Sheep and Goats

Category: Bible Books

  • Key Ingredients in the Search for God – Isaiah 58

    We do ourselves a disservice when we allow ourselves to be driven into dead ends, even if it is the name of education. Humans vastly overstate their conclusions with a confidence often unjustified by the underlying facts. Even “settled science” often turns out to be settled by decree. Conclusions tried and true may turn out to be up for grabs, as in this video someone pitched my way as to how “some leading scientists are questioning Darwin’s theory.”

    I shy from things like this, for some degree of natural selection is surely built into the fabric of life. The question is: How much? Fight battles more consequential. These days, that is abiogenesis (life arising completely through natural processes). There is no evidence whatsoever that this has occurred. Incredibly, the confidence of those who state life arose in this manner simply derives from a refusal to consider anything else. Ditto with our knowledge of the universe itself. We know almost nothing about “dark matter” and “dark energy” other than that they must exist, otherwise much of which we have already concluded about the universe is invalid.

    Assessing evidence and gaining knowledge is a plus, but it shouldn’t be made a sacred quest. “We don’t have to know everything” makes for a more appropriate human mantra. It is even shortsighted to argue “evidence” with unbelievers, because the Bible makes clear that evidence is not what it’s all about. “Abundant peace belongs to those who love your law; Nothing can make them stumble,” says Psalm 119:165. Does one love that law or not? It has nothing to do with “evidence.” Nor does Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that Jehovah is good; Happy is the man who takes refuge in him.” If you don’t like broccoli, will “evidence” convince you that it tastes good? “No man can come to me unless the Father, who sent me, draws him,” Jesus says. (John 6:44) Does he draw them because they have gathered evidence?

    People are so poor at processing evidence that it ought not be one’s guiding light; half the time they get it wrong. Systems of faith recognize that basic human flaw to a much greater degree than systems of non-faith. Nothing wrong with evidence in itself. Pour me a double-shot of the stuff. But don’t make it your sole criteria. Faith is less dependent on processing evidence than is science. The latter totally depends upon it—the former, not so much. Faith helps us overcome the blind spots we impose upon ourselves when we adopt the prerequisite that we must know everything.

    Instead, scriptures continually speak of “preparing” or “softening” one’s heart as a prerequisite to seeking God. It is best to adapt to God’s point of view rather than our own. “Heart” incorporates intellect but is not confined to it. It includes emotion, appreciation, motivation. Here, from the scheduled Bible reading for this week, is a people seeking God while he hides from them. The problem is not that they have neglected to gather evidence. The problem is one of heart, that they don’t act on what they know, and they aren’t much interested in being readjusted:

    “They seek me day after day, And they express delight to know my ways, As if they were a nation that had practiced righteousness And had not abandoned the justice of their God.” (Isaiah 58:2) It matters whether one “practices righteousness,” and of course, it will not be our own righteousness to conform to. It will be his. He is the one “teaching you to benefit yourself,” (Isaiah 48:17) so it’s a deal for us as well.

    “Why do you not see when we fast?” the Isaelites plaintively ask in the next verse.  “‘And why do you not notice when we afflict ourselves?’ Because on the day of your fast, you pursue your own interests.” They either ignore God’s requirements completely or pursue them so half-heartedly that it doesn’t count, like the Christians of Revelation 3:16 who deliberately stayed lukewarm.

    God lays down a few conditions for them, then says (verse 9): “Then you will call, and Jehovah will answer; You will cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am!’” But it is easier said than done, for they must desist from that most cherished of human activity: “Stop pointing your finger and speaking maliciously.” (also verse 9) Pay attention to your mother, who said when you point your finger at someone, three fingers point back at you.

    Jehovah summarizes all in next chapter: It’s not that he can’t deliver. “No, your own errors have separated you from your God. Your sins have made him hide his face from you.” That is why “he refuses to hear you.” Plus, it’s not just an OT thing, something unique to Isaiah. Jesus fully endorses that one must walk the walk, rather than devote themselves instead to collecting evidence:

    “Many will say to me in that day: ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them: ‘I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:21-23)

    There are many (though the ones obsessed with “evidence” are not necessarily among them) who love the scriptures. But try to get them to live by them? Forget about it. Says Ezekiel, another prophet: “Look! You are to them like a romantic love song, sung with a beautiful voice and skillfully played on a stringed instrument. They will hear your words, but no one will act on them.” (Ezekiel 33:32)

    Now, not to be too hard on the rank-and-file. Most people don’t fit the successive verses of Isaiah 59: “For your palms are polluted with blood And your fingers with error.  Your lips speak lies, and your tongue mutters unrighteousness. No one calls out for righteousness, And no one goes to court in truthfulness.” (59:3-4) But they trust in the “unrealities” (vs 5) that enable all of it, the unrealities of trusting in humans, including the unrealities of self-rule. Through sheer incompetence, even when not augmented by deliberate misconduct, human rulership based upon self-interest results in every sort of abuse. 

    It may be the “unreality” of dominant human teachings. As to how God can exist without a creator, that will be among the things beyond our comprehension. But as to anything else that exists, the simple principle of Hebrews 3:4 applies: “Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but the one who constructed all things is God.” This instantly resonates with the person whose mind has not been messed with. It is validated in everything he sees. He knows of no exceptions. It really takes a colossal and relentless degree of “education” to knock this bit of common sense out of him. Such education is undertaken, however, from kindergarten and on.

