RBV: Genesis 27:16

And she put the skins of the kids of the goats on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck.

--Genesis 27:16

This verse appears within the story of Jacob's tricking of the elderly, blind Isaac into giving him the patriarchal blessing instead of bestowing it on his older-by-mere-minutes twin brother Esau, who was the rightful heir. The "she" mentioned here is Rebekah, Isaac's wife and the mother of the two young men.  

Part of the background of the story is that the two parents played favorites (Genesis 25:28): Isaac preferred Esau and his "manly pursuits," while Rebekah favored Jacob, who is described as "a mild man, dwelling in tents" (Genesis 25:27), suggesting that he was more refined and that his aptitudes were more mental than physical. This favoritism put the couple at odds on at least one score, who would inherit the patriarchy after Isaac's death. Isaac evidently thought Esau the better candidate, since he was the older and stronger. His wife felt Jacob better suited to the position, being more cunning and skillful in business and management. It also spurred rivalry between the sons.

Jacob had revealed his cunning when he had bargained the birthright from Esau some time before (Genesis 25:29-34). He made cynical use of Esau's famished state to finagle the lucrative--even precious--birthright from his brother, whom the Bible says did not value it highly enough: "Esau despised his birthright" (Genesis 25:34; see Hebrews 12:16-17). The birthright was the firstborn's double portion of inheritance. (Jacob later passed this birthright on to Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh; see Genesis 48.)

In Genesis 27, Isaac had sent Esau out to hunt for game to make his favorite stew, after which he would pronounce the blessing on him. Rebekah knew that this gave her time to make her own stew from the meat of young goats to imitate Esau's dish and to prepare Jacob to disguise himself as his hairy brother (see Genesis 25:25). Jacob was a "smooth-skinned man" (Genesis 27:11) by comparison to Esau, so he would need, not only to wear his brother's clothes so that he smelled like him, but also to apply hair to the backs of his hands and neck to make the ruse work.

So, Rebekah evidently adhered the skins of the freshly killed kids to Jacob's hands and neck, perhaps even sewing them to her son's cuffs and collar so that Isaac would never think that the hair he felt was not genuine. With the short time she had to work with, she went to great lengths to ensure that Jacob received the blessing--and even then Isaac nearly guessed the truth when Jacob could not imitate Esau's voice well enough (Genesis 27:22).

Perhaps what God said in Genesis 25:23 motivated Rebekah: "Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger." She knew that God had ordained Jacob to lead the family (see Malachi 1:2-3; Romans 9:10-13). However, like Sarah before her, Rebekah took matters into her own hands rather than allowing God to work matters out so that Jacob would receive the blessing in a more ethical way.

Who knows how He would have worked it out--maybe Esau would have despised the blessing too or Isaac would have been warned by God not to bless Esau but to bestow it on Jacob at a later time. It is a moot point now. God included it in His Book so that we can learn lessons from what actually happened--lessons about the use of trickery, favoritism in families, getting ahead of God, making assumptions about what He is doing, priorities, selfish ambition, parental manipulation of their children, how one lie begets another, and so forth. We can mine a wealth of wisdom from the rivalry of Jacob and Esau.

Wisdom for the Young (Part Two)

Part of the problem that confronts young people today is that they—and frankly, all of society—have a devilish misconception of what is fun. It is no joke: What most people consider to be fun stems from a Satan-inspired viewpoint. Etymologically, fun derives from an older English word that means "to hoax, to play a trick on, to deceive." This original word once meant "to fool," and it was also used in the noun form, "a fool." When people play tricks on others, they think the reactions they get are funny. Thus, the modern concept of fun began with deception and humiliation resulting in amusement.

Fun did not come to mean "amusement," "gaiety," or "enjoyment" until the eighteenth century, suggesting that the prevalence of "having fun" is a fairly recent phenomena. In those tougher times—when child mortality was high, life spans were low, and life was hard and dangerous in general—people were more serious as a rule because life was so severe. In more modern times, having overcome many of these problems, society has elevated the concept of "fun" to its current levels. Now people want to have fun all the time and think they deserve it.

Each individual has a different idea of what is fun. Some people consider playing chess or backgammon to be fun. Others feel that playing video games is fun. Many think that actually playing a sport is fun. We all know someone who must believe talking is great fun. To others, their idea of fun is reading a book, watching television or movies, or enjoying a visit with family and friends. People have all kinds of different notions about fun.

Many of today's youth believe that fun must have an edge; it needs to be, not only be amusing, but also be risky, dangerous, even potentially lethal. It is astonishing to realize what some young people consider to be fun—activities that more mature people would consider to be wild, riotous, hazardous, and downright foolish. Their version of fun often begins with alcohol and illicit sex and gets worse—far worse—from there. It descends into dangerous "pranks," illegal activities, and perversions of all kinds. (See "The Century of the Child," in the November 1999 issue of Forerunner, particularly the inset article, "America's Lost Children," for an example.)

