Glory and Fire after the Days of Awe
Glory and Fire after the Days of AweKeeping the Feast of Tabernacles
I remember my first time. I walked into the buzz of an arena filled with thousands of people. Sitting down next to my mother, I stretched my hands into the arena as if it were a camp fire on a cool mountain evening. I could feel the fire! The feelings of joy and expectancy were palpable. I knew every person here – perhaps not personally, but with any one of the thousands of people, I could speak about anything. We were like minds, gathering after the conclusion of ימים נוראים, Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe. It was my first time to the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles.
The Feast of Tabernacles is sometimes called, “God’s favorite Holiday.” YourStudyBibleOnline.org says, “the reason God commanded them to observe Tabernacles, is because He tabernacled with His Dear Ones in the Wilderness, in His Glory. Please try to picture what it must have been like, with the mighty Pillar of the Fire and Light of the Shekinah Glory of God[i].” It seemed like I could almost feel it during the time of the Feast.
The Days of Awe start with the Jewish New Year and end with the Day of Atonement. For us, the Day of Atonement pictured the future removal of Satan just prior to the Millennium. It included sermons on the meaning of Leviticus 16:8,10,26 where it speaks of Azazel[ii]. The fast was to bring us closer to God to be At One with Him. On the Day of Atonement we used to fast from sunset to sunset, but the fast was without both food and water, so it could be rather grueling. But when the sun slid below the horizon at the end of the day, it signaled two things: food was finally at hand, and it was only a few days to the high point of the year, The Feast of Tabernacles.
To make this work, we were supposed to keep a “second tithe.” David Legge of PreachTheWord.com describes the second tithe as a “festival tithe” saying, “there is an additional initial 10 percent, which is a second tithe which was called the 'festival tithe' - you find that in Deuteronomy chapter 12… this second tithe, the festival tithe, was to build religious celebration and mutual community among the Jewish people[iii].” In fact, the second tithe was highly necessary to fund Festivals. For the Feast of Tabernacles, it was common to be away from home (In your Sukkot[iv]) for 10 or 11 days. Often this required taking unpaid vacation, so if you hadn’t kept the 2nd tithe you had very large financial problems brewing.
Communities that hosted such Festival events, coveted the 2nd tithe savings of Feast-goers, bending over backward to garner customers from a temporarily well-heeled crowd. They knew that thousands of visitors had one tenth of their yearly income that they could only spend for Festival expenses. The Feast was a blessing to each hosting community.
The highlight of the Feast of Tabernacles was the “Last Great Day.” This 8th day of the Feast was taken to look forward to the Millennial rule of Christ. That first Tabernacles for me, closed with a rousing sermon where a dynamic orator had almost 10,000 people in the large arena, their voices filling the space to a loud roar, raise their hands as if holding a champagne glass, and shout, “To the Kingdom! To the Kingdom.”
Those days for me have written deep dichotomies in my soul, for though the Feasts built the most wonderful memories, they were kept by a hyper-legalistic, Judaizing, British-Israelist, post-trib, controlling, cultish church. I know the truth of the Bible now. I couldn’t go back to an organization like that. However, after knowing the Holy Days, imbibing of Christmas and Easter is like drinking eggnog mixed with raw sewage. Though I love the celebration of the birth of Christ and the commemoration of His death and resurrection, there are Yule logs floating in my cup of celebration. The birth of Christ is littered with Mistletoe leaves. Saturnalia casts a shadow on the Son[v]. Egg laying bunnies tread all over the Resurrection. The pagan goddess Eostre overshadows the Upper Room[vi].”
Oh for a Festival celebration by Biblical Christians! The Feasts have no pagan baggage. But look as I may, I can find virtually nothing of the sort.
