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Blog of Christian philosopher and author C.W. Steinle: encouragements, profundities, observations, and sharing. May or may not have something to do with my books.
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Image: Daily Express, Asteroid path 2019 |
I have been fortunate (blessed) to see an airburst around this time last year. If you've never seen one, here's a recent video: https://youtu.be/p_CI2oBhmnA. But this object apparently passed through the atmosphere and headed back out into space.
As I was looking up making my morning connection with the Lord, what looked like an airliner or helicopter headlights caught my eye coming from the western sky. It was that bright. But it was moving at the pace that one usually sees when viewing a meteor—a shooting star. In other words, this was moving much faster than a jet.
It passed overhead and then disappeared at about 10 o'clock in the eastern sky. Based on the brightness and illumination of the surrounding atmosphere, I was expecting to witness yet another massive airburst. But not so. My conclusion is that the Earth experienced another near miss similar to the one by the North Pole just one week ago.
The message is clear. We will experience another sky fall and landfall soon.
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Why is this important? Read excerpt from The Rise of Western Lawlessness (below) Asteroid 2021 TG14 passed by Earth at a distance of roughly 155,000 miles (250,000 km). That's well within the orbit of our moon, which orbits at an average distance of nearly 239,000 miles (385,000 km). (Space.com).
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Begin excerpt:
According to Dr. Sten Odenwald, “On any given day, the estimates are that the Earth intercepts about 19,000 meteorites weighing over 3.5 ounces.”[1]
“Scientists estimate that 44 tonnes (44,000 kilograms, about
48.5 tons) of meteoritic material falls on the Earth each day. Several meteors
per hour can usually be seen on any given night. Sometimes the number increases
dramatically—these events are termed meteor showers. Some occur annually, or at
regular intervals, as the Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left
by comets. Meteor showers are usually named after the star or constellation
that is close to where the meteors appear in the sky. Perhaps the most famous
are the Perseids, which peak around the Twelfth of August every year. Each
Perseid meteor is a tiny piece of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which swings by the
Sun every 135 years. Other meteor showers and their associated comets are the Leonids
(Tempel-Tuttle), the Aquarids and Orionids (Halley), and the Taurids (Encke). Most
comet dust in meteor showers burns up in the atmosphere before reaching the
ground; some dust is captured by high-altitude aircraft and analyzed in NASA
laboratories. . . . More than 50,000 meteorites have been found on Earth. Of these,
99.8 percent come from asteroids.”[2]
Figure 4. A close-up
image of the asteroid Ida taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
“Asteroids with a diameter of 7 meters enter Earth’s atmosphere with as much kinetic energy as Little Boy (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, approximately 16 kilotons of TNT) about every 5 years, but the air burst only generates a much reduced 5 kilotons of TNT. These ordinarily explode in the upper atmosphere, and most or all of the solids are vaporized. Objects with a diameter of roughly 50 m (164 ft) strike Earth approximately once every thousand years, producing explosions comparable to the one known to have detonated roughly 8.5 kilometers (28,000 ft) above Tunguska in 1908.”[3]
Figure 5. Meteor over Chelyabinsk on February 15, 2013. This very bright fireball is also known as a superbolide.[4]
“On February 14, 2013 a 10,000 ton meteor about 17-meters in
diameter entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia traveling at 40,000 mph (18
km/s). It detonated in the air over the town of Chelyabinsk and the explosion
caused major damage to the town injuring 1,000 people. The people were hurt by
flying glass when the windows of over 3000 buildings blew out over an area of
about 1000 km2. Unlike the famous Tunguska Event of 1908 which blew down 80
million trees and was not ‘discovered’ for many decades afterwards, the
Chelyabinsk Meteor was extensively videoed by hundreds of dash-cams and cell
phones as it happened. Studies of thousands of meteor sightings by scientists
can now tell us just how often asteroids of 4-meters or larger enter Earth’s
atmosphere. About two of these events happen each year over the entire surface
area of Earth.”[5]
Professor S.A. Nelson of Tulane University has articulated
the dangers presented by incoming astrological bodies. Below are some excerpts
from his summary titled, “Meteorites, Impacts, & Mass Extinction.”[6]
Although the Chelyabinsk meteorite probably weighed about
12,000–13,000 metric tonnes, and measured 17 to 20 m in diameter before it
exploded, scientists were quick to point out that it was very small compared to
other objects that could potentially hit the earth. The explosion released
energy estimated at about 500 kilotons of TNT (about 20 to 30 times more energy
than the Hiroshima atomic bomb). The event brought to the world’s attention the
very real hazards associated with the impact of objects from outer space.