Too many of today's young people end up as addicts, either to alcohol or to drugs. Far too many young women resort to abortion, and they sometimes undergo multiple abortions (around one million abortions are performed each year in the United States). A frighteningly high percentage of them wind up with a sexually transmitted disease or three (in America, more than 19 million new cases of sexual disease are reported each year, and half of these occur to young people). About five percent of them begin their adult years with criminal records. Yet, while they were doing all of these things, they thought that they were having fun.

For many teens in the world, this is the current idea of fun. It is not a good and wholesome activity that is amusing or enjoyable, but behavior that is exciting and risky, often containing an edge of rebellion. Certainly, this is not everyone's idea of fun, but as Solomon says about mankind's insatiable desires for more, "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing" (Ecclesiastes 1:8). When one kind of fun loses its edge, a more extreme form takes its place.

Solomon also writes, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of correction will drive it far from him" (Proverbs 22:15). A child's tendency is toward foolish behavior because he does not have the wisdom or the experience to know what is good and right for him to do. Thus, God instructs parents to correct their children, to drive this foolish behavior out of them, and to teach them wisdom, the right and proper way to live. If they are left to themselves, undisciplined, they will likely intensify their foolishness until it becomes extreme and dangerous.

Proverbs 29:15 provides another warning: "The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother." Of course, it shames his father too, but it usually affects a child's mother more grievously. Mothers tend to feel the disgrace of their children's dishonorable behavior acutely, whereas a father is more apt to react in anger. Foolish behavior that leads to trouble and shame is frequently what results when unruly young people conceptualize and enact what they in their immaturity think is fun.

Ministers use Proverbs 29:18 in many situations, but it relates directly to the behavior of youth: "Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps the law." The first half of this verse could be paraphrased as, "When people do not have a godly vision to work toward, they run wild." This applies to everybody, of course, but it applies in spades to young people because they have not developed the internal restraints that the more mature have. Unrestraint surfaces more quickly in a child, especially if he does not have a set of rules to follow and a goal to work toward. His behavior is likely to be chaotic. It is the parents' job to place restraints on a youth's unruly nature and to guide him in the narrow way (Matthew 7:13-14), so that he grows into a happy, functioning adult in society—and, beyond that, into a well-loved and wise member of God's Family, the ultimate goal.

Notice, however, the last half of this verse: "Happy is he who keeps the law." Solomon shows us the most beneficial way to bring to pass true human happiness—true fun, real joy: by getting our children to understand and keep the law. The word happy really means "blessed." As a result of keeping the law, we will be blessed. If children keep their parents' law as well as God's law, they will truly be happy.

However, most young people think that keeping the law—doing what is right—is "uncool," "square," "boring," and "nerdy." This is another of those devilish misconceptions. In this age, virtuous young people are paragons, heroes! God certainly does not consider those who do well to be weird or strange. To the contrary, they are "the apple of His eye" because they please Him.

Unfortunately, a young person in this world is constantly beset by negative peer pressure, and one who worries about what his thrill-seeking peers think of him probably will not do what God says. He is too worried about "being cool" and fitting into his clique. Peer-pressure has always been difficult for the young people in God's church to face. Five days a week, many of them are in public school where they have "friends" that they want to impress—and his cool friends are the ones that urge him to go to the game on Friday night. His most popular friends push him to go to the party at a friend's house where the parents have gone away for the weekend. It always seems to be members of the in-crowd who drink and smoke.

Yet, God says, "You will be happy if you keep the law." Parents need to impress on their children that this world's notion of fun is misguided at the very least. Young people need to be taught from an early age that the first thing they should want is to please God, and that they can do this if they also please their parents (Exodus 20:12). In this way, they can learn a more godly idea of fun.

The Gospel Jesus Preached

Over the passing centuries since Jesus lived, traditional Christianity has unfortunately obscured many of the teachings of Scripture. In some cases, this veiling of certain truths has been deliberate—for instance, in the doctrines of justification and of the Sabbath—while others have been allowed to fade from memory or to be eclipsed by emphasis on other doctrines. The early Roman Catholic Church bears much of the blame for these significant changes, having decreed through their councils that Roman Christianity would follow paths contrary to God’s Word.

