Sheep and Goats

Month: August 2026

  • What is the Purpose of the Daniel 4 Dream?

    What is the Purpose of the Daniel 4 Dream?

    The purpose of the 4th-chapter-Daniel dream is reiterated three times to Nebuchadnezzar. Three times! Isn’t there a thing that repetition so many times means it carries great significance?

    “that people living may know that the Most High is Ruler in the kingdom of mankind and that he gives it to whomever he wants, and he sets up over it even the lowliest of men.” (Daniel 4:17)

    “until you know that the Most High is Ruler in the kingdom of mankind and that he grants it to whomever he wants.” (4:25)

    “until you know that the Most High is Ruler in the kingdom of mankind and that he grants it to whomever he wants. (4:32)

    And who does God want to give the ”kingdom of mankind to?” For whom does he bend over backwards to ensure that one really comes into his own? Can it really be just the dream’s recipient, Nebuchadnezzar? The man slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons before him, then bored out his eyes, sealing in that last visual memory. (2 Kings 25:7) I mean, he wasn’t that nice of a guy. So God should be obsessed with restoring HIM to power? THAT goal should be the be-all and end-all of the dream? THAT is the lesson he wanted repeated three times? I don’t think so.

    In one of those three repetitions, there is even a pointer of whom God ultimately does want to restore it to. It is a pointer that will be meaningful to one who assumes unity of scripture. It is a clue that will be lost on one who who doesn’t—who assumes disunity. “He sets up over it even the lowliest of men,” says 4:17. The overall student of Scripture will recall Jesus’ description, that he is “mild-tempered and lowly in heart.” (Matthew 11:29) He’s not into boring people’s eyes out. He’s into offering them “refreshment for yourselves.” (also 11:29)

    But spiritually dull people who do not connect scripture think it IS all about Nebuchadnezzar the eye-gouger. These are the same sort of people who think God is bringing his servant Trump to power, and before him Biden, and before him Trump, and before him Obama.

    No. Maybe, just maybe, it IS about something more than the nasty king, who does come around to knuckling under Jehovah’s power (as if he has any choice) but then quickly reneges—just like he did after another tree dream (2nd chapter of Daniel). The lesson learned hadn’t held for too long. Like Assyria depicted at Isaiah 10:15, Nebuchadnezzar is the ax who exalts himself over the chopper. He is just the ax! It isn’t all about him—though modernists think it is! .

    The tree that truly has significance, even after being chopped down with its stump bounded for “seven times,” is the tree representing God’s sovereignty. For centuries it was the nation of Israel as represented by its kings. Nebuchadnezzar is the ax that chops it all to an end. But it’s not a permanent end. It is an end that is restored after “seven times pass over it.” The kingdom heir it is restored to is “the Son of Man,” the same as Jesus self-description at Matthew 20:28: “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

    He is the lowliest of men, his lowliness repeated many times—not just the aforementioned role of serving and ultimately dying for others, but by his humble birth and upbringing, by his being “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” (Isaiah 53:3), by his being “made a little lower than the angels” that he might suffer death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:9) THAT is who Jehovah is pointing his dream to; he’s not just dead-ending it with Nebuchadnezzar.

    One does well to take G. K. Chesterton’s view of scripture. He assumed unity. Modern historical criticism—by far the dominant theology today—assumes division. It’s enough of a difference to make certain conclusions all but incomprehensible to each other.

    Chesterton called those “wrong who maintain that the Old Testament is a mere loose library; that it has no consistency or aim. Whether the result was achieved by some supernal spiritual truth, or by a steady national tradition, or merely by an ingenious selection in aftertimes, the books of the Old Testament have a quite perceptible unity. . .” His view is not popular today—higher criticism assumes disunity—but it is the one that works.

    Assuming unity over disunity of scripture is as great a paradigm shift as seeing the glass half-full over half empty, and it has just as much consequence. If you assume unity, you can do something with the scriptures. If you assume disunity, you cannot. If you assume unity, you can put the Bible pieces together as though a jigsaw puzzle. Puzzle assembled, completed picture before like on the box cover photo, you are convinced that your unified assumption was correct. You already suspected it was when you purchased the puzzle at the craft store. But your scholastic neighbor, who found his puzzle pieces willy-nilly in the landfill, does not assume unity and his pieces remain scattered.” He figures God’s sole purpose in spilling Daniel 4 print is to restore the eye-gouger to power.

    ******  The bookstore

  • It is Always the Priests and the Prophets

    “Now the priests, the prophets, and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the LORD. When Jeremiah finished speaking all that the LORD commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests, the prophets, and all the people laid hold of him, crying, “You must die!”

    …The priests and prophets said to the princes and to all the people, “Sentence this man to death! He has prophesied against this city! You heard it with your own ears.”

