to mention that Mordecai saved the Kings life. Then Queen Esther just so happens to be able to schedule a dinner for her husband (the King) and Haman, just in time to thwart the plans of Haman.

Be encouraged that even when you cannot see, hear or perceive God’s presence with your five earthly senses, it doesn’t mean that God’s not watching or listening.

(Proverbs 15:3 TLB) The Lord is watching everywhere and keeps His eye on both the evil and the good.

(Proverbs 15:3 MSG) God doesn’t miss a thing – He’s alert to good and evil alike.

Purim begins February 28 at sunset. I encourage you to:

  • Read the Book of Esther this month, and discover wonderful truths about God, who sometimes is cloaked from our earthly eyes, and works behind the scenes.
  • Invite Rabbi Ron to Speak about the Festival of Purim (Book of Esther).
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Religion, Science and the Future of Transhumanism

By Dr. Thomas Horn

 

Recently, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science featured a piece written by Professor S. Jonathon O’Donnell in the Department of Religion and Philosophies at the University of London titled, “Secularizing Demons: Fundamentalist Navigations in Religion and Secularity.”

O’Donnell’s aim? According to the article’s abstract, it was to explore at a deeper level than his peers the “anti-transhumanist apocalypticisms” of our day, the central voice behind which was identified as yours truly—“evangelical conspiracist Thomas Horn [and his] milieu [community gathering place]”

In other words, the University of London professor has determined that I and those who work with me at SkyWatch TV and Defender Publishing are the “leaders of the transhuman resistance” that members of that community had better pay attention to. The peer-reviewed Zygon agreed at least to the point they found reason to promulgate O’Donnell’s thesis.

A title such as this placed upon me and the associates within “my milieu” is, I assure you, not as offensive as it may seem. Quite the contrary, I am encouraged that my line of work in the media has captured the attention of renowned spokespersons of the scientific world—such as those deemed worthy of being featured in Zygon. The very fact that personalities of such high regard and academic acumen are addressing what I’ve concluded throughout my career proves that my work is worth addressing. If I was completely off the mark out in La-la Land, I may still gain attention for being an agitator, but to persons such as O’Donnell, I would simply be considered inconsequential and not worth the precious time it takes for them to write such a detailed response to my convictions. Likewise I am deeply flattered to see how mostly professionally and fairly my stance on the subject was handled, as I nearly expected this to be yet another “hit piece” upon myself and my associates. Most naysayers who have come against our work have formulated little more than a straw man’s argument. It’s clear by their retaliation that they haven’t truly read my work to begin with. They assume—errantly so—that we are just religious men and women who cry “sin” against anything laboratory-created as it doesn’t innately have the hand of God upon it. Such may not have been the case for O’Donnell. Much to my surprise, O’Donnell did not appear to be driven by the sole desire to paint me as a half-witted lunatic like some others have done throughout recent history. For that, I openly offer my gratitude.

There was, however, a few intrinsic flaws in his conclusions about us and our “demonologies” of transhumanism and secularism that we will discuss in this and the next couple magazines.

Why?

Because in 2018 we will: 1) host a conference in Branson, Missouri (this September, more info coming soon) where scientists, artificial intelligence developers, technologists and theologians will gather to inform the public on the ramifications of the soon coming technological singularity; 2) release a book on the subject by members of “The Milieu,” and 3) broadcast a month long Special Investigative SkyWatch TV Report on the hottest issues involving transhumanism and Christianity. This magazine will guide and apprise our readers on the most germane subject matter as things develop in the weeks and months ahead.

But Back to professor O’Donnell and his thesis for the time being.

There is always an inherent fallacy when a personality trained in the scientifically oriented school of “show me proof/evidence” analyzes a stance based on religious conviction, particularly as it relates to eschatological prophecy and ruminations about events that have not yet occurred. It will probably always be this way on this side of eternity, since what we “evangelical conspiracists” see written on the wall regarding the scriptural warnings of God aren’t impartially considered amidst the “proofs” and “evidences” of science. It’s no secret that science recurrently discounts religion, and by extension any conclusion that a religious spokesperson may come to. Though I wouldn’t immediately accuse O’Donnell of it personally, well-learned academics heavily entrenched in the scientific community or its publications quite frequently respond to religious concerns with “intellectual snobbery.” And we’re not guiltless on the religious end either, as many a minister will immediately regard people who place their faith in science with an air of “moral snobbery.” It should not have to be this way, but it is a reality perpetuated just as much or more by the Church than by the secular world as I see it. Religion—especially conventional Christianity—recurrently discounts science, and though I understand why, I think this is an unnecessary tragedy. Many preachers and teachers of the Church today distance themselves from addressing scientific development and discovery (and the more “fringe” the topic, such as transhumanism, the greater the distancing) because the Bible is always the final authority, so “science is irrelevant when it contradicts Scripture,” or so the thought process relates. On the other hand, the world at large (including Christians) considers most aspects of transhumanism (and science in general) to be enormously important to our current, and future, generations, so it matters a great deal. How sad, then, that any minister willing to tackle the “fringe” topics is seen as a conspiracy-theorist whacko (often by the Church as well) instead of the man with the salve that could potentially help heal some of the festering tension between secular and religious people groups.  

In many cases, such as a pastor of a local congregation whose duty is primarily to sharpen the Body of Christ and spread the Good News of our Savior, speaking of transhumanism and its potential travesties might be a distraction from what he or she is personally called and gifted to do. Though, there remains to be a massive deficit of voices on the God-fearing end of the spectrum that choose to stand in opposition to certain aspects of transhumanism and its prospective travesties, and the result of this is a tragedy in itself. When so few spokespeople of the Gospel are willing to address such important issues in the secular sphere: 1) Believers have nobody on their side to tell them why or how these scientific developments are immoral and possibly devastating, and they are therefore misled to support what they don’t know the Bible expressly forbids; 2) nonbelieving agitators against religion have that much more reason to blast the world with the claim that the Church is outdated and irrelevant; and 3) those who may or may not feel convicted to believe in or follow God already (or those who have yet to even consider what they believe) have a scarce few intelligent, educated theological responders to listen to and guide them (most of whom are already squelched by a “conspiracist” label) and therefore have no reason to see Christianity as anything more than an archaic system of beliefs that can’t relate to the modern world they live in.

The more a minister of the Word compares Scripture to science and the convictions and agendas therein, the more Scripture proves itself to be true from the beginning, so really, a minister’s attention toward what is happening in laboratories across the globe today should not be as intimidating as it has become anyway—yet it appears that hardly anyone in the mainstream Church takes this position. Ministers are missing a great opportunity here to reach those who are confused about what Scripture actually says on the subject…

I don’t wish to insinuate that it is every Gospel minister’s responsibility to drop everything and start preaching about the inner-workings of every sinister scientific organization and the impending dooms that may be birthed from them (and as I said prior, this might prove to be a distraction away from many ministers’ personal callings), but it is my goal in this thread of thought to point out that there have been so very few ministers of the Gospel that have stood up to address these issues for all three people groups just mentioned—which covers all three known categories of people in existence (believers, nonbelievers, and those who haven’t decided yet).

I can’t say that I blame anyone. To take the bull by the horns and speak out regarding the concerns of modern science is a risky move, and it places one in a minority position. My opinions and concerns about the incoming “replacement humans” are often disregarded or staunchly opposed by the scientific community (and lay readers who follow it), despite the fact that a great deal of my arguments have been solidly based on what concern-flags the scientific community has raised in the first place. (As for me or my associates being labeled “conspiratists,” a conspiracy is not a conspiracy when there’s proof, and much of my research traces back to the horse’s mouth, so that label largely cancels itself out if we’re all willing to be honest here…) A minister can quote from the same ten science journals in a row and identify the same impending catastrophes as a secular spokesperson on any given day, but between these two voices, by default of his religious distinction, the minister’s warnings may be discarded by the mainstream who believe his conclusions to be born out of a sacred duty that many believers don’t yet fully comprehend, and toward a God that nonbelievers need not heed. He or she has become a part of the minority, much like many of the prophets in the Old Testament when the majority of Israelites were so consumed with pagan revelry that the warnings of God fell to the wayside until it was too late—and seasons of great tribulation followed every time. (In the case of transhumanistic sciences, however, we are not talking about “seasons” of tribulation, but potentially a permanent and unchangeable reality that no petri dish or super-computer on the planet can reverse.)

I can certainly relate to this—not because I equate myself with an Old Testament prophet, but because I have attempted to raise awareness of irreversible dangers transhumanism poses to the human race that God designed and have watched as, over the years, many have ignored the warnings I believe God persuaded me to put out there. How exciting and flattering, then, that my warnings have been heeded by a man in O’Donnell’s position who finds it necessary to concentrate upon and attend to the research I’ve compiled regarding the relationship between today’s “Promethean faith” (transhumanistic ideals of “playing God” by redesigning His creation; more clarification on this later) and the clear-cut commands of God against some of these practices as addressed in the Word—even as early as Genesis.

Thus, starting in the next edition of SkyWatch Magazine I’ll begin a series of articles to address everything from the nearness of technological singularity to the ethics Christians and conservative philosophers will need to deal with… and sooner than most imagine.

 

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Abraham’s Real Roots

Prior to Sir Leonard Woolley, scholars assumed that Abraham’s Ur was somewhere near Harran (which is the spelling outside the Bible). That’s about ten miles inside Turkey along the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates that joins the great river at the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Harran was a merchant outpost in Abraham’s day, and it was perfectly situated for that role. It sat on a trade route from the Mediterranean to Sumer, linking the cities of Antioch and Carchemish with Nineveh, Babylon, and beyond.

This is consistent with what we know of Abram’s livelihood, who seems less like a shepherd and more like a traveling merchant who conducted business with men at the highest levels of government, as evidenced by his interactions with local kings in Canaan and the pharaoh in Egypt.