The gospel that Jesus taught during His ministry is one such area that has been purposefully diverted from scriptural reality. Ask any nominal Christian what Jesus’ gospel was, and the answer is likely to be, “He preached a gospel of grace” or perhaps, “a gospel of salvation.” Both of these are correct answers but not strictly accurate ones. Many Protestants sit in their pews each week and hear a gospel about Jesus Himself. This, too, is not wrong—certainly, Jesus is central to the gospel—but it is not exactly what the Bible says it is.

Mark 1:14-15 provides the inspired answer to our question: “Now after John [the Baptist] was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel’” (emphasis ours; see also Matthew 4:23; 9:35; 24:14). His message, then, was bigger than grace and salvation—as wonderful as they are—or even bigger than Himself, for that matter. His message was about the reign, the rule, the dominion, of God the Father, as well as of the Son, the One who is to be the King of that Kingdom (see John 18:37; Revelation 19:11-16).

The phrases “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven” are found over a hundred times in the New Testament, the majority of them in the four gospels. “Kingdom of Grace” never appears, nor—to the surprise of many—does “gospel of grace.” “Gospel of peace” is found twice, in Romans 10:15 and Ephesians 6:15, both probably echoing Isaiah 52:7 and Nahum 1:15. In Ephesians 1:13, Paul calls it “the gospel of your salvation.” Yet, by far, the gospel is most often called “the gospel of Christ,” “the gospel of God,” or something similar. From the Bible’s own wording, then, we can conclude that the divinely inspired gospel is about the Kingdom of God.

“The gospel of the Kingdom of God” encompasses grace, faith, redemption, justification, sanctification, salvation, glorification, and all the other doctrines of Christianity because all of these teachings comprise the major tenets of God’s way of life and the process of fulfilling His plan for humanity. The Kingdom of God is the goal of God’s great purpose, and if we desire to have a part in it with Him, it must be our goal too. Jesus’ preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom of God provides us with our objective, as well as with all of the component parts needed to reach it.

As many know, the word “gospel” derives from an Old English word, gödspel, which literally means “good news” or “good tidings.” Thus, when Christ preached, He proclaimed the good news of the soon-coming Kingdom of God. But, some may wonder, is this not God’s world? Is He not its Creator? Is He not sovereign of the entire universe? Why, then, did Jesus have to announce that God’s dominion was on its way?

The answer is simple: This is not God’s world! Yes, He created it. Yes, He governs all things. However, from the time of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden, God and man have effectively been separated from each other. The holy God cannot abide sin: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you,” declares Isaiah 59:2. In turn, sin has made humanity hold God at arm’s length for thousands of years, and man’s banishment of God from his life has resulted in his perpetually miserable condition: war, poverty, disease, deception, distrust, and death.

Taking advantage of the vacuum, as it were, Satan the Devil has enthroned himself “the god of this age” and blinded the minds of men and women to the truths that would set them free (II Corinthians 4:4). He has managed to deceive the whole world (Revelation 12:9), not only about himself, but about God and His way of salvation. This is why, among the first things He had to do, Jesus had to endure the Devil’s temptations and overcome him and them without sinning (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). He had to prove Himself superior to Satan’s devices and worthy of His throne over the whole earth and all mankind.

Luke in particular shows the link between Jesus’ overcoming of Satan and His preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Just three verses after the end of the temptation narrative, Luke recounts the episode of Jesus’ announcement of His Messiahship in Nazareth’s synagogue (Luke 4:16-21). He quotes from Isaiah 49:8-9, which provide His job assignment:

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD. (Luke 4:18-19)

His mission, He says, is to preach the good news to the spiritually poor people of this world, whom Satan has imprisoned and deceived, and to begin the process of freeing them from the oppression of sin. He would proclaim liberty from their debt of sin, just as the year of Jubilee freed the Israelites from their financial debts (Leviticus 25:8-12). The Jubilee is a type of Christ’s thousand-year reign, often called the Millennium, which will begin with His second coming and the binding of Satan (see Revelation 20:1-6).

The gospel of the Kingdom of God balances these present and future elements of God’s purpose. By His calling, God is selecting a few chosen servants to be the firstfruits of His Kingdom (John 6:44; Matthew 22:14; James 1:18; Revelation 14:4). These elect, who believe the gospel, are put through the process of salvation: They hear God’s Word, believe, repent of their sins, are baptized, and receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. God forgives and justifies them through His grace, and then they become sanctified both by the imputation of Christ’s holiness as well as through the lifelong process of overcoming their sins, growth in righteousness, and bearing fruit of godliness. At Christ’s return, they will be resurrected and changed into spirit, given eternal life, and glorified as God’s sons and daughters. They, as the Bride of Christ forever (Revelation 19:7-9), will reign as kings and priests (Revelation 5:10).

Such is the gist of Jesus’ message of good tidings to mankind. In reality, it is the message of the entire Bible—God’s wonderful plan of salvation and the establishment of His everlasting Kingdom.