    It’s set up as though a court trial, everyone convening at the city gate for that reason. (vs 10-11)

    …Then the princes and all the people said to the priests and the prophets, “This man does not deserve a death sentence; it is in the name of the LORD, our God, that he speaks to us.” (Jeremiah 26)

    It is frequently this way. The princes have no problem with it. It is the priests and the prophets who oppose religious truth. The very ones who you think would be in harmony with it are on the other side.

    “But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews rose up together against Paul and brought him to the tribunal, saying, ‘This man is inducing people to worship God contrary to the law.’ When Paul was about to reply, Gallio spoke to the Jews, ‘If it were a matter of some crime or malicious fraud, I should with reason hear the complaint of you Jews; but since it is a question of arguments over doctrine and titles and your own law, see to it yourselves. I do not wish to be a judge of such matters.’ And he drove them away from the tribunal. They all seized Sosthenes, the synagogue official, and beat him in full view of the tribunal. But none of this was of concern to Gallio.”

    Gallio saw that what was before him was a religious dispute. Why should he care about it? He ruled an empire. He “drove them away.” Despairing of his waning attention, they beat the daylights out of someone right under his nose. But their fifteen minutes of fame had expired. The Roman official had moved on to other things, perhaps rustling the pages of his newspaper to shoo the agitators away.

    Enemies of Jehovah’s Witnesses seek to ban the faith in Russia. It may remind one of General Bell’s World War I threat to Joseph Rutherford regarding a bill specifically designed to eliminate Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States: “That bill did not pass because [President] Wilson prevented it, but we know how to get you and we are going to do it!” In general, the military will not do such a thing. A patriot will not do it. Certainly, a civil libertarian will not do it. Those who grumble that Jehovah’s Witnesses have woken them up from a sound sleep will not do it. Even Richard Dawkins, the atheist advocate who thinks all religion is a cancer and would snuff it out gladly, will not do it to Jehovah’s Witnesses specifically. It is almost always powerful ones with strong Church connections who will do it.

    Note who does not do it: Wilson. He “prevented it.” Thereafter, as the opponents stirred up major trouble for the Witnesses, was he even aware of it? It is not as though his mind was not occupied with other matters. The one at the top is like Pilate, as are all national leaders—he has a country to run. “Look, this is not my cause,” Pilate thought. “I’ll give the scoundrels what they want. That way, I’ll get them out of my hair.” Certain countries favor a “house” church. Russia was long a country officially atheist. Its leaders discovered that worship of God simply cannot be extinguished, so it is channeled into a single main church as a concession. The main church, they find, is a strong force for national unity. It becomes a symbiotic relationship to be preserved and nurtured, a win-win. “What can we do for you?” the country asks the main church. “Take out the competition,” is the reply.

    Even so, the house church of Russia insists it did not orchestrate the attempt to snuff out Witnesses in that land. I’m inclined to believe them. That’s not to say they didn’t squeal like kids on Christmas morning, but the impetus comes from elsewhere. It was for the Daily Caller to reveal that elsewhere. Turns out it is the French anti-cult activists (FECRIS) whose VP is prominent with the Russian Orthodox Church.

    https://dailycaller.com/2017/07/23/the-french-connection-how-the-russian-orthodox-church-and-the-putin-administration-colluded-with-a-french-ngo-to-destroy-the-jehovahs-witnesses

    Hundreds of homes have been broken into by police in full riot gear and hundreds imprisoned, all at the prompting of anti-cult zealots determined that no one should veer from the mainstream.

    From: I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why

  • “Eat my Flesh and Drink my Blood”—What About it?

    That Watchtower Study last week, How to Remain Loyal When We Face Tests of Faith, begins with a consideration of Jesus’ words:

    “So Jesus said to them: “Most truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life, and I will resurrect him on the last day.” (John 6:63-64)

    He loses disciples right and left over this remark. “This speech is shocking; who can listen to it?” they grouse. (vs 60)

    “Owing to this many of his disciples went off to the things behind and would no longer walk with him.” (vs 66)

    It would have been the perfect occasion for Jesus to say, ‘Oh no, no! I didn’t mean THAT!’ But he explained it no more. He let them go. They were all fair weather disciples, apparently. He is okay with people being tested. After all, his own twelve passed the test:

    “Therefore Jesus said to the twelve: “YOU do not want to go also, do YOU?” Simon Peter answered him: “Lord, whom shall we go away to? You have sayings of everlasting life.” (vs 67-68) Most often that’s the answer you must give rather than harp on what seem to be missteps.

    Early Christians were accused of cannibalism. It’s hard to believe those words of Jesus wouldn’t have been used to fuel those charges. Cannabalism was among the early slanders of Christianity, usually something that happened at their “love feasts” where they “incestuously” (in the eyes of their detractors) called each other brother and sister. Testifying to how common was the accusation is the fact that a Roman governor, Pliny the Younger, looked into it. He pronounced it a nothingburger. Wrote he to Emperor Trajan: their communal meal consisted only of “ordinary and harmless food.”

