Here’s a quick thought to focus your day — as I contemplate several posts motivated by the end-times-prophetic chum Drudge has thrown into the water with the Al Gore “shepherd / hour of choosing” poem in Vanity Fair.

Marva Dawn, on page 159 of her intensely thought-provoking* book, “Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society”, cites Valparaiso University Theology Professor Frederick Niedner (who in turn draws on Paul J. Griffiths) as making a distinction between “consumerist” and “religious” readers of the Bible.

Leaving aside folks who aren’t inclined to read it at all, for whatever reason (e.g., lack of belief, distrust, thinking they know enough about it already, not thinking they can or should, etc.), Ms. Dawn notes that the former (“consumerists”) are “fettered” by a vast array of unstated assumptions and pervasive, unrecognized paradigms (e.g., cultural, technological, sociological, economic, etc.) that permeate our society.

Such readers…

…move quickly through texts “in search of things that will excite, titillate, entertain, empower, and give them some advantage over others.” In contrast [citing Niedner],

“[Religious readers] assume they have come into the presence of a text with inexhaustible depth. They read with reverence, humility, obedience and the presumption that difficulty in understanding reveals more about their limitations than the excellence or effectiveness of the text. Religious readers incorporate, internalize and memorize texts. They read slowly, hoping not to miss anything.”

The comment about inexhaustible depth is one echoed by writers such as C.S. Lewis, GK Chsterton and Anne Rice (not that those are equivalent) — craftsmen and women who know firsthand how difficult it is to weave such an intricate web of symbolic and other cross-references (much less to do so from historical sources!) That comment also rings true to my experience as a voracious reader and semi-professional, prolific writer.

I have read nothing else, by even the most gifted authors, that comes remotely close to the intricacy and depth of the Bible. If you are inclined to scoff at that, I urge you to pick up your favorite non-Biblical work of great literature and read it ten times. Then do the same — slowly, prayerfully, studiously — with the Bible. I haven’t reached ten yet, but midway through three, it’s already clear that there is no comparison.

And even if you conclude that there is some arguable basis for comparison, it’s an unfair one because the Bible was assembled from independent segments written by 40 authors, from insanely diverse backgrounds (did you know that Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon wrote one of the chapters of Daniel?) in three languages, over the course of more than ten centuries, with Hebrew prophecies amply authenticated by the proliferation of pre-Christian copies (270BC Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.)

The mealy-mouthed, non-sensical kind of stuff that comes out of much smaller single-language committees of various kinds in the span of just a few weeks, months or years testifies to the monumental difficulty of creating the Biblical canon if the work had been uninspired; that is, of purely human origin.

*Marva Dawn’s book is absolutely worthwhile. She is a faithful Christian and deep, original thinker with much to offer. Unfortunately, a few chapters fall victim to some more conventional, leftist-inspired lines of thinking bolstered by inadequate facts and an uncharacteristic lack perspective and logic on certain geopolitical issues.

UPDATE: Of related interest, the free (Project Gutenberg) copy of “Who Wrote the Bible?” (1891), by Washington Gladden. (H/T: AFC) Excerpt:

The writer of this book has no difficulty in believing that the Bible contains supernatural elements. He is ready to affirm that other than natural forces have been employed in producing it. It is to these superhuman elements in it that reference and appeal are most frequently made. But the Bible has a natural history also. It is a book among books. It is a phenomenon among phenomena. Its origin and growth in this world can be studied as those of any other natural object can be studied… we may study the origin and growth of the Bible without attempting to decide the deeper questions concerning the inspiration of its writers and the meaning of the truths they reveal.

That the Bible has a natural as well as a supernatural history is everywhere assumed upon its pages. It was written as other books are written, and it was preserved and transmitted as other books are preserved and transmitted. It did not come into being in any such marvelous way as that in which Joseph Smith’s “Book of Mormon,” for example [or the Q'uran], is said to have been produced.

At our men’s Bible study this morning, I related the story of an older woman whom I know from the neighborhood and from my old (very liberal) church. I ran into her yesterday afternoon while walking the dog in the woods. There’s a much longer back-story, I’ll spare y’all, but suffice it to say that she is a nice lady, a regular church attendee, and has done many good things. She’s even a political conservative.

Our conversation revolved around where my faith has taken me since I left that church and how excited I am about it. I then recalled a fairly large original oil painting of Christ that hangs in her house and felt moved to tell her how genuinely impressed I had been by it. (She and her husband had hosted several large gatherings at their home back when I attended that other church.) I half-expected her to then say something about how she had come to acquire it, or perhaps how its physical place of prominence in her home related to the Lord’s prominence in her heart and her life.

I was taken aback by where she went instead.