James Cameron's Lost Integrity

This past Sunday, March 4, the Discovery Channel aired Titanic-producer/director James Cameron's controversial documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus. The documentary—gleefully rechristened as a "crockumentary" by its detractors—purports to reveal scientific evidence that archeologists had found the actual tomb of Jesus' family in Jerusalem. Within this particular tomb, which had been discovered and excavated in 1980 by Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner, ten ossuaries—small limestone caskets for storing bones—were found, and on five of them were hastily inscribed names in Aramaic: Jesus, Matthew, Joseph, and two forms of Mary.

For Cameron, no stranger to blockbusters, this was heady stuff, and his production company, Associated Producers, along with award-winning investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, University of North Carolina at Charlotte religious studies chair James Tabor, and British-born archeologist Gibson Shimon, set out to bring this spectacular discovery to the attention of the world. Once the Discovery Channel signed on to the project, it became a major television event. It would present their allegedly scientific findings step by step to an amazed viewing public.

The problem is that, though long on the sensational and hypothetical, they were quite short on scientific facts. The Jerusalem tomb that they claim to be that of the family of Jesus of Nazareth is not—and certainly cannot be proven to be—His sepulcher. In fact, had the family of Jesus owned such a tomb, it would not have been anywhere in Jerusalem but in Nazareth, their hometown.

First, the biblical evidence is squarely contrary to the documentary's claims. After Jesus' crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea begged Pilate for the Savior's body, burying it in his own newly dug tomb (Matthew 27:57-60; Mark 15:42-46; Luke 23:50-53; John 19:38-42). Notice that each of the four Gospels mentions this fact. Jesus, then, was never buried in His family's tomb, but in another family's crypt. Besides, Jesus rose from that grave after three days and three nights, and the Gospels are equally clear that no bones were left behind (Matthew 28:6-7, Mark 16:6; Luke 24:3, 6, 12, 22-24; John 20:5-7).

To swallow the story of The Lost Tomb of Jesus, one must believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead, that His disciples stole the body from under the noses of the guards (a lie spread by the Jewish leadership of the day; see Matthew 28:11-15), and that His body was reburied later in His family's tomb. This last assumption is especially ludicrous, considering that His body's presence in such an obvious place could have—and would have—been used by enemies of early Christianity to disprove the apostles' claims of Jesus' resurrection. However, for nearly two millennia, the world has had literary evidence of Jesus' bodily resurrection, supported by more than five hundred eyewitnesses, in I Corinthians 15:3-8. There are no bones to make a case about!

Second, the names found in the tomb may seem to be prima facie evidence that we are dealing with biblical figures, especially since the one ossuary reads, "Jesus son of Joseph." What could be more conclusive? However, such reasoning is just plain shallow. Jesus was not the son of Joseph, and His family, most of whom soon became Christians, would not have recorded this falsehood. In such a situation, they would have instead proclaimed that He was the Son of God, as He Himself declared (John 3:18; 9:35-37; 10:36; etc.). In addition, other than the disciple, who was not related to Jesus, there is no known Matthew among Joseph and Mary's clan. Such a brother, grandfather, son, uncle, or cousin must be assumed.

Also, that a "Mary," even in the form of Mariemene e Mara ("of Mariemene, known as the Master," as the TV show disciphered it), should not be surprising, as nearly a third of the known names of Judean women of the time were also forms of "Mary." It is probable that most, if not all, of the tombs from that time held bones of some Mary. That this one contained the bones of a specific Mary, Mary Magdalene, is statistically implausible, especially since there is no record anywhere that the biblical Mary Magdalene ever held this title. One must bestow credence on the Gnostic gospels—and only specific ones of those—to come anywhere close to such a title. Further, there is simply no evidence that after Jesus' death Mary Magdalene lived in close proximity to Jesus' family or that she died in Jerusalem.

The documentary claimed that their statistician, the University of Toronto's Andrey Feuerverger, calculated the odds of the tomb being that of Jesus' family at 600:1. However, what he told them was actually that there was a one in 600 chance that another family tomb would have the same specific names. In other words, the producers misrepresented their own scholar's findings. Tal Ilan, compiler of the Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, which was used as the basis for statistical research regarding these names on The Lost Tomb of Jesus, contends, "[These names] are in every tomb in Jerusalem. . . . But my research proves exactly the opposite [of the documentary's claims]—these are the most common names that you could expect to find anywhere." Yeshua, for instance, was the name of about one in twenty Jewish men of the day. In essence, then, that these names appear together in one tomb proves nothing.