The impact of a space object with a size greater than about 1
km would be expected to be felt over the entire surface of the Earth. Smaller
objects would certainly destroy the ecosystem in the vicinity of the impact,
similar to the effects of a volcanic eruption. Larger impacts could have a
worldwide effect on life on the Earth. We will here first consider the possible
effects of an impact, and then discuss how impacts may have resulted in mass
extinction of species on the Earth in the past.
Regional and Global
Effects
Again, we as humans have no firsthand knowledge of what the
effects of an impact of a large meteorite (> 1 km in size) or comet would
be. Still, calculations can be made and scaled experiments can be conducted to
estimate the effects. The general consensus is summarized here.
Massive earthquake—up to Richter Magnitude 13, and numerous
large magnitude aftershocks would result from the impact of a large object with
the Earth.
The large quantities of dust put into the atmosphere would
block incoming solar radiation. The dust could take months to settle back to
the surface. Meanwhile, the Earth would be in a state of continual darkness,
and temperatures would drop throughout the world, generating global winter like
conditions. A similar effect has been postulated for the aftermath of a nuclear
war (termed a nuclear winter). Blockage of solar radiation would also diminish
the ability of photosynthetic organisms, like plants, to photosynthesize. Since
photosynthetic organisms are the base of the food chain, this would seriously
disrupt all ecosystems.
Widespread wildfires ignited by radiation from the fireball
as the object passed through the atmosphere would be generated. Smoke from
these fires would further block solar radiation to enhance the cooling effect
and further disrupt photosynthesis.
If the impact occurred in an ocean, a large steam cloud would
be produced by the sudden evaporation of the seawater. This water vapor and CO2
would remain in the atmosphere long after the dust settles. Both of these gases
are greenhouse gases which scatter solar radiation and create a warming effect.
Thus, after the initial global cooling, the atmosphere would undergo global
warming for many years after the impact.
Also, if the impact occurred in an ocean, a giant tsunami
would be generated. For a ten km-diameter object, the leading edge would hit
the seafloor of the deep ocean basins before the top of the object had reached
sea level. The tsunami from such an impact is estimated to produce waves from one
to three km high. These could easily flood the interior of continents.
Large amounts of nitrogen oxides would result from combining nitrogen
and oxygen in the atmosphere due to the shock produced by the impact. These
nitrogen oxides would combine with water in the atmosphere to produce nitric
acid which would fall back to the surface as acid rain, resulting in the
acidification of surface waters.
The Geologic Record of
Mass Extinction
It has long been known that extinction of large percentages
families or species of organisms have occurred at specific times in the history
of our planet. Among the mechanisms that have been suggested to have caused
these mass extinctions have been large volcanic eruptions, changes in climatic
conditions, changes in sea level, and, more recently, meteorite impacts.
Risk—It is estimated that in any given year the odds that you
will die from an impact of an asteroid or comet are between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in
250,000. . . . Although this seems like long odds, you have about the [the same
odds] of dying from other natural disasters likes floods and tornadoes. In fact
the odds of dying from an impact event are much better than the odds of winning
the Powerball lottery.
A 400 meter asteroid striking the earth would produce a
destructive force of 2,800 megatons of TNT. On November 8, 2011, the 400 meter
asteroid designated (308635) 2005 YU55 passed within the moon’s orbit of the
earth. Purdue
University has calculated that a 400 meter asteroid will only strike the
earth about once every 100,000 years.[7] The
problem is that we naturally assume the interval of time between strikes starts
from the time we read the data. No
one knows where in time their measurements should begin. Neither does anyone
know how evenly spaced throughout time certain sized asteroids might make their
arrival. Furthermore, there are so many known and unknown celestial objects out
there, we simply have no assurance that there is any great length of time
between these age-ending collisions.