“Oh that,” she protested. “I think I’m just a cultural Christian.“

She proceeded to tell me with great animation and hand-waving but more than a hint of wild-eyed, not-entirely-sure-of-herself defensiveness that, in her view, all faiths are part of some unknowable, larger truth which she is assembling for herself based on some un-identified source of authority and wisdom, tossing out what seems improper and keeping the stuff that feels right to her.

I was tempted to nod and smile and walk on. I hate conflict. And yet, it was clear, she was at sea. I was not in-your-face confrontational, but I’m satisfied that I made clear I did not agree, urging her to delve more deeply into the roots of her apparent faith by reading her Bible more and the myriad warmed-over and oft-misrepresented popular takes on it less.

The issue I brought up at men’s group was in relation to Revelation 21:7-8, in which Jesus says:

The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

The Greek root word for “cowardly” is Strong’s G1169, δειλός, pronounced dā-lo’s, meaning, simply: timid or fearful.

The only other places it shows up are in the two accounts (Mark 4:40 and Matthew 8:26) in which Jesus calms the storm, asking his disciples (in the KJV): “Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?”

Subtext: Because seriously dudes, don’t you get it? I’m right here with you.

Subtext to the subtext: Man-up, boys! Get a grip on yourselves! Fergoodnessakes, you’re working for the Creator and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all creation!

It’s the same thing God and his angels say in pretty much every encounter with mere mortals in the Hebrew scriptures also: “do not fear”.

I’d always read that Revelation 21 passage and thought, somewhat smugly, how I wasn’t a sorcerer, murderer, etc., conveniently skipping the part about cowardliness, timidity and fearfulness.

Net takeaway: we’re in a spiritual battle, whether we know it and like it, or not. The many apparent conflicts down here — political, economic, social, even inter-personal — are merely manifestations of that. Not recognizing that larger context is bound to lead not only to confusion and dismay but to fratricide.

As such, a desire to avoid conflict… to run and hide or shirk our duty is not only wrong, but flat-out dangerous — to ourselves, but also to those we’re trying to protect and who are fighting alongside us.

In sharp contrast, I came across these passages in my morning devotional, from Acts, chapter four:

v13: “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”

v29-31 (Peter’s prayer): “And now, Lord, look upon their [the Sadducees'] threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.”

The closing verses of the book of Acts also feature this word. From Acts 28:30-31:

He [Paul] lived there [Rome] two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him,proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

The word translated as “boldness” here is Strong’s G3954, παρρησία, pronounced pär-rā-sē’-ä, meaning:

freedom in speaking, unreservedness in speech: openly, frankly, i.e without concealment without ambiguity or circumlocution, without the use of figures and comparisons; free and fearless confidence, cheerful courage, boldness, assurance; the deportment by which one becomes conspicuous or secures publicity

It shows up in many other verses (31 in all). I have not explored them all, but it seems a worthwhile exercise for those so inclined. Especially so in these get-along, go-along, relativistic times where truth itself is deemed a matter of personal opinion… so long as it doesn’t cross lines of political correctness.

The primary application is obviously personal, but there are vast socio-political and institutional implications to this as well. I don’t have time to explore them either, except to say that, in the context of what Peter, John, Paul and the others were facing (excommunication from the synagogue, social censure, economic isolation, the loss of established filial and familial relationships and community standing, not to mention imprisonment, torture, and execution) we should not be too quick to complain about the erosion of free speech rights on the macro level if we have failed to exercise, on a day-to-day interpersonal “micro” level, the boldness Jesus requires in preaching the gospel.

We’re in a storm. We’re in a battle. Time is short but He is with us. We need not fear. We must be bold.

I’ve been reflecting on a comment ‘dj’ made yesterday on the “United Breaks Guitars” post and just wanted to amplify something he said. I had tossed that post off as a funny quickie, but his observation–that Dave Carroll’s music videos are an example of righteous anger expressed in a creative manner–seems more profound the more I consider it.

And I’d go even further.

Mr. Carroll’s videos seem like an extraordinary example, in a culture where justice is defined almost entirely around the individual and negotiated through conflict and litigation of righteous anger expressed with restraint, clarity, grace and humor (among other virtues).

There are so many things Mr. Carroll could have said or done, and even things he would have been ”justified” in saying or doing (in the world’s eyes, in anger, with pride and bitterness) with regards to United, or any particular individuals involved in their dispute… but he didn’t. Now some of that may well be on the advice of his lawyers, but so what? There are just as many lawyers who might have urged just the opposite. If attorneys were involved, he listened to the right ones.

How often have we each been in a position like Mr. Carroll? An institution, a person, or maybe several people commit some clear, even gross injustice against us and not only do they refuse to “do the right thing”, they don’t even acknowledge their error. They certainly don’t apologize.

I’m not thinking of any particular person or incident, but a veritable library of them. Just to be clear, more often than not, I’m on the United end of things, not Mr. Carroll’s.