Third, the DNA findings that were supposedly the most significant of the documentary team's findings have absolutely no meaning. According to the program, a scientist took swabs from the "Jesus" box and the "Mariemene" box, tested them for mitochondrial DNA (which would show maternal genetic similarity or dissimilarity), and the results conclusively showed that this Jesus and this Mary were not related. Their conclusion: These two must have been married! Talk about a leap of faith!

The test means nothing of the sort. All it shows is that the two DNA samples were from people who were not related. It does not show that the unknown donors of the samples were even of different sexes, far less that they were married! Moreover, over the course of a few centuries, several individual's bones could have been stored in the ossuaries; there is no way to match any DNA sample to the names scratched on the boxes. And there is certainly no baseline DNA from the real Jesus or Mary to compare the samples to. The test is meaningless, except to inform us that whoever belonged to the DNA did not have the same matrilineal descent.

With this documentary, James Cameron and his team of researchers have revealed only that they have no integrity, ethical or scientific, and thus that they have no credibility. Jesus warned us that at the time of the end charlatans would be claiming, "Here is the Christ!" or "There [He is]!" (Matthew 24:23). Take Jesus' own advice: "Do not believe it."

Hijacking Our Language

Listen (RealAudio)

The English language is a huge, vibrant, beautiful tongue. No language on earth can compare to its breadth and depth. The definitive Oxford English Dictionary, the unofficial but accepted authority on the language, lists and defines more than a half-million words, far more than any other language spoken today. Thousands of words are added each year through the coining of new words, the combining of old words, and the borrowing of foreign words, although the curmudgeonly among lexiphiles grumble about these additions, declaiming that the language already contains words that mean what the new words attempt to describe.

Far more pernicious, however, is the purposeful twisting of common words' meanings to fit and promote a particular political point of view. This came out during the recent debate over President Bush's deployment of 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. The Bush administration and its backers said this was a "surge" in troop levels, spinning the policy as a positive push to wrest control of the region from the insurgents and bring peace and victory.

Its opponents, however, described it using a different term: To them, it was an "escalation," bringing back long memories of a similar troop buildup in Vietnam—and of the disastrous results that ultimately followed. (It should be noted, however, that the additional soldiers in Vietnam did not cause the ignominious retreat from that country; it was a lack of political will to defeat the Viet-Cong.) The two sides have also volleyed the terms "withdrawal" and "redeployment," as well as "terrorist" and "insurgent," among others.

Another example of language abuse is the oft-heard term, "homophobe," used as a pejorative for anyone who opposes homosexuality. It is a total misnomer, as its intrinsic meaning is "fear of sameness" (homo- "same" + phobia "fear"). As can be easily seen, it is similar to words such as "arachnophobia" (fear of spiders), "altophobia" (fear of heights), and "xenophobia" (fear of strangers or foreigners). "Homophobia" has been hijacked by the liberal left and distorted to mean "hatred of homosexuals" in order to paint its opposition as irrational, untrustworthy, and even dangerous. Not content with morphing gay from "merry" to "homosexual," the left has violated the English language to its own debased ends.

Similarly, a further distortion of language has occurred with the usage of "tolerant" and its negative, "intolerant." In its original sense, tolerant means "inclined to forbear or endure," implying that a person would put up with something known to be morally wrong, dangerous, annoying, etc., for an indeterminate time. However, the word is now being used to mean "accepting without bias of what is different" or even "welcoming" of the same. The politically correct crowd demands that society "tolerate," not just cultural differences, but also sexual perversity and religious deception as if they were normal and morally equivalent to what is good and true. A person is considered "intolerant"—and likely to be ridiculed, hated, and perhaps persecuted—if he expresses any opinion that does not grant full normalcy to any unbiblical belief or deviant behavior, including pederasty, Wicca, terrorism, same-sex unions, children’s rights, Islam, feminism, or whatever the liberal cause of the week happens to be.

Speaking of belief, another word that is becoming warped is "fundamentalism." Originally, this word was coined to describe a twentieth-century Protestant movement that stressed a literal interpretation of Scripture as "fundamental to Christian life and teaching," as Webster's so succinctly phrases it. Although not Protestant, the church of God would generally agree with this approach. However, "fundamentalist" has been turned against those who practice fundamentalism, becoming a derogatory term meaning "fanatic, right-wing religious nut."

Incredible as it may seem, this definition has been helped along by the rise of Islamic terrorism. These terrible acts of violence have been perpetrated by Muslims adhering to Wahhabism, a literal, ultraconservative, and quite belligerent interpretation of the Koran. Rosie O'Donnell and others of her ilk have made ridiculous public statements in which Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists are equated—as if Jerry Falwell has a global network of militant Christians devising havoc against innocent civilians throughout the Muslim world.

