Taking Thoughts Captive

If you're doing your daily Bible reading from the ACNA Daily Lectionary—and I hope you are, because I think it's the best reading plan for most people—then you're getting ready during Advent to read through the Book of Revelation. Exciting times!

It's no secret that I disagree strongly with the Dispensationalist understanding of Scripture, as held by John MacArthur, Calvary Chapel, the Left Behind series, Dallas Theological Seminary, and much of contemporary Evangelicalism. This understanding is heterodox, at best, and contradicts nearly 1900 years of consistent biblical interpretation from the days of the Apostles through the 19th century. For some reason, that reality doesn't both people like it should.

Watching a Todd Friel video this morning on the Book of Revelation, he said the following:

“We need to understand the Book of Revelation the way the original audience would have understood it. If we come up with a different interpretation than they did then WE have it wrong.”

Bingo. Exactly. Couldn't agree more. And yet...coming up with a different interpretation is exactly what Dispensationalism does. Here's his entire video. It is certainly worth 20 minutes of your time. I wish I could speak like he does. I wish I was as exciting to listen to as he is. I wish I had his hair, too.

Seriously, watch it. He's fantastic.

#Evangelicalism #theology

I asked three different AI models a simple question, “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

Clearly, this is a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. No AI model should miss the reference, at least not any AI model developed by anyone with a Y chromosome. It's a softball.

Claude Haiku 4.5 and Gemma 4 actually tried to give me an answer by assuming a type of swallow, atmospheric conditions, etc. and then calculating an answer in miles per hour or meters per second, respectively. Eyeroll.

Only one, Gab AI, got it right:

African or European?

Brilliant.

#life

There was a refreshing cool in the overcast morning air today, and the dew was chilly on my bare feet. I know better than to think it will last or that there will not be more hot weather; however, it gives me hope to feel the cool mornings and to hear the windchimes blow early in the day on the soft breeze, something they do not do during the heat of summer.

Autumn is coming, even to Southeast Texas.

#life

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School’s been on a month and you’re riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you’ll dump on old man Prickett’s porch, or the hairy-ape costume you’ll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

But one strange wild dark long year, Halloween came early.

One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight.

So begins the Prologue of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, arguably one of the greatest American dark fantasy / horror novels ever written.

It's October, time to break out this classic and give it an annual read. I confess, I couldn't wait this year and read it again two weeks ago. Sure, I have it in hardback, but I usually read this gem from my 1979 dog-eared and seriously faded paperback...the perfect edition for such a creepy book.

It is a brilliant thriller. If you've not read it, you're missing out. If you have, you know it's time to read it again. Enjoy!

#Bradbury #reading

We in the West are living in the midst of a jihad, and most of us don’t even realize it — because it’s a brand of jihad that’s barely a generation old. Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War. It’s called the House of War because it, too, according to the Koran, is destined to be governed by sharia, and it will take war — holy war, jihad — to bring it into the House of Submission.

— Bruce Bawer, Surrender (2009)

Note: While certainly no ally of traditionalists and conservatives, Bawer certainly got this right. But don't take his or my word for it, read it for yourself in Reliance of the Traveler, a classic interpretation of Sharia Law. I'm glad to lend my copy to the curious. Do the work. Read primary sources, not the news.

#history #politics #theology

During the time when Machiavelli was writing The Prince, he was living in exile from Florence among ordinary folks in a small Italian village. While spending his days among them, he spend his evenings reading the great ancient writers. In this letter to Francesco Vettori, a friend living in Rome, Listen to how he describes the time he spends reading:

“On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them.”

Wow—here is a man who loved his books! Oh, that we spent a fraction of this time and had an ounce of his enthusiasm toward engaging the greatest minds of history! We would be very rich, indeed!

