God Creates Animals in Kinds (#3 in a series)

Whenever this blog mentions "God," it is speaking of the Creator. There is so much disinformation about evolution floating around— it is ubiquitous.  The highest levels of our most prestigious universities have opted to go with evolution and treat the Bible as historical mythology. As a consequence, the evolutionary paradigm has filtered into our thought processes to the point that it is so common that we do not even recognize its reach.

The greatest problem with evolution is not the gaps in the geologic column, the greatest problem is that it makes many people comfortable in denying the supernatural in general, and specifically in denying a Creator. Many who do believe "in" God, still reject the Bible as the inspired supernatural revelation of His Word to mankind. Therefore, I must lay some foundational groundwork:

To an observer on Earth, Earth was created in six literal days as described in scripture, and on the seventh day, God rested.  The "apparent" billions of years are not explained by evolution, but by the math and physics of Time. The Eternity of the supernatural exists outside of Time.  Deal with it.

 If "deal with it" sounds harsh, then I will quote what Paul wrote to Timothy in my footnotes and you can walk away. I have been there & done that on the endless debates and have no desire to pursue them further.  Genesis 1 is an accurate accounting of how creation would have looked to an observer on Earth.

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Okay, with that stated, let's get on with God creating animals...

One of the clearest concepts presented in the first chapter of Genesis is that God created in categories.

In 1735, Carl Linnæus published Systema Naturæ.  It provided a system for classifying nature that—now greatly modified and expanded, of course—is still in use today. In the preface to Systema Naturæ he wrote: “Finis creationis telluris est gloria Dei ex opere Naturæ per Hominem solum.”¹ A somewhat loose paraphrase is that 'the purpose of the creation of this planet is that from the works of nature, God is glorified by man.'

It is worth taking the time to go a bit deeper into his biography because Linnæus viewed creation quite differently than the Darwinists who would use his system of classification in the next century.  Linnæus believed that God put him on earth to classify nature. He was certainly born into the right family to devlop those skills as a child. His father was both an avid gardener and a Latin geek who loved to share his interests with his son. By four years of age, Carl knew the Latin names of many plants around his native Sweden. Had Carl been born in this century, he'd likely have been diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder because he would sometimes skip classes to go hunt wildflowers. Later, at Uppsala University, and by divine providence, he found a mentor when he met a professor of theology who was also a botanist. This gave him access to special sections of the university library, opportunities to lecture, and enabled him to go on botanical plant-collecting excursions across Europe.

Indeed, from this side of history looking back, one can see the hand of God directing his life toward the publication of Systema Naturæ.  This book first separated nature into three broad categories—Plants, Animals, and Stones/Minerals, which were then broken down into sub categories and phyla.  Specifically, for our purpose of investigating the question of pets in heaven, he classified animals by class, order, genus, and species. Linnæus, who frequently sprinkled his writings with references to the Creator, had developed a binomial (two-name) system of classification that was completely consistent with the Bible.

Because the work was so ingenuous, it was adopted by the scientific academies. A little over a century later, Charles Darwin used the Linnaean taxonomy for his work as well.²  But in marked contrast to the natural selection³ of evolution, the Genesis account entails forethought, purpose, direction, and evaluation; this is often called "intelligent design." Animals are created in batches of "kinds." Animals of one kind cannot interbreed with animals of another.  The animals created on Day Five were aquatic creatures and fowl (birds that fly above the land in the open vault of heaven). On Day Six, God created cattle and livestock, reptiles, and what the King James translates as "beasts of the earth" and other translations interpret as "wild animals."  The original Hebrew word there is חַי . The transliteration is chay, with the ch being close to a k and the ay being being close to a long i.

Quite frankly, to an ear that was raised in American English, it sounds a lot like the speaker is trying to suppress hacking up while saying "khy." The reason that I am making a point of this is because there is no English word that makes a perfect-fit translation for this 'kind' of animals, and yet it is this group that most of our pet animals belong to. I will put two links in the footnotes that go into this more deeply. The short definition  of חַי (chay) is alive, living thing, creature, life, living souls. Chay has both an adjective and a noun form, and it is used to describe a variety of life and living things in scripture, for example:
Genesis 2:7, God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of חַי, and man became a חַי soul;
Genesis 2:9, the tree of חַי in the mist of the garden (of Eden);
Genesis 7:15, They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of חַי;
Deuteronomy 5:26, the חַי-God speaks out of the midst of fire;
Psalm 16:11, You will show me the path of חַי;
Psalm 133:3, the Lord commanded the blessing, חַי forevermore.  