    One ought not get complicit with such “unrealities” of human self-rule. For “they hatch the eggs of a poisonous snake, And they weave the cobweb of a spider.  Anyone who eats their eggs would die, And the egg that is crushed hatches a viper.” (vs 5) Think a cobweb makes good cover? It doesn’t. “Their cobweb will not serve as a garment, Nor will they cover themselves with what they make.” (vs 6)

    Of those unrealities (and of you, if you are complicit with them):”Their works are harmful, And deeds of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to do evil, And they hurry to shed innocent blood.  Their thoughts are harmful thoughts; Ruin and misery are in their ways.” Sometimes it’s ruin and misery for the subjects of other human governments, preferably those far away that no one sees. Other times it’s ruin and misery for their own subjects. Indeed, “they have not known the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks. They make their roadways crooked; No one treading on them will know peace.” (vs 8)

    The scriptures become very graphic, likening human “righteousness” to a menstrual cloth. It’s sort of like how the way you embarrass an archeologist is to hand him a used tampon and ask them what period is it from. Where is one’s reverence for science to say such a thing? It’s too much. It ought be simply rephrased that science is not absolute, therefore, while one ought not sneer at its conclusions, it is fair to regard them always as tentative, subject to future revision. When cheerleaders of science say ‘Jump!’ there is no need to respond ‘How high.’

    How can it be that evangelizing atheists praise to the stars the wonderful human accomplishments AND my neighbor describes the news as “like a bad accident—you know you should look away, but you can’t”? In some cases, I don’t even think they believe it themselves, but they take the position because their adversaries take the opposite one. At any rate, Isaiah does not shy from the tampon analogy:

    “And we have all become like someone unclean, And all our acts of righteousness are like a menstrual cloth. We will all wither like a leaf, And our errors will carry us off like the wind.” (Isaiah 64:4)

    Notice how there’s a change of narration starting with verse 9. The “they” changes to “we.” Someone has gotten the point. Someone has taken it to heart: “That is why justice is far away from us, And righteousness does not overtake us.  We keep hoping for light, but look! there is darkness; For brightness, but we keep walking in gloom” and so forth, for several verses. You always hope for people to turn around. But it doesn’t happen that often.

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Righteous One Perishes but No One Takes it to Heart

    There is no huge significance that the Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight instead of a minute or two either way. But there is significance for it to stand in any of those spots instead of 10:30 AM or even high noon. That’s probably the way to gauge a verse like Isaiah 57:1:

    “The righteous one has perished, But no one takes it to heart. Loyal men are taken away, With no one discerning that the righteous one has been taken away Because of the calamity.”

    It’s not a call to identify any specific “righteous ones” who have perished. It is not to be applied to that actor who passed away a few years ago, an actor who had garnered more good press and than bad press, so that a certain romantic chum of mine mused that his demise satisfied that verse—just like Dick Van Dyke’s death, when it finally occurs (Lord knows, having topped 100, he’s old enough) might also have made him think of the verse, had he not died first.

    No, you don’t focus on individuals. It is the times you focus on that make such a verse meaningful. The ones who perish don’t perish during glorious times so that you’re saddened they’ve missed the fun. They perish during times so perilous that you say ‘It’s just as well. Now they can sleep through the wreckage and awaken in the resurrection.’

    Incidentally, that Clock, a contrivance of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was advanced four more seconds as of January 27, 2026. The Clock is symbolic, you understand. it is not a literal prediction of just 85 seconds left. Rather, it is an assessment of the mess humanity is in, and whether they are worse off or better off than the times just before. They are worse off, was the assignment of those Atomic Scientists, by four whole seconds.

    Whereas last year we were a refreshing safe .0001029615916 percentage distance away from total annihilation, this year we have gotten alarmingly close: only 0009837962963% distance away! The problems those scientists fret over include a failure of leadership to tackle worsening global risks like nuclear threats and record-breaking climate change, biological threats and pandemics. AI misuse and cyber risks add to the chaos. Clearly, these scientists aren’t cheerleading over the incredible successes of science. They are lamenting its redirection to evil.

    Science is a tool only as good as the ones wielding it, and the ones wielding it are not too good. The “broken-hearted ones living in the world” are not coming to any “agreement” as the ‘Let it Be’ song predicts. Nor does it comfort anyone to ‘Imagine’ that there is “above us only sky” and “no religion, too.” Very few world leaders have any use for religion today, The ones that do accept only the brand that “knows its place” (last place) and defers to human models of rulership.

    It’s a little like when I had a lengthy discussion with a man at the door over abiogenesis (origin of life) versus creation and he at last asked what difference did it make? Either way, we are here, so who cares how it happened? I answered that if God created life, it is just possible that he did not create it for nothing, that he has some purpose for it, and will not stand idly to see it all destroyed. But if we got here through abiogenesis, then any hope for humankind depends solely upon human efforts, and “they’re not doing too well.” The man’s wife, who had remained silent during our 45 minute discussion, spoke for the first time: “That’s a good point,” she said.

    It’s also a little like Timothée Chalamet, playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, pushing back at the incessant demand he keep cranking out more peace, love, and cumbaya songs that transformed the genre as it marked his musical debut. ‘Well, they’re not exactly doing the trick now, are they?’ someone else observed. JFK had just been murdered, then Malcolm X. Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King would soon follow. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world inches from World War III.