Figure 6. Plot of orbits of known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (size over 460 feet (140 m) and passing within 4.7 million miles (7.6×106 km) of Earth’s orbit) as of early 2013.[8]
In 2002 an asteroid between 50 and 120 meters passed between
the moon and the earth. Two asteroids in 2012, and one in 2013, all in the
35-45 meter range, passed through this same corridor. According to the
scientists’ calculations, asteroids of this size enter the earth’s atmosphere about
once every 300 years. But the reality is that we only went 106 years, from 1908
to 2015 to experience two massive explosions from asteroids of this size. And
who knows how many more entered uninhabited areas of the planet during that
same period.
Through advanced telescopes astronomers have gotten a much
better picture of all that is “out there”. The earth is moving around the sun
at 67,000 MPH. Our solar system is moving through the galaxy at 490,000 MPH. And
the galaxy appears to be traveling through space at 2,236,936,290 MPH. What
could possibly go wrong? The data which astronomers have obtained has not set
the scientific community at ease about the possibility of another extinction
event. Quite the contrary. Canada, Europe, and the United States have begun to scramble
to prevent the next extinction event. The U.S. Congress passed, in 2005, The National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Authorization Act, containing the
following directive:
The U.S. Congress
has declared that the general welfare and security of the United States require
that the unique competence of NASA be directed to detecting, tracking,
cataloguing, and characterizing near-Earth asteroids and comets in order to
provide warning and mitigation of the potential hazard of such near-Earth objects
to the Earth. The NASA Administrator shall plan, develop, and implement a
Near-Earth Object Survey program to detect, track, catalogue, and characterize
the physical characteristics of near- Earth objects equal to or greater than
140 meters in diameter in order to assess the threat of such near-Earth objects
to the Earth. It shall be the goal of the Survey program to achieve 90%
completion of its near-Earth object catalogue (based on statistically predicted
populations of near-Earth objects) within 15 years after the date of enactment
of this Act. The NASA Administrator shall transmit to Congress not later than 1
year after the date of enactment of this Act an initial report that provides
the following: (A) An analysis of possible alternatives that NASA may employ to
carry out the Survey program, including ground-based and space-based
alternatives with technical descriptions. (B) A recommended option and proposed
budget to carry out the Survey program pursuant to the recommended option. (C)
Analysis of possible alternatives that NASA could employ to divert an object on
a likely collision course with Earth.[9]
[1]
Odenwald, Dr. Sten. “Entry for ‘How many meteors enter the Earth’s atmosphere
every day?’”. Archive of Astronomy
Questions and Answers. Astronomycafe.net, 1997. Retrieved 27 Mar. 2015. <http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q896.html/>
[2]
Burdick, Autumn. “Entry for ‘Solar System Exploration: Planets: Meteors &
Meteorites: Read More.’” National
Aeronautics and Space Administration. nasa.gov, 6 Nov. 2014. Retrieved 27
Mar. 2015.
<http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Meteors&Display=OverviewLong/>
[3]
Odenwald, Dr. Sten. “The Frequency of Large Meteor Impacts”. Space Math @ NASA. National Aeronautics
and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center, n.d.: 26. Retrieved 27
Mar. 2015.
<http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/9Page26_Meteor_Space_Matth.pdf/>
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
[5]
Odenwald, Dr. Sten. “The Frequency of Large Meteor Impacts”. Space Math @ NASA. National Aeronautics
and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center, n.d.: 26. Retrieved 27
Mar. 2015. <http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/9Page26_Meteor_Space_Matth.pdf/>
[6]
Nelson, Prof. S.A. Meteorites, Impacts,
& Mass Extinction. Tulane University, 01 Dec. 2014. Retrieved 30 Mar.
2015. <http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm/>
[7]
Nowack, Prof. Robert L. Lecture 19:
Asteroids, Comets and Meteorites. Purdue University, n.d. Retrieved 30 Mar.
2015.
<http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~nowack/geos105/lect19-dir/lecture19.htm/>
[8]
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
California Institute of Technology. “Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
(PHA’s)”. Wikimedia Commons.
Wikimedia. n.d. Retrieved 30 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17041/>
[9]
United States Government Printing Office. PUBLIC
LAW 109-155-DEC. 30, 2005. gpo.gov. Government Printing Office, 30 Dec.
2005. Retrieved 30 Mar. 2015. <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-109publ155/pdf/PLAW-109publ155.pdf/>
Evergrande Default Could Rock China’s Entire Economy: "China’s public debt already stands at 270 percent of GDP, and non-performing loans have hit $466.9 billion." https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/evergrande-default-could-rock-chinas-entire-economy_4000625.html
Below is the data I compiled several years ago. Notice CHINA ON THE BOTTOM ROW! Net Wealth Times Government Debt.