The reason that I have spent this much time going into background information is because Heaven is a spiritual realm, not an earthly one. If our pets are going to exist with their own personality in heaven, then they need to have a spiritual element to their makeup.  Otherwise, we are back to what my old Sunday school teacher believed—that you may be able to have a pet in heaven, but it will not be the exact same animal that you knew here.

The good news is tucked up there where I quoted Genesis 7:15 earlier, "They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of חַי."  If your pet could have qualified to make it onto the ark, then there is a chance that it could make it to heaven too.  Sorry fish lovers, if you had to flush Goldie down the toilet... I don't know; that may have been the last you will ever see of her, or maybe not. There is still hope, as you will see a couple of paragraphs from now, but it is not as strong as the case for the breath of חַי .

One thing that probably needs to be clarified is that most of the evidence for pets being in heaven is in the form of "positive support," not hard proof. The Genesis account of the ark falls into this positive support category, and I will spend a future post looking into that.  Today, however, I want to do one more word study that relates to animal "kinds." That word is nephesh.

And here is where the hope for the fishes comes from: The first use of nephesh in the Bible is in reference to fish!

vayyô’mer ’elôhîym yish'retsû hammayîm sherets nephesh chayyâh
"and-said God let-swarm the-waters swarmers soul life/living"
i.e.: "let the waters teem with living soul-creatures"
— studylight.org

So maybe you have figured out that nephesh is the Hebrew for "soul" ... except that it is a little more complicated than that, as if "soul" isn't already complicated enough!

Nephesh occurs 755 times in the Old Testament, and the King James Version used over 40 different words to translate it. (Not at the same time, of course!) It is variously translated as soul, person, being, self, mind, heart, body, appetite, desire, and more depending upon what the king's translation team thought was the proper context. (For comparison, the Greek Septuagint was more consistent, translating nephesh as psychē 600 of those times.)

The 'best fit' translation of nephesh into English is usually "soul" but even then "soul" has two distinct meanings.  (a) Soul can refer to the essence of life itself. (b) Soul can be the part of us that is comprised of will, intellect, and emotions.  And just to mix it up a bit more, that first meaning of soul (a) overlaps with the definition of spirit; the spirit and soul are so closely linked that much of the time they can be used interchangeably. In fact, the only known thing that can divide them is the active Word of God, cf Hebrews 4:12. And lastly, nephesh is associated with (c) breath.

Created for Earth

Undoubtedly, God created animals to populate Earth.  And they were put here for mankind's benefit.
To borrow a line from the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident."
But we also know at our most organic level that there is "something more" than just this present earth life. My whole concept behind this "Bootcamp Planet" is that we are in preparation for "something more."

Let us look at this information in the light of Ecclesiastes 3:11. Here it is in a blend of the New English Translation and the New International Version:
God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

God has made our pets fit beautifully into this lifetime. He has also given our spirits a sense of eternity. We cannot see fully how our pets fit into the overall plan outside of this earth-time, but these two Hebrew words from the scriptures of creation, chay and nephesh, show us that animals were created in "kinds" to have a special value in the the heart of God. The better that we get to know God, the more clearly we will see the answer to our question. Already we have seen that God chose to place a degree of His own life-qualities into the nephesh animals.

In my next post, I will explore some things that the Bible teaches about animals that will give us a fuller picture of God's purpose for animals.  Specifically, we will be looking for clues that their purpose might extend beyond this present life, because if our pets have an eternal purpose, they will need to be around for eternity.