    At the Newport Folk Festival, he didn’t sing ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,’ or even his own ‘Blowing in the Wind’ type songs. He sang ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ to mark the end of an era. It was all over. Furthermore: “Well, I try my best to be just like I am, But everybody wants you to be just like them, They say, ‘Sing while you slave’ and I just get bored. I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.” Problem was, he “had a head full of ideas that were driving him insane” and it was “a shame how they made him mop the floor” instead.

    There was lots of insanity making the rounds about then with those four icons killed in just five years, with nukes to the U.S. only spared because one of the three Russian shipboard commandants refused the order to launch. (It had to be unanimous for go-ahead). With that backdrop, you can almost see why a guy might get all excited that 1975 might mark the end, given that 6000 years of biblical history was to end just then.

    “Aw, you don’t believe we’re on the Eve of Destruction?” (P.F. Sloan – 1965)

    Looks like it was just a head fake, a dry run for the real thing to come shortly. It is just around the corner. To be sure, it is one heckuva corner. But it is just around it.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 51: Mined from a Quarry

    Never thought I’d live to see childbirth likened to mining a quarry, but that is the meaning of Isaiah 51: 1-2. We just don’t usually think of our own birth that way, as though mined from a quarry. Nobody, but nobody I have ever known has likened childbirth to mining from a quarry. Yet there it is in Isaiah. Why had I not noticed this before?

    “Listen to me, you who are pursuing righteousness, You who are seeking Jehovah. Look to the rock from which you were hewn And to the quarry from which you were dug.” (Isaiah 51:1)

    What rock is that? What quarry is that? The next verse answers.

    “Look to Abraham your father And to Sarah who gave birth to you.” (verse 2) Don’t ever say that the Bible writers were of the Victorian era. Imagine—likening childbirth to mining a quarry!

    Furthermore, the metaphor is extended—twice. Not only is Abraham the rock, but Jehovah also describes himself that way in Deuteronomy 32:18. There, the Israelites “forgot the Rock who fathered you, And you did not remember the God who gave birth to you.” Is God both the rock AND the quarry here? Clarifying, or maybe adding more mystery still, Paul later describes a “Jerusalem above” which served as “mother” to the early congregation, for the early congregation is the second extension of that metaphor. Christ is the rock upon which the entire Christian congregation is built. Simon is renamed Peter, a word that means rock, and is given the keys to direct its early doings on earth.

    “Simon Peter answered [Jesus]: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In response Jesus said to him: “Happy you are, Simon son of Joʹnah, because flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father in the heavens did. Also, I say to you: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my congregation, and the gates of the Grave will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of the heavens, and whatever you may bind on earth will already be bound in the heavens, and whatever you may loosen on earth will also be loosened in the heavens.” (Matthew 16:16-19)

    Alas, only a remnant of either stays faithful, of the Christian congregation or of the ancient nation of Israel. It goes poorly for them when they do not, to the point that they “bow down so that [their enemies] may walk over you!’ So you made your back like the ground, Like a street for them to walk on.” (vs 23) It’s as graphic a metaphor as the quarry!

    And, for now, I’m not even going to touch the “stone” that was “cut not by human hands” and hurled into the feet of the statue Daniel saw. Nor will I mention one friend, a father, whose home I visited and he had somehow acquired a model replica of that statue, multi-colored to indicate the bronze, gold, silver, copper, etc, standing about a foot tall. “Do you shoot pebbles at its feet via slingshot for family study?” I asked him.

    No matter where one looks, it is all humans forgetting their Maker. Verse 13 poses the question: “Why do you forget Jehovah your Maker, The One who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth?”

    Forsake God and he forsakes them. They are left to their own devices. Fearsome though the Jews were in battle, they were no match for the professionals. The Book of Isaiah logs how the ten-tribe kingdom to the north (a product of Rehoboam’s pig-headedness) forgot Jehovah their Maker, and then the remaining two-tribe kingdom to the south also forgot. Though delivered once in Assyrian times, they were not delivered again in Babylonian times. There, they would have to settle for a later remnant to be released.

    The ten tribes were decimated by Assyria, its survivors scattered throughout that empire. The remaining two tribes were decimated by Babylon, survivors exiled into Babylon itself, except for the lowly peasants, initially left to remain, but subsequently organized by rabble, whose put down would see them killed off.

    They are glutted with own counsel in the meantime. This is easier seen in the present day, because the present day is where we live. “Why do you Witnesses always have to assume things are getting worse? What does that belief do for you?” some atheist asked me. It helps me to explain why the Doomsday Clock is set at 90 seconds to midnight and not 10:30 AM.

    There is material progress in the modern day, no doubt about it. If you measure life by gadgets or by the demand for back-breaking work, it has improved for most. But if you measure it by any cognitive feeling of well-being, it has gone down the drain—or, in the words of my non-Witness dad, “the world is going to hell in a hand basket.” If you are in the house-to-house ministry, open by saying, “The world is crazy, and we think the Bible helps—in explaining why it is crazy, offering hope for the future, and guidance on how to live in the meantime.” People may or may not think the Bible helps, but no one in may part of the world will deny that it is crazy