Harran is also the name of one of Abraham’s brothers. It’s probable that his brother was named for the city and not the other way around, since the city first appears among records recovered from the ancient city of Ebla dated to about 2300 B.C., some 300 years before Abraham.

The great scholar of Near Eastern history and ancient languages Cyrus H. Gordon made a strong case for Abraham’s origins along the upper Euphrates rather than in the heart of Sumer. Gordon, writing in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies in 1958,⁠1 highlighted a then-recently translated Akkadian tablet from the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit. A decree by the powerful Hittite king Hattusili III, who ruled in the mid-13th century B.C., to the king of Ugarit, Niqmepa, regulated the activity of Hittite merchants operating in Ugarit.

Important for our purposes: Hattusili identified the merchants as citizens of Ura, a city near Harran that specialized in tamkârûtum, or foreign trade.

Niqmepa had apparently complained to Hattusili about the traders from Ura. In response, Hattusili decreed that the merchants could conduct business in Ugarit only during the summer months (no great loss—that was the only time of the year when farmers had crops with which to pay); the merchants would have to return home to Ura in the winter; and they were barred from buying real estate in Ugarit.

Gordon pointed out that the Book of Genesis indicates that while Abraham and his descendants were in Canaan at God’s call, they were also there for the express purpose of conducting trade. For example:

But Hamor [king of Shechem] spoke with [Jacob and his sons], saying, “The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us, and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.”Genesis 34:8-10 (ESV), emphasis added

Gordon observed that men who traded abroad, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, apparently looked for opportunities to settle where they did business, but they were generally barred from buying real estate in foreign lands.

So there are enough similarities between the lifestyles of the patriarchs and the merchants of Ura, not to mention Ura’s proximity to Harran, to make the identification of Ura as Abraham’s Ur a strong possibility. Gordon went on in the article to demonstrate the linguistic possibility that the final vowel in Ura was dropped in the transition from Aramaic to Hebrew.

But just looking at the story logically, Harran was much too far north and east for Abraham’s father Terah to make it a stop on the way to Canaan if he’d been traveling from Sumerian Ur. There were much shorter routes between Sumer and Canaan—for example, a caravan route that linked Mari on the Euphrates to Damascus via Tadmor (Palmyra).

In other words, Mesopotamians in the 21st century B.C. would have mocked anyone from Sumerian Ur who tried to get to Canaan by way of Harran. Ending up at Harran would have required missing one turn completely and then taking another in the wrong direction, away from Canaan. Put it this way: Traveling to Canaan from Ur by way of Harran is like driving from Nashville to Kansas City by way of Minneapolis.

Finally, Woolley’s Ur was on the wrong side of the Euphrates.

Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel. And they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac.’”Joshua 24:2-3 (ESV), emphasis added

Ur in Sumer wasn’t on the other side of the Euphrates. It was on the west bank of the river, the same side as Canaan. But Ura, in modern-day Turkey, was, in fact, “beyond the River.”

“But what about those Chaldeans?” you ask. “Weren’t they around Babylon?” Glad you asked.

The Chaldeans were a Semitic tribe, possibly descendants of the Amorites, who founded the Neo-Babylonian empire in the first millennium B.C. That’s the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, not the Babylon of Hammurabi, who lived about 1,200 years earlier.

But the Greek historian Xenophon, who wrote in the 4th century B.C., referred to another group of Chaldeans. They were a warlike people who were neighbors of the Armenians. They lived north of Ura and Harran, between Mesopotamia and modern Armenia. In another book, Xenophon linked the Chaldeans to the Carduchians, who were probably the ancestors of the modern Kurds. The Kurds today occupy territory along the borders between Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, an area that includes the places we’re looking at, Harran and Ura.

Gordon also noted that greater Armenia, which was called Urartu from the time of David until the rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, was in its earliest days known as Ḫaldi (the “ḫ” sounds like “k,” so it’s pronounced KALL-dee). In fact, the chief god of the Urartians was named Ḫaldi, father of the Urartian storm-god Teisheba (who was equated with Ba`al-Hadad).

So Ur of the Chaldees was probably Ura of the Ḫaldis. Abraham came from a border region located between the Hittites, the Hurrians, Semitic kingdoms such as Ebla and Mari, Amorite territory, and the Subartans (Assyrians), not from the heart of Sumer as we’ve been taught.

Understanding Abraham’s origins helps understand the early history of Israel. Why? Yahweh needed to give the future Israel time to develop its own identity. That wasn’t likely to happen with His people surrounded by the temptations of decadent urban life. Witness what happened to Abraham’s nephew, Lot, when he settled in Sodom.

Further, there is a cryptic comment God made to Abraham that is key to understanding the spiritual history of the world down to the present day.

And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”

He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”Genesis 15:7-16 (ESV)

Iniquity of the Amorites? Wait—what?

Patience. That’s for a future installment in this series.

 

1 Gordon, Cyrus H. “Abraham and the Merchants of Ura,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 17:1 (1958), pp. 28-31.

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Abraham Was Not from Sumer

Let’s fast forward about 1,000 years from Babel. After the tower was abandoned, it appears that a group of Sumerians traveled by sea around the Arabian peninsula, and then overland across the wadis extending west from the Red Sea to found the 1st dynasty of Egypt.

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Early Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie noted a sharp difference between two groups of people buried at a large site near the village of Nakada in Upper (southern) Egypt. One group had been interred with very basic grave goods in simple pits covered with palm branches. The second group had been ritually dismembered, buried in pits lined with brick along with objects of value, such as lapis lazuli jewelry, and then covered with palm logs.

Petrie eventually theorized that the second group, which he dubbed the Falcon Tribe, had invaded and conquered the native inhabitants with superior technology, such as the pear-shaped mace found buried with some in the second group. Make no mistake, in the 4th millennium B.C., the pear-shaped mace was a weapon of mass destruction.

Other evidence, from artwork to architecture—for example, Egypt’s first pyramid, for the pharaoh Djoser, is clearly modeled on the Sumerian ziggurat—linked the so-called Dynastic Race with Mesopotamia. This theory was widely accepted until World War II. After Hitler, however, the Dynastic Race concept was a little too much like the Nazis’ ideas about genetics and bloodlines for comfort.

But then in 1995, Egyptologist David Rohl published his first book, A Test of Time. Rohl makes a strong case for the Dynastic Race theory, even documenting ancient graffiti in Egypt that appeared to show the Falcon Tribe carrying their boats overland from the Red Sea toward the Nile.

Now, is it a coincidence that the name of the first king of the first Egyptian dynasty, Narmer, is awfully close to that of Nimrod, the would-be emperor of Uruk? Scholars have to guess at vocalization in many cases. It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that the names Narmer and Enmerkar (the Sumerian king who, like Nimrod, was a king of Uruk born in the second generation after the flood) were the same.

Peter D. Goodgame explored this idea in greater depth in his book Second Coming of the Antichrist. I bring it up here only to suggest one possible explanation for the decline of Uruk as a regional power at just about the time of the Tower of Babel on the timeline of history. After the humiliation at Babel, Nimrod/Enmerkar may have decided to head for new lands and a fresh start. Since his father, Cush, was apparently the founder of Ethiopia, nearby Egypt, which had been settled by Cush’s brother, Mizraim, may have been a logical place to start over.

Think about that. Did Cush throw his brother and his brother’s family under the bus to give his son, Nimrod, a new start?

By the way, the Sumerian King List mentions that the first city to receive the kingship after the flood was Kish. Remember, there are no vowels in ancient Hebrew. Could Kish have been named for Cush? And Enmerkar’s father, Mesh-ki-ang-gasher, is said to have “entered the sea and disappeared.” Maybe that’s how Sumerian scribes remembered King Cush, who sailed off into the Persian Gulf to establish a new colony with his brothers Mizraim (Egypt) and Put (Libya) in Africa.

Now, that’s all speculation. Nothing so far in this article can be established for certain. And to be honest, the Sumerian King List has way too many names between the founding of the Kish dynasty and Enmerkar for the Kish/Cush theory to work.

As the first dynasties in Egypt established themselves and began to build monuments that would surpass those left behind in Sumer, empires rose and fell between the great rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Akkad, under Sargon the Great, established a kingdom around 2350 B.C. that stretched from the Persian Gulf almost all the way to the Mediterranean, but it collapsed less than two hundred years later under the weight of invasions from the barbaric Guti, who swept onto the plains of Sumer from the Zagros Mountains in northwest Iran.

The Guti, who we don’t know much about because they didn’t write, controlled Mesopotamia for about fifty years. They were finally thrown out by Utu-hengal, a king of Uruk, which set off a struggle for dominance between the city-states of the region. Ur finally emerged supreme, and what scholars call the Third Dynasty of Ur gave the region its last native Sumerian kings for a brief period, until about 2000 B.C. Then Ur was sacked by its ancient rival, the Elamites, who occupied what is now the far west and southwest of Iran, the region along the east side of the Persian Gulf.

Into that power vacuum moved a group of Semitic-speaking people called the Amorites. Scholars think the Amorites originated in central Syria, around a mountain called Jebel Bishri, which is on the west side of the Euphrates between Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa. However, scholars still debate that point more than a century after the first scholarly books were published about the Amorites.

Academics aren’t even sure the Amorites conquered the various existing Akkadian and Sumerian city-states. They may have been part of Mesopotamian culture all along and just somehow came out of the confusion around the turn of the millennium in control of the political machinery. What we do know is that around the beginning of the 20th century B.C., Amorite kingdoms emerged in what had formerly been Subartu (Assyria), Akkad, and Sumer, and, along with Amorite kingdoms in the Levant, they dominated the Fertile Crescent for the next four centuries.