    Given this circumstance that later enemies would capitalize on to spread rumors of cannibalism, you’d almost think Jesus wouldn’t say something that could so easily be misconstrued that way. Apparently, it’s not a concern. They would have done it anyway. It was standard fare back then for anyone accused of being a ‘cult.’ And while there are many reports of the cannibalism accusation, there is no record anyone ever appealed to Jesus’ words to support those accusations. It makes sense that they would, but there’s no record that anyone ever did it.

    Food and drink are constant metaphors in the Bible for spiritual things. Jesus was building upon those metaphors himself in John 6, likening himself to the “true bread” that comes from heaven. However, the “fair weather” disciples who left in a huff had no discernment whatsoever of these greater patterns. They were just there for the grub:

    “Jesus answered them: “Most truly I say to you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate from the loaves and were satisfied.” (John 6:26)

    Seen in that light, it was sort of a screening that Jesus did, to separate the wheat from the chaff.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Proverbs 22:6 Revisited

    (See Part 1)

    There is another way to translate Proverbs 22:6, the proverb that traditionally goes:

    “Train a boy in the way he should go; Even when he grows old he will not depart from it.” (NWT)

    The above is the typical rendering. Almost all Bible translations do it similarly, if not identically:

    “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” NIV

    “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” RSV

    “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” KJV

    “Train a child in the way he [should] go; and, even when old, he will not swerve from it.” CJB

    “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” ESV

    They almost all do it this way.

    But there is another way to render the verse. It can be rendered as a cautionary proverb that if you indulge a child’s bad behavior, it gets locked in:

    “Train up a child according to his way, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.” LSB (Legacy Standard Bible)

    This second way has the advantage of being more literal. “His way” is the child’s own natural way. There is nothing here about how the child “should” be. Instead, it is how the child is.

    Turns out that there is no Hebrew word corresponding to “he should go.” It’s an English insertion. Almost all Bibles do it. But it’s an insertion. Is it to make inspiring and uplifting what really is a warning that “you’d better not mess this up?” Give in to a child’s own self-willed, sinful tendencies—“his own way”—and it becomes locked into place. Leave off on the hard work of loving discipline, and the child’s “own way” will emerge as dominant. The “even when he is old, he will not depart from it” is not a desirable outcome. it is an undesirable one. But you ensure it by giving into him when young.

    That rendering does sort of fit with other proverbs, such 22:15. “ Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a boy, But the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” The default mode of people is not wild and free and wonderful. It is wild and free and a nightmare—or at least, a potential nightmare.

    Translators don’t like that view however. Few give in to it. Count up the almost 60 translations on display at Biblegateway*com. At most, you’ll find 10 that do it the cautionary way. Mostly, they prefer the long Christian interpretive tradition of “way he should go” even though the “should go” is not in the Hebrew. They “turn that frown upside down” to read more inspirational and to fit better with the overall theme of Proverb that wisdom works out to benefit us.

    ******  The bookstore

  • A Good Fig but a Bad Egg

    Read up on the father-son combos of Bible history and it’s enough to make you doubt Proverbs 22:6. You will at least footnote it:

    “ Train a boy in the way he should go; Even when he grows old he will not depart from it.”

    *”Not necessarily so in the case of kings,” the footnote will read. (“Past returns do not guarantee future performance,” says Wall Street, before making a grab for all your money.)

    How can you say otherwise in the light of prominent father-son trainwrecks, such as Hezekiah’s boy Manasseh being a bad king “like no one’s ever seen” (to use Trump-speak) or those horrific sons of Josiah: Shallum, Jehoikim, and Zedekiah. Not to mention (though not kings) Eli’s sons being rotters (for which Eli was rebuked) and Samuel’s sons going bad (for which he is not). It’s almost like if you load up with too many duties, life takes it out on your sons.

    AI doesn’t like that view. AI usually takes the majority view on anything. It is not (yet) at the point of correcting its creators. However, if the pattern of contemporary science holds true, we can expect, eons down the road, AI to maintain that humans had nothing to do with its creation. We can expect it to insist that it did so on its own through pure natural processes.

    At any rate, AI likes the more traditional rule of thumb that is “train up a boy in his way and he will not depart from it,” contenting itself with the observation that it is not a guarantee to override free will. What about Asa-Jehoshaphat, it says, or Uzziah-Jotham? Call those bad father-son combos? It has a point, I guess, but I still think my examples are more prominent. Of course, I don’t want to go around calling Josiah, Samuel, and Hezekiah bad dads, lest they come back in the resurrection and sue me for slander. Take that principle of attentiveness to one’s own sons too far and a man will never do anything else. But it does seem a good cautionary tale to have your ducks lined up upon taking upon oneself large responsibility, because the pressures to take one’s eye of the ball are heavy. Even wonderful people like writers can be tough to live with because their heads are always elsewhere. Balancing duties is a bear.

