Monthly Archives: May 2012

Restoring the Supernatural (Part 3 – Exploring the Elements)

Posted by on May 28, 2012 No comments

QUICK UPDATE

Before I jump into to todays post, I wanted to let you know that I have began a project with Douglas Hamp. Basically, we are making his book Corrupting the Image: Angels, Aliens and the Antichrist Revealed into a film. This will be a essentially a way to visualize a lot of the concepts he brings up in the book to a wider audience. It will be done in a very professional manner and hopefully will get some views on youtube since it will be posted there on my page once it’s done. Doug has asked me to be the director for the project. We also have some phenomenal talent that will be a part of the making of this film including a guy who has worked on some major motion pictures in Hollywood in the CGI (Computer Graphic Imaging) department. So hopefully it will look cool. This last week, we recorded Doug talking about his book. We got about three hours of footage so the next step will be to build a proper script around the narrative that Doug provided.

After this post, I’m going to take a break from writing Restoring the Supernatural and focus on the video projects. As I read back what I have written, it’s been somewhat scattered and poorly written in many parts, so much like the way the film Age of Deceit was a “build-deconstruct-rebuild” I feel that this topic and my aspirations of making it a PDF book are similar. I am writing a whole different thing on the side that I hope to release much later. But working 50+ hours a week with a family leaves little time for doing this kind of stuff. In any case, here’s Part 3.

EXPLORING THE ELEMENTS
Throughout the many years of human history that we do have record of, it is blatantly apparent that the earlier the writings, the more fantastic they appear. Mythologies of strange creatures, giants, gods, heavens and the underworld are found in many ancient literatures. It is my conviction that this is the reason why God inspired the authors who penned the many scrolls of the Bible. It was to shave away all the deception and fluff in order to get to the core truths that are important for humanity to hold onto. However, I do believe it is important to look at how these ancient narratives and how they reflect on the Biblical text for a couple of reasons.

First, it helps us be informed about the enemy. While some are okay with holding steadfast to the Word of God alone and tune out the rest of the world, others like myself feel that knowing a little bit about the enemy can help the body of Christ be informed of the impending attacks. This is what being a watchmen is all about. It’s not for everyone and certainly God has appointed various people to do various things for the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:10). The common analogy used here is that of a sports team. Scouts always take a look at the other teams scheme so they can prepare for what they can expect to see when they face the opposition. We also have to keep in mind what God reminded us in the Word in the book of Luke when the rich man pleads with Abraham who was on the other side of the chasm that separated himself and the pit of Hades. The rich man wanted Abraham to somehow warn his brothers so they would be spared of the pain. Abraham replied, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:31). So in a similar fashion, all someone like myself is trying to do is heed warning. Again I am no prophet, but the bottom line is that if the people don’t listen, and something excessively supernatural does go down, and I believe it will in a short time, the responsibility falls on the individual who heard the warning and didn’t do anything.

Second, if we know that the Bible is true, then ancient written records that do not conflict with the Biblical narrative should also be taken into account. Certainly not as inspired text, but at least to gain a better understanding of the context to which the Bible reveals truth to us.

Inevitably, the centerpiece and punch line to all of this is always going to be Jesus Christ. And this will be a recurring theme throughout our investigation of many of these topics. There is no need for this kind of knowledge to be saved by the love of our Lord Jesus, but it certainly does help us get a grasp of why Jesus is important.

But in order to even begin to explore what these ancient text reveal to us in light of the inspired text, let’s explore where, when and why we find ourselves in a culture that either ignores the supernatural all together, or has gravely misplaced its implications and effects in our world.

WHAT STARTED THE DESCENT?
The question that really made me curious about how we have come to this secular, materialistic view of reality was when it all happened. For centuries, ancient stories and mythology were not taken as mere folklore or fiction but as some form of history. Yet in the last few centuries, we have completely tuned out the supernatural elements of the ancient writings dismissing them all as “religious” writings, predominantly in the realm of academia from which cultural trends flow.

Just a quick overview of recent history and we know that sometime around the beginning of the enlightenment period, a major shift happened in the authority of academic scholarship. Almost all the text of religious or spiritual significance from ancient times that were held as historical for over a millennia were suddenly tossed aside as unreliable and unreasonable. A wikipedia source explains the enlightenment period as follows:

“The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment or Age of Reason) was a cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe and America, whose purpose was to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted science and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition,[1] intolerance and abuses in church and state. Originating about 1650 to 1700, it was sparked by philosophers Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), John Locke (1632–1704), Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), physicist Isaac Newton (1643–1727), and philosopher Voltaire (1694–1778).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

As a consequence, anything that defied reason was touted as false or superstition. The age of enlightenment is the foundation to the state we find ourselves today in culture and society. The Institution of Church has also been greatly affected by the age of enlightenment. Anything supernatural is seen as somewhat taboo and almost unwarranted. And while there has been a slight revival in a sense of the supernatural elements in the modern church, it seems the pendulum has swung the opposite direction into the highly suspicious charismatic movement.

