The Lesson of the Bears and the Boys

My pastor's weekly newsletter this week was about the story of Elisha and the boys who taunted him and were subsequently killed by a couple of angry she-bears.  The original Hebrew, as Pastor Stephan points out, more than likely isn't talking about what we would consider children these days. The bears didn't brutalize a T-ball team. The word translated as boys in this story refers in other places to young men. The Israelites considered anyone under 30 to be not an "adult" but a young male. And we all have been treated lately to the sort of orchestrated violence young people can get up to when incited by media and ideological party leaders.

The way this story is written, the confrontation of Elijah by the youthful servants of Baal (it's likely that's who they were) suggests an imminent attack on Elisha was planned. Certainly the story was going around that Elijah was actually dead and that his going up to Heaven was a lie perpetrated by Elijah. It was in the interest of the pro-Baal party to spread this sort of gossip. Later their descendants, the pro-Sanhedrin party of Israel in Jesus' time, repeatedly attempted to stone, throw off a cliff and arrest Christ for disagreeing with their dogma. It's no surprise that their cultural ancestors (the "boys" in this story) would have been gathered to do harm to Elisha and to shut up the man who opposed them. The bears were simply God's security team protecting Elisha, whose work was not yet completed in Israel.

Jesus said we would recognize the signs of his imminent return in the same way that leaves in Spring speak of the coming Summer. One can hardly look around, watch the news, hear the taunts of today's version of those young men in the story, and not see evidence of the soon-coming Savior. The young men have gathered. Google Seventh-day Adventist and you'll see page after page of anti-Adventist web pages and entire sites dedicated to opposing Adventism. I saw one "pastor" ranting about how horrible SDAs are and how they should be knocked in the head until they come to their senses. He flat out recommends that we be prevented from buying or selling until we cease spreading our lies. It was pretty stunning hearing a self-proclaimed Christian defender saying it straight out like that.

The devil is among us like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It is hardly surprising that the church is being attacked from without and within. Only by knowing God and Jesus whom He has sent, is there any safety in this momentous age. But God is working among all those children of His. There is a growing division in the Catholic church and among Protestants as well between progressive leadership and those who prefer to get their theology straight from the Word. Many Christian leaders wonder after the Beast, seeking to gather themselves and lead their followers to join the popular herd without challenging the traditions that Satan has worked so hard for millennia to embed in churches, the culture, the media and governments. 

At the same time, we see Christians waking up and questioning things they've long been told and which are generally believed without question. It seems the Holy Spirit is moving God's scattered flock to go back to the Bible to check out some things they've been told about God that don't jibe with the God of Love they have come to know. I recently came upon an Assemblies of God pastor who has published the Bible with the books in their original order. To my surprise, Pastor Coulter talks about the ever-burning hell idea being false doctrine. Other whole churches worldwide are accepting the Sabbath truth. Amazing Facts director, Doug Batchelor, recently was invited to preach in the largest Christian church in India (if not the world). 

We're in the sheep and goats time of history. The polarization of political parties usually leads to sharp disagreements and violence, especially if their followers suddenly begin thinking for themselves, asking awkward questions, and (to the horror of the leader class), choosing another path. The apostate church leaders, who hold to a kind of "divine right of kings" with regard to their own authority, will gather loyal followers and encourage them to taunt anyone who deviates from the accepted convoluted pack of lies Satan and his minions have for so long perpetrated on the Christian world.

And one need not study for very long before you find that what you read in Scripture is on many points at variance from what you hear from the mainstream pulpits of the land. When Bible students take a hard look at doctrines like the immortality of the soul, ever-burning hell, transfer of sanctity of the 7th day Sabbath to Sunday, and priestly authority to forgive sins, and find a different truth, it makes a lot of people who have taken the name of Christ and claim to speak for him, exceedingly angry. When you realize that the idea of an immortal soul negates John 3:16 since it means God no longer gives eternal life to those who believe in Jesus, it raises questions about all you have believed. Everyone good or bad, believer or unbeliever is by nature already immortal mainstream religion claims. So, logically, God can only burn people in the lake of fire forever, since He cannot kill an immortal soul as this doctrine claims. So logically, this means God cannot have love or mercy in this matter. He can only punish.