Some days find me trolling the Internet, plying my computer geek skills, spinning carefully phrased search strings in a vain attempt to find a real Christian Tabernacles celebration. A Calvary Chapel or a Khouse-like organization celebrating the Feast – ANY Feast. The search parameters get narrower and narrower and the search strings get longer and longer as I exclude all cults, synagogues, and Jewish Messianic celebrations. I search, always in vain, trying to rekindle the days of Glory and Fire.
[i] http://www.your-study-bible-online.org/tabernacles_1.html
[ii] http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/azazel.html
[iii] http://www.preachtheword.co.uk/sermon/gog01.shtml
[iv] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkot - in modern times, a hotel.
[v] http://paganwiccan.about.com/cs/aboutyule/a/paganxmas.htm
[vi] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter
Give the Bully Your Underwear
Give the Bully Your UnderwearThe Gaza Withdrawal
I must confess that I am still embarrassed to this day. If I were running for political office, this could be dug up and used against me. I was stupid. In my English class in college, it was explained to me that the Arab-Israel conflict was very complicated and that it would be very difficult to explain it in a short unit in English. It was explained to me by my Jewish – turned Christian, Yiddish accented, Hebrew speaking teacher. Surely if HE couldn’t explain it, then it must be hard to understand, so, when writing my essay, I resorted to the method used commonly by the uninformed today and prated on about how Israel needs to let the Palestinians live there too, in peace.
My English teacher hadn’t told me that the central theme in the Palestinian platform was to destroy Israel. My English teacher hadn’t told me that the leader of the “Palestinian Movement” was himself an avowed terrorist who would say soothing words in English for the West, but then foment violence among his people in Arabic. My English teacher hadn’t told me that God had made an everlasting covenant with Israel, that the land was theirs. My English teacher hadn’t told me that it was all actually pretty simple. Israel belongs there.
My English teacher had fallen prey to a common fallacy: If the bully keeps kicking you and giving you a wedgie[i], obviously he wants your underwear, so give it to him. If a bully keeps beating you up, perhaps you need to discuss the situation with him, understand him so that you can get along. Perhaps if you talk about things it will get better.
My English teacher didn’t know what I found out in the second grade.
Torry. A lanky second-grader with cowboy boots. Me. A skinny second-grader with shins. Torry liked to take out his frustrations on my shins, kicking them daily. It hurt! Running didn’t help. Talking didn’t help. I didn’t know what to do; it was infuriating. However an answer came one day in the form of instinct. Torry kicked me one time to many. I found myself throwing him to the ground and wrestling him. Soon a crowd gathered around the fight – a circle of gleeful children, thrilled over the day’s entertainment. But their faces changed when they saw that Torry was at a disadvantage because I was sitting on his chest pounding and pounding him in a fury born of pent up shin energy. They grew concerned and quickly pulled me off of him, my arms swinging wildly in blind fury.
It was a generation ago. There were no lawsuits. We didn’t even get sent to the office. But from that point on, I was shin-kick free. I had respect from Torry. He even smiled and waved at me after that. Wow! What a lesson for me! Beat up the bully and life is better. Subsequent to that second-grade experience, I observed this in action many other times.
Israel has withdrawn from Gaza because they think that appeasing the bully will make him get along better with them. Neville Chamberlain was fooled in the same way. These days, if Torry in second grade, was caught kicking me in the shins, he and I would be in for long sessions of therapy to understand the conflict between us, whereas our relationship problems were solved in less than two minutes right there on the playground.
The Palestinians don’t just want Gaza, they want to push Israel into the sea. They want to kick Israel in the shins until they back into the Mediterranean, give them car-bomb wedgies until they give up Jerusalem.
Well, bullies only understand a strong arm, a violent response of overwhelming superiority. Giving a bully your underwear won’t make things better. The bully will only laugh and beat you up after school.[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedgie
The Abrahamic Covenant and how is it being challenged today
The Abrahamic Covenant and how is it being challenged todayRising Anti-IsraelismIranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hates Israel. He has called for it’s destruction saying, "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map[i]," Ahmadinejad asserts that Israel will soon disappear , he also said, “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury[ii],” While working on building Iran’s first nuclear bomb, you can guess that his primary targets are the United States of America and Israel. Think EMP[iii].