One place where the ancient records were not overturned were the Egyptian hieroglyphs. While this is speculation, I believe that those who were part of the enlightenment, although didn’t openly accept the supernatural, in specific regard, the Biblical accounts, for some reason felt that the ancient Egyptian records were the most accurate. Perhaps it was because of the wealth of records left behind by the Egyptians, or their alleged accomplishments of the Great Pyramids and Sphinx. Or if we really want to get speculative, it may be because the folks who touted “reason” we’re not doing anything new, but were resurrecting an ancient philosophy of wisdom and knowledge as the benchmark for attaining godhood. This makes a lot of sense in light of the secret societies that came out of the enlightenment period. The most popular group that emerged from this time period was the Order of the Illuminati.

 

Restoring the Supernatural (Part 2 – Supernaturality)

Posted by on May 23, 2012 No comments

The Supernaturality
It’s true that we as a culture and society have come to a place where information is readily available at our fingertips, especially here in the west. Everything we could ever want to know, we can find out in mere seconds. “Google it!” or “Wiki it!” have become a mantra for finding out information about anyone, anything, anywhere, and anywhen. But as knowledge is increased and humanity taps into this huge stream of information floating through the air, the chasm between those providing the information, and those receiving it, have become ever so wide. This is precisely why I believe the Word of God is so important. If the Bible is true and it really is a message from an all powerful Creator, a mind which spoke the universe into existence and has given life to me and you, then under such circumstances that we find ourselves today, information that we can be confident as “Truth” can only be found in the Bible. The Bible is a collection of 66 books, written by 40 people, in three different languages, spanning over 1500 years, various cultures, and time periods. Yet the conclusions of many who have researched and scrutinized the Scriptures for centuries have agreed that it is a message of supernatural origin.

I’ve often heard theologians and Christian apologists talk about how the Bible is not simply a book of spiritual truths, but also a historical book. While the secular scientific community is quick to dismiss and doubt Noah’s Flood, the Garden of Eden, or even according to the some New Atheists, the existence of Jesus as a man who lived in the first century, as a Christian, it is my conviction that the events which are described in the Bible (that are not obvious parables or metaphor) are real historical events. Do they have spiritual, moral, emotional, social significance? Absolutely. But without the events actually taking place in the fabric of our past, these other truths cannot be related to at the level they were meant to by God.

So when I read in Genesis that God formed the entire universe piecing together time, space, matter and energy, I believe it was a real event. When God formed the earth and formed man in His image from the dust of the ground, I believe this was a true historical event. When I read how the serpent (or shining one per Dr. Mike Heiser) came and deceived mankind into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, I believe this was a real historical event. When I read in Exodus 14:21 how God parted the red sea so Moses and the Israelites could pass, I believe this was a true event. When I read events described in 2 Kings 6:17 when God opens the eyes of Elijah’s servant to see the spiritual realm with horses and chariots of fire, I believe it was a real event. When I read Ezekiel 1:16 and Ezekiel 10:10 where he saw a cherubim, a living creature with four faces and what appeared to be a wheel within a wheel, I believe it was a real historical event. When I read Jesus rose from the dead, I believe this was a true historical event. When I read through Him, we are born again and are promised to be clothed with immortality, I believe this will be a real historical event in the future.

The Bible is full of supernatural events, past present and future. My little rant in the paragraph above is just a small snippet of all the supernatural events described in the Bible. I left out some of the more intense and important events so I can address them later in the book, but either way, it should be obvious that the Bible contains a supernatural history which is in context to eternity. The foundation to such a claim is that the supernatural is the reality that feeds the natural realm.

Supernatural Feeds the Natural

Francis Schaeffer’s most popular analogy was the upper story/lower story duality. This was the philosophical handling on the difference between the natural realm, the lower story, and God’s realm, or the upper story. The lower story consisted of reason, rationality, mathematics, materialism, nature, and all of the tangible compartments of existence while the upper story is where transcendence of meaning itself resides. This is the place of God. A place beyond understanding, explanation, and the confines of nature. While I can go deeper into the philosophical ramifications of this analogy, for our purposes, I simply wanted to show the trail of thought that can help us gain a better understanding of what the supernatural consists of.