    When I was a boy, there was one and only one possible “end of the world” scenario: nuclear war. I was not a Witness then and would not become one until my 20s. Today there are a dozen or more “end of the world” scenarios, most some variant of pollution or mismanagement of the earth. The very latest one is the changes AI may bring upon humanity. These things make people anxious and anxiety is an ever-present backdrop of life today. Recently I read of significant swaths of college students—was it one third?—reporting they were anxious “all of the time.” Substance abuse is pandemic today, as is loneliness. At least a third of all Americans are on some sort of antidepressants. They feel they need that to cope with life. Trust in the good will of others is at a low. One never knows when a complete stranger will do you harm for no reason at all. “Whistleblowers” arise in every field to convince us that no institution can be trusted. A 1968 Truth Book statement that humans cannot live together in peace—have they improved in that aspect since or have they become more contentious? In short, there is no stability in life for many, and lack of stability plays havoc with the emotions, even if materially you’re better off than back in the day.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Not Giving Up. Not Hardening One’s Heart

    Three times Joseph would have been within his rights to give up. Three times he suffered reversal so serious as to think life had betrayed him. And maybe, since God was in charge of life, that He had betrayed him, too. At each instance, the circuit overseer paused to ask how Joseph would have felt at that moment, what prospects would he have just then assigned to his future. How could he not have become despondent then, and he probably did for a time. But he recovered.

    And then, when the ones who caused him the most trouble came calling years later, had be been hard-nosed toward them, who could not understand it? But he did not. His heart had not hardened over the years. He had not been plotting his revenge. 

    The first occasion, a complete reversal of life for him, was his brothers selling him into slavery. He—his father’s favorite. When you see pictures of him in the publications, the circuit overseer said, it is often with Jacob’s arm around him. No more. Sent out to check on his brother’s welfare, they captured and sold him.

    He adjusted. He worked hard. His new master put him in charge of everything. Life started looking up. Trouble was, the man’s wife was always trying to seduce him. When he refused her, she accused him of attempted rape. The master believed her, threw him into prison. There, would he not have said, “What did I do wrong? I did everything right!” Might it not have seemed another betrayal by God? Could he have been blamed for giving up? It’s not like he could just figure on doing his time and getting out; his most likely prospect was to rot there.

    Then there was the time when the chum he made in prison got released, the pharaoh’s cupbearer. ‘Hey, make sure to mention my plight when you get out,’ Joseph implored him, ‘I don’t belong here.’ Surely, one can could on a chum. Nope. The guy forgot all about him. A third betrayal. How much can a guy take? Somehow, he recovered. 

    Interpreting dreams was a thing then in Egypt. They had huge tomes full of dreams and what they meant. Trouble was, it was tough to do, and there were plenty of frauds and phonies who knew how to string the dreamer along and make a fine living off it. The pharaoh had a dream that greatly troubled him. THEN the cupbearer remembered. ‘Hey, you know, there was this guy in prison who was pretty good at such things. Why don’t you give him a shout?’ 

    Pharaoh did. Joseph told him affairs and gove Jehovah all the credit. It resulted in complete reversal, more thorough than the previous betrayals had  been betrayals. Turned out the dream was of national significance, how to stock up for the upcoming famine. Joseph was put in charge of implementation. It was in while in that role, years later, that his brothers came crawling to him, having no idea who he was. “Oh, so NOW you come seeking my help!” the CO spelled out the drama that could have arisen had Joseph allowed it, but he did not. (He probably didn’t tell Pharaoh, though, the CO tossed in, because Pharaoh would not likely have been as forgiving. Then set a long and convoluted process in which Joseph maneuvered to see if his brothers had changed. Were they still the heartless louts of before? They were not. They had changed.

    The drama comprises nearly 30% of the Book of Genesis. It takes 14 chapters to unfold. It all comes to an end in the next book, Exodus, with a new pharaoh arisen who did not know Joseph. But that’s a reversal for another talk. It was not mentioned in this one. Fast forward a few thousand years to when my mentor would lose a business contract. Trouble is, he would say, a new pharaoh has arisen at the company who does not know Joseph. I had that happen to me a time or two as well. As did the CEO of one of my first accounts, the fellow whose coffee cup meme, “CAN’T a man drink his coffee in peace, for crying out loud?!” would many years later emblazon my tee shirt, a first for me, since I have long stated that I am not a billboard. This CEO showed me all the mounted awards his company had won. ‘They don’t mean a thing,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we get canned the very next year.’ Alas, he himself suffered a betrayal, in the form of a massive stroke that left him unable to function.

    But this all aside that the circuit overseer would not have included even had he been aware of it. I never saw that CEO again. His second-in-command took charge, whom I did not especially like. Today, I would have visited the stricken man. but he was many years my senior at the time, everyone held him in a sort of awe, self included, and the gulf between us was huge. 

    The CO would go on to develop themes of not giving up, not becoming despondent, and not letting the circumstances of life make one’s heart hard.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 48:22: “There is no Peace for the Wicked”

    Jarringly out of place at the end of Isaiah 48, so it would seem, is the final verse: “There is no peace,” says Jehovah, ‘for the wicked.’”

    Who’s he talking about? Just who is “wicked?”

    Is he referring to the same as, whenever the younger brothers took to squabbling, the older bro would tilt back in his chair and say, “It’s amazing what Jehovah can accomplish, given what he has to work with?”

    Well, maybe a little. But, for the most part, it is attuned to what one sister said in public comment: “It should never be said that someone is worthless since you can always be used as a bad example.”

    More of that. A little of the former. At any rate, the “wicked” God refers to are from the ranks of his own people! They also seem to have comprised the rule, not the exception. Despite that, he did a lot, and it sure wasn’t due to their wonderfulness. 