If your life is like mine, something like this happens every week or two. Smaller versions happen every day, even every hour. I was just at a coffee shop catching up with a friend. I ordered a double espresso. It looked like they gave me a single. I could have made a scene. I’ve been with people who have done just that. Then I over-stayed my parking meter by a mere ten minutes. I got a $15 ticket. I’m paying it and moving on. 

Yeah, I know, those examples are slightly different, but aren’t they all? We live in a sinful world. We’re all sinning against one another nearly all the time. God works in our response (or lack of one). What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that Mr. Carroll’s video not only gives me a shot of vicarious glee at someone “stickin’ it to the man”, but gives me a new appreciation for the discipline that real grace requires. It’s a discipline I would do well (we’d all do well) to adhere to more often.

One construct for thinking about it is something I heard on an Alistair Begg podcast from last February. (I’m just catching up; he is excellent at least 99% of the time. He used the acronym, T.H.I.N.K. to lay out five questions to ask (and then answer all of them in the affirmative) before opening one’s mouth or releasing one’s typing fingers.

Fair warning: it’s convicting and not easy!! It goes like this:

T — is what you are about to say TRUE? (most people stop here)
H — is it HELPFUL?
I — is it INSPIRING (meaning, does it lift the conversation to a new level of insight while providing some positive, even memorable motivation for change?) 
N — is it NECESSARY? (I can almost here the voices of various relatives and childhood mentors on this one!)
K — is it KIND?

I rarely post e-mails verbatim, but this one is too flat-out good-natured funny not to, especially for this former “1K” (100,000-real-miles-per-year) United flier who now avoids them like the plague. Apologies if I’m late to a party everyone has already attended. Received from a former client a few minutes ago:

A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines. United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight. Dave spent many months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his Custom Taylor guitar.

During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create 3 music videos for YouTube exposing their lack of cooperation. The Manager responded: “Good luck with that one, pal.”

So he posted retaliatory video #1 on YouTube this past July. The video has since received over 6.2 million [now 6.3 million] hits.

United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was: “Good luck with that one, pal.”

Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for product recognition from the video that has lead to a sharp increase in orders.

Here’s the video for song #1

And song #2:

It can have its downsides, but at its best, alternative media is awesome.  

And yes, RB, I thought especially of you when I saw this one.  

Don’t miss John Tierney’s thoughtful column in Monday’s NYT:

I’ve long thought that the biggest danger in climate research is the temptation for scientists to lose their skepticism and go along with the “consensus” about global warming. That’s partly because it’s easy for everyone to get caught up in “informational cascades”, and partly because there are so many psychic and financial rewards rewards for working on a problem that seems to be a crisis. We all like to think that our work is vitally useful in solving a major social problem — and the more major the problem seems, the more money society is liable to spend on it. [link in original]

He might as well have said — and please pray and count to ten, maybe twenty, maybe even a thousand before/if you respond — that the biggest danger in searching for truth more generally is the temptation… to lose skepticism and go along with the “consensus” merely because it has been the consensus.

I’m all for orthodoxy. Just not at the expense of absolute truth. (And yes, Virginia, despite what you may have been taught in your relativistic public school, it does exist; though Santa Claus doesn’t.)

In other words, in a spiritual context: read your Bible diligently; study a matter. (As Proverbs 25:2 says: “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.”) Pray and seek wisdom; wrestle with God (as Jacob did). Don’t be too hasty to think you know. And trust me, I’m advising myself on this as much as, if not more than, anyone here.

Don’t be surprised if, once you do that diligently for some time, you begin to see that what you thought was true is, in fact, crooked, tarnished and desperately broken. That’s kinda where I am on a lotta things in our world and our culture and even our churches at the moment.

Now don’t misunderstand. The wisdom of the ages is awesome indeed, especially in comparison to the fashion of the moment — the churning sea of public opinion. It’s still not God Almighty though; merely our best approximation under our human power. And our human reasoning has a strong tendency to drift or be drawn away from hard truth.

In an area — e.g., the Christian faith — worked on by many great minds, over millennia, many but by no means all of them with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the two usually line up very well (truth and orthodoxy)… but not always. Sometimes orthodoxy and the traditions of men can get confused.

I was listening to a teaching on podcast on the way to small group last night that focused on the relatively obscure man Uzzah in 2nd Samuel, chapter six. Read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions, but the main point he was making was that familiarity and intimacy with God are not the same thing.

Uzzah had grown up twenty years with the Ark of the Covenant literally sitting in his living room. When, out of a well-meaning, human-instinctive impulse to keep it from falling, he reached out to steady it (as if God needed help) God struck him down. Harsh? Only if we confuse  human consensus, reason and familiarity with dead human ritual with utter awe and reverent intimacy with the living God.