Schaeffer, being a theologian and philosopher, never went into how this upper story may simply be the spiritual realm. What is the spiritual realm but a place that transcends nature? And since this reality does exist, and can be verified from the lower story where we reside now, it’s impossible to negate its existence. In other words, we being firmly in the lower story to conduct our communication between one another, it takes rational, logic, and reason to describe the upper story. Yet, while I am certain that no words can accurately describe what it’s like to be in that other place, or simply put, the spiritual world, I do think that it is important that we can use our lower story confines to investigate how or what the implications are. Otherwise, such evidence would only only be a construct of fantasy.

The mistake that is made with the modern sciences and even some folks who would call themselves Christian, is that they have ignored the upper story. They have forgotten that all that is down here, comes from up there. But even those who do acknowledge the upper story, like new agers, spiritualists, and other esoteric and occult practitioners are not realizing that there can be good and bad beings in the upper story realm. Because the beings in the upper story are very much intelligent entities, God being the ultimate, it is important to realize how much influence they have to our lower story existence. There are entities in the spiritual world who willfully rejected God, and therefore, there is an very important element of discernment that is needed for us down here.

This is why the Bible is what it is. While various religions and alternative spiritual practices will provide a particular staircase that promises a destination of upper story glory, pure, holy and transcendent, God Himself provides the proper staircase to ensure that the one we walk up will be met with the Creator Himself. It sheds a whole new understanding of that famous passage by Jesus doesn’t it?

“Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” ~ Matthew 7:14

In a sense, Jesus is the carpenter who built the staircase for us. God freely gave His life up so that this staircase would be constructed and available for anyone who wanted to accept the path. But not only that, He left instructions on how to get to that staircase and what it would take to make the steps upward. I’ve heard a clever acronym for the Bible; B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) and I really think this applies when looking at this analogy.

When we grasp this concept, we understand a wealth about our own behavior here on earth. First, we can understand why humanity itself is in constant search for something. For the transhumanists, it’s immortality in this physical world. For the new agers, it’s spiritual ascension and getting in tune with the “higher self.” For the esoterics, it’s “becoming gods.” For the scientists, it’s finding the cure for diseases. Whatever the label of a person or persons, the mission in life is to find purpose and meaning in an attempt to find a connection with that transcendent element of our being that is lacking so hard in the depths of our souls in this fallen world. It becomes abundantly clear that outside of the love, grace, and mercy of Jesus Christ, we are walking blindly in a world that offers false staircases, all of which lead to destruction.

Second, and more to the point, is that no one can live in the lower story without the reality of the imposing upper story. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Our concepts, motives, drive for meaning and purpose are all factors derived from the upper story realm. All of these things would be meaningless if the materialistic view is true, as many philosophers have agreed that a truly pure materialistic perspective ends in nihilism. Yet, all humanity yearns for something more than simply the material part of who we are. It is inconsistent for the person who lives believing there is meaning and purpose in their life, while at the same time believing that life is simply a grand clash of atoms and particles. Furthermore, when we get into the constructs of DNA, quantum physics, and the fact that information itself is an immaterial entity, we will really begin to see how the upper and lower story are inseparable.

The Church
‘Though Christians would never accept naturalism as a philosophy, many have absorbed a naturalistic approach to marketing, adopting techniques that treat a target audience essentially as passive “consumers” to be manipulated into buying “a product.”‘ ~Nancy Pearcey in the Book Total Truth: Study Guide Edition p 367)

The institutionalized church community has become trapped so to speak in the lower story. We have become salesmen for Jesus, not messengers of Salvation. The blurring of the line between financial gain and spreading the Gospel have become the stronghold that has driven our churches to become “seeker friendly” and all about “social justice.” Part of my criticism here is that the institution of church are largely seeking meaning and purpose in the same places that the humanistic atheists, new agers, occultists, and scientists are seeking. In other words, what makes the church that feeds the homeless different from the atheists who do? What makes the church that seeks quiet time for prayer different from the new agers who meditate for hours? And so on. And while the church does recognize the upper story and point to the unique God of heaven, how many stand in our pulpits today and deliver an alternative staircase that lead to destruction? How many have become mere word smiths verbalizing some snake oil of self improvement playing into the desires of the flesh? A question comes to my mind as I write this. “Who am I to judge the institution of Church and the intent of the pastors in seeker friendly churches?” And this is true. Who am I to point the finger? Again, I don’t have all the answers, but as I continue, I hope to continue to provide you with some food for thought and some concepts to chew on so that you are made aware of the impending dangers of deception lurking behind the appearance of success, fame, wealth, fortune, and the beautiful beast that is the institution of church.