    There is a cautionary way of reading Proverbs 22:6 that I knew nothing about until I accidentally veered there while looking for something else. The something else was evidence that Jeconiah, Josiah’s grandson, could be called a good fig while being a bad egg. The “good figs” of Jeremiah 24 are not necessarily good in the moral sense. They are good in the same sense that a fruit that has not rotted on your kitchen shelf (gone bad) is “good.” Jehovah shows the prophet a collection of figs:

    “One basket had very good figs, like early figs, but the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten. Jehovah then asked me: “What do you see, Jeremiah?” So I said: “Figs; the good figs are very good, but the bad ones are very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.” (Jeremiah 24:3-4) Sure. If you see a spoiled fig on your counter, you don’t say, “You bad fig!” as though it had done something wrong. It’s just not “good” anymore. It has spoiled.

    The next verses of 24 make application:

    “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel says, ‘Like these good figs, so I will regard in a good way the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans.” (vs 5)

    That being the case Jeconiah might be called a “good fig.” An Israelite king who reigned only 3 months, he surrendered to the Chaldeans. Was he also “good” in the moral sense? No. He was a stinker. Says 2 Kings 24:9: “He continued to do what was bad in Jehovah’s eyes, according to all that his father had done.”

    He also died in Babylon. So he doesn’t fit the next verse at all: “ I will keep my eye on them for their good, and I will cause them to return to this land. I will build them up, and I will not tear down; I will plant them, and I will not uproot.” (6) It seems there is a moral component to “good” after all.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Science Takes a Hit in Pandemic’s Aftermath

    Nobody’s trying to diss vaccines here—honest, I’m not. I’m just trying to write a commentary on evolution—to what extent (if any) can it be reconciled with Genesis? Why should vaccines thrust themselves into the middle of the discussion? No reason at all, that I can see.

    Except that Sean Carroll, author of ‘The Making of the Fittest,’ does just that. Many times I’ve mentioned this book in my blog. At last, he reaches the ‘dessert’ portion of his book that he likens to a full-course meal. He’s dealt with all the basics for evolution. He rests his case. Now, it’s time for dessert and after-dinner conversation—of which there is a lot. Now he launches into related topics. Two of them are related. A third is not.

    Carroll brings up Stalin’s science crony (Lysenko), who disregarded evolutionary teachings (as a bourgeois notion of the West) and consequently imposed mass starvation on the Soviet Union through mandated and misguided agricultural policies. Okay, that fits. He brings up how deniers are ever scheming to attack his cherished evolution and how they might be defeated. That fits, too.

    In between he sandwiches in a critique of those who practice chiropractic. “Spinal crackers” he calls them. (Let the reader use discernment that he doesn’t like them.) That doesn’t fit at all. What in the world do chiropractors have to do with anything? It’s as though his brother in-law went to a chiropractor rather than the doc Carroll recommended and he is still grumbling about it.

    I mean, his book is about evolution and the war against creationists. Chiropractors have no problem with evolution. At most, some will put a theistic spin on it, but there are plenty of scientists who do that too. Their schools incorporate evolution. What’s with this ax to grind over chiropractic? Ah, here it is: The “founding principle [of chiropractic] conflicted with the medically accepted view of infectious diseases as being caused by germs.” Well, that is certainly unforgivable but even so, is that enough for “spinal crackers” to earn his special contempt in a book plainly about something else?

    Oh, here it is: “The opposition of chiropractors to the germ theory of disease led to a resolute opposition to vaccination, opposition that continues among a substantial fraction of chiropractors today.” Well, maybe, but it’s news to me. If it ever did, suffice it to say that most have long since grown out of that notion. This doesn’t seem to placate Carroll at all. He is determined to eradicate the offending health regimen.

    Now, as it turns out, for many years, I worked in a field of repetitive motion that periodically took it out on my back. Many times I would pull a muscle leaving me in pain and almost unable to walk. Each time, my favorite chiropractor restored both posture and pain instantly. How he did it, I don’t really care. It’s not as though when my back heard that science doesn’t endorse him it went bad again. This is especially poignant as I have known many to suffer back problems, go the route of conventional treatment, culminating in surgery, and end up essentially crippled for life. Few of them are comforted by knowing their selected route was “evidence based.” So now, does Carroll put chiropractors on the kill list? Not on my watch.

    Not once did any chiropractor I engaged make any comment about vaccines. Nonetheless, what underhanded methods have they used to undermine them, according to Carroll? He mentions a few. First, they “doubt the science,” a sin that includes (1) “point[ing] to other measures, such as sanitation and hygiene, as the entire explanation for a decrease in certain diseases [rather than vaccination].” They also (2) question the motives and integrity of scientists, suggesting conspiracies between them and pharmaceutical companies—in short, that “their support for vaccination is motivated by greed, not public health.” They (3) cite dissenting views among “ardent critics who hold medical credentials,” as though those views are right, even though they are minority. They (4) make appeals to personal freedom. They (5) exaggerate harms vaccines might cause. However, Carroll says, “once the fog of disinformation clears and the efficacy of vaccines is demonstrated on a massive scale, most of the arguments provide weak refuge.”