Truth is truth is truth. Not only in the spiritual realm, but in science and other things, we would do well to take a cue from the Bereans in Acts 17:11 who “…were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

We have nothing to fear from truth; only from its opposite, wearing its clothing, parading in arrogant imitation, insisting that time is short and that we need a treaty next week or the sky will fall. It will. Just not on the timetable of the global warming alarmists whose emperor has been exposed as unwittingly, foolishly naked. And yes, if you’ve read all of 2nd Sam 6, you’ll see the allusions… and the distinctions.

With H/T’s to Lauren, Bea and JRed, among others, file this one in the category of stuff that, for a few weeks now, I’ve really wanted not to believe.

The super-short version of this scenario stems from the question: What if, as a world leader you knew you were facing a radically bad economic future? Not just Carter-style stagflation or the “chin-up” talk I keep hearing from secular friends about “light at the end of the tunnel”, but the kinds of circumstances that would literally have people up-in-arms (if efforts to disarm them first failed).

What if you,

a) were anticipating, in the words of the highly respected Financial Times, “the biggest coordinated asset bust ever”,

and/or

b) realized that, to finance the country’s unprecedented debt, about to ‘balloon’, without simply handing over the keys to the Oval Office to the Chinese, you needed to deliberately, radically and quickly devalue the currency?

The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true. But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer. Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed. Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

In other words, what would you do if you were pretty sure that some morning in the next 6-12 months, and maybe sooner, folks would wake up and find that a loaf of bread cost $50 but that was OK because it just happened to be exactly what they had left in their 401K and so they’d at least have one more breakfast. (I exaggerate… a bit.)

What would you do?

The super-short answer: You would try and be as pro-active as possible. You would put in place mechanisms, and engineer events in such a way as to prevent your losing power and (secondarily) avoiding complete social chaos.

Of course there would be a cost to that. Perhaps a very high cost. The exact shape that took would depend a great deal on your character and moral framework.

But, if that moral framework were utilitarian, with a dose of narcissism thrown in, you might reason, even the unthinkable would be “worth it” if you were convinced that an extremely dire socio-economic scenario lay on the near horizon and you could see such a crisis or series of crises being “useful” in the service of some larger purpose. Finding a way to put marshal law in place (or something close to it) without having to disclose the real reason could become… very convenient.

I’m not making this up. It’s basic “Alinsky Rules for Radicals”. Go look ‘em up. And note bene the many connections between them and our current president.

In fact, the real crises, the quasi-engineered crises and the response(s) to them might begin to blur together such that people would mostly argue with one another about which one was which, and who was really behind the curtain and whether there was a curtain or a Wizard at all, or just an man on a bit of a power trip that seemed to start out fairly well a year ago. People would spend a whole lot less time or energy getting traction on, or coherence behind a movement to hold you and your cronies accountable — or criminally culpable.

Draw your own conclusions, but that’s the kind of top-level scenario that makes the following videos and links [including this hair-raising one in comments] at least possible in my mind.

Do not fear, or leap to conclusions… especially if you’re a Christian. We’re supposed to carry our crosses, remember? We’re supposed to discern and remain calm and keep our eyes fixed on the Rock and pray, pray, pray.

Yet, even with that, we’re told we will suffer. Most of us have forgotten that our identity in Christ comes with the very real possibility of dying as he and the apostles (and many saints and disciples) have, as a means of salting and lighting a spoiling dark world.

It would be nice if that were in our own bed at age ninety-nine, surrounded by sweet-faced great-grandchildren, but that’s statistically rather unlikely, especially in troubled times. Almost certainly so in Tribulation-eve times.

But by the same token, don’t assume either that it’s too wild or huge scenario as not to be plausible. Having been in my share of executive meetings I am extremely gun-shy about using the word “conspiracy”. Most executives put their pants on one leg at a time and can’t agree with each other about the corporate salad bar. Sometimes events that look like a big, dark conspiracy can come about by the unspectacular avenue of folks making self-serving decisions. The conspirator, in those cases, is satan and we needn’t necessarily waste a lot of time blaming his foot-soldiers.

Other links:
Address by the President of Ukraine, November 4, 2009

Selected posts from JRed on the back story: Nov 3rd, Nov 8th, Nov 10th.

UPDATE: Gotta love the Spanish MD-nun (with subtitles). First of six in a series. Very sober and chock-full of credible background info, e.g., from the New England Journal of Medicine:

Detroit. However one pronounces it, the city whose name means ’strait’ in French, (as in, the channel of a river) has become a city of death and decay.

The abandoned corpses, in white body bags with number tags tied to each toe, lie one above the other on steel racks inside a giant freezer in Detroit’s central mortuary, like discarded shoes in the back of a wardrobe.

Some have lain here for years, but in recent months the number of unclaimed bodies has reached a record high. For in this city that once symbolised the American Dream many cannot even afford to bury their dead.

