BP, Wormwood and Other Fairy Tales

I have grown very weary of the interminable contrived associations of the BP oil spill with the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. With every scientifically enshrouded attempt to manufacture a global apocalyptic "end of the world" scenario, I find eschatological presuppositions at the epicenter. First it was Henning Kemner, then Dr. James P. Wickstrom and now Lindsey Williams. All arguing that this is not just the greatest ecological disaster this country has ever faced, but this is the beginning of the end. I found that Williams, whom I initially presumed to be making objective scientific claims, is also being driven by his dire apocalyptic paradigm.

A friend recently wrote: "My thoughts are based solely on my opinion of Lindsey Williams. I bought the book ["Where's the Food"] in 1987 "when I was young and gullible" and he had me believing the food would be gone in 2 years (which was his prediction). Looking back now I'm quite ashamed of my gullibility. I had no idea the guy was still around till I saw this post. I know nothing of the radio host [Alex Jones]. Back then he was driven by his eschatology and it looks as if he still is. Preterism rescued me from all that.."

Following, is a sound hermeneutical (science of interpretation) discourse on Revelation 8:8-11.

Part 2

Thanks to Gary DeMar for his commitment to a well-reasoned interpretational approach. Being driven and tossed by the proverbial winds of the prophetic speculators,is a very sad place to be, and I can't begin to verbalize how grand it is to have stepped off that merry-go-round. Shame on the modern day "prophets" for contributing to a fear-based sense causing the spiritual indifference and ultimate malaise (or is that mayonnaise :) that too many in the Church are wallowing in.

As I've stated before, simply because this is NOT a fulfillment of Bible prophecy, doesn't lessen the severity of this eco disaster. Many lives will be irreparably altered by what appears to be the callous negligence of BP. However, instead of panicking and assuming this is a God ordained "last days" plague, which it is not, we must strive to find the solution.

The Gospel will be victorious. We aren't living in the "present evil age" (last days) that passed away with the Old Covenant in the first century. Therefore, I believe God is looking for messengers who will view serious problems like the one we're facing now, not as unscalable mountains but as mere hurtles to be traversed. It's all a matter of perception. I'm so looking forward to the day when the Church steps out of this defeatist, rapture mentality. A whole lot more will be done if we expect success.

Let me close by quoting from both the first and last chapters of Jesus' last revelatory words. We may be confused by the contents of the imagery contained therein, but as long as we recognize that God cannot lie, we can rest assured these events are not in our future.

Revelation 1:1-3 (NASB) ¹ The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, ² who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. ³ Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.

Revelation 22:6-7 (NASB) ⁶ And he said to me, "These words are faithful and true"; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must soon take place. ⁷ "And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book."

Revelation 22:10 (NASB) And he said to me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.

Revelation 22:12 (NASB) "Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.

Revelation 22:20 (NASB) He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming quickly." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Could God have been any clearer regarding the timing of His intentions?

If it's "orthodox" to believe that God was not capable or willing to communicate truthfully and clearly to His first century Church, then at at that point I must reject orthodoxy. The God I worship is faithful and true and it is not within His divine nature to lie or deceive. By arguing that the Revelation's fulfillment is still future, when in the first century Jesus Christ prophesied the things "MUST soon take place", are we not in grave danger of unwittingly calling God's veracity into question?

The unprovoked 1967 attack on the USS Liberty

Was Israel's 1967 Attack on the USS Liberty, a mistake in identity?

You be the judge whether "mistaken identity" was even a remotely plausible excuse for the murder of 34 servicemen and the injuries of 174 more. In the videos to follow, watch the testimonies of the courageous men who survived this horrific unprovoked attack. Under Secretary Ball's concluding comment (below the first of five videos), will forever ring in my ears. Will we learn nothing from this tragic event? To what degree has our Middle East policy been shaped by this attack? And to what measure does the Israeli mindset, KNOWING that "they can get away with almost anything" without retribution, shape the Middle East today, some 43 years later? Our consistent acquiescence and insistence that their acts (like the one detailed below) are fully protected and empowered by the sovereign hand of God, is leading us in every direction but the Promised Land.

"Loss of Liberty" - The cover-up of the 1967 Israeli assault on the USS Liberty

 

George Ball (1909-1994), the Under Secretary of State of Economic affairs during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, wrote: "The ultimate lesson of the Liberty attack, was that it had far more affect on policy in Israel than in America. Israel's leaders concluded that nothing they might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal. If America's leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that the American friends would let them get away with almost anything."

 

  Comments from the surviving decorated heroes of the USS Liberty: "If we could get the truth of the Liberty out, it would change the history of this country." "I can't understand why the American newspapers and TV people have helped cover this up by not covering our stories." "Never before has the U.S. Navy ignored eye witness testimony of American Military, to accept on faith the story told by their attackers." "There should be a congressional committee, both senate and house, to examine all the data...and it's getting late to do this, because like McGonagle, God bless, he's gone." "To me that was one of the worst cover-ups in American history. How low can our government go?" "So I will never buy the idea that some of the pilots thought this was another ship." "We didn't know who was attacking us. They didn't know who was attacking us. I don't know how Washington can say, Don't go, because they're friends of ours. That's the thing that's always bothered me, right there."

Any time anyone even questions Israel, the immediate cry is racism and/or antisemitism. Let it be clear that I am neither a racist nor an Antisemite. Few abhor bigotry any more than I do. I love the Israeli people. and they desperately need the Gospel of Christ. However, they have not been well served by their Zionist leaders who have appeared to stop at nothing to further their cause. As Christians, I don't believe it's prudent to blindly accept Israel's every action as though they are empowered by the hand of God. Clearly they are an ally, but then again, what did that mean for the crew of the Liberty? Do allies intentionally sink the ships of their compatriots?