Footnotes
As I urged you on my departure to Macedonia, you should stay on at Ephesus to instruct certain men not to teach false doctrines or devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculation rather than the stewardship of God’s work, which is by faith. The goal of our instruction is the love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith.  1 Timothy 1:3-5

¹ Finis creationis telluris est gloria Dei ex opere Naturae per Hominem solum. 
A more literal translation is: The end of the creation of the planet is the glory of God from the work of Nature by Man only. "The end" meaning the goal. 

² Because the Linnæan system is not based on evolution, modern biology has begun making changes in classification to accommodate the evolutionary belief that birds and reptiles had a common ancestor. Going forward, I would expect to see an attempt to edit Linnæus's role out of the textbooks and dump him in the "silly things people used to believe" history.  

³  natural selection should not be confused with random selection, although they are somewhat related.  There is random mutation of genetic material, but the mutations are "naturally selected" because the useful mutations survive to be reproduced. 



chay - חַי click link to language studies   •••   chay - click for study listing 501 occurrences of chay

God's Regard for Animals Pets (#2 in a series)

I had planned to start this post with an overview of scriptures showing how God regards animals, and then move to a more specific look at animals that are pets.  An event Sunday morning changed that. Molly, a beloved black dog died.
This is her picture from last spring; we have walked this wood together many times. She was never my personal pet, but she most definitely counted as a friend of the family.  I was always happy to fill in and feed her when her regular caretaker was away.  I used caretaker because Molly was not owned by anyone. She was her own dog.

It has been said that the Bible never mentions pets, and that is what I was taught as a child. In one sense, that is accurate—most of the time. When you type "pet" into a King James Version Bible search tool, you will get: No Results Found.

In some of the more relaxed paraphrases, however, you might get a match. Here is one from the New Living Bible:
Can you make it a pet like a bird,
or give it to your little girls to play with?
Job 41:5

In this instance, it is pretty easy to forgive my childhood teachers for not recognizing a pet in this verse.  In the King James version that they were using, the verse read like this:
    "Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?"
The whole "binding" thing in 400 year-old English can easily throw a person off.  Think of it in terms of a tether or leash. 

In context, the 41st chapter of Job begins with a challenge, "Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?" The personal pronoun him in verse 5, KJV above, refers to Leviathan, meaning: Will you play with Leviathan as with a bird?  The first seven verses of Job 41, including this one about the pet bird, are a series of rhetorical questions designed to show that Leviathan is fierce, the exact opposite of a pet bird that would be safe to have around small girls. 

Although this passage from Job has little to do with pets in heaven, we can extract a bit of deductive knowledge: Ancient people played with pets.  This fact is also backed up with archeological evidence. During the era in which Job lived, the Mesopotamians tamed falcons to help them hunt gazelle, while in Egypt at that time, people were domesticating dogs, antelopes, and monkeys. 

For us, in our quest to answer the question of pets being in heaven, this supports the idea that men have always enjoyed animals; it is not a recent trend or fad. The fact that men have connected with pets across time, geography, and culture indicates that God designed it to be this way.


A Parable about a Pet 

Although the word pet is not found in most standard translations of the Bible, I think you will agree that the narrative perfectly describes a pet.

   There were two men in the same city—one rich, the other poor. The rich man had huge flocks of sheep, herds of cattle. The poor man had nothing but one little female lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up with him and his children as a member of the family. It ate off his plate and drank from his cup and slept in his bosom. It was like a daughter to him.
   One day a traveler dropped in on the rich man. He was too stingy to take an animal from his own herds or flocks to make a meal for his visitor, so he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared a meal to set before his guest.

This Old Testament parable was told by the Prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12 when he confronted King David about having sent Uriah the Hittite to his death on the front line of the battle. The story gets even messier after that, but we don't want to focus on the bad behavior. Today we want to see that Nathan definitely describes a beloved family pet.  It is such a delightful picture that I could aspire to be that man's pet: eating and drinking as well as he does, and then being held in his arms, next to his heart for a perfectly safe rest.  This little lamb was cherished.   

Again, on the surface, this parable does not seem to have much to do with pets in heaven. The ewe lamb was slaughtered and the last we heard of it, it was on its way to the stomach of a dinner guest. That is not the common notion of utopia. But if we look a little more deeply, we will discover a couple things about the nature of God. 