What is occurring to the English language recalls the prophet's cry in Isaiah 5:20, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" The malicious alteration of language is one more black mark against a society descending rapidly toward a disastrous fall, weakened first by its own suicidal behavior before succumbing to its encircling enemies. Isaiah broadens the principle of distortion to include not just words but also morality, ideas, impressions, and even sensory perceptions. When black equals white in so many areas of human life, all distinctions disappear—and rather than the world coming together in bliss and harmony, it produces weakness and eventual dissolution. Such is the theme of the decline and fall of most of the great civilizations.

Words are important, for through them come all ideas, good or bad. In the end, they are but symbols whose meanings can often be distorted to suit intent of the author, and we need to be attentive to their use so that we are not deceived. Remember Jesus' first warning in the Olivet Prophecy: "Take heed that no one deceives you" (Matthew 24:4). In this day of politically correct language, it is very good advice.

A Day of Inconvenient Truths

Listen (RealAudio)

Former presidential candidate and senator from Tennessee, Albert Gore, Jr., spent the first half of 2006 jet setting throughout the United States and Europe to tout his new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. In it, he proclaimed the end of the world as we know it, but despite his Bible Belt origins, his apocalyptic vision does not include even a whiff of biblical prophecy. He is a proponent of sudden, disastrous, worldwide climate change due to global warming, the kind imagined in another recent movie, The Day After Tomorrow. So, any day now—perhaps even as soon as this coming Sunday—everyone north of the Tropic of Cancer or thereabouts will either be frozen solid or huddled, shivering and blue, in their own custom igloos.

The irony of the Gore movie's title is delicious, right alongside Bill "The Gambler" Bennett's Book of Virtues and the late Sam Walton's Made in America. An Inconvenient Truth purports to marshal the facts on global warming and predicts the dire consequences of ignoring them. Yet, the movie itself turns a blind eye to the mounds of scientific evidence that contradict its premise. They are themselves rather inconvenient.

For instance, the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels has written two well-documented books, The Satanic Gases and Meltdown, both of which conclusively explain that, while there has been some increase in global temperatures over the past few decades, the warming trend has been quite gradual and natural—and certainly will not produce catastrophic results. In fact, temperatures rose much more rapidly in the decades before 1940, and there were no adverse effects then. Michaels' offerings are just a few of the many books and studies published in the last few years to balance the environmentalist left's Chicken Little scenario.

That is exactly what it is: a fake crisis, based loosely on debatable science, promoted to advance a political agenda. As Michael Crichton explained in his book, State of Fear, movers and shakers of all stripes have learned that manufacturing crises, producing doubt and fear in the populace, opens the electorate to suggestion and manipulation. Although these influential members of society and advocacy groups assert the truth is on their side, they really care little about it. Their first rule is "the ends justify the means."

In the past few weeks, another issue has moved forward in the face of inconvenient facts. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, a Democrat and soon-to-be powerful House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, has pledged to introduce a bill to reinstate involuntary conscription to the U.S. military—the draft. The crisis he has created, along with willing abettors in the mainstream media, is that of class warfare. He claims that the poor and disadvantaged comprise a disproportional percentage of the armed forces. In other words, the wealthy and elite in this country do not contribute their fair share to the nation's defense in terms of manpower.

What are the inconvenient truths that Rangel ignores? The Heritage Foundation's Dr. Tim Kane has engaged in an exhaustive study of the composition of U.S. military recruits since 1999. He and his associates have found that Representative Rangel has reached the exact opposite conclusion to the facts. For instance, Kane's "Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005" relates:

The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality. . . . Those who have been so quick to suggest that today's wartime recruits represent lesser quality, lower standards, or lower class should be expected [to] make an airtight case. Instead, they have cited selective evidence, which is balanced by a much clearer set of evidence showing improving troop quality.

. . . For example, it is commonly claimed that the military relies on recruits from poorer neighborhoods because the wealthy will not risk death in war. This claim has been advanced without any rigorous evidence. Our review of Pentagon enlistee data shows that the only group that is lowering its participation in the military is the poor. The percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004, and 13.7 percent in 2005. . . .

In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) support the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers. (Emphasis ours.)

What is Representative Rangel up to? How can he ignore such obvious facts? He is advancing a political agenda to punish the wealthy and privileged, as he imagines them, and to extort money and benefits for his poor and downtrodden constituents, as they are only in his own mind. Stripped of all its rhetoric, his proposal is sheer socialism, arbitrarily redistributing wealth and advantage to those who have shown no inclination to earn it for themselves. But then, socialists have never let the truth weigh them down.