Forty three years after the vicious and sustained attack on the USS Liberty, the testimonies of the survivors and the blood of the dead speak clearly. We can squabble about motives all day long but the fact is that only those so heavily weighted by presupposition could possibly believe this was merely a mistake in identity. The Zionist track record is simply not very good. With the ethnic cleansing in the late 1940's throughout the 50's (see Elisas Chacour's "Blood Brothers") and the attempted sinking of the $40m USS Liberty intelligence ship in international waters, what else are they prepared to do?

(In my view, the above video by sensationalist Alex Jones, clouds the waters. Some of his claims are suspect)

The following quotes are from the book, The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship (2009, Simon & Schuster), by James Scott, a longtime journalist living in South Carolina, whose father was an officer on the Liberty.[http://mondoweiss.net/2010/05/the-u-s-s-liberty-and-the-culture-of-impunity.html]

[With the Liberty] the United States had the capability to intercept and decipher VHF and UHF radio frequencies, common frequencies used for government and military communications...

In the case of the Liberty, the White House, afraid of offending Israel's domestic backers at a time when it needed support for its Vietnam policy, looked the other way....

Hints of disbelief did emerge, often from small newspapers outside the Beltway. Many puzzled over how Israel's exceptional military could make such a blunder...

[T]he overall lack of criticism of Israel baffled some senior government leaders. The dogged press corps consistently challenged the administration on its Vietnam policy and ambitious social programs. In the case of the Liberty, the press aimed most of its critical questions at the American government. Israel in contrast enjoyed a reprieve. Reporters soon adopted the phrase 'accidental attack,' a description that frustrated Pentagon officials, who felt it minimized the ferocity of the sustained assault that had killed or injured two out of every three men on board...

"We were quite convinced the Israelis knew what they were doing," [Thomas Hughes, director of the State Department's Intelligence office] later said. "It was hard to come to any other conclusion." Other senior staffers agreed, believing that Israel did not want the United States reading its wartime message traffic....

Despite Jerusalem's close ties with Washington, many State Department officials--and others in the intelligence community--believed the Jewish state's survival instinct was so strong that, if necessary, Israel would attack a close ally in the interest of self-preservation....

[According to William Wolle, former State Department:] "The feeling of those of us at the working level in NEA [State Department Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs] was that the Israelis had deliberately done this so that we couldn't read all of their communications, etc. We are their ally but they are not going to trust us when it comes to a wartime situation in terms of what information might get out, what we might pass along to someone. We all felt it was no accident."...

Soon after the Liberty attack, [National Security Agency director Lieutenant General Marshall] Carter appeared before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to discuss the Liberty. [Deputy Secretary of Defense] Cyrus Vance joined him... "Cy Vance just told me to keep my mouth shut," [Gerard] Burke [Carter's chief of staff] recalled his boss telling him.... "There was absolutely no question in anybody's mind that the Israelis had done it deliberately," Burke said. "I was angrier because of the cover-up... The only mystery to me was why was the thing being covered up."...

Some of President Johnson's advisers later regretted the handling of the attack. "We failed to let it all come out publicly at the time," said Lucius Battle, the assistant secretary of state for near eastern and south Asian affairs. "We really ignored it for all practical purposes, and we shouldn't have." George Ball, the former undersecretary of state prior to [Nicholas] Katzenbach, wrote that the Liberty ultimately had a greater effect on policy in Israel than in the United States. "Israel's leaders concluded that nothing they might do would offend Americans to the point of reprisal," Ball wrote. "If America's leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with anything."

" . . . an act of military recklessness reflecting wanton disregard for human life."

Then Secretary of State Dean Rusk in a 10 June 1967 diplomatic note to the Israeli Ambassador.

"But I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. Their sustained attack to disable and sink Liberty precluded an assault by accident or some trigger-happy local commander. Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous." 

Rusk, As I Saw It, W.W.Norton, 1990. p 388

BP's Deep Water Horizon Oil Blowout

The truth behind the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

I've received more than one email warning that this BP Oil disaster is not a solvable problem. This, I am told, is the wrath of God being literally poured out as the seas turn into blood. Following is from Dr. James P. Wickstrom, warning in "Oil Volcano Pressure Too Strong For Containment" that BP accidentally drilled into an underground volcano.

Wickstrom writes:

"It has been estimated by experts that the pressure which blows the oil into the Gulf waters is estimated to be between 20,000 and 70,000 PSI (pounds per square inch). Impossible to control. What US Scientists Are Forbidden To Tell The Public About The Gulf What you are about to read, is what the scientists in the United States are not allowed to tell you in great fear of the Obama administration.

They are under the threat of severe repercussions to the max.. Scientists confirming these findings cannot be named due to the above, but what they believe, they want to be known by all. Take a U. S. map, lay it flat and measure inland just the minimum 50 miles of total destruction all around the Gulf of Mexico as to what you will read below. The carnage to the United States is so staggering, it will take your breathe away.

Should what the scientists who are trying to warn everyone about be even close to being true... all of Florida will be completely destroyed as will everyone and everything on it.You decide!! Everyone has the right to read what I have just written in this article, as well as to what is written below by the scientists who the Obama administration and BP are trying to shut up."

This kind of junk science, based upon a faulty reading of God's Word, will continue to plague the Church while eroding the Bible's integrity, until we take the Bible seriously and stop playing games with its clarity. Let's bring sanity back into Christianity. :)