    “For my own sake, for my own sake I will act, For how could I let myself be profaned?” (48:11)

    But regarding his own people? “I knew how stubborn you are —That your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead is copper.” (48:4) And “you have been called a transgressor from birth.” (vs 8)

    Again, what he does is not due to their record, but despite it: “But for the sake of my name I will hold back my anger; For my own praise I will restrain myself toward you, And I will not do away with you. (vs 9)

    As to his own people—it just got so tiresome to deal with them—he addressed (vs 1): “You who swear by the name of Jehovah And who call on the God of Israel, Though not in truth and righteousness.”

    How can one not think of a first century counterpart utterance of Jesus, that many would come to him in the final day, with their “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do this? Didn’t we do that?” only to hear the rebuke: “I never knew you. Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!” “Workers of lawlessness” versus “truth and righteousness” is apparently the deciding factor. Loudly singing the name in itself doesn’t cut it. (Matthew 7:22-23)

    No sense in squabbling over this passage, because each one will apply it to the other guy. But it does show that the popular view of Jesus being so loving that’s it’s near impossible to get him upset is wrong. Apparently, it’s quite easy to get him going, but also quite easy to avoid. Just supplement your acceptance of our Lord’s redemption with “doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens,” and you are okay. (Matthew 7:21)

    It’s a little hard to imagine that “doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens” would consist of no more than being nice and helping out the poor. Those are not such polarizing activities that one could later turn against them, becoming “enemies of the cross,” as Paul said many had done. “For there are many—I used to mention them often but now I mention them also with weeping—who are walking as enemies of the torture stake of the Christ.” (Phillipians 3:18) Nor does it seem that anyone could later interpret them as “shackles” and “ropes” that the very “kings of the earth” and their “high officials” would want to break free from. (Psalm 2:2-3)

    Ah! The ray of hope: “No, you have not heard, you have not known, And in the past your ears were not opened.” (vs 8) Okay. So, leave the past in the past. Accept the Lord, come to him in repentance, but then don’t “accept the undeserved kindness of God and miss its purpose.” (2 Corinthians 6:1) “Gonna change my way of thinking; Make myself a different set of rules,” is the way Bob Dylan put it. “Gonna put my good foot forward; stop being influenced by fools.”

    Are you saved upon doing that? One circuit overseer addressed a Bible-belt (Southeastern U.S.)  congregation on how to respond when people ask “Are you saved?” Aren’t you? he said. Aren’t you in a saved condition? If you hesitate in any way, perhaps to clarify trinitarian concerns or to point out that it is not once saved-always saved, they take it as a ‘No.’ So just say Yes. Whereupon he had the congregation repeat three times, “I am saved.”

    Really applying all this Jesus likens to the cramped gate versus the broad and spacious way that most people prefer. “Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it.” It just might entail major changes in life. Like another circuit overseer who described that car easing its way veerrrrry slowly through the cramped gate. Upon squeezing through, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The car accelerates then halts with a THUD.

    Oh no! The trailer didn’t make it through!

    ******  The bookstore

  • You Almost Never Have all the Facts

    Lot was a righteous man. The Bethel speaker said so. Three times 2 Peter 2:7-8 says he was. So, he must have been.

    “And [God] rescued righteous Lot, who was greatly distressed by the brazen conduct of the lawless people—for day after day that righteous man was tormenting his righteous soul over the lawless deeds that he saw and heard while dwelling among them.”  

    It really bothered him to see all the riff-raff and how they were carrying on. 

    And yet, righteous is not the first word coming to mind when most think of him. What is? Quarrelsome? Opportunistic? Materialistic? Abraham offered him a choice and he chose the best portion. Just like the circuit overseer was dismayed when Ernie chose the biggest piece of pie. You’re not supposed to do that, he said, you’re supposed to defer to the other person. Well, which piece would you have taken? Ernie countered. He replied that he would have chosen the smaller piece. “Well, there you go,” the slick fellow said.

    But maybe, just maybe, the Bethel speaker said, Lot was older than Abraham—did you ever think of that? It could be. Abraham was probably the baby of the family. Long as their child-producing days were back then, his brothers might have been much older than he, so much so that their kids would also be older than him. So maybe Lot was. This led to the observation that the older man always gets the cushier place, which led to the sacrosanct Bethel practice of bidding on both rooms and apartments. I know this first-hand from our Bethel friends who maneuvered forever to get a fine apartment up there in the Sliver Building that Bethel owned, and there we were after a day of sightseeing in New York, up high in his apartment with wine and cheese and a magnificent view of Manhattan. Alas, soon afterwards, he and his wife were transferred to Patterson. What would they see outside those windows, cows?

    Then, too, since Lot had been kidnapped years ago, swept away, and it took a SWAT team to free him, maybe, just maybe, he suffered shell-shock, PTSD, and Abraham knew that, so no wonder Lot would thereafter avoid the wide open fields. No wonder he would seek out the safety in numbers. So there.

    Could the Bethel speaker prove it? No. But that was his point, he said. You also couldn’t disprove it. In fact, it was all a segue to lead into something else. His talk had nothing to do with proof, he said, nor with Lot, for that matter. His talk had to do with not jumping to conclusions when you don’t have all the facts. 

    We love to do it. We do it all the time. But we shouldn’t. You almost never have all the facts, and instead extrapolate from what you have, which sometimes is very little. The speaker next gave examples, one or two from the scriptures where such is frequently the case, but most from real life, in which it was easy to be hard on someone—until you knew a key missing fact which turned the entire situation around—as it might have with Lot. 