That was the world of Abram of Ur. We’ll have more to say about the Amorites, but know this: Their influence on history is much greater than you’ve been told.

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Here’s another bit of inaccurate history we’ve been taught: Abram, later Abraham, didn’t come from the Ur in southeastern Iraq, the one that was in imminent danger of being torched by the Elamites. Although it seems to make sense that he might have been a refugee from the collapse of Ur, it’s far more likely that Abraham was born and raised in a part of the world that was close to the Amorite heartland, near the border between modern-day Syria and Turkey.

This was the belief of most scholars for many years until famed archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley made his spectacular discoveries at Ur in Iraq. That Ur, with its magnificent ziggurat and stunning “royal tombs,” seemed much more appropriate as the ancestral home of the patriarch of the world’s great monotheistic religions than some place in Turkey that hasn’t been found yet.

A recent discovery about some of the remains found by Woolley at Ur gives us a glimpse into the world of Abram. It also illustrates a tendency among scholars to view the ancient world through rose-colored glasses. Woolley and his team, who worked at Ur in the ‘20s and early ‘30s, found 1,850 burials dated to the second half of the third millennium B.C. Seventeen were so elaborate that Woolley, displaying a flair for marketing, dubbed them the Royal Tombs of Ur.

One tomb in particular is worth our attention. It was the tomb of a noblewoman by the name of Pu’abi, an Akkadian name that means “commander of the father.” She’s believed to have died around 2600 B.C. Pu’abi was buried wearing a fabulous golden headdress adorned with carnelian and lapis lazuli. Lapis lazuli wasn’t easy to get back in the day; it was only found in Afghanistan and shipped to Sumer by way of Meluhha, a civilization on the west coast of India.

Among the other treasures buried with Pu’abi, Woolley found the famous Golden Lyre of Ur, one of a dozen stringed instruments in the tomb when it was opened in 1929. Sadly, the Golden Lyre of Ur is one of the priceless treasures of antiquity that was lost when the Baghdad Museum was looted in 2003. It was found in pieces in the museum’s car park.

To the point: Also buried with Pu’abi were fifty-two other people arranged in rows inside her tomb. These were apparently servants sent to the afterlife with her to ensure that Pu’abi had everything she needed for eternity.

How nice for her.

Now, Woolley, interpreting the scene with a romantic bias, decided that the servants had gone to their eternal rest willingly, drinking some toxic elixir and then peacefully lying down to await whatever came next. But in 2011, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania used CT scanners to examine six skulls from different royal tombs. They reached a much darker conclusion.

Digital imaging technology and modern forensic science made it clear that the actual cause of death in all six cases was blunt force trauma. Instead of quietly drifting off to their eternal rest, the victims had been bashed in the back of the head with the business end of a battle-axe.

That dumped a large bucket of ice water onto Woolley’s vision of an idyllic death scene. Keep that in mind the next time you get really aggravated at the sense of entitlement displayed by politicians, pop divas, and first-round draft choices. At least when they die, they don’t take dozens of people with them.

Well, because of Woolley’s truly incredible discoveries, Jews and Christians revised the standard map of Abraham’s journeys to show a long trek from southeast Iraq to southeast Turkey, and then on to Canaan.

We’ll pin down Abraham’s real home town next month.

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Why Jerusalem is the Capital!

In December, President Trump declared, “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people.” This statement made Jerusalem Headline News once again. On December 6, one CNN Headline read, “Trump’s Jerusalem decision promises upheaval.” Hand it to CNN News to predict the future. This declaration about Jerusalem rattled, upset, unnerved and disturbed people all over the world. Why is this so?

People, including Christians are asking questions about Jerusalem once again. As a result, I’ve been researching the Scriptures to see what God says about Jerusalem. I have already compiled 22 pages of notes in a Word Document. I’m contacting leaders to see if they’d like me to speak about Jerusalem right now. Let me give you a little taste of what I’ve found.

(Genesis 12:1) The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

God told Abram to pack his bags and move since He wanted to give Abram a new home as a gift.

(Genesis 12:6-7, chapter 15) In these verses God lists some of the land He is giving to Israel.

(Genesis 17:8) The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

God specifically told Abram what land He was giving him, and He told Abram that his new homeland was an everlasting possession. The lease would never expire; it would belong to Abram’s descendants forever.

In Leviticus 26 God told the Jewish people that when they sin, God would scatter them around the world. But He also said that their removal from the land would only be temporary, brief and short-lived. They may suffer, but they will never be completely destroyed. God promised that He would never break His covenant with Israel. And God specifically brought up the land of Israel when promising to restore them.

More than 2,600 years ago Ezekiel prophesied (in Ezekiel 26) about the physical and spiritual rebirth of Israel. God promised to bring the Jewish people back to the exact same land He gave their ancestors. He used the words, “your own land.” In the Living Bible it says, “For I will bring you back home again to the land of Israel.”

Other nations cannot take the land of Israel, and tell the Jewish people they’ll recommend a good realtor who’ll help them find another place to live. The land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and it is their eternal home. The physical rebirth of Israel took place on May 14, 1948. Then in 1967 Israel regained control of Jerusalem from Jordan. As expected, God kept His promise to the people of Israel.

When people disobey God they will be punished. They can be harmed and hurt. Haman, Hitler and hordes of horrible people have hurt Israel, but God will never allow anyone to completely destroy Israel, or keep their land forever. A few times in the Bible God says He will remember (or remind Himself of) His covenant with Israel. He also says He will remember the land. Possessing the land of Israel is part of God’s Covenant with the Jewish people. The people and the land are inseparable!

God’s message of the restoration of Israel is not limited to the book of Ezekiel. God also told Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah and Paul the same thing. The Bible is filled with promises from God that He would bring the Jewish people back to the land He gave our ancestors. The land He gave our ancestors, includes Jerusalem. God also promised to spiritually restore the Jewish people as well.

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Nimrod and the Return to Babel

The end of the Sumerian poem Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta is mostly missing, but it appears that Enmerkar ultimately triumphed over his rival. Other stories suggest that Enmerkar, who I believe was the biblical Nimrod (I make that case in my book, The Great Inception), later marched the army of Uruk to Aratta and conquered it.

This is consistent with archaeological evidence of the Uruk Expansion, which covers the period from about 3500 B.C. to about 3100 B.C. Although scholars usually downplay the violence that created the world’s first empire, Uruk spread its influence as far away as northwest Iran and southeastern Turkey. Pottery from Uruk has been found are more than 500 miles away from the city. To put it into context, Uruk at its peak controlled more territory than Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

This was not always a peaceful endeavor. An ancient city called Hamoukar in northeast Syria was destroyed and burned by an army from Uruk sometime around 3500 B.C. Scholars have identified the origin of the army by the pottery they left behind. Hamoukar was overwhelmed and then burned by attackers who used clay bullets fired from slings to defeat the city’s defenders. Strangely, what appears to have been a trading post from Uruk outside the city was destroyed, too, suggesting that maybe the men sent by Uruk to keep the locals in line had gone native.

That was how the kingdom of Nimrod obtained materials like jewels, copper, silver, lead, gold, timber, wine, and other things that were scarce in the plains of Sumer.

Of course, there is no way we’ll ever know for certain that Nimrod was Enmerkar, and that he was responsible for the Uruk Expansion—which is a nice way of describing the process of conquering everybody within a two-month march of home. Artifacts from Uruk are found everywhere in the Near East, especially a type of pottery called the beveled-rim bowl. This is significant because it offers a glimpse into the way the society of Uruk was organized.

Scholars have found that the society just before the Uruk period, the Ubaid culture, became more stratified as people moved from rural settlements to cities. The Ubaid civilization produced high-quality pottery, identified by black geometric designs on buff or green-colored ceramic. In contrast, around 3500 B.C., the Uruk culture developed the world’s first mass-produced product, the beveled-rim bowl.

The beveled-rim bowl is crude compared to the pottery from the Ubaid culture, but archaeologists have found a lotof them. About three-quarters of all pottery found at Uruk period sites are beveled-rim bowls. Scholars agree that these simple, undecorated bowls were made in molds rather than on wheels, and that they were probably used to measure out barley and oil for workers’ rations.

The way they were produced left the hardened clay too porous to hold liquids like water or beer. (Yes, the Sumerians brewed beer. Enki’s alternate name, Nudimmud, is a compound word: nu = “likeness” + dim = “make” + mud = “beer.” One could argue that Enki is the spirit of our age.)  The bowls were cheap and easy to make, so much so that they may have been disposable. At some archaeological sites, large numbers of used, unbroken bowls have been found in big piles. Basically, these cheap bowls were the Sumerian version of Styrofoam fast-food containers.

The concept of measuring out rations implies an employer or controlling central authority responsible for doling out grain and oil to laborers. It’s not a coincidence that the development of these crude bowls happened alongside Uruk’s emergence as an empire. After the flood, which we theorize marked the end of the Ubaid period, people again gravitated to urban settlements where they apparently exchanged their freedom for government rations.

It looks like that’s how Nimrod and his successors, including Gilgamesh, controlled their subjects—moving them off the land and into cities, keeping a tight rein on the means of production and distribution of food and resources.

Now, it’s possible we’re reading more into the evidence than is truly there. It could be that the beveled-rim bowl was nothing more than an easy way for people to carry lunch to work. Will future archaeologists conclude that Americans were paid in carry-out hamburgers because of the billions of Styrofoam containers in our landfills?

Still, given the unprecedented growth of the Uruk empire between about 3500 B.C. and 3100 B.C., it’s not going too far to speculate that the use of mass-produced ration bowls was a symptom of the stratification of society under the rule of Nimrod/Enmerkar and his successors. As in the Ubaid culture, citizens of Uruk found themselves working for hereditary leaders—kings, who justified their rule as ordained by the gods.

