Aug
29
2011
Prophecy: Amos 8:9 predicted the sudden miraculous turning of mid-day into midnight. “It shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.”
Fulfillment: “Now from the sixth hour (noon) there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour (3 PM) (Matt. 27:45).
While at Christ’s birth, the dark night was turned into brightness, now at His death, the brightest time of day fell into darkness. As if God’s Creation went into symbolic mourning for Jesus.
Three Hours of Darkness at the Cross
Aug
4
2011
For me, the WHOLE problem of politics is that it consists of grossly inadequate people telling others how to behave. My bottom line for politics — and for ethics — is to concentrate on improving yourself alone. There would be no room for the authoritarianism of modern-day socialism if this rule was followed.
If your ambition is to “save” the world for the righteous cause of liberty, the only legitimate way to do so is to improve yourself and then let others copy you. The Spanish Saint San Pedro of Alcantara was correct: “The trouble is that no one wants to correct himself and everyone meddles at correcting others: thus everything stays the same.”
Read the wise words of liberty advocate Leonard Read:
Assume that I have a magic ring; I need only put it on my finger to make every citizen’s position a carbon copy of my free-market, private-property, limited-government views. No cost in time or money. All of my ideas greeted by everyone with “You are absolutely right!” No deviation but only agreement! Would I put on this ring with its power automatically to cast all others in my ideological image? Most emphatically, I would not! To do so would put an end to all growth in others, and in me – an affront to my premise as well as to Creation’s scheme of perpetual hatching.
Our job is not to fool other people into behaving just as badly and on as erroneous of principles as ourselves. Our job is to improve our sorry selves so as to develop true light to help others see. Leonard Read: “In a word, our task is to increase our own candlepower. Is this not what our earthly existence is for?”
How To Advance Liberty: Leonard E. Read
Jul
30
2011
What is modernity? Why is the whole world insane?
Eric Voegelin said that modernity is a Gnostic revolt against the fundamental structure of reality.
He defines Gnosticism as the belief that humans can transform the nature of reality through secret knowledge and social action.
Jun
11
2011
The Bible demands that prophets produce their credentials in Isaiah 41:21-22:
Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.
Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them (set our heart upon them), and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
Jesus manned up and met this credential, rather than hiding from it, “I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he” (John 13:19).
May
27
2011
The Materialists say there is no intellect, just a material brain. Interesting that man is the only being that is anti-intellectual. Disregarding the obvious linguistic barriers, do you imagine you would ever meet an anti-intellectual frog?
Apr
24
2011
Carlyle writing to a young man:
“Neither let mistakes and wrong directions—of which every man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many—discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully, to be right, he will grow daily more and more right. It is, at bottom, the condition on which all men have to cultivate themselves. Our very walking is an incessant falling—a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement!—it is emblematic of all things a man does.”
Feb
20
2011
Bertrand Russel says that mathematics kept him from suicide. But eventually he became happy because, “Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection… Interest in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind.”
Feb
18
2011
The prophets of Israel have no peers in the religious history of the world.
“Other peoples have had their great religious teachers: the Hindus their Buddha, the Persians their Zoroaster, the Arabians their Mohammed. But nowhere do we find a succession of men extending over several centuries of time, who entertained such lofty conceptions of religion, devoted themselves with such passion and power to the realization of these conceptions, and contributed so much to the permanent moralization and spiritualization of religion, as did the prophets of Israel.”
“The Beacon Lights of Prophecy”; Dr. Albert Knudson; 1914
Jan
21
2011
Which Religion has been adopted by the entire World?
Yeah, you guessed it. Education. Everybody in just about every culture buys into the myth of educational salvation, which pretends that the only thing standing between you and the desires in your heart is education.
In 1900 we had 500,000 people total enrolled in institutions of higher learning; today the figure is 100 million people, desperately trying to get ahead. In finances, in knowledge, in skills.
With one out of every four college age kids currently enrolled in a post-secondary institution, the demand is strong and growing. But there is no way enough schools will be built to satisfy this demand. Where will these eager young people turn?
Perhaps knowledge isn’t something that can be handed to you. Maybe you need to find out the important things of life by yourself. Drop the advisors. Forget the appearances. Make something happen. Don’t look to education as some sort of solution. You already know too much. It is time to stop adding and start subtracting. Build everything on a solid basis. You can trust no teachers of any kind to give you a solid base. This is your responsibility alone.
And, if you must distrust your own learning abilities…
On money, only listen to a millionaire.
On aesthetics, only listen to a beautiful person.
On business and economics and human relations of any kind, only listen to a problem solver.
Dec
11
2010
The Naturalist and Supernaturalist both believe in some ultimate, Basic Fact. The difference lies in their division. The Supernaturalist divides everything into two classes: 1. the class of things (or one thing) which is ultimate and basic, and 2. those things which are derivative from the first class.
The Naturalist places everything in the first class. The greek word for Nature is Physis, which means to grow. The Naturalist sees everything as growing from the first Basic Fact. So Naturalists must be Determinists. Everything happens because something else caused it to happen, nay, because everything caused it to happen. The Naturalist CANNOT believe in Free Will for man because he believes that every event was caused by the entire series of events in Nature. There is nothing outside of Nature, so there is no Free Will.
This doesn’t mean that a Supernaturalist cannot be Deterministic, but it is not required.