The Palestinians hate Israel. Yassar Arafat, winner of a Nobel Peace prize – no longer noble, nor for peace[iv] - said, “We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. . . . We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem[v].”
Europe hates Israel[vi], and even Jews hate Israel[vii]. Why? Why such hate for the chosen people of God, for those who brought us law, the 10 commandments, and even the line of David leading to Rabbi of 2.1[viii] billion people – most of whom don’t even know that Jesus is Jewish.
The hate is because of many things, but a lot of it today stems from the challenges to the Abrahamic Covenant between God and Israel hundreds of centuries ago. Let’s examine the nature of that covenant and it’s ratification.
Nature of the Covenant
The parties the Abrahamic Covenant established by God, are God, Abraham and his physical descendants. Genesis 15:18 says, “On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates…[ix]” Then Genesis 17:4, 6-7 says, “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.” And, “… I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.” This was an everlasting covenant to Abrahams, physical descendents. He established it with Abraham and then He said the same to Isaac and Jacob, all of Israel (Genesis 26, 28, 35, 48, and 50).
Ratifying the Covenant
A most important and oft overlooked fact about the Abrahamic Covenant, is it’s ratification. With any covenant between two parties, ratification is important. Ratification can be defined as, “The process whereby a state may express its consent to be bound by a treaty, involving formal confirmation by the state of its initial signature to the treaty[x].” This “consent to be bound requires that two parties perform an act signifying that consent. In modern times, between nations it involves governments voting the treaty into national law and signing a document attesting to either the fact that this has been done, or their consent to do so. In the time of Abraham, the process of ratification, called making a covenant, can be seen in Genesis 15. After reconfirming His covenant with Abraham, Abraham performs a ritual whereby he splits animals apart and waits for God to perform the ritual with him. “Navigating the Bible II,” says of this ritual:
“This was the way of making a covenant (Rashi). Indeed, the words b'rith (covenant) and bathar (split) appear to be closely related (cf. Radak, Sherashim, s.v. Barath). It symbolized that just as the two halves of the animal were really one, so were the two people making the covenant. Moreover, just as one side cannot live without the other, so the two cannot live without each other (Ralbag; Ikkarim 4:45). It was also seen as a malediction; anyone violating the oath would be torn asunder like the animals (Bachya).”
Both parties were to walk between the split animals, However, in an unprecedented move, God knocked Abraham out and completed the ritual Himself, making the covenant binding only on God and His eternal resources. Abraham could now do nothing to break this covenant. It was a one-way covenant. It was unconditional.
Thousands of years later, the Temple razed to the ground, the people of Israel scattered to the four winds, we still read in the Bible that Israel would be in the land that God promised them, and that there would yet be a temple in the last days. A pastor reading this in 1930 would have had to either spiritualize it away, or better yet, take it on faith. A pastor in 1949 would have already witnessed the power pr prophecy as Israel was back in the land, ”And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth [xi]”.
Israel may not know it, The U.N. may not know it, even the Jews in the United States of America might not know it, but Israel’s being where it is, the preparation for a new temple[xii], the contention over Israel[xiii], and the friction over the unconditional Covenant that God made with them are all part of prophecy, part of God’s awesome plan that is coming to fruition right before our very eyes, through the contention for the Covenant.