As an example, the Sumerian myth Enki and Inanna tells the story of how the divine gifts of civilization, the mes (sounds like “mezz”), were stolen from Enki by the Inanna and transferred from Eridu to Uruk. Enki, always ready for a romp with a goddess, tried to ply Inanna with beer. She maintained her virtue while Enki got drunk, offering her gift after gift as his heart grew merry and his mind grew dim. When he awoke the next day with a hangover, Inanna and the mes were no longer in the abzu. The enraged god sent out his horrible gallu demons (sometimes translated “sea monsters”) to retrieve them, but Inanna escaped and arrived safely back at Uruk, where she dispensed the hundred or so mes to the cheers of a grateful city. Enki realized he’d been duped and accepted a treaty of everlasting peace with Uruk. This tale may be a bit of religious propaganda to justify the transfer of political authority to Uruk.

One more thing:  We mentioned earlier that archaeologists at Eridu have found 18 construction layers at the site of Enki’s temple. Some of those layers are below an eight-foot deposit of silt from a massive flood. The most impressive layer of construction, called Temple 1, was huge, a temple on a massive platform with evidence of an even larger foundation that would have risen up to almost the height of the temple itself.

Here’s the thing:  Temple 1 was never finished. At the peak of the builders’ architectural achievement, Eridu was suddenly and completely abandoned.

… the Uruk Period … appears to have been brought to a conclusion by no less an event than the total abandonment of the site. … In what appears to have been an almost incredibly short time, drifting sand had filled the deserted buildings of the temple-complex and obliterated all traces of the once prosperous little community.i

Why? What would possibly cause people who’d committed to building the largest ziggurat in Mesopotamia at the most ancient and important religious site in the known world to just stop work and leave Eridu with the E-abzu unfinished? Could it be…

“Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. (Genesis 11:8-9, ESV, emphasis added)

To the Sumerians, and later the Akkadians and Babylonians (who knew him as Ea), Enki was the supernatural actor with the most influence on human history. He was the caretaker of the divine gifts of civilization, the mes (at least until he was tricked by Inanna), and he retained enough prestige for powerful men to justify their reign by claiming kingship over his city, Eridu, for 2,500 years after the city around the temple complex was abandoned.

For one moment in human history, Enki induced a human dupe—Nimrod, the Sumerian king Enmerkar—to build what he hoped would be a new abode of the gods, the bāb ilu, to rival Yahweh’s mount of assembly. It was to be the heart of a one-world totalitarian government.

Yahweh put a stop to it. But as George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The sin of Nimrod is being repeated today by the globalist movement, which is slowly but surely leading us back to Babel.

i Safar, Fuʼād; Lloyd, Seton; Muṣṭafá, Muḥammad ʻAlī; Muʼassasah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Āthār wa-al-Turāth. Eridu. Republic of Iraq, Ministry of Culture and Information, State Organization of Antiquites and Heritage, Baghdad, 1981.

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“The Days of Noah” Part 2

Playing God

When you realize exactly what they are doing to create one single beneficial trait or cure a disease, then you have to realize that they are clearly playing god.  Exactly how long do you think the real God is going to tolerate this?  What do I mean?  They are not god and so they are going to have to do an incredible amount of research and experimentation to actually get any breakthroughs.  How many millions of failures will they have?  What will they do with their failures? They will kill them!  They are deciding what is good and creating life that matches their belief system, all the while they are killing their mistakes.  How is this not playing God? They are creating a new breed of humans and replacing the old ones. Only God has the right to do this!  He is the creator and according to the Bible, if it was not created in the 6 days of creation, then it should not be created.  Trans-humanism will fundamentally change the reality of what it means to be a human.  This technology is rewriting the very words that God originally wrote when He wrote our DNA. RE-writing DNA will change the creation that God once called good.

Thou Shalt Not Mix Species

Trans-humanism is clearly breaking the Biblical mandate to not mix species. We have been commanded to respect what God has created and only allow each species to reproduce after their kind. (Gen 1:24&25) The Bible even goes on to denounce bestiality, which has an obvious connection to Trans-humanism. (See Leviticus 18: 23, 20: 15 & Deuteronomy 27:21) Then we have two passages in the Bible that quite directly address the idea of mingling of species, which is also form of tampering with DNA.

From these two passages we can see that there are six types of mixing of species which are forbidden: the mixing of seeds; the grafting of different species of trees and vegetables; the mixing of seed in a vineyard; the hybridization of domestic and wild animals; plowing or driving with domestic or non-domestic animals of different species; and the mixing of wool and linen. After looking at these two passages, how do you think God would feel about Trans-humanism? Tragically, they have been feeding us genetically modified foods for 20 years now and our government believes that we don’t even have the right to know about this.

DNA Is The Book of Life Written By God Himself – Psalms 139:16

  • Psalms 139:16 – Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuity were fashioned, when as yet there were none of them.

The Bible seems to indicate that God has a book of life that was written before we were born that includes all the details and determines how all of our members are fashioned. This is a perfect description of DNA because DNA is what determines exactly how our bodies are formed.  Furthermore, the New Testament gives us the idea that our body is also the temple of the Holy Spirit.  If these two truths are correct, then it leads us to ask some very critical questions.  Once that you understand that DNA is the book of life where by YHWY authored every detail of His temple, then you can understand why we should never change it.  Interestingly enough, DNA has two strands, just like the old and new testaments of the Bible.  There are 4 individual strands that join each other to form a single strand of DNA, just as the Bible is joined together by the 4 gospels. When God was finished writing the DNA that would create everything we know and love, He rested on the 7th day and called it all good! If you know that God never changes, then why would He want us to change what he created when He created it good in the first place?  (See Micah 3:6)

Defiling The Temple

Does DNA contain the exact instructions for this temple of the “Holy Spirit?”  I believe it is difficult to say no here.  This means that DNA, just like the Bible, gives us the exact instructions for how to build a literal temple.  Like the words of the Bible, DNA is the information system that carries the true message and instructions of the creator. The Bible gives us many examples about how the physical temple in Jerusalem is a very Holy place and that Israel was commanded to protect it from those who would defile it.  Interestingly enough, if you change one dimension of the temple you have defiled it.  If you bring sin into the temple, you have defiled it.  

  • 1 Cor 3:16-17 – Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.
  • 1 Cor 6:19 – Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.  Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

How can changing our DNA and redesigning our body not be considered destroying the temple or defiling the temple?  How can a Holy God inhabit an un-Holy temple? The Bible is clear, we are the temples of the Holy Spirit and changing the temple is a form of defiling it or blaspheming it. Changing the temple is a form of destroying the temple because God made it just the way He wanted it! Why is this so important?  Because the temple is the place where the Holy Spirit dwells.  In fact, I believe that you can take this analogy one step further.  Destroying the temple by changing it is a form of “Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.” The idea of blaspheming something has to do with speaking slanderous lies (distributing false information), but it also can be talking about various forms of abuse.  Of course, how is changing DNA from the truth that God wrote not some form of slander or propaganda?  Isn’t it interesting that the two unforgivable sins in the Bible are “Blaspheming the Holy Spirit” and taking the “Mark of the Beast?” I believe that these two unforgivable sins are connected.  We know that taking the “Mark of the Beast” is something that we do to our body and that God will destroy all those who take it.  So maybe the Mark of the Beast” somehow destroys or changes our bodies?  This is what Trans-humanism brings to the table and it breaks the boundaries of what God did when He created everything.  

Specific Creation Means Specific DNA

The “Doctrine of Special Creation” means that creation took place through supernatural processes and that each part of creation was specifically planned and formed by God. This doctrine is clearly taught in the Genesis record, where all future reproduction is commanded to take place “after it’s kind” no less than ten times in the first chapter. Understanding that DNA is the language that determines the reality of what is actually created means understanding that DNA was literally written by God himself. If God is truly Holy and perfect, then changing something that He created is wrong. How can we change something God called good and make it better, but that is exactly what they are claiming they can do?  This is exactly the lie that Satan is trying to get away with. Changing our bodies is wrong and it seems to have direct consequences for our spiritual bodies as well.

  • (1 Corinthians 15:37-44) And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare seed—perhaps of wheat or something else. 38 But God gives it a body just as he planned, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. 39 All flesh is not the same: People have one flesh, animals have another, birds and fish another. 40 And there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. The glory of the heavenly body is one sort and the earthly another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory. 42 It is the same with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

We Are Not To Change God’s Words

It is important to note that God spoke (with actual words) the world and all creation into existence. What if God spoke different words?  Don’t you think the world would be different?  The Bible asserts these words came directly from God and therefore they are “true words,” which communicate the correct information that God wanted to give. Jesus also says that He is “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”  If God gave us true words and them someone comes along and changes those words, then what we end up with is a lie.  Who is the father of lies?  This is why there are so many warnings against tampering with the inspired words of God Himself.   YHVH also says that we are never to add or take away from His word.  (See Deut 4:2, 33:4 & 12:32, Revelation 22:18-19, Proverbs 30:5-6, Matthew 5:18). The message is clear, don’t mess with the Word of God! In my mind, there is no reason why this should not apply to our DNA. More importantly, we were made in His image and this is what makes us His children! If we change our DNA, then we will be created in a different image and that would seem to indicate that we would have a different father or creator.

Diluting the Word of God Changes The Information

  • Revelation 22:19 “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

Taking away information can lead to a loss of information to the point that even salvation is lost! This is the exact warning of this verse. (Also see Deuteronomy 4:2 & Proverbs 30:6)  Note that the warning seems to emphasize the literal words that are being used, not just the thoughts or the message behind the words. God has promised to guard His Word against any such deletions. “The words of the LORD are pure words: . . . Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever” (Psalm 12:6-7). Peter warns against those who would “distort the scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). “All scripture is given by inspiration of God [God-breathed], and is profitable . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16). Again, if God created us, then He created DNA and used it to store the correct information or blue prints necessary to form the human body.  Because God wrote our DNA, it is more than difficult to understand why many Christians and churches are embracing Trans-humanism.