See: WorldWealth101.com: https://www.worldwealth101.com/2019/01/real-government-debt-coverage-by-country.html
Calculated and estimated using available 2014 through 2017 data; in US Dollars (USD).
Cover of sheet music for "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" words by Mrs. Dr. S.G. [Julia Ward] Howe, Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co., 1862. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic |
Originally a camp-meeting hymn "Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore?" it evolved into John Brown's Body. Then in 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music may be by William Steffe.
The Jews had been cast away by the Nations (Gentiles) long before the time of Yeshua. In this session we will follow the growing antagonism between empires—Persian to Roman—and Second-Temple Period Jews. Understand the power of patriotism in the formation of post-Apostolic Christian theology and the real roots of anti-Semitism.
Ecclesia_et_Synagoga replica of Ecclesia et Synagoga depiction at Strasbourg Cathedral |
Chris Steinle in Athens |
Chris Steinle is a recognized Bible prophecy commentator as a guest and co-host on alternative media as well as the author of more than ten books. Steinle is a former pastor and retired CPA with over 25 years’ experience in business leadership as CFO and corporate treasurer. His ministry experience includes a weekly international-radio evangelism broadcast. Chris has taught on location in Israel, Philippi, Thessaloniki, Corinth, Athens, and Egypt.
Image resembling the receding light. |
Now, I need to switch gears and discuss the existence of the spiritual realm; because, after all, that "reality" has everything to do with the eternal state of existence. How did that realm come into being? Who created it? Indeed, the ultimate existence (the philosophical field of "ontology") has very much to do with the creation of that glorious dimension (cosmology). The debate over Creationism vs. Evolution has focused much attention on cosmology. But little thought has been devoted to explaining the creation of the spiritual realm. For this investigation, I rely on a chapter of my book, The Rise of Western Lawlessness (rather lengthy for a short blog, but pretty much says it all):
Metaphysics covers a wide spectrum of philosophical study. Aristotle first used the term, "metaphysics," referring to his work "after his study of physics." Nevertheless, subsequent philosophers have applied the word to mean, "beyond physics." Metaphysics seeks to explain both the source of "being," and the "things," which exist outside of the material realm. The early philosophers associated the Creator with the realm of ideals because both God and his attributes were outside of the physical realm. The question of how much of human life is affected by spiritual forces, and how much is determined by man's own mental perception, is still up for debate by philosophers. The importance of man's perception was magnified as Humanism elevated the importance of man. Shakespeare incorporated the intrigue of the metaphysical question in Hamlet.115
Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison. - Hamlet, Hamlet act 2 scene 2
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams. - Hamlet, Hamlet act 2 scene 2
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause - Hamlet, Hamlet act 3 scene 1
Shakespeare expressed the aspect of metaphysical perception when he said that a prison could seem like infinite space. But then he applies the same principle to the afterlife. If subjective reality only exists in the mind, then one's reality would change according to the whims of one's own imagination. Shakespeare's assessment of metaphysics is brilliantly carried to its logical culmination in Albert Paine's compilation of Mark Twain's unfinished book, The Mysterious Stranger. In the excerpt below, Satan is the first-person speaker who has just revealed to the main character that his entire existence is only the subjective manifestation of his own thoughts.
"You are not you - you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream - your dream, a creature of your imagination."
"In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever - for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. . . . It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"116
Even though Satan professes there is no God, one cannot help but notice the similarity between Twain's ultimate end of subjective reality and Jesus' allusion in His parables to the outer darkness. Consider the following real-life example of existing with only one's mental capacities.
Born in South Africa in 1975, Martin Pistorius suddenly began to succumb to a mysterious illness when he was 12. After going home from school with a sore throat one day, he stopped eating, started sleeping almost constantly, and stopped communicating.
He gradually began to lose control of his body. He was treated for both cryptococcal meningitis and tuberculosis of the brain - but no one really knew what was wrong. Doctors told his parents he was left with the mind of a baby and that they should take him home to die. But he lived on. Pistorius left the hospital but spent more than a decade at home and in day care centers unable to move or speak. His family was told he was unaware of the world around him, but he says he actually began to wake up a couple of years after he became ill.