    That’s why it’s so much easier, not to mention more productive, to turn your scrutiny upon yourself, and not the other person. Even with yourself you may not have all the facts but you’ll have 100 times what you do with the other person. Remember what everyone’s mama used to say: when you point your finger at someone else, there are three pointing back at you.

    ******  The bookstore

    ,

  • Paul—“An Insolent Man”

    Early Christians were afraid of Paul. He’d been a violent enemy. When he turned around, they didn’t believe it. Barnabas (always good for that sort of thing) had to escort him around and ease the way.

    Some of those Christians probably always were afraid of him. The Watchtower study of last week (3/15/26) included the printed point: “Can you imagine how Paul must have felt when he visited a congregation and met those he had persecuted or the family members of those he had persecuted?” It may have been tougher on him personally when they forgave.

    Every so often he would run into one of those persons. If they didn’t remind him of what a hothead he had been, his own conscience would have—-he, the guy that, as Saul, would “ravage the congregation. He would invade one house after another, dragging out both men and women and turning them over to prison.” (Acts 8:3)

    So some were afraid to approach. Probably some of them always were. He’s okay if you agreed with him in every particular, but if you cross him in any way, they’d think, recalling strong statements he’d made in his letters, and every so often, he’d say to himself ‘Yeah, you know I really still am an insolent man’, (1 Timothy 1:13) I just switched sides.’ Anyone who wields authority benefits from this.

    We like to think we have made progress in our lives. What a downer to taste, even for a moment, that we have not. It’s like when someone recalls the harsh traits of their dad and says “I’m never going to be like him’ and they go for years thinking they are not, only to one day look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘Huh, I’m exactly like him. Strip aside the superficialities, and I’m exactly like him.’

    Of course, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Paul’s violent past would lead him to the contemplative water of past sins, but he didn’t have to drown in it, nor drink it in. He had counterbalancing thought of how Christ’s death had repurchased him, forgiven him, and would cleanse him as though a new person. He accepted that forgiveness. He never took it for granted, spending the rest of his life building up the congregations, suffering no end of hardship in the process.

    It did equip him to spot the “superfine apostles” though, slicksters of tongue (2 Corinthians 11:5-6) who wanted his office but not his work. To them, he detailed his hardships: 

    “I have done more work, been imprisoned more often, suffered countless beatings, and experienced many near-deaths. Five times I received 40 strokes less one from the Jews, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I experienced shipwreck, a night and a day I have spent in the open sea; in journeys often, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own people, in dangers from the nations, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers among false brothers, in labor and toil, in sleepless nights often, in hunger and thirst, frequently without food, in cold and lacking clothing.” (2 Corinthians 11: 23-27)

    Perhaps it faded in time, or maybe that past when he opposed haunted him even more with increasing years. That Watchtower Study corralled three statements of his to that effect:

    “For example, when he wrote his first letter to the Corinthians in about 55 C.E., he said: ‘I am not worthy of being called an apostle, because I persecuted the congregation of God.’ (1 Cor. 15:9) Some five years later, in his letter to the Ephesians, he described himself as being ‘less than the least of all holy ones.’ (Eph. 3:8) When writing to Timothy, Paul referred to himself as being formerly ‘a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insolent man.’ (1 Tim. 1:13)”

    It was another one of those studies—most of them are these days—in which healing and imitating the Christ is the theme. Are such meetings boring? These days they focus heavily on applying the Bible in one’s life, putting on the new personality and all. That’s not appealing to a lot of people, who are more into telling other people what to do.

    The Study made good use of Psalm 139: “You observe me when I travel and when I lie down; You are familiar with all my ways. There is not a word on my tongue, But look! O Jehovah, you already know it well. Behind and before me, you surround me; And you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is beyond my comprehension. It is too high for me to reach. (verses 3-6)

    That being the case, that God knows us better than we do ourselves, the psalmist could ask: “Search through me, O God, and know my heart. Examine me, and know my anxious thoughts. See whether there is in me any harmful way, And lead me in the way of eternity. (23-24)

    “Anxious thoughts.” Sometimes we feel off and if asked why will respond that we don’t know. Just what is it? We don’t know. We may not want to know. Here, we are encouraged to go to Jehovah in prayer who searches us though.

    They even threw in the Potter molding the vessel, someone “try[ing] to imagine Jehovah molding us and trying to make us better people. This brings us closer to him.”​ It’s like when you hit a wall, as Paul apparently did at times, bad traits having caught up with you, or at least the memories of them, and you say, ‘I’m no good.’ Nah, you’re not no good. You’ve just hit a lump that continued molding will work out.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Manipulating Cyrus the Great King

    Pulverizing Sennacherib was a big deal? Turns out that it was just a warmup for a greater deliverance, that of Babylon being defeated but not before it had conquered and strutted around insufferably. So the Sennacherib experience would serve as faith strengthening groundwork for that other deliverance in store.

    The one who did the conquering is pre-named in the Book of Isaiah. Chapter 44 ends that Jehovah is “the One saying of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, And he will completely carry out all my will’; The One saying of Jerusalem, ‘She will be rebuilt,’ And of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’” (44:28)

    45 expands upon his role:

    “This is what Jehovah says to his anointed one, to Cyrus, Whose right hand I have taken hold of To subdue nations before him, To disarm kings, To open before him the double doors, So that the gates will not be shut: 2 “Before you I will go, And the hills I will level. The copper doors I will break in pieces, And the iron bars I will cut down. 3 I will give you the treasures in the darkness And the hidden treasures in the concealed places, So that you may know that I am Jehovah, The God of Israel, who is calling you by your name.” (45:1-3)

    It’s not so much a violation of Cyrus’s free will as it is an object lesson in If you want to get a guy to do something, appeal to his vanity. First-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus relates that Cyrus was shown that prophesy after he conquered Babylon but before he freed any Jewish captives.