Adding to God’s Word Changes The Information

  • “For I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.” (Revelation 22:18)
  • “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) Six times during the creation week, God saw His handiwork and pronounced it “good” (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). 

In the same way DNA was written by God himself and called good, DNA is the language or code that literally transcribed His image into flesh so that He could walk and talk with us in perfect harmony. Human DNA is literally the building plans for the temple of the Holy Spirit. Changing those plans may make the temple of mankind uninhabitable for the Holy Spirit of God, thereby making salvation impossible.

Information Is An Entity

Information weighs nothing and is an immaterial entity, which means you could consider it a spiritual entity because it is not flesh and blood.  When we compare the weight of a DVD that is empty versus one that is full, they both weigh the same. If the DVD is empty, there is very little value, but if it is full it could be priceless. In essence, we don’t really care about the DVD; it is the information on the DVD that is important. Interestingly enough, the “Information Theory” says that the amount of information within a system cannot increase. This is a direct consequence of the fallen world that we live in.  The information theory directly contradicts the theory of evolution and our DNA more than qualifies as an information system.  In a way, you could call the life we have been born into an information war – the “truth” versus the “lie.” Therefore, the “lie” would want to corrupt any and all information systems, including your DNA. If you have any doubt about whether the information found in our DNA is from God, then see Dr. Stephen Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt – https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=aA-FcnLsF1g&feature=youtu.be.

Remaking Mankind In A New Image

Knowing that God created us in His image, ask yourself who would want to change us?  Satan! If Satan is the god of this world, then just think about how badly he wants to get rid of God’s children?  Furthermore, don’t you think that Satan wants to have his own children that are made in his image and following his plan? What would be even better is to change the children of God into the children of Satan.  After all, we know that Satan tries to imitate God in every way. Wouldn’t Satan want to destroy the temples and images of God? I think that answer here is obvious! This “War of the Seeds” is exactly what Genesis 3 is communicating.  There is going to be a DNA war and there are going to be those who have the DNA of the father the devil and those who have unbroken DNA going back to Adam, who was the Son of God. If you don’t think we are in a battle for the mind and hearts of humanity, then listen to what one of the largest false religions in this country has to say about their ultimate goal.

  • This quote is found above the doorway on the entrance to the Grand Lodge of the Masons in Washington D.C.:  “Masonry builds its temples in the hearts of men. “  With simple extrapolation one can surmise that the Masons would want to see Lucifer build a new kind of temple in the hearts of man.  Thereby replacing YHVH as the God of our true heart.

Let’s take this idea further. If YHVH wants to inhabit our body and make it His temple for the Holy Spirit, then whey wouldn’t Satan want to do the same? We know that the Abomination of Desolation takes place because Satan wants to stand in the temple and proclaim he to be god.  If Satan wants to sit on the throne in Jerusalem in a rebuilt temple, then he may also want for his spirit to sit on the throne of your heart in a temple rebuilt to his specifications.  The infilling of the Holy Spirit is the opposite of demonic possession.  In the end, we are fighting Satan for the same turf. This is why I have used the quote above to show how occultic religions actually come out and say that building temples in the hearts of men to a false god is their ultimate goal.

The Signature Temptation Of Satan

  • You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

In the very beginning, Satan gives away both his plan of salvation and his signature temptation for mankind – “That you shall become like God himself.” Satan’s signature temptation directly tempts us to play God. I also believe that this temptation will have a strong presence in how the Anti-christ plans to deceive the world.  Remember, the spirit of the Anti-christ has been at work since God created the earth and it has brought forth many anti-Christ’s. (1 John 2:18, 1 John 2:22) How do we recognize them?  Well, part of the revelation comes from their departure from the Bible and the true church. The other telltale sign is that they deny that Jesus is the Christ – the Way, the Truth and the Life. This is something that is currently happening in the ecumenical movement within the church today. Of course, the “New World Order” is behind this movement as they seek to blend the world’s religions together and make salvation all about being a good person, whatever that is.

I don’t believe that this temptation to be like God is purely an empty promise. I believe that Satan is actively trying to offer mankind a godlike existence through modern technology.  I don’t think it is a coincidence that we find ourselves in the days where people worship the false religions of both science and evolution. The end game of evolution is nothing more that the belief that we will evolve into gods. If you learn anything from this study, realize that science is starting to come good on its promise to make mankind immortal and to add all kinds of super powers along the way. This is exactly what Satan claimed to be able to do back in the garden! If you listen to Trans-humanists for very long this is the question they are going to ask you.  “If you could be better and live infinitely longer, why wouldn’t you?”  The truth is that if your god were science and evolution, only ignorant people would want to stay like they are and die so soon. However, if you are a Christian then, then my answer is quite simple. I believe that a loving and perfect God created me the way that I am. Even though I may die one day, I have put my trust in Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Just as Christ rose from the grave, I believe that He will also raise me from the dead and give me a heavenly body that I may see Him face to face and as He truly is.  This makes sense when I think and walk in the spirit, but how did that sound to the carnal man?  After all, who really wants to be weak and who wants to be a born looser?  How about the apostle Paul for one?

Human Weakness Grows The Strength Of God

  • 2 Corinthians 12:10 -That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

When we are weak, we can see the real need for God in our lives and maintain a much closer relationship with Him because we have to depend on Him daily. When we are weak, we are much more transparent so that others are more able to see Christ in us and through us. Once you understand how physical weakness and infirmity can profit the Kingdom of God, then you can see why Satan wants to change that equation. Satan wants to make us physically strong by changing us into his image and his likeness. Just like every temptation, Satan wants to blind us to our need for God and Trans-humanism fits perfectly into this agenda.  Living ten times longer just has a way of eliminating the reality of our need for a savior. Once you understand that human weakness is strength in God, then it becomes easier to understand why the final or Divided Kingdom of Daniel 2 shows an increasing inferiority as you go towards the bottom of the image. I don’t believe that it is a coincidence that the image finally ends with clay, because clay is the very lowest of earthly substances and the very thing God used to build mankind up from in the first place. God also told Adam, “for you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”

Consider the scales:

  • 2 Corinthians 12:9-11 – And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.  (NASB)

Think about what this passage is saying.  There is an inverse relationship between physical strength and spiritual strength.  After the fall of mankind, God saw fit to make us weak physically, so that we might one day come to our senses, thereby having the potential to become spiritual giants.  If Satan uses this same equation, then Satan would want to make us physically strong and powerful. The more like God Satan makes us, the feebler we become spiritually. This is why it would make sense that Satan’s plan of salvation for mankind involves making mankind into a super race.

There Is Only One Superman

  • 1 Pet 1:23 – For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
  • 1 John 3:2 – Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

When we hide our lives in Christ and put our faith in Him, then we will be re-born of an imperishable seed because we are the children of God.  Jesus was the first of this seed.  Did you ever realize why the virgin birth of Jesus was so important?  God himself wrote the Y chromosome of Jesus and it was un-corruptible. This is exactly what being born again is all about. God is going to do the same thing to us.  Sure, we don’t look like much, but our weakness only proves that we are God’s children.  Being born again represents this idea of a new spiritual seed that gives birth inside us for a body that will one day be imperishable. Faith that believes even through weakness in the living and abiding word of God produces the salvation and righteousness that is the currency of heaven.

  • “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2 Cor 5:1)

The Great Lie Is Coming

Trans-humanism is coming to change all of creation and to eliminate all of the human 1.0’s. I believe that Satan is actually making good on his promise to turn us into little gods. If you didn’t have a relationship with Jesus and you didn’t believe that what God created was really good, then why wouldn’t you enhance yourself?  Why would you just want to be a human, when you could be a human 2.0 that is quite superior in every way? There is no escaping that science is doing just that and this is only the beginning. In some of the coming months we will address more of just how this ultimate temptation provided by the latest technological advancements just keeps getting better and better.  Science is a false god and it may very well be the source of the coming great lie! I also believe that this is why the Bible says the following:

  • Matt 24:22 & 24 – “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
  • 2 Thessalonians 2:11 – “For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie.

Deception & Strong Delusion

Deception and strong delusion are the distinguishing characteristics of the “End Times.” When I think about the fact that not many people survive, I think about just how bad the tribulation will be. However, it occurred to me that Jesus is clearly keeping track of His own.  If the population is taking the “Mark of the Beast,” then they are not His own and they will not survive what is coming. Trans-humanism could explain part of the reason why God’s children seem to be facing extinction unless Jesus returns.  When I think about a strong delusion, I think that there must be a powerful deception about “who we are” and “why we are here.” Certainly, this kind of reasoning could explain how the enemy plans to sabotage the biblical text and the ultimate meaning of life. Another give away is when the Bible refers to signs and lying wonders.  Clearly something supernatural or beyond our realm will seem to be coming into play here.  When I think about a false prophet, I think about a false religion with a false god that is communicating a false message. Trans-humanism, the product of science that follows the religion of evolution is clearly all of these things.  

Jesus Has Spiritual Seed!

For the modern mind, salvation is hard to understand because it is so simple.  Understanding only becomes possible once we become like little children and hear just how much God loves us.  Still, many people have asked, if Jesus did not pass on any of his genetics to the rest of mankind, how did He save us?  There are quite a few ways the Bible helps us to understand how we are saved.  One of my favorites is how we are made like him because of our adoption into the family of God.  In another passages, the Bible teaches that we are the bride of Christ and that Christ is our ‘kinsman redeemer.”  However you want to explain it, the miracle of the gospel is that Jesus will see his seed again. We, the believers and the church, are His seed!

  • Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Isaiah 53:10 KJV
  • No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 1 John 3:9 ESV

One day, Jesus will re-write our DNA into literal truth, thereby transforming us into new creatures with heavenly bodies.  Just as there are no lies or false information found in Jesus, so will God do the same for us? This re-writing of who we are will allow us to see Him as He really is by fundamentally changing who we are. (1 John 3:2) This is also the exact opposite goal that Satan has with regard to us.

  • In the beginning was the word (true information) and the word (true information) was with God and the word (true information) was God. And the word (true information) became flesh and dwelt among us. John 1 NIV

What is Really Possible Today?

In order for you to see just how big of a deal this is, I need to remind us of just what is possible. Today, they are able to clone dead things and bringing them back to life. This has already been used to bring back species that are actually extinct.  In 2009, blood was extracted from the bone of a dinosaur that scientists insist is eighty million years old. While I don’t believe that blood can last for millions of years, but I am convinced that the idea of Jurassic Park could become a reality. National Geographic confirmed this possibility in its May 2009 special report, “Recipe for a Resurrection,” quoting Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient DNA who served as a scientific consultant for the movie Jurassic Park, saying: “I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I’m not laughing anymore. This is going to happen, it’s just a matter of working out the details.”  http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/05/cloned-species/mueller-text.  There may be other nefarious purposes that are served by the development of hybrid creatures. If a spirit seems to need a body to inhabit, then what about all of the angels that lost their heavenly abode/Oiketerion?  Doesn’t that mean we may have a situation where we have a great many disembodied angels looking to inhabit bodies in an avatar kind of way? I’m not sure about you, but this is starting to sound like a hellish scenario to me?  

Right now, the US military is in a new “Arms Race” that is creating “Super Soldiers.” This is confirmed by the JASON’S $100 Genome report to the DOA and military analyst Noah Shachtman in “Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes.” This recent special for Wired Magazine was based on a leaked military report in which the JASONS admitted concern over “neuro-pharmaceutical performance enhancement and brain-computer interfaces” technology being developed by other countries ahead of the United States. What is even scarier is that these soldiers can be born completely normal, but later modified genetically to be entirely something else.  This matches the idea of the “Mark of the Beast” exactly.

Just How Dangerous Is This?

There is not doubt that positive advances may come from some of the science and technology fields that we are discussing. However, learned men like Prof. Francis Fukuyama (Nobel Peace Prize Winner), in his book, Our Post-human Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, warns that unintended consequences resulting from what mankind has now set in motion represents the most dangerous time in earth’s history. We are entering a period when exotic technology in the hands of Trans-humanist ambitions could forever alter what it means to be human. To those who would engineer a Trans-human future, Fukuyama warns of a dehumanized “hell scenario” in which we “no longer struggle, aspire, love, feel pain, make difficult moral choices, have families, or do any of the things that we traditionally associate with being human.” In this ultimate identity crisis, we would “no longer have the characteristics that give us “human dignity” because, for one thing, “people dehumanized à la Brave New World”…don’t know that they are dehumanized, and, what is worse, would not care if they knew. They are, indeed, happy slaves with a slavish happiness.” The “hell scenario” is just a beginning to what other intelligent thinkers believe could go wrong. More importantly, we would no longer have any more resemblance to the perfect and loving God that created us.  

Enter the “Super Soldiers.”

Today the science of recombinant DNA, or rDNA, is probably the best candidate for how they plan to change our DNA after we are born.  This term is used to describe the combination of two DNA strands that are constructed artificially. Genetic scientists can do this to create unique DNA strands for different purposes. Obviously, the code you are replacing is removed and the new code is spliced in. Like naturally occurring DNA, recombinant DNA has the ability to produce completely new proteins and structures thereby changing the host permanently. How would this DNA be carried to every cell of our bodies?  As it turns out, a virus literally does exactly just that, but they are developing other ways as well.  What is interesting is that viruses are not really alive and if is very difficult to explain just how they were made through evolution.  Just another coincidence as this entire trap of deception begins to develop around us.

Back To The Days of Noah & Tampering With DNA

The truth is that the more we study Trans-humanism, the more synonymous it becomes with accomplishing the purposes of Satan and the more similar is sounds like the “Days of Noah.” The obvious product of Tran-humanism is a new creation with a new breed of men. This is also exactly what was happening in Genesis the 6th chapter. This “new breed of men” is the enemy of God because God did not create them.  If the Nephilim were really created by fallen angels, then Satan created them and therefore they qualify to be the seed or children of Satan.  This war between the seeds is why God commanded Israel to kill every last one of them. Just like Goliath, they defy the God of Israel and the armies of Israel.  The Nephilim seem to be specifically camped out in the Promised Land. Do you think that that is a coincidence?  In the end, it is difficult to really believe the Bible literally if you cannot be open to the possibility that there were “giants in those days and also afterward.”  The fact remains, you can’t get giants with 6 fingers unless someone or something has tampered with their DNA. How can this not be similar to the genetic modification that is happening today?

While many may doubt the authenticity or inspiration of the Biblical texts or their translation, there is one thing we know.  If God is our creator, then God wrote the DNA of every living thing on this planet. DNA is a living language, a blue print of the soul of mankind. DNA is an information system that reproduces the image of God and expresses His likeness into the world.  DNA is much more complex than words because it actually determines the reality of all creation.  In my opinion, the ramifications of changing anything in our DNA could be greater than changing the words in the Bible.  Looking for the spirit that drives Trans-humanism, I find only one candidate. It is the same candidate who would want to change the Bible and all of creation and turn it into a pack of lies.  Satan is the father lies and a murderer from the very beginning!

The Flood & Protecting The Blood Line

The prophecy of the “seed of the woman” in Genesis 3 is none other than Christ Himself. He was foretold to come so that He would deal the final blow to the plans of Satan.  Satan has obviously tried to prevent this from happening.  In the same way that Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt to keep from being slaughtered, Satan has tried to prevent God’s plan of salvation from happening.  This includes the attack on the Messianic bloodline that started with Adam & Eve.  If Satan could modify, mix or defile the DNA of mankind, then he may have been able to pollute the Messianic bloodline. This attack was made possible because Jesus had to be of the lineage of Adam & Eve in order to save us from the wages of sin. This genetic attack explains the Bible’s documentation of a perfect and unbroken lineage from Adam all the way to Jesus Christ and just why the book of Numbers is so important.  Throughout history God has had to protect the seed of the woman from Satan, but God’s plan cannot be thwarted. (See Revelations 12) This “cosmic war” or chess match is the root of God’s redemptive plan for humanity and why there had to be a second Adam.

  • Rev 22:16  –  “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star.”  NKJV

Scoffing

In 2 Pet 3:1-7, Peter says that one of the signs of the “last days” will be the scoffers.  What is interesting is exactly what they are scoffing at.   

  • “Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. 7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men

In the last days, men will scoff at the idea that Jesus will actually come back, but it doesn’t end there.  Peter specifically mentions the flood, which is also synonymous with the “Days of Noah.” Jesus made the same connection between the “Days of Noah” and His soon return. The problem is that we are living in the days where both people in and out of the church are scoffing at the literal beliefs in both the flood and Genesis 6 account. Let’s face it. What the text plainly seems to say is embarrassing and sounds far fetched. That is why the modern church has had to come up with some other possibilities, but this is purely a case of scoffing. Unfortunately, this scoffing is coming from many within the church and has grown to the point that it surrounds the issue of the Nephilim and the giants in the Bible as well?  

This same spirit of scoffing goes on to scoff at creation itself through the new religion of Trans-humanism.  “How can there be a great and powerful God who made us when I can clearly design a better human being than He can.”  Trans-humanism is tampering with God’s creation. If God does not want His words tampered with, then how do you think He feels about the wholesale redesign of life on this planet? How do you think God feels about changing the “Temple of the Holy Spirit,” which is our body? The strange union of fallen angels with the daughters of Adam described in Genesis 6 is not any stranger than spiders married with goats to produce a new breed of goats that produce spider webs in their milk.  Remember, the story doesn’t say that they had sex with these women; it just says that they took them. When the women came back, they were pregnant. We take spiders and goats, mix their DNA and we get a new creature with amazing abilities. How can Satan be less technologically advanced than us?  Maybe he is behind this huge explosion of technology to begin with? Past generations had to assume it was sex because they had no other ideas for how these women could have given birth to a hybrid offspring.  Today, we know that all they needed was a swab of their DNA.  If science can take two of any species and blend them together, then why would it be impossible for Satan to devise a plan to do the same thing?  If the U.S. government is trying to design solders that any rational person would describe as “a zombie with super powers” to win their next war, then why is it so far-fetched to think that Satan would devise a plan to created similar hybrid offspring with super powers to help him destroy God’s people entirely?  If the giants had won the fight for the “Promised Land,” then God’s promise to Adam, Noah and Abraham would have been broken. The giants found in the Bible clearly seem to have been genetically modified and God certainly did not create them. Trans-humanism is clearly repeating this idea of genetic modification with the goal of produced a new type of humans 2.0.  Like the giants of old, the next generation of mankind will live longer and heal quicker. They will be bigger, stronger, smarter and faster than normal humans.  This is exactly how the Nephilim in the Bible were described. We are seeing the “Return of the Nephilim” as we speak. Once they are here, and I believe there are many reason why they are, then it will only take 3-4 generation before all of mankind will be changed.  None of the real humans will be left. One of the things we know about the return of Christ is that He comes back before that happens.

  • Matt 24:22 – “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.

So What Am I Saying?