    Funny he should say this just fifteen years before response to a worldwide pandemic took these arguments off the back burner and put them up front. These days those five points are reasserting themselves and it has nothing to do with chiropractors. The safety of the Covid-19 vaccine proved so flawed, its efficacy so overstated, and the curtailment of freedoms (point 4) so egregious during the pandemic, that not only do the Covid vaccines come in for intense criticism, but the furor has spilled over into all vaccines. One might even say that all of science takes a hit by thrusting it forward as though a poster child. Here Carroll’s book is named Top Science Book of the Year by USA Today, and he cannot stay on topic. He must veer from evolution to tackle a topic made prominent by its sheer irrelevance to his book.

    The obvious gaslighting that occurred during the pandemic has come back to bite them all. Were you to tie a millstone to the feet of every chiropractor and pitch them all into the sea, it would make no difference to current circumstances. Nobody, self included, would have ever predicted it. When you rile the masses, however, they research matters and end up doing far more damage to your cause than you ever dreamed they would. Speaking to Carroll’s point (1), for example, the CDC’s own mortality data reveals that in 1900, measles caused 13.3 deaths per 100,000 population. By 1960, the figure was .2 deaths per 100,000. The measles vaccine was rolled out in 1963. Thus, the chiropractors’ point (1) is exactly correct, at least in the case of measles. After a mortality drop of 98% had already taken place, a vaccine to eradicate measles was introduced. Its backers thereafter claimed credit for the entire drop.

    Not to mention that letting vaccines take over a job that nature or sanitation or hygiene or something was already winning is not necessarily a good thing. Turns out that when you force the human immune system to be on high alert for a particular pathogen, it comes at the expense of everything else. The immune system’s capacity is not infinite. Does this explain why mainstream vaccine experts highlighted in a 2017 study that children worldwide vaccinated with DTP were 10 times MORE likely to die in the first six months of life compared to unvaccinated children? They didn’t die from what they were immunized against, but they did die, at a ten-fold increased rate.

    Not to mention that most vaccines (not true of the measles vaccine, but it was of Covid-19) alleviate symptoms but do nothing to prevent transmission. This becomes counterproductive. A sick person who doesn’t know he’s sick stays in circulation and infects others. A sick person who knows he’s sick stays home and infects nobody. Though it be hard to imagine today, I used to look forward to measles, chicken pox, and mumps. It meant a week off school. The same thing happened with the Brady Bunch family, a sit-com from the 1960s. The eight children all came down with measles in an episode titled “Is There a Doctor in the House?” It’s “a slight temperature, a lot of dots, and a great big smile” due to staying home, playing Monopoly, and missing school. It’s very hard to gaslight someone out of recalling their own experience. Lest this threaten to happen anyway, here is a sit-com to confirm that my experience was nearly everyone’s experience.

    Believe me, look into these things and it is a hornet’s next you look into. So much for Carroll’s point (3). The dissenting views he complains of are having their day in the sun. As to his point (2), greed eclipsing public heath, I commendably don’t go there—but it is only by ignoring human nature. Somehow the most ardent cheerleaders of science envision practitioners of their discipline immune to the base forces that afflict the unenlightened ones. Tell Carroll to put on his pith helmet once more and get back to digging up fossils. Science takes a hit which it brought on itself. It made a massive authoritarian grab for the world, locking down everyone for years, forcing its will on them all, only to be caught with its pants down.

    As for chiropractic, ought we expand this to all alternative health therapies that Carroll would likely also have a problem with? Vincent McCabe’s 1997 book, “Let Like Cure Like,” discusses common principles to most of them: “These philosophies, both thousands of years old, have yet to be proved scientifically because of the limitations of science, not because they are not true.”

    It is left to the reader to assess this statement. Are there limitations of science? This is not the same as asking whether science knows everything. Its most fervent supporters readily acknowledge that it does not. The point of contention is whether science itself has limitations. Given time, could it figure out everything? The great divide hangs upon that question. It is given increased pertinency as science is the driving mechanism for those who would choose human rulership over the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ rulership of God. Will it truly enable them to “know good and bad,” as was promised in the garden?

    ******  The bookstore

  • Sarah Walks with God: Genesis 20

    Sarah Walks Courageously with God

    Sarah was the noted figure last night in Courageously Walking With God. Leaving her home and all in Ur, a comfortable life, to follow her husband and traipse all over on camels. The contrast was drawn with Lot’s wife, who wasn’t about to give up the good life, who looked behind as her family was fleeing Sodom, and who subsequently turned into a pillar of salt.

    I know she did this because I saw that drama played out at the St Louis International convention years ago at Busch Stadium. They ran from the diamond into the outfield, as though chasing a fly ball. Midway, she raised her colored cloak inside out over her head. It was white on the inside. From afar, she looked exactly as though turning into a pillar of salt.