Unburied bodies piling up in the city mortuary — it reached 70 earlier this year— is the latest and perhaps most appalling indignity to be heaped on the people of Detroit. The motor city that once boasted the highest median income and home ownership rate in the US is today in the midst of a long and agonising death spiral. [The number seventy symbolizes perfect spiritual order -- or in this case, the exact opposite: perfectly ghastly decay and disorder.]

The word ’strait’ carries very different connotations from its homologous cousin, ’straight’ (i.e., not crooked). In Hebrew scripture, it is translated from Strong’s H6887, צרר, and pronounced tsä·rar’, meaning:

to bind, be bound, or make narrow; to cause or suffer distress, to besiege; to tie up or shut up; to be scant or cramped; to show hostility toward, to treat with enmity; to vex, or harass

The word that first shows up in 1st Samuel 13:6 (key to establishing meaning):

When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, (for the people were distressed,) then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits.

If we were to hop from Hebrew directly to an Engligh-French mash-up, the verse might read, “…they were in Detroit… distressed…” In the ESV, with the preceding and following verses (i.e., 1st Sam 13:5-7) it reads:

And the Philistines mustered to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen and troops like the sand on the seashore in multitude. They came up and encamped in Michmash, to the east of Beth-aven. When the men of Israel saw that they were in trouble (for the people were hard pressed), the people hid themselves in caves and in holes and in rocks and in tombs and in cisterns, and some Hebrews crossed the fords of the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul was still at Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.

Israel’s enemies were massing against them from what is now the Gaza strip, the latest land ceded (in 2005) to the so-called Palestinians.

No credible defense was being mounted in King Saul’s time. Israel’s doom seemed imminent. He waited for instructions from the Lord, via the prophet Samuel, but got impatient and decided to make unauthorized offerings to the Lord on his own. Samuel arrived shortly thereafter to tell Saul he shouldn’t have done that, that the Lord was not pleased, and that he should absolutely not go into battle. If he does, Samuel warns, he will lose. Saul does anyway. Israel is badly defeated.

The hiding in caves bit should remind any astute Bible reader and student of end-times prophecy of Revelation, chapter six, in which the Lamb (Christ) is opening the seals. When he opens the sixth, we read (Rev 6:12-17, KJV):

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo , there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together ; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come ; and who shall be able to stand ?

It describes a time (likely soon, IMHO) when the world is in its biggest strait – or in French, its greatest “detroit”.

Last month, the city of Detroit hosted its annual marathon footrace with the motto “You can do this”. It hardly stands out in a culture of me-me-me, where self-esteem and self-centeredness are the measure of everything. Detroit native Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” recommends exactly the opposite to what it’s title might seem to imply: become self-absorbed, he urges… and screw everyone else.

Despite my longstanding enthusiasm for long-distance running, and the many positive, transformational aspects of it, the sport, as generally practiced in the U.S. nowadays, is inherently a selfish endeavor. It has a veneer of fellowship, but of a kind that is fleeting at best compared to the real thing, in Christ.

It shares many characteristics with any other “pride” parade. Look at me!! I did it!! There are exceptions, of course (e.g., U.S. Olympian Ryan Hall who acknowledges quite explicitly, the source of his athletic gift) however most of the non-generic shirts you see at Boston (or any) marathon have the person’s name in big, black, bold letters. Look at meeee!!!! they seem to scream.

As I once did, a large number of people in this country have made physical fitness their fixation; their idolatrous, substitute god. The real one can’t like that. Our bodies are temples, but we must not worship them over the holy which dwells inside. It’s fine to keep them fit (in fact, responsibility for just that is implied in scripture), but like any good thing, it can become a spiritual wasteland at the extremes. Ultimately, one’s investment in it is temporary: it defaults to zero. We all die, even the fittest among us.

The race took place on Sunday morning. Now I’m hardly a paragon of virtue on this point (nor a stickler for Sunday vs. Saturday sabbath as doctrine) but unlike Eric Liddell (portrayed in the film, Chariots of Fire) who stood up to his own (British) monarch, refusing to run for his country and mortal king in the Olympics on a Sunday eighty-five years ago despite what must have been enormous pressure, I doubt that more than a handful ever even considered running a different race on a different day that might not interfere with the conventional day of Christian rest and worship.

Is it common? Of course. Right? Different question.

The marathon’s co-sponsor: Flagstar Bank. Flag. Star. Is that not clearly symbolic of the USA? This was the headline, ten months prior…

Flagstar Bank Milks the Public

Dec 31, 2008 (Detroit Free Press…) — Flagstar Bancorp. Inc. (FBC) said today that it has received preliminary approval to obtain $266 million from the federal government’s $700 billion bailout program for the nation’s banks.

The interesting part of this story is that in November of 2008, one month prior to seeking approval for tax payer funds, Flagstar enacted a moratorium on new business loans. The ban was so strict that it even included existing customers. Flagstar will not extend business loans and there is no anticipated date when the new loan moratorum [sic] will end…

Is this an outrage that a bank could seek taxpayer money under the premise of increasing lending to revitalize the economy while eliminating new business loans at the same time?