First, we see that God recognized the unique relationship this lamb held for its family.  The love bond made this lamb special above all the nondescript sheep in the rich man's flocks. The poor man had invested time, money, and heart in raising this lamb, and God counted it with a separate standard than the standard used for the other sheep that were turned out to pasture.  Because in this parable God differentiates between the value of this particular lamb and the value of the other sheep at large, I am encouraged that this supports the possibility that the same could be true for animals in heaven as well. So while a parabolic story like this one does not "prove" that some animals in heaven might have a love relationship that counts as "more special" than another random generic animal, it does add credence to that possibility.

Secondly, we see God's character of Restorer.  Right before this parable of the lamb, in 2 Samuel 11, is the long sorry story of how "the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the LORD," verse 27.  But chapter 12 opens with this phrase, "And the LORD sent Nathan to David."  It is remarkable and revealing of God's character to realize that after David made the greatest screw-up of his life,  God initiated the restoration by assigning one of His prophets a mission:  the LORD sent Nathan to David.  

Each individual life is unique, and it is my opinion that when God's time schedule can accommodate it, He will often wait for a person to repent on his or her own because self-initiated repentance brings God greater glory. In this case, however, God had the nation of Israel that He needed to be getting on with, so He facilitated the speed of its wayward king's repentance by sending Nathan.  David writes about this time in Psalm 51:1, "For the choir director. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions."


The rest of Psalm 51 is stuffed full of wonderful insights on the character of the Lord, and it would be worth your time to read it in full. However, for the purpose of this blog we will limit that discussion to two points:
Verse 12, Restore to me the joy of Your salvation...
Verse 17, The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.
Again, we have come to a place where you may be asking, "How do those two points relate to pets in heaven? They are quite a bit further down the trail than the parable that turned David in this direction."  Here is what I discovered about that:

The joy of Your salvation
Notice that the Y in Your was capitalized in this literal translation. David is speaking of the joy in the Lord's salvation, not his own joy in personal salvation.  God gets joy in saving!  The Lord got joy in restoring David! 
Most parents experience an emotion like this at some point—they will give a gift to their child, and although the child is delighted with the gift, the parents' joy in seeing that delight is even greater than what the child experiences. 

The story is told of a little girl who asked Billy Graham if her recently deceased pet would be in heaven. His reply was that if that is what it takes to make you happy, then yes, your pet is in heaven. At the time I first heard that anecdote, my science-brain kicked in and said to myself, "That is a sweet story, but where's the proof?"  My revelation of God's love at that time in my life was so lacking (it is still small, but then it was minuscule) that I could not imagine how Dr. Graham's words could be anything more than a feel-good answer. But, no! Luke 12:32 says, "Do not fear, little flock, for your Father took delight to give you the kingdom." Or as the King James phrases it, "your Father's good pleasure," which is a really good segue into the the second point that I am highlighting from Psalm 51— the sacrifice pleasing to God.

The sacrifice pleasing to God
King David came to understand that God places a high value on a humbled heart. Many translations use the term "a contrite heart" in verse 17, but contrite is not a word commonly used today. The original Hebrew is transliterated as dakah, meaning crushed or broken down.
This speaks to a major attitude adjustment that many (most?) of us need to make about pets being restored to us in heaven. Our earthly inclination is our self-perspective: Yea! I get my pet restored to me!  The Kingdom of Heaven perspective, however, runs closer to: Wow! I am so humbled that God has such regard and love toward this animal that He would restore it. He saw my broken heart and moved. I want to praise Him

♦  ♦  ♦

This post dispelled the myth that the Bible is silent on the topic of pets; it is not. As we move through the posts ahead, this will pop up again—that myths we have been led to believe, opinions that we have accepted, and flat-out wrong teaching we have been exposed to have occluded our view of the heart of God.

The overt references to pets may be thin, but when we consider the purpose for the Bible, the reasons we are here on Earth, and the ways of God, eventually we begin to recognize that our bootcamp time on the planet involves a lot of process. Growing. Learning. Considering. Working toward. Jesus could have stood on the Mount of Olives and simplified the answer by injecting into the middle of his sermon, "Oh, by the way, pets of believers go to heaven."  Well, no, actually Jesus could not  have done that because he did not see his Father doing it. cf John 5:19 and 8:28. The Father could have shown him that, but had chosen not to.  My point being that the Father has chosen discovery to be part of our human experience.