    Says his Antiquities of the Jews (Book XI, Chapter 1, Section 2):

    “This was known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah left behind him of his prophecies; for this prophet said that God had spoken thus to him in a secret vision: ‘My will is, that Cyrus, whom I have appointed to be king over many and great nations, send back my people to their own land, and build my temple.’ This was foretold by Isaiah one hundred and forty years before the temple was demolished. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this, and admired the divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfill what was so written…”

    He didn’t just free the Jewish captives and then someone said, ‘Hey, do you know that you just fulfilled prophesy?’ Rather, Josephus relates that he was shown the passage (maybe via Daniel, a high official in that Babylonian court) and seeing his name in lights, was inspired to fill the role.

    Don’t think he didn’t read ahead. Don’t think his head didn’t swell when he came to 45:9

    “Woe to the one who contends with his Maker, For he is just an earthenware fragment Among the other earthenware fragments lying on the ground! Should the clay say to the Potter: ‘What are you making?’ Or should your work say: ‘He has no hands’”?

    I certainly won’t, he’d say, since the Potter made ME the most excellent of the excellent vessels and sealed the deal by giving me His most sacred assignment, to conquer the Babylonians! (which is right up my alley since I wanted to kick their rear ends anyway)

    It’s sort of like the religious football players who conspicuously thank the Lord after every punishing play. It’s not as though they’re going out of their way to serve him. Pummeling other players is what they’d be doing anyway. One of these characters was known for wearing John 3:16 as his eyeblack, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.” True enough, but is the football field the best place for display, where they regularly haul players away to mend broken bones inflicted by other players? This prompted some atheist fans to suggest Matthew 6:5 for eyeblack: “5 “Also, when you pray, do not act like the hypocrites, for they like to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the main streets to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” But for the fistfights that might break out between the two sides, I’d love to see it.

    Whoa! Would Cyrus’s chest ever puff out at applying to himself the next chapter, 46:

    “Remember the former things of long ago, That I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is no one like me. From the beginning I foretell the outcome, And from long ago the things that have not yet been done. I say, ‘My decision will stand, And I will do whatever I please.’ (46:9-10)

    And what did he foretell from long ago? Cyrus would savor the answer: ME! and then keep reading:

    “I am calling a bird of prey from the sunrise, From a distant land the man to carry out my decision.” (46:11) Who is that fearsome bird of prey? Ahem: ‘C’est moi! C’est moi, I’m forced to admit. ‘Tis I, I humbly reply. That mortal who these marvels can do, C’est moi, c’est moi, ’tis I.’

    “Listen to me, you who are stubborn of heart, You who are far away from righteousness. I have brought my righteousness near; It is not far away, And my salvation will not delay. I will grant salvation in Zion, my splendor to Israel.” (46:12-13)

    And he selected ME to do it! Who is more righteous than me? An excellent choice! “I’ve never lost In battle or game; I’m simply the best by far. When swords are crossed ‘Tis always the same: One blow and au revoir!”

    It’s really not too hard to put hooks in the jaws and direct the mighty ones to your bidding. Just appeal to their ego. If even Hezekiah, from a culture in which humility was a thing, became full of himself at the thought that God would deliver the city while HE was in charge, just think of Cyrus, raised in a culture in which humility was for chumps. Hoo boy. He’s even called God’s “shepherd” and “anointed.”

    God chose me to do his purpose? Good choice! How could he have chosen better? Guess I’ll hop to it.

    Revisit the contention for a moment that the Book of Isaiah is divided into two sections at the chapter 40 mark, Isaiah and ‘Second Isaiah.’ Why do they say this, when the extant evidence indicates otherwise? (The two supposed sections immediately follow one another in the same column of the pertinent Dead Sea Scroll.) You assume they must have some good reason, but it is only that Isaiah 40 clearly tells the future beginning with chapter 40 and they think that’s not possible. it’s their historical-critical method they’ve adopted as the be-all and end-all!

    “2nd Isaiah” (chapters 40-66) is the future deliverance from Babylon set as though it had already happened, they observe. Therefore, it DID already happen, and some liar of a scribe later tacked the chapters on to 39 to make it appear foretelling the future!

    Well, isn’t that what prophets did? Wasn’t that one of the tricks up their sleeve? Weren’t they conduits for God who sometimes revealed future events? It’s a slam-dunk for believers, but the historical critical method assumes that they don’t. When they appear to, it’s the work of some dreamy and delusional God-apologist, in their eyes. I mean, you hope that when you’re tried in court, your own lawyer won’t join the side of the opposition, but in the case of the Book of Isaiah, that is too much to hope for. If your preacher is a graduate of the historical-critical seminary, watch out. “Okay, I have to repackage this pablum for the masses,” he or she is apt to say, “so as to extract the higher meaning.” The higher meaning they find is likely to be higher only in their eyes, as they reconfigure scripture as a tool to mend the present system of human self-rule.

    The same sort of abhorrence for divine power is also at work in the dating of the gospels. Most contemporary theologians think the gospels were written much later than originally supposed, toward the end of the first century and into the second century. Do they have a good reason to think this? Well, it’s good in their eyes, if not those of the sort of humble people who would treasure the gospels. Jesus foretold the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple, which occurred in 70 CE. He couldn’t have foretold it, they say, such things don’t happen today. He must have written it after the fact and then slipped it in as though before. The same bias that creates 2nd Isaiah also creates the late writing dates for the gospels!