[i] http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/15E6BF77-6F91-46EE-A4B5-A3CE0E9957EA.htm
[ii] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540608312&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[iii] http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/bg1784.cfm
[iv] http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7962
[v] http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/we_plan_to_eliminate_the_state_of_israel_and/346613.html
[vi] http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Briefs/4732.htm
[vii] http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21394
[viii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity
[ix] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%20Genesis%2015:18&version=48
[x] http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rls=GGIC%2CGGIC%3A2006-16%2CGGIC%3Aen&q=define%3A+ratification
[xi] http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/popup/1161549492-9716.html#10
[xii] http://www.templeinstitute.org/events.htm
[xiii] http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/popup/1161549409-1261.html#2
The Nephalim, UFO’s and alien encounters
The Nephalim, UFO’s and alien encounters
The Nephalim
In Genesis, the Bible speaks of the Nephalim. These beings turn out to be hybrids of fallen angels and mankind – what we would call “alien hybrids” in the modern vernacular. Evoking images of the “X-Files, the Bible indicates that such beings may be in our future. It also speaks of a UFO-like “wheel” as well as other strange things. Meanwhile rampant accounts of UFOs, Alien sightings, and abductions are much too common to be simply discounted as a mass delusion”.
What a spooky area of inquiry this can be.
Sexdactyly, “is a genetic condition in which a person has six fingers on one or both hands, or six toes on one or both feet[i].” It was no laughing matter to the Pawnee Indians in Wild Bill Cody’s time.
William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody lived from 1845 to 1917. He was an American soldier, buffalo hunter, and showman. In his autobiography, Pawnee Indians that he met told him a story of giants:
the Pawnee Indians brought into camp some very large bones, one of which the surgeon of the expedition pronounced to be the thigh bone of a human being. The Indians said the bones were those of a race of people who long ago had lived in that country. They said these people were three times the size of a man of the present day, that they were so swift and strong that they could run by the side of a buffalo, and, taking the animal in one arm, could tear off a leg and eat it as they ran[ii].
Bill says that these giants had six fingers, and that they denied the existence of the “Great Spirit.” This so displeased the “Great Spirit” that he brought a deluge upon the land that submerged even the mountain tops , killing the giants[iii].
The giants that the Pawnee speak of sound much like the Nephalim of Genesis 6: “ 1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.” And “4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown” then “17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.”
The Hebrew word, “Nephalim” can be interpreted to mean “fallers, rebels, apostates,” or “falling on, attacking[iv].“ These were evil beings, but the most telling part of this passage it the interpretation of the phrase “sons of God.” Lambert Dolphin says:
The phrase "sons of God" (bene elohim) is used only three other times in the Testament, as indicated earlier-in Job 1:6; 2:1; and 38:7. In each case it clearly means spirit beings, twice those fallen spirits who accompanied Satan in his periodic appearances before the Lord in heaven[v].
So we see that there were evil spirit beings who came to earth and had evil offspring. This is a far cry from the alternate, fallacious, interpretation called the “lines of Seth” view often taught in seminary. From many angles the “lines of Seth” view makes no sense[vi]. There are plenty of good sources for further study of the “lines of Seth” idea.
UFOs And Alien Encounters
1235 A.D. Kyoto Japan September 24, General Yoritsume and his army watch many unusual lights for several hours, 1913 and later: The Brown Mountain Lights can be seen and are immortalized by a bluegrass song of the same name; 1944 Foo Fighters, colorful spheres are repeatedly spotted by military crews around the world. Roswell. Rendelsham[vii]. In all there are over 18,000 vetted, credible reports of Unidentified Flying Objects[viii]. 6% of the population has seen a UFO and 2% to 4% of the population reports being abducted[ix]. Even if a significant portion of these claims are fallacious, mistakes, or hoaxes, when taken as a percent of a population of over 6 billion people, there are quite a lot of people being affected by UFOs – too many to say that they are hoaxes, or that they are some kind of mass delusion.
There are curious things about UFOs though. They don’t seem to be arriving by way of space travel. No UFOs are spotted decelerating into the Solar System, they just seem to appear out of nowhere.
Consider, for a moment, a 300 year linear progression of human technology. Now, we can create stealth planes and camouflage. We are only now experimenting with active camouflage[x], whereby thousands or millions of micro fiber optic cameras and projectors surround a person so that the image on the other side is constantly being projected, and the person in the suit disappears like the aliens in the Predator movies.