We can embrace this as we pursue the answer to "Will my pet be in heaven?"  He has not forbidden us to seek that answer the way He has forbidden trying to speak with the dead. The answer is knowable, but we need to know the ways of the Father better first.

The plan for my next post is to look at the creation of animals and God's purpose for them. He used the dust of the Earth, so were they meant for this world only? Believers get new bodies, but what about animals?  I have a lot of notes on this and they scatter in different directions, so it will be fun for me to see how the Holy Spirit works that out on the page.

Until then, keep your heart filled with praise.

Will my pet be in heaven waiting for me?

Will my pet be in heaven waiting for me?
   Let me give the short answer first, and then I can more fully explain my reasoning over the next few posts.

Q. Will my pet be in heaven waiting for me?

A. I am convinced that is possible, but there are some terms and conditions that apply.

1) The biggie is that you have to make it to heaven yourself. Your pet will not be waiting for you in hell, so you'd best accept the blood sacrifice of Jesus and get your salvation locked down.
2) Secondly, just as your admission into heaven is based upon your love relationship with God, your love relationship with your pet also factors into the answer.  That may sound a bit sketchy if it is the first time you've heard that idea, but I will build the case for that in a future post.
3) A major portion of my argument will apply only to sentient pets.  We'll be looking at the Hebrew word nephesh later on, but for the purpose of streamlining this intro, I will say that it would be good if your pet has enough self-awareness to respond to its name. If your pet is an unnamed earthworm, all bets are off. 

None of this Argument is Set in Concrete

I have been looking at this question on and off for quite some time.  I am willing to consider ideas and concepts that are outside the traditional box. My only hard rule that I use as my guide is that it cannot conflict with scripture. Adding new insight and gaining understanding is an on-going process that includes refining some of my earlier notions to clean out the junk. In fact, one of the big reasons that my views have evolved over time is because I keep finding spiritual holes in stuff that I was taught as a child.

Early Understandings

In the case of pets in heaven, the prevailing thought that I was taught as a child was, yes, there are cats in heaven, so if I wanted to play with a cat there would be one available. However, since cats do not get born again, it would not be the exact same "Thomas" that I left behind.  (Thomas was the family pet cat. I have put more of his story in the footnotes.)

Let's check what my Sunday school teachers told me against what the Bible actually says— 
It is fairly easy to find support for the idea that there are animals in heaven, especially horses. I am writing a blog article, not a book; so in an effort to stay as concise as possible, you will get a 3-witness list as proof that heaven has animals.
• Revelation 19:11 – John sees a white horse in heaven.
• Revelation 19:14 – many troops of horses from heaven
• Revelation 5:13 – John hears "creatures" in heaven.  (created beings)

That was easy. There are animals in heaven. But to determine if a specific animal we knew on earth can get there, we are going to have to answer many more questions about mortality, the structure of the soul, if animals have souls, the reality of the spirit realm, transport between the physical and spiritual realms, the purpose of heaven, and God's own purpose and regard for animals. 
Indeed, we need to understand a bit about God's nature to see if His allowing our specific pets in to the next world would even be an option.

There is that verse from 1 Timothy 6:7 that says, "for nothing did we bring into the world — it is manifest that we are able to carry nothing out;" Young's Literal Translation. In that regard, our-earth-pets-in-heaven does not look good.  If we are going to get them there, we are going to need help; and as we will see later, maybe not only God's help but possibly help from the pet itself.

Unfortunately, the Bible does not give a direct answer to our title question. This makes sense when you consider that the purpose of the Bible is to reveal God to man. To get an answer, we will have to search the character of God.   And we also need to develop a more realistic view of the place He designed to be His own home. Believers tend to conceptualize Heaven as their destination, and that is valid, but more than that, Heaven is currently the home of God's Throne.