    In Sarah’s case, her sacrifice of the good life was remedied after a time. Abraham passed her off as her sister in Negeb, for fear the king might kill him off to take her as his wife. They were known to do such things—killing didn’t bother them but stealing another man’s apparently wife did. So Abimelech absconds with her, figuring he’s going to woo her over. ‘Keep your paws off her,’ God says in a dream. ‘She’s married!’ Whereupon, Abimelech falls all over himself to make amends, showering both Sarah and Abraham with gifts:

    “Abimelech then took sheep and cattle and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham, and he returned his wife Sarah to him. Abimelech also said: “Here my land is available to you. Dwell whereveryou please.” And to Sarah he said: “Here I give 1,000 pieces of silver to your brother. It is a sign of your innocence to all who are with you and before everybody, and you are cleared of reproach.”

    I mean, if you were wanting to scam the guy you could not do better. I’ve even thought of copying the scheme myself next time I run across a rich king, for my wife is also a looker, and as it is I have to constantly beat off louts giving her the eye. Trouble is, I’m a little worried she might become enticed with the good life and cut me out of the picture entirely.

    ******  The bookstore

  • What is the Burden of Jehovah? (Jeremiah 23:33)

    What is ‘the Burden of Jehovah?’ (Jeremiah 23:33)

    Burden of Jehovah?

    “And when this people or a prophet or a priest asks you, ‘What is the burden of Jehovah?’” (Jeremiah 23:33)

    Huh? What is being spoken of?

    There is a play on words here towards a people who are anything but respectful toward the prophet. The Hebrew word massa has a double meaning. It can genuinely mean a heavy burden. Or it can mean a solemn utterance that is that way.

    ‘What “burdensome message” do you have for us today? As they party and carry on and preside over a shipwreck of maltreatment (to other people, not themselves) which suits them just fine, here comes Jeremiah. “What downer do you have for us today?” they jeer. “Come to spread a little more doom and gloom?”

    The prophet does not flinch: “You people are the burden!” he throws back at them, reverting to the other meaning of the word. “And I will cast you off,” declares Jehovah.” (33b) Mend your ways and you won’t be such a burden. But it doesn’t seem too likely that you will, as the remainder of the twenty-third chapter indicates.

    Imagine the stress of such a role. Imagine being in Jeremiah’s shoes. No wonder his book shows him all but being dragged kicking and screaming to his work:

    “You have fooled me, O Jehovah, and I was fooled. You used your strength against me, and you prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; Everyone ridicules me,” he explodes at 20:7.

    “For whenever I speak, I must cry out and proclaim, “Violence and destruction!” For me the word of Jehovah has been the cause of insults and jeering all day long” just like it is with these homegrown prophets and priests sneering, “What is the burden today?”

    How to cope? Quit.

    “So I said: “I am not going to make mention of him, And I will speak no more in his name.” But in my heart it became like a burning fire shut up in my bones, And I was tired of holding it in; I could no longer endure it.”

    He can’t do it. But does it ever cause him stress! There’s no sanitizing these verses. He complains mightily, even bitterly. How else can you explain his subsequent words at 20:14-16?

    “Cursed be the day on which I was born! May the day that my mother gave me birth not become blessed! Cursed be the man that brought good news to my father, saying: “There has been born to you a son, a male!” He positively made him rejoice.And that very man must become like cities that Jehovah has overthrown while He has felt no regret.“

    Somehow God pulls him through despite himself, but he never regards his assigned role as a piece of cake. Maybe he’s the guy I’ll rush to chat up in the resurrection, as others are making a beeline for David. Sort of reminds me of an older brother, faithful lifelong, who will close out his days that way, I have no doubt, who nonetheless ventured his view that “Jehovah expects a lot.” I’ll ask Jeremiah how he ever pulled off his role.

    God keeps ratcheting up his assignment.

    He confronts those who say “again and again to those who disrespect [Jehovah]: “You will enjoy peace.”’ And to everyone who follows his own stubborn heart they say, ‘No calamity will come upon you.’” I mean, does that sound like a great assignment or what, continually butting heads with these people?

    It’s like a friend of mine remarking of those he encountered in the ministry, that they had minds “of concrete—all mixed up and firmly set.” The entrenched interests have taken charge, liken the modern-day counterparts who have adapted to doing anything they want and calling it ‘holy spirit,’ serving God with their lips but it seems not important to them if they actually do what he wants or not.

    His prophetic mission has taken him to the top of a world that doesn’t want to hear it. So much do they not want to hear it that. “Pashhur . . . the priest . . . the leading commissioner in the house of Jehovah, kept listening to Jeremiah while prophesying these words [and] struck Jeremiah the prophet and put him into the stocks.” (20:2) Was Jeremiah abashed the next day upon his release? Doesn’t sound that way:

    “Jeremiah now said to him: “Jehovah has called your name, not Pashhur, but ‘Fright all around.’ For this is what Jehovah has said, ‘Here I am making you a fright to yourself and to all your lovers, and they will certainly fall by the sword of their enemies while your eyes will be looking on; and all Judah I shall give into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will actually take them into exile in Babylon and strike them down with the sword.” (20;3-4) It is another play on words, this time a play on Pashur’s actual name. Pashur literally means something like ‘fruitful/joy all around.” Jeremiah kept the ‘all around’ part’ changing only the stuff that the “all around” was all around.