I believe we are living in the “End Times.”  Human history is speedily coming to a close and that God’s next intervention into human history will be the soon return of Jesus.  I believe that unless Jesus returns, the new science of Trans-humanism is going to completely eliminate all of what God created by mingling the seed of His original creation. I also believe that this was exactly what happened in the “Days of Noah.” Even if you don’t agree with me, you have to admit that there is a clear similarity between what is happening today and what is described in the Bible. Genetic modification seems to clearly been happening both then and now.  The war of the seeds that was prophesied to begin in Genesis 3 is exactly what Trans-humanists expect will happen when modified humans interact with those who are not modified.  A new form of racism is about to be sprung on this planet. The “Divided Kingdom” of Daniel 2 also highlights this coming conflict, where the two groups of people “cannot cleave one to the other.” That is why our own government has spent so much money trying to modify the constitution to accommodate this war. The fact that Daniel 2 tells us that the last government before the return of Jesus will have two types of people, those with mingled seed and those who have kept themselves true to their original seed, is just too much for me to believe that this is a coincidence.  However, as I have said, I do not believe that the case against Trans-humanism ends there.  You may find this hard to believe, but I am not actually personally invested in the views I have presented here about the Genesis 3, Genesis 6, and Daniel 2. I honestly believe it isn’t important unless it was actually happening again. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the way you look at it, I believe that Satan is tampering with God’s creation again through genetic modification. Still, a case can be made against Trans-humanism by just looking at the principles laid out in scripture. Here are some of the highlights that we have covered.

Changing Our DNA Is:

  • Blaspheming the Holy Spirit because it defiles and destroys the Temple of the Living God.  
  • Defacing the Image of God and perverting the Words of God and the Truth of God.
  • Fundamentally changing who we are by changing our perceptions / inclinations / inhibitions.
  • Ultimately Changing Mankind From the Descendants of Adam and Kinsmen of Jesus, to the Seed and offspring of Satan.

Satan’s Plan

DNA is literally a code and a language that transfers the information that God wrote that ultimately determines our identity as a species. When the Bible says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, that is literally what happened. As we have seen, Satan has come up with a plan to change everything God wrote and created and turn it into a lie or a perversion. Whether you believe this is a new plan or an old plan is certainly up for debate. However, what you cannot deny is that Trans-humanism is going to change everything God created. This change comes straight from the spirit of the Anti-christ that has now come to our world to blaspheme the word of God in un-imaginable ways. These changes to DNA will defile, contaminate and profane the temple of the “Holy Spirit” (AKA – the human body) in such a way that a Holy God may no longer be able to inhabit this un-holy temple.   These new technologies clearly violate the species barrier that God has set up.  Most importantly, they are poised to actually tempt mankind to become something more than what God created.  They will tempt mankind with the very signature temptation of Satan by attempting to make mankind to “become like God.” Remembering our theme for this series, “when you see these things happening, then stand up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near.” It is to this end that I believe there is yet another unmistakable convergence of Bible prophecy happening right before our eyes. This convergence of genetic modification that ties what is happening today in Trans-humanism to what happened in the “Days of Noah” threatens to make “all flesh corrupt” yet again.  There is a new god in town and his promise of salvation seems more real to a new generation that trust in science more than a man named Jesus who lived 1900 years ago. In next month’s article, we are going to continue to show some additional implications of this new technology.  We will also cover another major part of what was different about the “Days of Noah” that very few people talk about.  Unfortunately, it will open up too many cans of worms to cover here, but again this second uniqueness about the “Days of Noah” is causing many intersections with things that are happening on our own timeline.  Hope to see you next month as we continue to lift up our heads for the soon return of Jesus!

For more information on this prophetic series, please go to prophecydays.com.  Look for “The Convergence” series where you will find the links for all the video, audio and notes from the series. You can also find the video links on YouTube by typing in prophecydays.com & Convergence.

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The Tower of Babel: Abode of the Gods

The Tower of Babel: Abode of the Gods

 

Not all the holy mountains in the history of the world are natural, formed by the shifting of tectonic plates or the sudden, catastrophic opening of “the fountains of the great deep.” The Tower of Babel was one such artificial mountain. Babel was humanity’s attempt to force its way back into the divine council.

At Babel, mankind tried to storm the castle of God.

For generations, well-meaning Bible teachers have presented the story of Babel as an object lesson on the dangers of pride. Those foolish people were so arrogant they thought they could build a tower high enough to reach heaven!

With all due respect to those teachers, that’s an insult to the intelligence of our ancestors, if you think about it. And it’s a disservice to people in church who want to know why Yahweh was so offended by this project. Really? God is that insecure?

Look, if big egos were enough to bring God to Earth, He’d never leave.

Babel was not a matter of God taking down some people who’d gotten too big for their britches. The clue to the sin of Babel is in the name.

Remember, the Hebrew prophets loved to play with language. We often find words in the Bible that sound like the original but make a statement—for example, Beelzebub (“lord of the flies”) instead of Beelzebul (“Ba`al the prince”), or Ish-bosheth (“man of a shameful thing”) instead of Ishbaal (“man of Ba`al”). Likewise, the original Akkadian words bāb ilu, which means “gate of god” or “gate of the gods,” is replaced in the Bible with Babel, which is based on the Hebrew word meaning “confusion.”

Now, there’s a bit of misinformation that must be corrected about the Tower of Babel: Babel was not in Babylon.

It’s an easy mistake to make. The names sound alike, and Babylon is easily the most famous city of the ancient world. It’s also got a bad reputation, especially to Jews and Christians. Babylon, under the megalomaniacal king Nebuchadnezzar, sacked the Temple in Jerusalem and carried off the hardware for temple service. It makes sense to assume that a building project so offensive that God personally intervened must have been built at Babylon.

But there’s a problem with linking Babylon to the Tower of Babel: Babylon didn’t exist when the tower was built. It didn’t even become a city until about a thousand years after the tower incident, and even then it was an unimportant village for about another 500 years.

Traditions and sources outside the Bible identify the builder of the tower as the shadowy figure named Nimrod. Our best guess is he lived sometime between 3500 and 3100 B.C., a period of history called the Uruk Expansion. This tracks with what little the Bible tells us about Nimrod. In Genesis 10:10, we read “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”

The land of Shinar is Sumer and Erech is Uruk. Uruk was so important to human history that Nimrod’s homeland is still called Uruk, five thousand years later! We just spell it differently—Iraq.

Accad was the capital city of the Akkadians, which still hasn’t been found, but was somewhere between Babylon and ancient Assyria. Babylon itself was northwest of Uruk, roughly three hundred miles from the Persian Gulf in what is today central Iraq. But it wasn’t founded until around 2300 B.C., at least 700 years after Nimrod, and it wasn’t Babylon as we think about it until the old Babylonian empire emerged in the early part of the 2ndmillennium B.C.

So where should we look for the Tower of Babel?

The oldest and largest ziggurat in Mesopotamia was at Eridu, the first city built in Mesopotamia. Scholars put its founding at around 5400 B.C. In recent years, scholars have learned that the name Babylon was interchangeable with other city names, including Eridu. So “Babylon” didn’t always refer to the city of Babylon in ancient texts.

Artist’s conception of how the never-completed ziggurat at Eridu might have looked

 

 

 

Eridu never dominated the political situation in Sumer after the reigns of its first two kings, Alulim and Alalgar. But as the home city of Enki, god of fresh water, wisdom, and magic, Eridu was so important to Mesopotamian culture that more than three thousand years after Alalgar, Hammurabi the Great was crowned not in Babylon, but in Eridu—even though it had ceased to be a city about three hundred years earlier.

Even as late as the time of Nebuchadnezzar, 1,100 years after Hammurabi, the kings of Babylon still sometimes called themselves LUGAL.NUNki—King of Eridu.

Why? What was the deal with Eridu?

Archaeologists have uncovered eighteen levels of the temple to Enki at Eridu. The oldest levels of the E-abzu, a small structure less than ten feet square, date to the founding of the city. And consider that the spot remained sacred to Enki long after the city was deserted around 2000 B.C. The temple remained in use until the 5th century B.C., nearly five thousand years after the first crude altar was built to accept offerings of fish to Enki, the god of the subterranean aquifer, the abzu.

Now, this is where we tell you that abzu (ab = water + zu = deep) is very likely where we get our English word “abyss.” And the name Enki is a compound word. En is Sumerian for “lord,” and ki is the word for “earth.” Thus, Enki, god of the abzu, was “lord of the earth.”

Do you remember Jesus calling someone “the ruler of this world”?  Or Paul referring to “the god of this world”?  Who were they talking about?

Yeah. Satan.

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Here’s another piece to our puzzle:  Nimrod was of the second generation after the flood. His father was Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah. In Sumerian history, the second king of Uruk after the flood was named Enmerkar, son of Mesh-ki-ang-gasher.

Now, get this:  An epic poem from about 2000 B.C. called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta preserves the basic details of the Tower of Babel story, including the confusion of language among the people of Sumer.

We don’t know exactly where Aratta was, but guesses range from northern Iran to Armenia. (Which would be interesting. Not only is Armenia located near the center of an ancient kingdom called Urartu, which may be a cognate for Aratta, it’s where Noah landed his boat—the mountains of Ararat. So it’s possible Nimrod/Enmerkar was trying to intimidate the people—his cousins, basically—who settled near where his great-grandfather landed the ark. But we just don’t know.)  Wherever it was, Enmerkar muscled this neighboring kingdom to compel them to send building materials for a couple of projects near and dear to his heart.

Besides building a fabulous temple for Inanna, the goddess of, well, prostitutes, Enmerkar/Nimrod also wanted to expand and upgrade Enki’s abzu—the abyss.