The story takes another twist when you consider that within two months a group of investors purchased a majority interest in Flagstar Bank shares. In effect, our government used tax payer money to subsidize Flagstar Bank while private investors moved in to scoop up the shares at approximately a 90% discount. Who the the TARP money really benefit here? Certainly not taxpayers! Did we subsidize wealthy investors?

Five days after the marathon, Flagstar’s Chairman and founder (of 40 years) announced his resignation/retirement. Reasons unknown.

During the race, three men died. For even one person to die in a marathon is unusual, though hardly unheard-of. Three is highly unusual. Three in the space of just a few minutes is extraordinary… unprecedented… bizarre. The event thus made national headlines. This piece in USA Today provides a simple overview and chronology:

The men — Daniel Langdon, 36, of Laingsburg; Rick Brown, 65, of Marietta, Ohio, and Jon Fenlon, 26, of Waterford— died within a 16-minute span during the marathon in downtown Detroit.

Langdon collapsed on Michigan Avenue between the 11- and 12-mile markers at 9:02 a.m. Fifteen minutes later, Brown collapsed near the same spot.

The youngest victim, Fenlon, collapsed at 9:18 a.m. just after finishing the half-marathon in 1:53:37.

One might think that older people are more likely to die in marathons, but this is not the case. Most who die are in their 40’s and 50’s. For someone over sixty or under thirty to die in such a race is unusual. To have two outside the typical range die in the same race only adds to the already-high odds against this series of events. In short, both young and old died.

I’m reminded of Jeremiah 51, verses 4 & 22, in which the prophet says:

They shall fall down… in her streets… I break in pieces the old man and the youth…

Lest that seem a wild tangent, Jeremiah 51 is probably the very book from which Daniel drew the prophetic insight that gave rise to Chapter nine and verse two (see below). It’s headline subject is “The Utter Destruction of Babylon.” With this audience, I hope I don’t have to expand any further on the potential parallels between that and Babylon/America.

And lest anyone think that Daniel’s prophecy is past, note that ancient Babylon was never destroyed, only conquered. The “utter destruction” speaks of a time yet-to-come. Consider also Lamentations 2:21 –

In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old…

Like the bank that sponsored the race, Detroit is highly symbolic of America’s decline and corruption, in multiple dimensions. It’s economic plunge from greatness is well-known. As of Friday, November 20th, Michigan had the highest official unemployment rate in the nation, at 15.1%. [The actual rate, nationally, is even higher than that.]

Detroit and its environs are a locus of social and racial strife and urban decay — an extended hangover from the 1970s riots. It has become a haven for desperation, giving rise to foul-mouthed media self-aggrandizement (e.g., Eminem). The woes of nearby Flint launched the career of self-styled cultural commentator, Michael Moore.

The Detroit metro area is also home to one of the largest concentrations of muslims in the U.S., (Dearborn, MI) and the site of some of the earliest islamic immigration to the U.S., all marking another axis of decline: a retreat from our Judeo-Christian roots towards a religion that lauds deception.

With all due reverence for the grief and shock that these men’s families must be experiencing, I find it potentially noteworthy that the first runner to die, Daniel Langdon, was celebrating his 36th birthday, as his wife notes here. In Biblical terms, six is a number of incompleteness, corruption, perversion and enmity towards God. It’s square, therefore, even more so. (Please note that I do not, in any way, mean to imply or ascribe such things to the late Mr. Langdon himself.)

Daniel Langdon collapsed at 9:02AM and presumably died a minute later. It’s essentially the same time that the first plane hit the twin towers on 9-11-01 (9:02 vs. 9:03). In the Book of Daniel, chapter 9, verses 2-3, we read:

…in the first year of his [King Darius'] reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.

It’s one of the most pivotal prophetic realizations in all of scripture — prelude to the most pivotal prophetic chapter in all of scripture. (In addition to having been referenced by Jesus himself in Matthew 24:15 as the place to look for end-times insight, especially as regards the abomination of desolation; it’s also the most thoroughly validated book in all of scripture.

Daniel’s humble of repentance for the sins that brought his people into captivity in the first place is so instinctive, honest, heartfelt and intense that he gets interrupted by the Angel Gabriel, bringing prophetic word of the “seventy weeks” prophecy that every end-times aficionado and Christologist is (or should be) intimately familiar with.

I find it notable that Gabriel’s visit to Daniel occurs in the first year of the reign of a foreign (Median/Persian) king (ruling the Chaldeans in Babylon) just as we are in the first year of a very different (foreign) kind of reign by a man (who may also be a foreigner by birth), over the modern Babylon that is America.