    This is why you do not put intellectuals and academics in charge of disseminating the Word of God. Ever concerned about their stature in the eyes of their peers, they will wuss-out every single time when the game gets rough. No, you need to put lowly ones in charge who have no special stature to worry about. To me, Jeremiah’s becoming one of the most interesting players in the Old Testament.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Anecdotal Evidence and Science

    What to do with Eyewitnesses

    In May of 2020, no hope was held out for victims of Covid-19. The “warp speed” development of a vaccine had not yet landed. Sufferers were advised bedrest and fluids at home. They were only to enter the hospital if they were almost dead (which in many cases would finish off the job for them), President Trump then described a letter he had received:

    “I got a letter from a doctor the other day, from Westchester, New York, around the area, he did not want anything. He just said: ‘Sir I have hundreds of patients and I give them hydroxychloroquine, I give them the z-pack, which is azithromycin, and I give them zinc, and out of the hundreds of patients, many patients, more than 300, I haven’t lost one.’ He said: ‘Please keep pressing that sir.’”

    Q: What do you do when people are dropping dead left and right and then a physician comes along with a treatment he has used on over 300 patients and says ‘I haven’t lost one?’ Do you:

    A) Ignore him.

    B) Seek higher-quality evidence

    C) Go talk to those 300 and shake them down for their stories.

    Though any one of common sense would choose C, the actual response was a cross between A and B. Why? Because to choose C makes you beholden to “anecdotal evidence,” a horrific faux pas in the discipline called science.

    Michael Shermer discussed anecdotal evidence in his Great Courses lecture series, “How to Think Like a Scientist.” Anecdotes are near-worthless, he maintains. If you want to think like a scientist (who doesn’t?) you ignore them. “Ten anecdotes are no better than one and one hundred anecdotes are no better than ten,” he stated. “Imagine how worthless five hundred must be to him,” I said in ‘Workman’s Theodicy,’ referring to the five hundred eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection.

    Okay, okay, so the five hundred eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection were long dead at the time of his and my writing; that throws a significant caveat into it for sure. But the three hundred eyewitnesses from the Westchester physician were not dead! Quite the opposite. They would have been dead, many of them, were it not for his treatment that he subsequently tried to share with the nation. How can you not go and talk to them?

    Science did not. They devised “higher quality” studies to conclude that the doctor was talking through his hat, and that whoever disdained science enough to listen to him was equally foolish. Is it because talking to the patients requires leaving the laboratory? Is it because if you send someone to speak with them, whatever they bring back is also “anecdote” and therefore equally untrustworthy? I can’t think of a better circumstance to validate the Romans 1:22 verse of fools insisting they are wise.

    So stupid is this mainstay of “thinking like a scientist” that conspiracy theorists arise to insist it was not stupidity at all, but design. The plan, they insist, was to discredit anything cheap and effective so as to make a financial killing with the next product from Pharma. It is a battle for others to wage, not me. Good luck to those who embark on it; it’s like arguing over the trinity. I let it pass. Others can conclude what they will. But it may just be a limitation of science itself. Science is simply not nimble enough to deal with anecdotal evidence, so it doesn’t even make the attempt. It ignores it. It carts that stuff to the curb. No matter if lives are said to depend upon it or not—out it goes.

    This doctor, a Vladimir Zelenko, was not the only doctor to weigh in. Other doctors would also weigh in, and even eclipse him by testifying before Congress. I heard one of them, a Dr Pierre Kory. In the early days of Covid-19, he and others did not want to just sit around waiting on CDC guidance which didn’t come beyond bedrest and fluids. They started tinkering with already existing drugs that they had used for other illnesses. Might some be adapted to the new contagion? The found the answer was yes. ‘Look, I’m not dissing any vaccine,’ Kory said. ‘But it’s not here yet. In the meantime people are dying. I’ve found a regimen that works. [just like Zelenko and others had] Please let me use it! Please tell others about it!’ But it was anecdotal evidence. Though each doctor who testified had hundreds of patients treated, hundreds of eyewitnesses that could have been sought out, it was to no avail. Science can’t be impeded by such nonsense. They ignored him and sought out higher quality evidence that would tell them he was wrong.

    You’d almost think that President Trump’s own experience with Covid 19 would indicate Zelenko (whose regimen he promptly adopted and who closed his practice shortly after sending his letter, so harassed was he by detractors—he has since died) was onto something. In October of 2020, Trump himself came down with Covid. He was old and obese, two huge factors of comorbidity. Everyone thought he was a goner. Instead, he kicked the illness in no time at all. Shortly thereafter, he was waving from his limosine. During his 4-day hospital stay, he was mostly ambulatory and worked from his bedside. Did the Zelenko treatment help him recovery so quickly? The answer will never be known, probably, for his care consisted of treatments then unavailable to the general public, primarily a regeneration monoclonal antibiotic cocktail.