As Christians, as keepers of the Ten Commandments, we are bound to the truth. Whatever kind of truth it is—religious, scientific, political, social, financial—we must give it its due regard. Yet, we live in a nation—in a world—in which the pursuit and respect for truth is waning and almost gone. God says through Jeremiah: "'And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me,' says the LORD" (Jeremiah 9:3).

But we do know Him, and we have a responsibility to "buy the truth, and sell it not" (Proverbs 23:23, KJV). As liars and deceivers increase (II Timothy 3:13), we must be on the lookout for those who press on with their agendas despite the inconvenient truths of reality. No good end will come on those whose lives are built on lies.

A World Upside-Down

God thunders in Isaiah 5:20, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" In this verse, He pronounces a curse on those who judge a matter exactly opposite to reality, and its connection to the surrounding verses suggests that such people do this knowingly to deceive others. The two immediately preceding verses condemn those who sin blatantly and then taunt God to come and punish them, and the following verse censures "those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight" (verse 21). The subjects of these three "woes" hang together as facets of humanity in rebellion against God: the brazen sinner, the cunning spinmeister, and the self-righteous know-it-all.

Most people have little difficulty spotting the brash sinner and the puffed-up know-it-all, but the crafty spinmeister can easily fool us into thinking along the lines on which he leads us. Millions of Americans and others around the world are still twisted like pretzels after the Clinton administration's eight years of spin—to the point that his sixtieth birthday has been marked here and abroad as a watershed event for the Baby Boomer generation. Perhaps there is no clearer example of turning matters upside-down than Bill Clinton's infamous line of defense during the 1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." To him, even the meaning of English's most basic word of existence could be manipulated to obfuscate.

We live in a world of spin. From celebrities to corporations to nations, everyone is engaged in a fierce public relations battle for the loyalty and affection of as much of the population as possible. The objective of their efforts is not one of the nobler virtues—peace, truth, freedom, service, and justice, among others, although these words may be used in their rhetoric—but simply allegiance at any cost. A celebrity puts on a public persona to gain fans who will pay for his entertainment offerings, and his "people" ensure his foibles never make the evening news—and if they do, they are paid good money to cast them in a positive light. Companies do this with their operations and products, and nations do this with their policies and practices.

Now even non-state actors—read, terrorist organizations—busily attempt to shape world opinion in their favor by controlling the news. In the case of the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, Hezbollah has managed to convince most of the world that it won the month-long war in total opposition to the facts on the ground. In reality, their stronghold, southern Lebanon, lies in ruins, devastated by weeks of nearly constant bombing and mortar fire, besides the ground actions of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Hundreds of its fighters are dead, its medium-range missile inventory has been destroyed, and much of its physical infrastructure lies as rubble. Because it provoked the Israelis into retaliating, Hezbollah has lost huge numbers of its dwindling supply of supporters both to death in the war and to disaffection; only a few hundred citizens showed up at its most popular victory march in south Beirut. It is desperately trying to win them back with gifts of $12,000 per household to pay for destroyed homes and lives (ironically, they are paying in U.S. dollars, most likely counterfeited in Iran and funneled through militants in Syria).

Hezbollah has been successful in this public-relations coup because it set Israel up under a set of parameters for victory that no nation could accomplish. According to the terrorists and their co-conspirators in the media, victory for Israel was possible only by completely rooting out and destroying every last member of Hezbollah anywhere in the world. If only one member of Hezbollah had been able to wave a flag of victory after the IDF had ground Lebanon to dust, Israel would have been seen as failing in its mission. A terrorist organization would have faced and stood up to the military behemoth of the region and remained viable. And this is what happened.

This has been taken to such an extent that the Israelis themselves believe it! Strategic Forecasting reports today:

About 63 percent of Israelis think Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should resign as a result of failings in Israel's conflict with Hezbollah, according to a poll published Aug. 25 in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The poll also revealed that 74 percent want Defense Minister Amir Peretz to step aside and 54 percent want military chief Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz to resign.

Militarily, Israel's action in Lebanon compares favorably with other historic victories since its founding in 1948. Geopolitically, the situation in the Middle East favors its continued dominance over the divided and weak Arab/Muslim states around it. Yet, the perception of matters, framed by both the subtle and the blatant use of deceitful images and opinion in the media, is that Israel is vulnerable, weakened, and ripe for destruction. God prophesies in Zechariah 12:2, "Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem." The Arab/Muslim nations, in saying that up is down and down is up, are behaving in such a drunken, unrealistic manner.

God pronounces a curse upon those who purposefully turn matters inside-out. In this regard, Zechariah 12:3 relates, "And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it." God has a reason for the descendants of Judah being in possession of the Holy Land at the end time, and Israel will not be dislodged until His purposes are fulfilled. No matter what its enemies perceive, the reality is that Israel is considerably stronger than they are, and God promises to look out for the house of Judah in its troubles with its neighbors (verses 4-6).