"For so many years, I was like a ghost. I could hear and see everything, but it was like I wasn't there. I was invisible," Pistorius told NBC News in an interview in his hometown in Essex county, England - his first U.S. television appearance.
"It was terrifying at times," he recalled.
"At first, when I was trapped inside my body, my biggest fear was being alone, which I guess is kind of ironic. Because, in a sense, even though there were people around me, I was alone."117
After about 13 years, Martin had a care worker who spotted signs that he was consciously aware of his surroundings and she explained her observations to her superiors. In Martin's book, Ghost Boy, he described what it was like to finally have someone come to this realization. This excerpt is from the book's prologue. "It took so long to accept that I was trapped inside my body - to come to terms with the unimaginable - that I'm afraid to think I might be able to change my fate. But, however fearful I am, when I contemplate the possibility that someone might finally realize I'm here, I can feel the wings of a bird called hope beginning to beat softly inside my chest."118
It is worth noting that Mark Twain wrote a book about Christian Science. In her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy stated in a chapter entitled, Science of being; "Metaphysics changes things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul."119
However, the Bible says that God changed His pre-ordained thoughts into things, creating that which is visible from that which was unseen. The "ideas of Soul" sound hauntingly similar to the World Soul of the Platonists. Both Shakespeare and Twain realized that metaphysics without God leaves man without a pleasant place to spend eternity.
If man's existence were actually the result of his own thinking, how could his spirit know or communicate with other spirits? Some media must exist to make community possible. Dimensionality of some type is necessary to recognize borders. Otherwise how might spirits in the afterlife know where their identity ends and another object begins? Unless God created the heavens with some type of dimensionality, how would God know Gabriel from Michael? Heaven must have dimensionality or else Moses could not have received the pattern of the heavenly tabernacle.
Furthermore, for activity to occur in heaven, something must move or change. No matter the scale, some manner of distinction between moments of movement must exist, or else all of eternity would be perceived as one massive blur. (Even though God is outside of time, He is able to distinguish one period of time from another.) Some recognition of time over which change can be observed is necessary to realize that something has happened - to recognize that there has been activity. Life without movement would resemble man's definition of death. What Christian would want to spend eternity as part of some homogenous ether - without dimensions and without activity? That sounds a lot like a world "without form and void." - Gen.1:2
How might a dimensional spiritual platform come into being without a God to create the heavenly realm? Do the metaphysicians believe all of the disembodied minds might figure out a way to make contact with one another, and then to build their own communal spiritual habitation? Or perhaps it will evolve from some gooey spiritual pond over billions of years. The proponents of material evolution have done nothing to explain the existence of the spiritual realm. Philosophers cannot even explain the existence of the material particles or the energy from which they base their big bang. Yet the theory of evolution is totally dependent upon the pre-existence of the orderly principles of physics and the pre-existence of the atomic particles - the mysterious media of the present physical world.
Nevertheless, the notion of subjective reality appeals to the self-centered Atheist, so long as he doesn't connect the dots leading into the outer darkness. The spirit of lawlessness holds out the promise that man doesn't need God. The devil delights in driving man further into himself, and farther away from reality. Thus the appeal of video games which offer the players their chance to design and build their own private worlds. Western man's withdrawal from face-to-face interaction is a prophetic indicator of the man's final state without God. He prefers texting and online chat precisely because it separates him from others. The self is willing to be isolated if it means that each soul can be its own god. Pitifully, most are willing to die rather than to submit to the source of eternal life.
Philosophy is still fumbling with the bane of the Gnostics - how to connect the spiritual and material realms. God has created man as a complex creature made up of body, soul, and spirit. Man will never be able to figure out how God has done it. Man is a miracle. The only way that man's wisdom can even approximate a solution is to split matter away from spirit, and then to propose different rules for each solution. The honest Humanist philosopher must choose between the theory of evolution and his faith in an unresolved spiritual realm. There is simply no way to reconcile a subjective spiritual realm with an accidentally evolved material realm.
Philosophers have not explained the phenomenon of human existence at all. They have merely formed separate theoretical systems; one concerning matter, and the other dealing with the spirit. These theories are never considered together because they are hopelessly incompatible. But they are presented to society separately, espousing the merits of both systems, and expecting that people will believe they have eliminated the necessity for God. Whereas, in fact, taken together they overwhelmingly prove the existence of an external creator! A God who is outside of, and set apart from, His own creation. Thanks be to God that with the same genius by which He designed and created the worlds, He has also created the heavenly abode, and shown man the way into everlasting life through His Son Jesus Christ.