Imagine for a second, the cartoon view of heaven:  A white-robed saint sits playing his harp; is there a point to having his old Bassett hound howling along at his side?  To arrive at the correct answer as to whether God would have a place and purpose for our pets in Heaven, we are going to need a realistic view of heaven. Although I'm confident that we will have the opportunity to play instruments of praise there,  we've been warned that God's plans for us are beyond all that we can imagine (1 Corinthians 2:9), so we can still push this envelope a little further.

The title of this blog is Bootcamp Planet.  I chose that because so much of this life is basic training for the next. In similar fashion, the present heaven seems to be a grad school. There may be an apprenticeship during the Millennial Reign, but eventually there is coming a new heaven and a new earth. From this perspective, does keeping a pet, now immortal, from your bootcamp days make sense in the greater plan of the Creator?  This is a question that you will have to answer for yourself. Currently, my answer is a very strong, "maybe." 

The point I want to make now is that we should not be trying to answer "Will my pet be in heaven waiting for me?" from our very limited perspective of earth-time grief.  We must try, as best we can, to know the heart of God and see, as best we can, if there is any divine purpose for it.   
I am not going to be able to wrap this topic up in one or two blog posts. But I will give you a hint for hope: 1 Corinthians 13:8, Love never fails.

Next time —
We will be looking more at the heart of God, specifically, His regard for animals.  He created them for more than food and sacrifice. And if you are having difficulty thinking outside the bonds of traditionalism, then I have a homework assignment for you: Write a poem about that goldfish you once flushed down the toilet that is now swimming upstream in the River of Life trying to get to God's Throne Room.


Footnotes

Heaven/heaven — Maybe you noticed that I bounce back and forth on capitalization?  I have sort of tossed conventional grammar rules out the window for this word. If it works as a proper noun place-name in my head, I capitalize it, and if it is more of a common noun concept, I don't.  If you are a grammar cop, sorry, not sorry.  

Ephesians 3:20,21 — Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Thomas —  The first family pet I remember was a brown tiger cat that my dad named Thomas. He was given that name because he was a tomcat in the full slang sense of the word—he slept around.  As a kid, I thought "tomcat" meant "vagabond" because he'd frequently disappear for a couple days.  No one thought it incumbent to enlighten me otherwise.  However, Thomas did have a resurrection story. Instead of his normal one-or-two night stands, he was once gone for a month. When he did eventually show up, he was so decimated and mangy that my mom didn't want him around the house, especially not around us kids. So my dad put him in a 5-gallon bucket with an open bottle of chloroform, put a lid on it, and buried the bucket in a corner of the sheep pasture, thinking that Thomas would drift away into a permanent sleep. About three weeks later, a very healthy Thomas came walking out of the woods. My dad could not believe it. He had to go dig up the bucket. It was empty, although the lid was still on it just as it had been placed for burial. It remains a mystery as to how.

My Memories on Facebook - One Year Ago

I did not remember writing the following piece until it showed up today on my Facebook Memories.    At the time, we were only a few weeks away from the national election, so I kept the setting private.  Donald Trump was campaigning for a border wall. Hillary Clinton was trying to appear compassionate by calling for increasing the number of "war-torn refugees" that the US would accept, except that instead of accepting the Christians who were actually being driven out of Muslim war zones, the Obama administration was accepting poorly skilled and largely illiterate "refugees" at a Muslin to Christian ratio of roughly 24:1.
I had not used a public setting on that post because, well, no point in needlessly stirring the pot; it would have made some people mad without changing any minds. But anyone can read it now:

October 14, 2016

The Children of Israel were once strangers in the land of Egypt. True. They were invited there, having received a formal invitation from Joseph, an adviser to Pharaoh—the manager of Pharaoh’s palace and the governor of all Egypt. There was no illegal running over the border, and there was no pseudo-sovereign United Nations dumping them on Goshen in an attempt to weaken Egypt.

They had not entered Egypt illegally. They were certainly not breaking the laws of the land by being in Egypt. In fact, in Genesis 46:33-34, we see them being given instructions—which they obeyed—that would help allow them to be welcomed. In Genesis 47, their special skills in animal husbandry were used to oversee the Pharaoh’s livestock too. They did not take jobs away from the natives because the Egyptians detested shepherding.