Consider also, we have stealth planes that don’t show up on radar, top secret defense satellites that are not detectable from earth. We can send highly automated probes to every planet in the solar system and beyond.
Can you imagine that if we had the technology to travel between the stars, that we could not cloak ourselves from observation by the natives? Do you suppose that 300 years from now that we would have a mature nano and pico technology that would allow to monitor not just all medical processes in a person, but their very thoughts without being observed[xi]? I should think so. Why then would a UFO crash in Roswell or Rendelsham? Why would primitive experiments be conducted on abductees? Why would relatively primitive, detectable, implants be put into abductees? It doesn’t add up. We are not dealing with advanced beings from another location in the galaxy. We are dealing with the “days of Noah…”
Days of Noah
Matthew 24:37 says, “But as the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of man be.” In the days of Noah the “bene elohim” were among us such that Noah’s purity would be an issue. UFO’s, experiments on abductees, our advancing genetic knowledge, and desire to “evolve” ourselves may put us in a similar situation where genetic purity will be difficult to come by again; where the “bene elohim” perhaps in there UFOs will make another appearance and signal the return of Christ.
[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_fingers
[ii] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12740/12740-h/12740-h.htm
[iii] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12740/12740-h/12740-h.htm
[iv] http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/words/5/1161150638-7744.html
[v] http://www.ldolphin.org/nephilim.html
[vi] http://www.alienresistance.org/sons_of_seth.htm
[vii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_UFO_sightings
[viii] http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:VcRWjbwiyG8J:www.larryhatch.com/+larryhatch&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=7
[ix] http://www.uforq.asn.au/articles/statistics.html
[x] http://www.defensereview.com/article850.html
[xi] http://viralone.wordpress.com/2006/07/19/technological-singularity-defined/
How Genesis 5 shows evidence of design from outside the time domain
How Genesis 5 shows evidence of design from outside the time domainHow can you can prove the Bible and know it is trueThe genealogy recorded in Genesis chapter 5 indicates that the Christian gospel was told 2000 years in advance, encoded in the Hebrew text. The gospel appears encoded in the meaning of the names of the geology, and can be ferreted out by using Hebrew roots for the named mentioned there. This is just one in a sea of evidences that make it intensely evident that the Bible is true – provably so.What’s in a name? As it turns out, a great deal of information is in a name. Parents use names to project or proclaim something about their new child. Some names evoke memories of the past, as when a child is named after a long lost relative. But usually names project into the future. We project our wishes for success for the child, or for him to stand out in a world that is a veritable sea of people.
In Genesis 5, we will find that names were used by the Holy Spirit to project into the future, and not just a generation into the future, but a future that would affect hundreds of generations. The genealogy in Genesis 5, and encoded in the names listed, we will find the Gospel; from the fall of man, to the coming redeemer.
Before embarking on this fascinating study, let’s look into some criticisms of the “Gospel in Genesis.” Just 5 years ago, there were a lot of theologians who pooh-poohed the idea that the Gospel was encoded in the genealogy in Genesis 5. In reading through their refutation, they would often quote Strong’s concordance for the meanings of these names. They neglected to do a roots study.
Now sources from Christianity Today
[i], to Messianic Judaism sites
[ii], literally dozens
[iii] of references cite this Genealogy. Apparently people have begun actually taking a hard look at this genealogy and discovering just how fascinating it is. Let’s take a look at it too.