So that means God is NOT omnipotent at the least or, at worst, He really enjoys watching folks suffer for a lifetime of what are in most cases pretty petty sins in the vast scheme of things. God, then is pretty harsh, not the God of love at all. Then there is Hollywood theology that portrays a kind of Christian reincarnation where you die, become an angel and then get sent back to Earth to have another go at it. If you want to believe all that, then you best get folks away from the Bible. Like a retired pastor told me, "I believe in science and the Bible equally." That way it leaves room for him to believe the same stuff all the regular folk do and it becomes an easy road from there down to "Well the Bible is so full of flaws, there's no need to take any of it literally other than as occasionally good advice."

Those who love power have a tendency to become cruel and desperate as that power slips through their fingers. See Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of the world's despotic rulers for examples. The death toll in the 20th century alone is in the hundreds of millions. We are seeing that now as the venom against God's children gets more and more poisonous. Remember, we are up against the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet. It's good to remember that God will send along bears to protect His servants when He needs to.

Yours in Christ,
Tom King
© 2024

Elemental Spiritual Forces Threaten

 

In Colossians 2:8, Paul warns against "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world." When we rely on these beliefs, cooked up out of our own fears, desires and prejudices instead of upon Christ as revealed through the scriptures, we set ourselves up to eventually create our own versions of a religion, one without any reliance on objective truth, but instead upon something they like to call "my truth."

I think this was the thing also that Ellen White warned us about when she cautioned against the rising influence of spiritualism. Here Paul warned us particularly against "elemental spiritual forces". The spiritualism we've been warned against is more than just some ghosts knocking on walls while little girls hold seances. Spiritualism, while it does range from Ouija boards to communicating with the dead, spiritualism as a whole believes that we have immortal souls that know more than we are aware of. and deceptive philosophy. Satan seeks to confuse us. Encyclopedia Britannica defines spiritualism as philosophy that embraces ideas including "the immortality of the soul, or the immateriality of the intellect and will. Less obviously, it includes belief in such ideas as finite cosmic forces or a universal mind, provided that they transcend the limits of gross Materialistic interpretation. Spiritualism as such says nothing about matter, the nature of a supreme being or a universal force, or the precise nature of spiritual reality itself." This leaves all kind of room for the "spiritual" man to find his own truth within himself. As a result, the spiritualist does not have to submit himself to any external law, truth or instruction that does not emanate from within himself. This allows one to toss aside any uncomfortable restriction on one's behavior that doesn't feel compatible with your own truth which you have discovered within yourself. It also allow you to jettison any commandments or Biblical advice you don't particularly feel comfortable with.

This current so-called spiritual movement tends to rejects "religion" in favor of being "spiritual" not religious. It has many of the trappings of Lucifer's plan for ruling as the Prince of this world. If it doesn't reject religion outright, it seeks to water it down to allow room for "spiritual" Christians (if they still retain the Christian identity at all), to believe whatever suits them. It's frequently called "my truth" by people who say they are "spiritual not religious." Spiritualism doesn't necessarily achieve this level of self-enlightenment all at once, but it certainly trends that way if taken to its logical ends.

Satan keeps coming back to the same plan with the same beliefs about obedience to self and to heavy handed government and it always results in a whole lot of death. God tends to get left out or gets used as an impersonal rubber stamp for whatever the ruling class is up to. Marxism is just the latest Satanic deceptive philosophy to be embraced by the powerful special (rich) folk of the world. Before we had "I'm spiritual" we had the divine right of kings, emperors, caliphs, etc..We peons knew our place and deferred to the special ruling class and were proud to do so. We were mightily deceived to accept our low station with a kind of pride. A few special powerful leaders always make the decisions and discipline the collective, the masses, the proletariat, peons, the workers, the plebs, the rabble, the great unwashed, riffraff, Labor, the proles or, my favorite, the hoi poloi and usually they discipline harshly.