The truth is that God is on His throne and maneuvering affairs in anticipation of the end of the age. Are we willing to recognize reality?

Eradicating Humanity

When I am not editing someone else's writing or writing something of my own, I am often found reading. It is something I have been doing with regularity since I plowed through a children's version of The Ugly Duckling when I was five years old. Seeing that I took to reading like, well, a duck—make that a swan—to water, my parents encouraged it with access to lots of books, and I am still in the habit.

My current fare is C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, a skinny volume whose main theme is, according to the back cover, "how to best teach our children—and ourselves—not merely reading and writing, but also a sense of morality." The late Mr. Lewis was certainly qualified to discuss such a subject, since as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at both Oxford and Cambridge universities, he was involved in education all his life. The book is actually a transcript of a series of lectures he gave—obviously to a highly educated audience, as his prose is liberally salted with references to Classical literature and phrases in foreign tongues (Latin predominating). In a similar vein, his arguments are quite intellectual and logical in that Oxford don sort of way. Because of this, I have had to re-read many sections, many paragraphs, and many sentences two and three times to catch his drift. This is not a book for the faint of heart. Though it runs only 109 pages, it is not a quick read.

Beyond the main theme of education, however, lies a concept with which most Christians should be familiar, which is found in the title, The Abolition of Man. Lewis restricts his comments to the methods by which modern educators, whom he calls "Conditioners," are attempting to wean the younger generation away from adherence to natural law. In other words, modern education's premise, he posits, is to remove from humanity what makes it essentially human—its universal values. He argues that the products of today's educational system are "Men Without Chests," the title of his first chapter; the education-elite are ripping the heart out of mankind by mass-producing essentially valueless graduates. Their philosophy has come to be known as relativism or postmodernism, which is commonly understood to mean "there are no absolute truths."

Because he is speaking to a secular audience, Lewis does not take his argument the further step that a thinking Christian would. Lewis was a deeply religious man, and he probably contemplated the spiritual ramifications of his thesis in his private thoughts. Nevertheless, he does not mention the malevolent influence behind this valueless philosophy, Satan the Devil. Such an excursion into the realm of "the ruler of this world" (John 14:30) would not have been well-received by his audience. We, however, must take his presence, his power, and his participation in the affairs of humankind seriously.

What is the primary aim of "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2)? The abolition of man! Ever since God created the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden, Satan has been interested in nothing else but the eradication of humanity from his "proper domain" (Jude 6). He sees mankind, made after the God-kind (Genesis 1:26-27) with the potential of being born again into the God Family (John 3:3-8; Revelation 14:1-5; 20:4-6; etc.), as interlopers, squatters, and vagrants in his realm. He is painfully aware that God intends humanity to replace him and his demons as rulers of this planet, and he is fighting like a cornered rat to retain his place and power. Though he has already been personally defeated by Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:14), he still believes he can win or at least frustrate and perhaps ruin God's plan by deceiving, attacking, destroying, and killing as many human beings as he can (I Peter 5:8). He especially desires to derail and exterminate as many of God's begotten children as he can (Revelation 12:17).

Most people would probably laugh at such a notion, for it is not popular to believe in a being of ultimate evil like Satan the Devil. This is a very skeptical world. If people cannot see it, they do not believe it—and Satan has done a good job of deceiving the whole world into believing that he does not exist (Revelation 12:9). Now he can hide in plain sight and go virtually unnoticed. Mankind blithely ascribes his malicious works to "natural causes," "unfortunate accidents," "coincidences," "delusions," "mental illnesses," "misunderstandings," even "progress." Thus, the valueless educational methods Mr. Lewis decries are considered by the intelligentsia to be an evolutionary step forward for mankind—while the truth is that Satan has merely handed Western civilization a time bomb calibrated to render millions of people spiritually deaf to God's call.

The serpent is more subtle than any beast of the field (Genesis 3:1), and Adam and Eve's descendants are proving to be just as gullible and sinful as their first parents—perhaps more so in our degenerate age. It is interesting that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, their eyes were opened (verse 7), but in reality, now they had their eyes wide shut. Paul writes, ". . . whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them" (II Corinthians 4:4).

It is only when we are called by God and our eyes opened by His Holy Spirit that we can see what is really going on in the world (II Corinthians 3:16). We are in a life-and-death struggle "against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). We have to "put on the whole armor of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil" (verse 11). In this battle, we have to recognize the real enemy and his stratagems and to "resist him, steadfast in the faith" (I Peter 5:9).

No worries. It is just the fate of humanity on the line.