The Genesis 5 genealogy talks about the following people:
Adam
Seth
Enosh
Kenan
Mahalalel
Jared
Enoch
Methuselah
Lamech
Noah
To get the full sense of this genealogy, the Hebrew roots must be examined. These roots can be found from various scriptural hints, as well as the original Hebrew. When the definitions of the names above are added to the list, we het the following:
Adam = ManSeth = AppointedEnosh = Mortal (frail, miserable, woe etc.)Kenan = Sorrow (wandering nomad)Mahalalel = The Blessed GodJared = Shall come down (reference to the BeniElohim coming down?)Enoch = Teaching (1st of 4 gen. of teachers. Cf. Jude 14,15)Methuselah = His death shall bring. (when he died the flood came)Lamech = despairing (lamentation)Noah = Rest or Comfort.
Now, reading the genealogy, we get the fascinating proclamation: “Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow (but) The Blessed God shall come down, teaching (that) His death shall bring (the) despairing rest
[iv].”
This is but one small example of the vast amount of information that is encoded cryptographically in the Bible. There are enough surprising examples to prove that the Bible is true and from outside our spacetime.
Let’s examine just a few startling examples that show that only a being who can see the future could know. In these examples it is important to remember that this was written thousands of years ago in a culture surrounded by superstitious pagans. Science as we know it now didn’t exist.
The Pleiades and OrionMy absolute favorite constellation is Orion. He is a mighty hunter. You can see his constellation clearly in the night sky. Some features of it are easily seen; for instance, Betelgeuse at 427 light years away, is one of the largest red giants (a supergiant) visible to the naked eye. It is so large that if it were centered in our solar system, its surface would extend to Jupiter
[v]; and of course the Pleiades in Orion’s belt.
In the Bible, in the book of Job, God asks Job three questions. Two of those are in Job 38:31, where God asks, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion
[vi]?” In this question, we have two fascinating implications: 1) that somehow the Pleiades are bound. God asks if Job can do that. 2) that the bands, of Orion can be loosened, stretched out. These are questions that would not occur to any mere man at that time because these constellations had “always existed” as far as people of that time knew.
Thousands of years later, we know that the seven stars of the Pleiades are actually 250 individual stars locked gravitationally, and that by 25,000 individual measurements, they are, “… all bound together and are flying together like a flock of birds as they journey to their distant goal…
[vii]”
Scientists have also discovered that the stars in Orion are moving apart so that, “all these stars that at the present time constitute the constellation of Orion are bound for different ports, and all are journeying to different corners of the universe, so that the bands are being dissolved
[viii].”
So thousands of years ago, God revealed this astronomical information to the writer of Job.
Additionally there are other amazing discoveries in the Bible that prove that it is unlike any other book ever assembled, that it is, indeed, from outside out spacetime. Some of these things are: gravity in the Bible, ocean discoveries that were only proved in 1977, statements in the Bible that were only proved by World War II pilots, archeology proven in the Bible, stunning mathematical impossibilities in the Bible, and many others
[ix].
The Bible is true, amazing, fascinating, and you CAN prove it.
[i] http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/newsletter/wom91027.html
[ii] http://shalom-israel.org/witness.htm
[iii] http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22genesis+5%22+genealogy++gospel+Adam+seth+enosh+Mahalalel+mortal+sorrow
[iv] http://www.evanwiggs.com/articles/infinite.html
[v] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse
[vi] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038:31-32;&version=48;
[vii] http://www.bibletoday.com/archive/proof_text.htm
[viii] http://www.bibletoday.com/archive/proof_text.htm
[ix] http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/scientific-proofs-of-bible-1.html
The fruits of “randomness” in relationship to culture and ethics
The fruits of “randomness” in relationship to culture and ethicsSummaryRandomness has, in the guise of evolution, wreaked havoc upon our educational systems. In fact, randomness doesn’t really exist, as all processes are ultimately deterministic as God is the creator of all.
---
Randomness is, “A condition in which any individual event in a set of events has the same mathematical probability of occurrence as all other events within the specified set, i.e., individual events are not predictable even though they may collectively belong to a definable distribution.
[i] (emphasis mine)” In short, this definition posits that randomness is equivalent to unpredictability.