“Let the people of Aratta bring down for me the mountain stones from their mountain, build the great shrine for me, erect the great abode for me, make the great abode, the abode of the gods, famous for me, make my me prosper in Kulaba, make the abzu grow for me like a holy mountain, make Eridug (Eridu) gleam for me like the mountain range, cause the abzu shrine to shine forth for me like the silver in the lode. When in the abzu I utter praise, when I bring the me from Eridug, when, in lordship, I am adorned with the crown like a purified shrine, when I place on my head the holy crown in Unug Kulaba, then may the …… of the great shrine bring me into the jipar, and may the …… of the jipar bring me into the great shrine. May the people marvel admiringly, and may Utu (the sun god) witness it in joy.”1 (Emphasis added)

 

That’s the issue Yahweh had with it right there. This tower project wasn’t about hubris or pride; it was to build the “abode of the gods” right on top of the abzu.

Could Nimrod have succeeded? Ask yourself: Why did Yahweh find it necessary to personally put a stop to it? A lot of magnificent pagan temples were built in the ancient world, many of them copying the pyramid-like shape of the ziggurats, from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica. Why did God stop this one?

We can only speculate, of course, but God had a good reason or we wouldn’t have a record of it in the Bible. Calling Babel a sin of pride is easy, but it drains the story of its spiritual and supernatural context.

In the view of this author, the evidence is compelling. It’s time to correct the history we’ve been taught since Sunday School:  Babel was not at Babylon, it was at Eridu. The tower was the temple of the god Enki, Lord of the Earth, the god of the abyss. Its purpose was to create an artificial mount of assembly, the abode of the gods, to which humans had access.

That was something that Yahweh could not allow.

1 Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker, E, Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G. Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.3#), retrieved 12/17/16.

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Christ Celebrated Chanukah

Christ celebrated Chanukah so you can too!

(John 10:22-23 NIV) Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Yeshua was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.

The word “dedication” in Hebrew is Chanukah so Yeshua was at the Temple during the Festival of Chanukah. Every year during this festival we celebrate the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple. In 2 Corinthians 6:16 Paul tells us we are the temples of God since God’s Spirit lives in people who belong to Yeshua. Because of this, it will spiritually benefit us to celebrate the Festival of Dedication (or Chanukah) and rededicate our temples to God.

חֲנֻכָּה (SEC # 2598) – Chanukah

It comes from (חָנַך) chanak: to train up, dedicate (SEC # 2596)

make experienced, submissive, etc. (as one does a horse by a rope in its mouth)

Dedication involves submission. When people want to keep a horse under their control, so it does what they want it to do, a rope is used to control it. Being under the control of its rider, the horse can be dedicated to doing exactly what its owner wants.

For people to be dedicated to God we need to live the same way as the horse. We need to be directed and under the control of Yeshua our Lord, Owner and Master.

The Hebrew word חָנַך is the Hebrew word Solomon used in Proverbs 22.

(Proverbs 22:6) Train up (חֲנֹךְ) a child in the way he should go

(Proverbs 22:6 GNT) Teach children how they should live

(Proverbs 22:6 TLB) Teach a child to choose the right path

(Proverbs 22:6 MSG) Point your kids in the right direction

To dedicate our temples to God we need to be pointed in the right direction so we can choose the right path and live as our Lord calls us to live.

I trust you are beginning to see how celebrating Chanukah can be a spiritual blessing to you. Chanukah begins December 12 at sunset, and ends December 20 at sunset. I encourage to learn more about Chanukah and if you desire I am available to visit your congregation, Bible study, or group of friends to lead a Chanukah celebration.

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After Eden, Before the Flood: Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

The big question we didn’t address in last month’s article is why cranial deformation—headshaping—was even a thing. Please understand that I’m not suggesting that these 6,000 year-old coneheads were genetic mutations or Nephilim, the angel-human hybrids mentioned in Genesis 6 (although the Nephilim would have been around during at least part of the time that headshaping was common in the ancient Near East). But who wakes up one morning in 7000 B.C. and decides to wrap something around baby’s skull to see if it makes his head pointy?

What inspires that? And why was Eridu, the first city in ancient Sumer (and thus possibly the oldest city in the world), the starting point for this?

A study published in the academic journal Paléorient in 1992 concluded that the practice of head-shaping, which is found around the world, originated in the Near East because it was so widespread there. However, the researchers believed the deformation was not necessarily intentional, but probably “incidental to patterns of head-gear.”⁠3

Really? For more than six thousand years our ancestors accidentally forced their babies to wear head-gear so tight it deformed their skulls?

Here’s another bit of data to chew on. At Eridu and nearby sites in ancient pre-flood southern Sumer, and only there, archaeologists have found about 120 terracotta figurines they call “ophidian.” That’s fancy talk for snake-like. They’re slender bipeds, adorned with button-like protuberances, more often female than male, and often in poses that are exclusively mammalian—for example, a female lizard-like figure suckling an infant.

Ophidian figurines made from terracotta and bitumen. Female found at Ur in 1931, male at Eridu in 1948-49. Drawing of female based on object #31-16-733 at Penn Museum; male figurine was on display at the National Museum of Iraq.

The aforementioned scholars pointed out in their paper that there had been no serious study of those figurines and what they meant to the ancients, and no scholarly literature on the origins of human cranial deformation (at least as of their writing in 1992).

Why might that be?

While there hasn’t been much scholarly attention paid to the snake-like figurines, there have been several papers published within the last ten years on head-shaping in the ancient Near East. Still no conclusions on why or how it got started, but it’s clear that the people who lived in the region—descendants of the refugees from Eden—made a habit of this odd practice.

We’ll never know for sure, but we can speculate: The people who formed the earliest human civilizations copied a look that someone, somewhere had seen and decided was a physical ideal. What motivates modern-day teens to wear the clothes and hairstyles they do? Except that this particular fashion statement didn’t change with the seasons—it appears to have been worn by nearly everybody for more than 6,000 years!

It’s not likely that this was a simple fashion statement. However it started, this was apparently a practice that was believed to convey some advantage.

Think back to what we discussed about the serpentine nachash and seraphim, and remember that at least one of them rebelled against Yahweh. Is it possible that the citizens of the prehistoric Near East were trying to curry favor with what they believed was a god?

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Now, if we haven’t already, here is where we may run off the rails.  But let’s run through one more theory, look at the evidence, and see if it makes sense.

As mentioned earlier, Eridu is considered by archaeologists to be the center of the Ubaid culture. The Ubaid period is defined as the civilization in the ancient Near East just before the time of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, roughly between 6500 B.C. and 3800 B.C.  It would have begun not long after Adam and Eve got kicked out of the garden.

Now, God wanted humanity to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).  It was not for His people to take dominion over each other.  As Jesus told his disciples thousands of years later, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.  It shall not be so among you” (Matthew 20:25-26a).

Just as Adam and Eve were created to work the land, God’s design for humans was to be more or less self-sufficient—growing our own food, tending our own flocks, and helping each other whenever and however we’re needed.  When you live that kind of life, you’re too busy to lord it over your neighbors.  And, frankly, since you’re not depending on handouts for your family’s daily bread, it’s harder for government to lord it over you.  It makes sense that Israel was led by judges in times of trouble during its early years, but a king wasn’t part of the original plan—even though God, who knows the end from the beginning, surely saw what was coming and let the Hebrews make Saul king anyway.

Earlier, we described the main features of the Ubaid civilization.  Archaeologists and sociologists have noticed two other things that emerged during the Ubaid period—first, it was a transition from a rural to an urban society, and second, society became increasingly stratified.

In other words, the evidence—things people were buried with, mainly—shows that as people moved from the country to the city, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

This period also saw the construction of the first temples in Mesopotamia.  Each city apparently had a temple for its own local god.  And each temple had a granary for collecting the offerings of the commoners.  Of course, this means somebody oversaw who gave how much, and—more importantly—who received how much.  Archaeologists and sociologists believe this led to an elite class of hereditary leaders, who may have been the ones doling out the grain from temple granaries.

Substitute income tax and social security control over the grain harvest and rationing, and it’s clear that things haven’t changed all that much in the last 8,000 years.  But I digress.

It’s fair to ask how this situation came about.  We can only speculate since we don’t have any written records to study.  Logically, though, it’s a pretty good guess that entities who’d rebelled against Yahweh at this early stage had set themselves up as gods.  It’s conceivable, based on what we know about angels from the Bible, that one or more of them appeared to the pre-Sumerians and encouraged certain candidates who were receptive to the idea that 1) the gods needed temples, and 2) the temples required priest-kings to oversee offerings and ensure that the gods were pleased.  The result was a civilization where freedom was restricted to the upper class while the peasants worked the land to support them.

We’re speculating, of course, but from the standpoint of the Fallen, breaking civilization into classes was a brilliant PSYOP.  Destroying the world is much easier when you only have to manipulate a handful of useful idiots who can convince the rest to do things your way.

Scholars who study the Ubaid period have concluded that it was a time of increasing disparity between the classes, but they don’t look at the situation through a spiritual lens.  It happened, but why? They analyze factors like climate and technology, but they ignore the possibility that the unseen realm may have guided those changes.

God’s original design was for people to work the land and live free.  As Christians, who should accept the existence of the spirit realm by default, it should be natural for us to ask whether the lesser elohim might have rebelled against Yahweh’s plan for creation, and if so, how that would play out.  If we don’t, you can bet secular historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists won’t bother.

Since the trend during the Ubaid period was toward ever-larger villages with temples of the gods at the center of everyday life, contrary to God’s command to “multiply and fill the earth,” it’s a fair guess that this change was the work of entities who were disloyal to their Creator—and who wanted to destroy the work that He’d called very good.

3 Solecki, Rose; Akkermans, Peter M. M. G.; Agelarakis. Anagnostis; Meiklejohn, Christopher; Smith, Philip E.L. “Artificial cranial deformation in the Proto-neolithic and Neolithic Near East and its possible origin: Evidence from four sites,” Paléorient, 1992, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 83-97.

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