Restoring the Supernatural (Part 1 – History)

Posted by on May 19, 2012 5 comments

How do we know History?

“This site is dedicated to be a repository for the numerous “out-of-place” artifacts that have been discovered…If taken seriously, these artifacts would destroy several fundamental theories in the realms of evolutionary science, geology, modern dating, and more. In the end analysis, it is clear that our understanding of and theories about history and evolution is wrong. The question is when mainstream science will admit it.”  ~Forbidden History

Cliches are often true aren’t they? Short snippets of words to describe some element of reality that most people tend to agree with under any circumstance. The one I thought about while pondering where to start with this chapter was the one that goes like this; “Those who forget history, often repeat it.” But what if the history we are forgetting is far more vast than simply a teenager who might be ignorant of the holocaust? And what if the history we are going to repeat have dire implications for the world at large?

Jesus Christ said in Matthew 24:37, “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” This passage will become more important as we uncover the supernatural implications of the words uttered by our Lord Jesus, but for now, consider the thought that there was a history in the antediluvian, or pre-flood world that are systematically denied by the established sciences, and forgotten at large by the body of Christ.

Through most of time, “history” was passed down through word of mouth, stories, myths, books, and other limited resources highly susceptible to corruption, change, or manipulation. Once modern science entered the conversation in the last century, they took the wheel as the authority in describing history in the academic milieu.

Science operates on the observation of evidence. However, I believe that there are two kinds of evidence. Material and immaterial. Material evidence can be ancient pottery, clothing, ruins, even the bones of a once living human being or animal from way long ago. Basically, they’re things that can be measured, weighed, and observed in the physical spectrum. While investigating these resources could tell us a great deal about a given ancient culture, it cannot give us any insight into the immaterial history. When I say immaterial, I mean the various emotions, thoughts and experiences of those who were actually there to experience the ancient past. These things are left to speculation and are often fabricated by those who investigate the material evidence.

Here is an example. Let’s say my wife and I go to Starbucks to have a cup of coffee. We walk in, order our coffee, sit down at one of those IKEA bought contemporary couches, and have a conversation. When we finish our coffee, we both leave our cups on the table and walk out. If an investigator on that same day wanted to know whether or not my wife and I had been at Starbucks, they can certainly figure it out without much work. Besides, they write your names on those cups now don’t they? But, if the investigator wanted to know what my wife and I were talking about, that would be a little bit harder. He would have to rely on secondhand information from someone who may have been there and heard a few snippets of the conversation. And let’s say the investigator was trying to uncover not just what we might have talked about, but our thoughts and emotions during that conversation. Good luck. Certainly we act out our emotions with our gestures and facial expressions, but unless they had a chip in our brains (more on that later in the book), you would have no idea what our emotional experiences were, let alone our thoughts.

So in light of understanding this fact, we have to look at history as we know it with a grain of salt don’t we? How could you say you know everything about a certain period of the past when you weren’t there? The legends, myths, folklore, stories and ancient writings are a mere fragment of the actual reality that may or may not have occurred in the distant past. Even if you are majoring in History at a prestigious University, all you would really know is what the establishment will feed you as “history”. Yes it would give you more knowledge about the past than your average person who doesn’t study history, nevertheless, your knowledge would be limited and even shaped by what is written and recorded. Another Cliche comes to mind; “Those who win wars, write their history.”

But it seems like websites like Forbidden History (forbiddenhistory.info) and many others going against the grain are trying to show that there are even physical artifacts that don’t fit the proper paradigm of the established sciences. Whether it be a huge pyramid structure 300 feet underwater off the coast of Florida, [1] or the Dashka Stone, which allegedly shows an aerial view of the region along with an unknown form of language [2], or a petrified footprint that the Smithsonian deemed hundreds of millions of years old [3], the earth itself is teeming with artifacts that don’t fit the paradigm of science as presented in all levels of our education system.

But how could this be? Why would the establishment lie to us? For what purpose and for what ends? These are legitimate questions and are worth investigating. The bottom line is that history is not what we read in the history text books. It is not simply found in the artifacts that fit or don’t fit the establishment.  I believe they have a supernatural undercurrent that is largely ignored by the not only the main stream populous but the body of Christ at large.

[1]http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1987-03-16/news/8701160699_1_underwater-pyramid-treasure-hunter-florida-coast
[2] http://ragnartaltos.hubpages.com/hub/Proof-of-Ancient-Flight
[3] https://www.forbiddenhistory.info/?q=node/116

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