As it turns out randomness is rather important for many business, scientific, and industrial activities. The fields of “Algorithmic Probability, Chaos Theory, Cryptography, Game Theory, Information Theory, Pattern Recognition, Probability Theory, Quantum Mechanics, Statistics, and Statistical Mechanics, are all concerned with randomness
[ii].
The most notable of these is cryptography. Today we routinely use cryptography as we shop online, make a cell phone call (hopefully), or log on to a wireless network. However, even from the days of Bletchley Park in World War II, it was extremely important to produce randomness.
In fact, one book
[iii] fictionalizes a practice used In Bletchley Park. In it , a woman would turn a cage of colored ping-pong balls and reach in, randomly pulling a ball out and dropping it into a bin. The tumbling of the balls in the cage was supposed to produce a random result. But in this case, the woman had a sub-conscious penchant for certain colors. This bias showed up as a mathematical anomaly, allowing the Germans to crack that code. That program was scrapped.
Computers churn out random numbers using programs that can generate long strings of values with no obvious pattern; but in the end, this is a deterministic process. The word deterministic can be defined as, “Governed by and predictable in terms of definite laws, such as dynamic equations
[iv].” So if there is a determining equation governing the generation of numbers, the numbers that are generated will never be truly random. The equations governing the “randomness” can be discovered.
Proverbs 16:33 says, “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from Yahweh.
[v]” Like the deterministic processes that generate the pseudo-random numbers of advanced computer programs, or even the “true randomness” companies like Random.org claim to generate (using entropic processes like radioactive decay and background noise) really are deterministic and thus essentially pseudo-random.
As mankind delves deeper into quantum physics, M-Theory (a super-set of String Theory), and the maturing field of chaos theory, true randomness becomes less true. And with the advent of quantum computing, pseudo-random based cryptographic schemes will implode like the collapse of Schrödinger’s wave function under observation. And all non-quantum based cryptography will be useless. Mankind is daily pushing back the veneer of randomness.
There is no hiding from God. There is nothing that He cannot seek or know. He wrote the first algorithms of the Universe and life; and therefore all is determined in Him.
Our officially Secular Progressive culture is now based on the notion that random processes created the Universe and all forms of life on earth. This assumption is based on the conjecture that there is no “prime mover,” no principal observer, no designer or creator. This assumption has the affect of leveling our moral responsibility so as to be equal to that of animals.
As the ideas born of an assumption of natural randomness penetrate the flaccid ideologies of Christendom, they breed nihilism, a destructive situation-based ethos, and a backlash of seekers, who having rejected the watered down theologies of the major churches, are ripe for the pickings of unbending, and seemingly solid faiths like Islam. Thus we have a Europe that may become Islamic in this generation
[vi].
Thus the idea of randomness when applied to the nature of human kind and the universe, is bearing an evil fruit as modern science intentionally blind themselves and our children to even the possibility of underlying deterministic processes in creation – and certainly to the Ultimate Determiner, YHWH.
It is my belief that as the frontiers of science peel back the layers of pseudo-randomness, that mankind will come face to face with the fact that there is, no doubt, a Creator; and that He is in fact the God of the Christians. Even so, they will choose a form of determination called self-determination over obedience, to their ultimate demise
[vii].
[i] www.onesixsigma.com/tools_resources/glossary/glossary_r.php[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness
[iii] Cryptonomicon is a
1999 English language novel by
Neal Stephenson. It concurrently follows the exploits of
World War II-era
cryptographers affiliated with
Bletchley Park[iv] http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/browse?s=d&p=20
[v] http://bible.cc/proverbs/16-33.htm
[vi] Prophecy 20/20, Chuck Missler, Nelson Books (August 29, 2006) Language: English ISBN: 0785218890
[vii] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=73&chapter=16&version=48 9And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God, who hath power over these plagues; and they repented not to give Him glory.http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=73&chapter=17&version=4813These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.
14These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful."