Almost none of that applies to the conditions that face America today. America has a lawless government that does not enforce her immigration laws because it desires a one-world system.
And if you are having a WWJD¹ moment, then please remember that Jesus was fully aware of the spiritual world around us. This is the part of The Conversation that the Church is often too prissy to talk about. Allah is one of the foreign gods that we are allowing into the country by the caravan.

I don’t fully understand the spiritual blindness. I’ve met people who will readily concede that a Haitian witchdoctor’s voodoo curses can have a demonic force behind them, or that pagan fertility symbols and fetishes are occult objects; but when it comes to Islam they are dismissive of the supernatural. Open those eyebulbs! Along with the diseases and parasites, strange spirits have crossed our border. I hope your exorcist license is up-to-date.

So, how far have the country and I come? How much still applies?

    Obama is gone, but many of those who were hired under his watch still carry on his policies. President Trump has begun to "drain the swamp," as the saying goes.  Illegal immigration has reportedly dropped 78%.  That is the best estimate because no one really knew what it was before. Prototypes of border walls are under construction and will be completed by the end of the month.
    Personally, I was a bit struck by my having written that "Jesus was fully aware of the spiritual world around us."  Late this summer I read the book Reveᴙsing Hermon² which pretty much centers on that very point: that Jesus and his disciples who grew up in the Second Temple culture of Israel during that era were aware of the influence of the supernatural. So when I say that "I was a bit struck," I mean it hit me that there's a connection between my writing that last October, and then feeling "Yes! This book is filling in so many gaps!" as I was reading it this summer: more evidence of ordered steps on my journey through life.
    But the Liberals and Leftists in America still seem to think more like the European leadership when it comes to Islamic immigrants. They seem to believe that if they get the right plan and spend enough money, that immigrants who arrived here for political reasons can be integrated into American society.  Unfortunately, either their policies or a Great America are doomed—both cannot fill the same space at the same time.

    Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the way the World was created to function.  It is fundamentally incompatible with Judaism, which produces marketplace wealth. It is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity, which has engineered cultural progress and civilizing inventions. Islam does not integrate or assimilate into either one of these cultures.

    Notice that I have called Islam, Judaism, and Christianity "cultures" and not "religions." That was intentional. It is the culture that emanates from the religious beliefs that is incompatible, not the freedom to believe whom or whatever one wishes.

   Three paragraphs ago, I put the word 'integrated' in boldface. Now I would like to explain why: Integrate means to take all the parts and put them together. Parts is parts, as they said in the old chicken sandwich commercial. No special value is put on one part over another.
    By contrast, America's founders supported immigration policy that encouraged assimilation. Assimilation means to incorporate the elements in such a way that they become absorbed into a highly functioning society. These immigration policies were pro-active, as we say now. Value was placed on skills, literacy, general health, and a desire to be here.  It is the difference between a melting pot and a sundries bin.

And hardly anyone is talking about the spiritual dimension.  But people bring their demons with them, both psychologically and literally. Often they manifest as a vague pressure or a sense that someone is a little off. Sometimes there's a subtle but intimidating rebellion that causes others to back off and cave in with concessions such as removing pork products from a menu or changing Christmas celebrations to winter festivals. But look also at the knife attacks, the vehicle attacks, the rapes, even beheading.  Demons are immigrating too, and they don't need green cards.
      




¹ WWJD = What Would Jesus Do?
² Heiser, Michael S. Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers & the forgotten mission of Jesus Christ. Crane, MO: Defender Publishing, 2017.

Why There Were No New Posts in September

Well, it has been awhile since I last posted, but that does not mean I have not been writing!  I have several drafts that I have not posted with titles like:

 "The Problem with American Men," which is that they are too comfortable letting mouthy women run things, just so they don't have to hear it.  I did not publish this because as I was editing it to remove personal details, I began to realize that, although I was being nicer in the way I said it, I was still grumbling almost as much as the mouthy women I don't like.  In the end, I was left with one basic thought: I respect a man who gets off his duff to do the right thing. At 60 characters, that is more of a tweet than a blog.