Recent attempts to blend Marx's philosophy with spiritualism as its being worked out in contemporary philosophy, dwell on the problems of labor, the unconscious, artificial intelligence, and depression. By summoning up the idea of an immortal soul, Marxist/spiritualist apologists conceive of a kind of secret human being that dwells inside the body of any species (a Buddhist/Hindu idea) and thus is detached from “man” in its traditional sense. This allows us to disengage the human body from "spirit". No longer is the soul to be attached to individual humans, the body isn't absolutely necessary since the soul exists as this impersonal essence defined by an ambiguous concept of labor (regular raggedy folks). This convoluted philosophy supposes that this soul or essence is both alienated from things like religion and emancipated from reliance on anything outside the self like instruction from some arbitrary "God". Marxism it is posited, provides a way to achieve an Earthly Utopia without having to bother God for instruction about how to do that. Friedrich Nietzsche a cheerful Marxist and inspiration for the German Nazis, went so far as to proclaim "God is dead." What he meant was that we no longer need God because we are spiritual beings and everything we need is in our own immortal essence. It also allowed the Nazis to decide that murdering 15 million people didn't make much difference as their essences would simply go elsewhere so they wouldn't interfere with the establishment of the Third Reich's plans for an Aryan Utopia.

This kind of philosophy supports Satan's contention at the beginning of the Great Controversy that he had a better idea for how to govern humans so that he keeps all that free choice controlled. If we are paying attention it's not hard to spot cloven hoofprints all over this sort of spiritual Marxism. And always it winds up that a whole bunch of uncooperative human weeds need to be pulled up and incinerated.

Not religion but politics and progressive spiritualism is the hallmark of Satan's plans for ruling the Earth. Even religion, when co-opted for Satan's purpose, is at its heart political and involves a tyrannical powerful ruler or ruling class lording over the people who are assumed to be incapable (too stupid) to manage their own affairs. Sadly, many who claim to have once been among God's chosen people find themselves drifting away from the church. By adopting a more convenient sort of religion,  their advanced spiritual philosophy allows them to set themselves up in these last days as arbiters of their own more comfortable truth. But don't call this belief system a religion even though it is. That would hurt their feelings.

And since these spiritualists no longer need organized religion, spiritualism provides them an alternative to "assembling themselves together" in congregations of believers. The spiritual often prefer instead, things like going out into nature and being spiritual; getting in touch with the elemental spiritual forces that come from their own understanding rather than the Word of God. Or they can gather in chat rooms with other enlightened spiritual folk and discuss how this ever-shifting philosophy so admirably adapts itself to whatever new notion springs up among them.

 The deception is pernicious, pervasive and deadly. It allows the spiritual person to join a herd of fellow humans who are okay with infanticide, sexual perversion, and rejection of inconvenient Biblical commandments. "We don't do commandments anymore. What's the point?

Accordingly, we no longer need to be saved by God's grace, but are emancipated from all that by our own righteousness and superior philosophy." It soon follows, as one retired pastor told me that the spiritual man holds science and scripture as equals. The trouble is, that increasingly for my spiritual friends, science begins to weigh more heavily on their personal truth scales, especially the "science" that justifies the whole reliance on "my truth" rather than upon God's truth.

It explains why in the last days many of the brightest lights among us will go out; the victims of their own brilliance unsupported by a reliance upon God's Word. Beware for the devil our adversary prowls among us seeking whom he may devour.

(c) 2024 by Tom King

 

 

No Wonder Adventists Back Then Were Spooked

Rev.Samuel Walter Gamble known
for research in the ancient
literature, enabling him to
reproduce the long lost Hebrew
calendar, upon which he bases
arguments to prove that
Sunday and not Saturday was
the "ancient and true Sabbath."
            - Who's Who circa 1920
 

I found a book published in 1900 and now residing in the Library of Congress by Samuel Walter Gamble, field secretary of the American Sabbath Union (later the Lord's Day Alliance) that purports to prove that the Sabbath is really actually on Sunday. It comes up near the top of the list when you do a search in Google images for the word "sabbath".This poor man, a valiant defender of laws making working on Sunday a crime in the United States, spent 18 years trying to prove his case by studying ancient calendars. He based his research on the assumption that God's people couldn't count to 7, and that God basically gave the Hebrews the wrong date for Sabbath when he gave them the 10 commandments.

He further assumes that despite the Biblical genealogies that go all the way back to creation, that the true Sabbath was "lost" after the flood and no one kept it. Also, because the seventh-day Sabbath couldn't occur on the same date every month, Gamble believes that the Jews and the string of God's followers chronicled in scripture all the way back to Adam, couldn't possibly have counted up to 7 days in order to keep the same Sabbath every week. They could only have done that if the Sabbath was on a fixed date, he says. Thus the Sabbath wandered around all over the calendar and can't be assumed to have occurred every seventh day.