The Humanist theories about the creation of life and the illusion of subjective reality have, none the less, been used to indoctrinate several generations with the reasonableness of Atheism. (Isn't it hilarious to see cars with evolution bumper stickers, which also sport mystical spiritual crystals hanging from their rearview mirrors?) "Professing to be wise they have become fools." – Rom. 1:22 Only by blind faith can the Humanist deny his Creator, and, at the same time, believe in the goodness of man, and the value of "spiritual" thinking. By brainwashing the children with these independent yet conflicting story-lines, the Humanists have convinced them that man has solved the problem of his own existence. Can mankind ever solve the problem of creation? No, because it has already been solved.
The only plausible solution to the complexity of man's being is found in the Bible. The media in which body, soul, and spirit can operate simultaneously was provided by God. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." – Gen. 1:1 The unseen things of heaven are real, definable, and living. They have the ability to act and interact - because they were all created by God through His Son. "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him." – Col. 1:15-16. The faith that the Christian has is the most reasonable explanation ever presented for the existence of all things, material and spiritual. Therefore, "by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." – Heb. 11:3
The metaphysics of the Enlightenment ultimately leads its followers into the outer darkness, but the gullible public believes they have a firm footing from which they might forge ahead to create their own godless utopia. The "enlightened" thought that led man to devise the story of his own creation also encouraged him to create his own ideal government. Man's attempts to solve the authority question remain as unresolved as his theories about creation. These experimental governments are the subject of our next chapter.
Now, in a shameless plug, allow me to announce the Second Edition of The Rise of Western Lawlessness which can, at this time, be pre-ordered at a discount.
Amazon book page |
The Rise of Western Lawlessness: Second Edition is an expansion of Volume 1 and includes a foreword by Douglas W. Krieger. Some chapters have been lengthened to better cover the the philosophies of man and the spiritual systems of wickedness that have exalted themselves against the knowledge of Christ. Steinle takes the reader on a journey through 3,000 years of western history exposing the deceptive spirits of humanism and deism rooted in ancient philosophy- the same ungodly influences that were reintroduced to western thought during the Renaissance and the so-called Age of Enlightenment. Along the way, discover why the modern hodgepodge of spiritism, metaphysics, and evolutionary theories are not only false, but inconsistent and self defeating. Includes more than 150 supporting references and 11 illustrations.
Excerpts: [Today's freedom represents neither the Old Testament concept of freedom from ungodly peoples, nor the New Testament freedom from the enemies of sin, death, and eternal separation from God. The new face of freedom is the liberty of self expression - a personal freedom that perceives as its adversary every form of restriction... freedom to experiment, freedom to sin, freedom from conscience, and freedom from God. Meanwhile, the remnant who still cling to Judeo-Christian ethics look on in dismay as the citizens of the Western nations surrender all of their other rights for the right to sin. Lawlessness is next to godlessness...The Western Church has diminished the perceived authority of God by embracing the philosophical god of goodness. An ideal god that is too good to judge. A universal goodness devoid of power to do anything. Today's nominal Christians are disowning the Lord God and following after this theoretical god; an inanimate god who sees nothing, hears nothing, and knows nothing. The philosophical god is as unlike the living God as the idols of ancient times.
"But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them." - Psalm 115:4-8 NIV.
And those who make this theoretical god will be like it! That is, the worshipers of the abstract god will be without discernment, without knowledge, and without judgment. Likewise, those who imitate this god believe that it is wrong to distinguish differences, that it is wrong to claim truth, and wrong to judge anyone. But the True God is the living God; the Father God; the Lord God who is the judge of heaven and earth - the judge of the living and the dead. Thus, this freedom called lawlessness has one great and dreaded enemy - the existence of the one true God.]- end excerpts
Pre-order now at a pre-release discount - $0.99 at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093CPYDK3
No charge by Amazon until the release date!
"For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:9-10).
"as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness" (2 Pet. 1:3).
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Jesus said that where our treasure lies, our heart will also be.
Dear Lord, help us this day to forsake self reliance, selfish ambition, self-focus; and may we "us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:1-2).