Or this one:

"A Look at Refugee Politics based on 1 Kings 11," which I haven't published because it was getting long and rambling with too many current-event examples.  It began with a quote of 1 Kings 11:1, 2, (which you can find now in the footnotes,) and was intended to be a counter argument to these two points:
  • "but Christians are supposed to LOVE the foreigner"
  • "you're being hypocritical—your own ancestors were migrants"
If I ever go back and re-work my draft, I will make it two separate posts. In the meantime, I will leave you with a summary of that post without the proofs or explanations: 

The counter argument to the first one, that we must love the foreigner,  pulls a truth so far out of context that it becomes a half-truth. While we are commanded to treat foreigners with decency, there is also a matter of priorities. Failure to properly prioritize is what got King Solomon in trouble. Solomon's love for foreigners surpassed his love for God; he was in full disobedience of the Lord's command, and God was rightfully angered.  God, then family— Scripture sets a  higher priority for our love on both of these than on foreigners.  And next on the list, at equal levels, is to love our neighbor as ourselves. The principle is to take care of our own first without being cruel to others.

My counter arguments to the second one, that I am being a hypocrite if I do not accept foreigners since my own ancestors were migrants, have several facets. (a) While I may be an exception to most Americans, a walloping large percentage of my ancestry was already born on colonial soil before America became a nation, therefore, they were not immigrants. (b) The minority percentage that did immigrate to the United States had to pass much higher immigration standards that those in effect today. They had to pass health standards, have a job or skill, and they already knew the English language. So if I want foreigners to meet some basic standards for legal immigration and not just take anybody that some guy at the United Nations tells us to, that is not being hypocritical. (c) The Bible verse that is frequently used as justification is Leviticus 19:34, "Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt."  This suffers the same flaw as the first argument: It pulls a truth so far out of context that it becomes a half-truth.  The Israelites had been invited to Egypt by the man second in power to the Pharaoh. They did not live off the government dole, but supplied a huge boost to the Egyptian economy; and no, I am not talking about the forced labor toward the end of their time there.  Originally they were free herdsmen, not conscripted as construction-worker slaves. Initially, it was a win-win deal for both the Israelites and the Egyptians. Clearly, any analogy comparing today's refugees being forced on a sovereign nation by a multi-national board with the mutually beneficial deal made between two parties back then will fall apart pretty fast.


But I do hope to publish one of the other drafts that I started working on even earlier.  My Columbus Day post is one that I began for Independence Day.  The original title was:  Nationalism and the 4th of July 🦅
That will have to change, of course. I am revising it so that, instead of using the patriotism of the 4th of July as the background, I am using President Trump's proclamation about Columbus Day. When Obama controlled the national narrative, every year we'd hear about how evil the European white guys exploited the indigenous Indians. Yet truthfully, much of the North American continent had not progressed much further than Africa had. The Indians could have built a bigger canoe first and become the discoverers of Europe, no? If anyone dared to point out that the peak of the Inca culture in South America had passed or that the Mezoamerican civilization of the Aztec was also going into decline, he'd be scorned as being racist. 
But times have changed. Here is a quote from the Associated Press —

President Donald Trump is proclaiming Monday as Columbus Day — without any of his predecessor's qualms.
The president's proclamation Friday directs the U.S. to celebrate his discovery of the Americas, noting "the permanent arrival of Europeans was a transformative event that undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great Nation."

This praise for Europeans is—I was going to say "a polar opposite," but that's the wrong axis! Anyway, looking at the bravery and accomplishment of a European male is a 180° change from Obama's screed to "acknowledge the pain and suffering" of Native Americans that we were scolded with last year.



FOOTNOTES

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women ... from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love.
1 Kings 11:1, 2, ESV

This is a link to a Google translation of an article where German Chancellor Merkel tries to make the "We must love the foreigner" argument. She reportedly said that "Herrgott" has "put this task on the table" for Germany.  "Herrgott" means "Lord God" in this case, (although it is often used as informal swearing like "Jeez.")
  https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/10/04/merkel-auf-esoterik-trip-der-herrgott-hat-uns-die-fluechtlinge-geschickt/&edit-text=&act=url