This is one of a small handful of footraces that crosses an international border, as this pdf map notes, with four of the 13.1 miles run in Canada. All three runners died just a few miles after re-entering U.S. territory. Prophetic significance? Not clear, but it brings to mind the 1999 Port Angeles, Washington interception of would-be terrorist Ahmed Ressam attempting to infiltrate on a false Canadian passport with 100+ pounds of high explosives in the trunk of his car: in hindsight, one of the more significant (and fortunate) early-warning signals of what was to come. As this obscure but recent article notes, Canada (along with Mexico) remains a potential weak-spot in our terrorism defense.

The last runner to die was named Jon (no ‘h’, just as Abram prior to having his name changed and being dedicated to God lacked an ‘ah’). He was also the youngest and the only one to finish the race (a half marathon).

John the Apostle was the youngest among Jesus’ crew of initial eyewitness disciples… and the last to die. (The marathon is a quintessentially Greek event; John wrote most if not all of his masterful scriptures in exile on the Greek island of Patmos).  Recall also that, in the 2009 Detroit marathon three died within sixteen minutes. Three. Sixteen. You with me?

John 3:16 is super-familiar to any spectator of a major American sporting event.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life…”

1st John 3:16 (also written by the Apostle John) may be even more apropos:

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

The first two runners to die collapsed while running East, parallel to the broad Fisher Highway, away from the muslim enclave of Dearborn (as one would if fleeing).

If there is prophetic meaning to be found in any of this — perhaps a stern final warning to America to repent and take John 3:16 seriously (I can think of no other prophetic/ symbolic meaning that fits all these clues) — then this Jon did not die in vain, any more than did the other runners… or John the Apostle… or Christ.

Is there a specific symbolic message to be discerned in this strange and highly unlikely sequence of events? I wouldn’t be writing this post if I didn’t suspect that there was, though I’m going to be very cautious about the timing other than to say: soon.

Closing observations:

One of the three who died made it to the finish line (of the half marathon). Two thirds died close to the end, during the period of highest intensity. Could this relate to a judgment on America? On America’s role (or dissolution) in end-times prophecy? To the time of Jacob’s trouble (aka, the second Holocaust, aka the Tribulation) during which it is prophesied that two-thirds of the Jews will die? To the Harpazo and/or the first half of the seventieth week of Daniel?

I don’t know.

What I feel confident in identifying is the block of prophetic time we now inhabit: the first half of the seventieth week of Daniel.

I and other observers believe that the 70th week of Daniel began with one of the events surrounding BHO’s election. Not everyone agrees on which one, or who the antichrist is, but time will reveal that. Despite having identified BHO as the antichrist back in July, I maintain an open mind as to exactly who is who. He’s at least a major player. In the meantime, watch Al Gore closely. Much more to come on him in subsequent posts.

Ron Reese confidently marks the date of the start of the 70th week as October 29th, 2008, when BHO ran a half-hour prime-time advertisement/speech that very likely sealed up his election the following week. Ron sees that as the half-hour silence in heaven and the critical “covenant with the many” of Daniel 9:27. I would not argue with him, though evidence for January 20th, 2009 is also significant.

Either way, it seems clear that the block of time we now inhabit is the first half of the seventieth week of Daniel, prior to the antichrist’s full, bold revelation of himself to everyone and his inhabitation by satan. In street parlance: when the poo hits the fan.

(Just as Judas allowed himself to become inhabited in stages — see John 13:2, 11, 27 — it seems likely that whomever it is has free choice up until that point.)

UPDATE I: I had not read Joseph Herrin’s meaty last post (before going “off-net”) when I wrote the above. In it, he makes ample reference to running as a metaphor for following Christ. Highly recommended (as is all of his wise, thoughtful stuff).

UPDATE II: I am made aware of a theory (three raptures, outlined by JRed: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI) that may or may not be valid and (if so) may or may not relate to the events chronicled here. But there seem to be some parallels…

My editorializing would add little to a case that should stand on its own merits and make a strong statement to anyone whose ears are still open in the “life wars”.

A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night. Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed [at age 23]… ‘I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead,’ [he said]. Dr Laureys’s new study claims that patients classed as in a vegetative state are often misdiagnosed. ‘Anyone who bears the stamp of “unconscious” just one time hardly ever gets rid of it again,’ he said.

Then again, if he was emitting CO2 that whole time, he’s a burden on the gaia-earth-mother-planet, just like the rest of us. He is exactly my age. I can scarcely imagine…

As I wrote four years ago, regarding our deathbed vigil for my brother:

…with each hour, more of God’s mystery unfolded around us… God’s purpose. God’s plan. Goodness through hardship. Purpose through broken things… God’s time. It is not ours to know. It cannot be scheduled. It just… is. We must stand still and quiet, waiting in awe and wonder.

It’s not even worth dissecting the biased wording in the latest one-sided, editorial AP lede for what seems (unsurprisingly) to lie underneath it, e.g., smoking-gun e-mails…

Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online – stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.