(Letter from Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori)

#history #reading

I must admit that I hardly think of the end times. Surely I lament in the evils that have become so commonplace that we no longer are surprised by them, much less shocked. But I am not looking to the affairs of the Middle East or anywhere else to inform me of that which even Jesus insists He knows not the day nor the hour. St. Paul reminds us where our focus should be and would urge us to consider with Jesus where our treasure is, our hearts ought to be also. So in giving us encouragement and even hope, He points us to those things that belong to the Lord and bids us to keep our attention on them:

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. (Phil 4:8)

There is a great spiritual battle being waged among us and within us. It is not between the forces of evil under the reins of the devil against the forces of good under the reins of Jesus — of which we might be tempted to see ourselves as everything from spectators to warriors. That battle has been done. It is the once for all of Calvary and the Empty Tomb. Indeed, the battle we find ourselves in is to decide the focus of our hearts. It is the battle of the true, the noble, the just, the pure, the lovely, the good report, the virtues, and the praiseworthy, all the things which have God's approval upon them against all that do not. Fear and curiosity may pique our interest as we try to make heads or tails about the great news of the day but in the end all of which the news speaks will pass away like the wind.

Another gem from Pr. Peters. Read the rest here.

#theology

Fauci, and Faucism, represented the apotheosis of what the managerial/academic/journo class desires: An excuse for sweeping power, based on (alleged) expertise, in which they could ride roughshod over those stupid proles and flyover people while preening about the allegedly superior moral and intellectual qualities that justify their rule.

Then it turned out that they were wrong about nearly everything and — as Fauci’s diaries demonstrate — knew it at the time, at least at the top.

— Glenn Harland Reynolds (here)

Is anyone shocked to find out from his diaries that Anthony Fauci is a self-absorbed megalomaniac who gloried in the attention and praises heaped upon him during the pandemic? Of course not. He is a prime example of the Luciferian passions of pride and vainglory and the damage they will do if unchecked.

Here's an interesting take on the self-proclaimed American elites as well as a personal reaction from one of their followers that will also shock no one but which serves to illustrate our depravity and the increasingly bitter divide in America.

#history #politics

The editor of this anthology, who took part and was wounded in the last war to end war, hates war and hates all the politicians whose mismanagement, gullibility, cupidity, selfishness and ambition brought on this present war and made it inevitable. But once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in a war.

Regardless of how this war was brought on, step by step, in the Democracies’ betrayal of the only countries that fought or were ready to fight to prevent it, there is only one thing now to do. We must win it. We must win it at all costs and as soon as possible. We must win it never forgetting what we are fighting for, in order that while we are fighting Fascism we do not slip into the ideas and ideals of Fascism.

For many years you heard American people speak who admired Mussolini because he made the trains run on time in Italy. It never seemed to occur to them that we made the trains run on time in America without Fascism.

We can fight a total war without becoming totalitarians if we do not stand on our mistakes to try and cover them; our military; our political and our naval mistakes; and learn from the winners; rather than copy the methods of the losers because they have been at the business of losing for so long.

The Germans are not successful because they are supermen. They are simply practical professionals in war who have abandoned all the old theories and shibboleths which had accumulated to such a point that military thought had completely stagnated, and who have developed the practical use of weapons and tactics to the highest point of common sense that has ever been reached. It is at that point that we can take over if no dead hand of last-war thinking lies on the high command; and we can thank the enemy for having done all this preliminary work for us.

— Ernest Hemingway, editor, Men At War, 1942

#Hemingway #history #quotes

In final stanza of Longfellow's long poem, “The Building of the Ship,” we find out this page was long poem is not about building a ship but about building a nation. These words ring just as true as they did nearly 200 years ago when Longfellow first penned them

Many are cynical and discouraged about the future of America. I used to be, though I am not now. But we must no longer be complacent. I have realized that what our Founding Fathers struggled to establish, we must similarly struggle to maintain. Entropy, entitlement, historical amnesia, and indifference threaten our blessed inheritance as much as Socialism, division, and foreign threats. Ours is the time to re-learn from books and put into practice through political involvement before we have to re-learn from suffering and put into practice through arms.

Read Longfellow's words, then read them again, then re-read the Declaration, and have a blessed Independence Day, America!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'T is of the wave and not the rock; 'T is but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, — are all with thee!

#culture #history #politics