Odd that Gamble seemed unaware that Sunday comes on different dates every month nowadays, but he'd rather we not look too closely at that. Flaws in the argument notwithstanding, Gamble and the American Sabbath Union prevailed in inspiring some pretty strict Sunday laws for some time, toughening up, if not national, then state Sunday laws. They were

Wilbur F Crafts
ASU Founder

 especially successful in the South. It should be noted that more than one Adventist farmer did jail time for working his fields on Sunday around that time, despite having rested the previous day and having attended church services that Saturday. Mr. Gamble heartily approved of this level of enforcement. Aggressive Adventist activists opposed ASU founder Wilbur F. Craft's efforts to promote the Blair Amendment (a national Sunday law) and the Breckinridge Bill (limited to Washington DC). Prominent SDA preacher A.T. Jones and Wilbur Craft got into a series of running conflicts that led in part to both men leaving their respective organizations.

Gamble says that Jesus fixed the problem of everyone worshiping on the wrong day by rising on the first day which was "really" the seventh day and that (reading the mind of Jesus who never said any such thing) Christ intended for the Sabbath to be on the first day of the week all along. He closes his eyes to the fact that Christ, Himself, kept the so-called Jewish Sabbath during his ministry and his apostles did the same afterward during theirs. Also, it's significant that after his crucifixion, Jesus rested in the grave from his labors from Friday to Sunday, only rising from the dead after the hours of the Sabbath had passed. The Sabbath, He had said, was made for man, but apparently Jesus kept it holy Himself.

A.T. Jones - Minister
and SDA Activist

Gamble has no problem with Roman Emperor Constantine, himself a major sun-worshiper, changing the Sabbath to "the venerable day of the sun" (Constantine's own words) in order to make the Pagans more comfortable joining the Catholic and coincidentally Roman State Church. The Vatican quickly held a counsel that accepted the change in order to ingratiate itself with the emperor and to pack the cathedral pews a little tighter with new pagan converts and their money. Apparently, that was not problematic for Gamble.

The author, an ASU officer at the time, was busily trying to shore up the nation's restrictive national Sunday laws. As part of his argument for tougher Sunday laws, Gamble claimed that if Seventh-Day Adventists were to succeed in getting the national Sunday laws of the day repealed, that all workers would suddenly be required to work 7 day weeks. Without the force of a national law requiring all workers to rest on Sunday, Gamble warned Congress that America's churches would be soon abandoned.He also claimed, again without evidence, that it had been "proved" that workers only live 12 years when working 7 days a week and that therefore Adventists would be responsible for the mass slaughter of millions of working fathers far earlier than what God intended.

Talk about logical gymnastics trying to prove that a largely Catholic Christian tradition, established on the Roman Church's own hook without scriptural authority was correct. He would have us believe that the ten commandments are flawed or at least the 4th one is. Given that, apparently, God didn't even know when Sabbath was supposed to be, then Gamble believes that the unbroken keeping of the 7th day Sabbath by Jews is, according to Gamble, impossible and irrelevant anyway. How could anyone have been expected to keep the 7th day Sabbath if it changed dates every month instead of being only on fixed calendar dates.

He went on to claim that the worst of it was that if the Sunday Laws were repealed millions would no longer come to his revival meetings and be saved.

 

And this silly book is enshrined in the Library of Congress, digitized and published online. Interestingly, Gamble acknowledges a debt to the Reverend D.M. Canright. Canright picked up the title "Reverend" when he left the SDA church to become a Baptist preacher. He left because, as he put it to a colleague, "I could be a great and popular preacher if this (SDA) message were not so unpopular." Coincidentally, Canright left shortly after Ellen White told him he was too long-winded and should pare his Sabbath sermons down from 2-3 hours to 20 or 30 minutes.

Gamble could have benefited from the same counsel. It seems this convoluted and often incomprehensible book was designed deliberately in order to encourage people to try to read it and then to give up in confusion. Nobody wants to admit they can't understand what the man is trying to say. So, many readers, looking for some comforting argument that means they don't have to make any big and uncomfortable life changes, decide that this guy must know what he's talking about.

Little hint: he doesn't.

(C) 2024 by Tom King