Instead, just go look up “Midieval Warm Period” (carefully air-brushed out of most climate debates and graphs) and investigate what happened to human civilization before, during and after. In sum: population grew, people settled places formerly too cold to inhabit (e.g., Greenland; villages high up in the Alps, etc.), crop yields increased, disease, premature death and storms all subsided…)

Or just go read what renown Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider says, on his own website. It’s a quote from an interview he gave to Discover Magazine in 1989:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

His long defense of the quote (in full context here) reveals just how badly twisted ethics have become; how much the notion of objective science had already slid when he made the statement, and how much further it has slid in the intervening two decades.

Human beings have been flawed since Adam and Eve, struggling with just the kinds of conflicts Schneider talks about. His sleight-of-hand is to put the human struggle — the temptation to lie and cheat to get one’s preferred way — ahead of something that the Enlightenment (to its credit) placed outside and beyond the fallen scientist as a person: the quest for TRUTH. Let the real data lead where it may.

For reasons too long to lay out in one post, it has become obvious that global warming (aka, climate change) initiatives are not only a fraud of the first order and a distraction from important environmental and humanitarian priorities but also a gross, hubristic conceit — part of a very raw struggle for unprecedented levels of political power. The entire “climate change” mantra has become a fig-leaf for long-held elite aspirations towards global socialism and the kind of one-world government foretold in scripture as a harbinger to the very end times. All of which can leave one feeling impotent, waiting for the other shoe to drop. (And it will.)

Yet as self-imposed deadlines draw nearer, the protagonists are coming out, implicitly revealing the congruity of their corporate objectives with such a state:

Coca-Cola is spearheading a coalition of more than 100 companies pushing a United Nations climate treaty to bind the U.S. to cap-and-trade emissions regulation, commit the world’s wealthiest nations to a potential $10 trillion in foreign aid and, possibly, form a proposed international “super-grid” for regulating and distributing electric power worldwide.

Together with the SAP and Siemens corporations, Coca-Cola launched a website called Hopenhagen, leading up to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, which opens on Dec. 7. The website invites the citizens of the world to sign a petition demanding world leaders draft binding agreements on climate change and advertises, as of today, “16 days left to seal the deal.”

Other “friends” of Hopenhagen include media outlets Newsweek, Discovery Channel, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, The Wall Street Journal and Clear Channel, among others, Internet giants Yahoo, Google and AOL and dozens of other companies and organizations.

I’m more than a little sick to think I’ve helped some of these companies directly. I find it notable that two of the top three are German.

Think about just the leader, Coca Cola, for a moment.

Imagine that you’re on the Coke board. You’ve known for some time that health concerns in the first world will limit growth there, while growth in the third world will be limited by the gradual nature of economic development. Then a big initiative comes along that will cost you virtually nothing (and save you immense amounts in legal fees).

It promises a multi-trillion-dollar wealth transfer that will enable many more in the third world to suck down your brand of sugar and caffeine in large quantities. Never mind where the money came from. Heck, under such a system, with the right kinds of kickbacks to the right people (FAR fewer than in the past)  you might even be able to lobby for a global monopoly franchise. It’s a complete no-brainer as far as they’re concerned, but not for the reasons they cite.

I find it remarkable that the left-leaning constituencies who usually claim to care about such stuff (e.g., concentrated corporate power, greed, hidden agendas, corporate ’spin’, exploitation, McWorld homogenized culture, etc.) aren’t screaming ‘foul’ at something that will clearly accelerate all of those trends.

I’m not a big Coke drinker, but if you are, consider a boycott. If you feel motivated, write a note telling them (or any of the other companies on this list) that you’re all for environmental responsibility but NOT if it’s mixed with wild-eyed, ill-advised sycophantic support for an unelected, unaccountable socialist world government bureaucracy with the power to tax at will on the pretext of “regulating” what the sun (and Son) give us.

I find it encouraging that nearly every one of the companies supporting this initiative has one or more competitors who are not. (E.g., Coke but not Pepsi; Google but not Microsoft/Bing, etc.)

Finally, it’s interesting that in ‘Hopenhagen’ we see yet another instance of that familiar word (‘hope’) divorced from any explicit object. Hope in what? In whom? To what end? Those specifics are obfuscated. Just ‘hope’; trust us. The check’s in the mail. Really. Like ‘progress’, the word feels all warm and fuzzy.

Like a seat on a warm dry bus on a cold, wet day, it brings a sense of relief… until one realizes that the doors are locked and the destination is at the sole discretion of a driver without our best interests in mind.

One thing hope definitely doesn’t mean in this context is what Paul took it to mean when he wrote 1st Corinthians (13:7): “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Love does not mean hoping for a one-world government — at least not this side of Christ’s Millennial kingdom.