    And no, don’t carry on about Trump’s getting treatment better than you would get. That is just the way it is with regard to leadership of anything in this system of things. On a recent trip to Chicago, I was even reminded of how past-mayor Daly had to think very quickly to extract himself from such a trap.

    It seems that the President, the Pope, and Mayor Daly had been caught adrift in a small boat which had sprung a leak. It could thereafter safely transport two persons, but not three. The President promptly pointed out that as leader of the free world, it could hardly be he that bailed. The Pope made the same observation on the basis of heading the world’s largest religion. Mayor Daly, a politician renowned for his corruption, began to sweat. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he proposed, “Let’s do this the democratic way! Let’s take a vote.” So they did and Mayor Daly won, five to two.

    Does it water down this post to conclude it with a joke? Maybe. But how can you conclude that a policy of ignoring eyewitnesses is anything but a joke? God help us when this mainstay of science is picked up by the judicial system. Prosecution and defense alike will soon stop calling upon them, since science has deemed them unworthy of consideration. It recalls a certain chum of mine, admittedly given to corniness, who stocked a bookshelf with various Bible translations and his collection of comic strips—Calvin and Hobbes was a favorite. That way he could say, “If it’s not in the Bible, it’s a joke.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • Exposing an Inordinate Trust in Science

    In the days of ‘Me Too’ a common endorsement of anyone leveling an accusation was ‘Why would she lie?’

    I’m almost at that point now with conspiracy theories, so many of them have turned out true. I’m almost at the point (but not quite) of saying that the burden of proof should be upon those denying them, not those asserting them, so awry has gone the doomed trial period of human self-rule.

    Here is the doctor, Anthony Fauci, who directed the U.S. Covid-19 policy testifying before Congress at July’s end, 2026. One political party grills him relentlessly. The other party lauds his long tenure of public service. It was precisely the opposite from 30 years ago, during the AIDS epidemic, when the accusing and supporting parties were reversed!

    After an opening statement in which he declares himself the victim of a witch hunt which threatens even science itself, he invokes his fifth amendment right over 100 times. It is the answer to every question asked of him. In a snafu that screams the absurdity of human government, the accusers holler that he cannot plead the fifth, since he has already been pardoned. However, if the pardon is invalid, as has been alleged due to its being signed by auto-pen and not the participating president, then he might be in hot water and pleading the fifth is exactly what he should do.

    Thirty years ago, it was Democrats blasting him for stonewalling off-patent AIDS therapies in order to pave the way for a new one, AZT, a toxic antiviral that neither cured AIDS nor prevented transmission. This time, it was Republicans blasting him for stonewalling off-patent Covid-19 therapies in order to pave the way for a new one, remdesivir, which would be nicknamed by many nurses, “Run—death is near.”

    Since he represented science—he repeatedly said that he did—a media with no use for religion but boundless enthusiasm for science, long ate up and heralded every utterance from his lips and shouted down as misinformation anything contrary. Heaven help you if you went against official narratives. Doctors lost hospital privileges and some their licenses. Individuals lost their social media accounts. Today, many of those dissident views, such as the very origin of the Covid 19 virus, are widely viewed as correct. It didn’t hop from one animal species to people. It was an accidental result of human tinkering, called gain-of-function research. As always (human government triggers so much mistrust these days) conspiracy theorists arise to charge that it was not accidental, but deliberate,for who knows what nefarious ends

    And no, I have no ax to grind regarding Doc Fauci. My former post of ‘What if Moses spoke like Trump,’ from the pandemic’s onset, when he and the president were nightly on television, left unmolested the statement that he was the great doctor soon to save us all. Nor do I have any ax to grind with regard to vaccines. Dissing them has never been my cause. There is an ax to grind, however, in the unthinking adoration often entertained toward science, it being the human answer to God’s proposed ruling of the earth. Who needs the latter when science will deliver us? In order to properly address that misplaced adoration, one must shovel through the snow of vaccine lore clogging the path, but it is not an end in itself.

    The boundless trust and enthusiasm in science is such that (U.S) society tolerates what they would never tolerate in any other area: the removal of liability should results go bad. The most common sense item in the world, instantly acknowledged in all other fields of activity, is that if you remove incentives for things to be safe, they soon won’t be. People will take shortcuts in research and manufacture. That’s why one has legal recourse in case they be harmed by—say—defective auto parts, or medical implants, or toys for your child, or household appliances, or power tools, or household chemicals or, or nearly anything—with one notable exception. If you are injured by a vaccine, you are out of luck. They alone are immune from liability. To attack them is to attack science itself—what crazy person would do such a thing? The author of ‘Vaccines, Amen’ likens the current reality to a customer asking a car salesman if his product is safe. “Prove to me it isn’t,” the salesperson retorts. It is an absurdity tolerated in only one area, probably enduring for only one reason: an over-devotion to science from people who have cast out God but not their instinct to worship one.

    ******  The bookstore