    Moreover, this bias that foreknowledge of the future is impossible is so strong that they must overlook in the New Testament much of what is plainly their expertise in order to accommodate it. If the gospels were written after the temple destruction, it’s amazing that none of them mention it. It would have been a fantastic vindication of Jesus’ words, the irresistible climax of his tussling with the Jewish leaders. And Luke, the writer of Act of the Apostles, who “traced all things with accuracy,” (Acts 1:3) can’t trace his way to the bathroom if he neglects the most monumental Jewish event of the last 500 years! The far-simpler, Occam’s Razor explanation, unless you have a grudge against the divine, is that the gospels and Acts were written beforehand, as everyone of common sense used to say before those of the historical critical method came along to foul the water.

    All this is not to condemn the historical-critical method, also known as higher criticism. It works just fine, provided one keeps in mind it is a limited tool. So long as one realizes it is not the sole means to unveil truth, one is okay. Some practitioners do. Some don’t. The two sides are reflection of the world of scientists. Some think science is a nifty tool that reveal a lot, but not all. Others think that if science doesn’t reveal it, it is bogus “pseudo-knowledge.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • Who are the Witnesses: Isaiah 43

    Half of [the chopped-down tree] he burns up in a fire; With that half he roasts the meat that he eats, and he is satisfied. He also warms himself and says: “Ah! I am warm as I watch the fire.” But the rest of it he makes into a god, into his carved image. He bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says: “Save me, for you are my god.” (Isaiah 44:16-17)

    That’s not too bright, is it? It’s part of a passage, verses 9-20, that circles around to reiterate, add details, and drive home the point of how dumb it is that his god, that he has made, should be made of the same stuff as fuels his stove. Three hundred years later, Diagoras of Melos showed just how dumb it was. His fuel running out while cooking lentils, he reached for a wood statue of Hercules. This was the god known for his mythical twelve labors. Diagoras broke it up, added it to the fire and quipped, Let Hercules perform his 13th labor. If Hercules truly was a god, stop him, do something about it. But as far as anyone knows, the god of wood instead performed his new assignment. Diagoras emerged well-fed.

    Jehovah’s prophet bullies them around, too. He doesn’t go so far as to chop them up for the fire, but he does tell them to put up or shut up:

    “Tell us what will happen in the future, So that we may know that you are gods. Yes, do something, good or bad, So that we may be amazed when we see it.” (Isaiah 41:23)

    He hauls them all into court two chapters later. Jehovah is there too and he makes them offer testimony that they are not just deadbeat gods in metal or wood form. That’s not entirely fair, since they can’t speak and Jehovah knows that. So, since they are mute, let them produce witnesses who will testify for them:

    “Let them bring forth their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say, ‘It is true.” (43:9)

    Tell about past events? Future events? Got anything anywhere up their sleeves to prove god status? There they are in court, so there will be no undignified badmouthing as when Elijah called out Baal for maybe being in the crapper when he didn’t show to prove himself. (1 Kings 18:27) No. This setting, convened by Jehovah himself, is more formal. And, whereas the idol gods all hem and haw and pick their noses, Jehovah’s not sweating is as to having witnesses to testify:

    “Let all the nations assemble in one place, And let the peoples be gathered together. Who among them can tell this? Or can they cause us to hear the first things? Let them present their witnesses to prove themselves right, Or let them hear and say, ‘It is the truth!’” “You are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “Yes, my servant whom I have chosen, So that you may know and have faith in me And understand that I am the same One. Before me no God was formed, And after me there has been none.  I—I am Jehovah, and besides me there is no savior.” “I am the One who declared and saved and made known When there was no foreign god among you. So you are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “and I am God. Also, I am always the same One; And no one can snatch anything out of my hand. When I act, who can prevent it?” (43:8-13)

    Just try tossing him into the fire. He’s not in statue form to begin with, so you can’t grab hold of him. He also has plenty of witnesses to testify that you don’t want to mess with him. Jehovah has deeds to his credit, spectacular deeds. One of them is quite recent, within the memory of the court attendees. It’s not every day that you wipe out the enemy’s 185K Plan.

    Sennacherib’s annals, preserved in various museums, boast of how he demolished town after town, showing no mercy, but Hezekiah in Jerusalem he let off with a stern warning and a fine.

    “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity and conquered (them). . . . I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself [Hezekiah] I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver . . . all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.”

    The blustering is conspicuous, not for what it says, but for what it does not say. He didn’t take the city. One scholar, knowing how these blowhards operated, opined that when Sennacherib’s scribes say 200,150 captives, we can dismiss the 200,000 as scribal embellishment to keep the boss happy, and settle on the 150 as closer to the truth. He may have bunted his way on base but the inning ended without the grand slam home run he had planned upon.

    My own people like passage for its courtroom theme. Maybe it’s because they get hauled in there from time to time. At any rate, they’ve adopted that 43:10-12 as their own: Jehovah’s witnesses have become Jehovah’s Witnesses. Critics are not so sure they like the idea. That passage just pertains to events back then, they fume, not to some modern-day preaching group. But that can also be said (and is by most Jews) about verses Isaiah applied to Jesus too, of which there are plenty. Beyond all question, Jesus’ disciples were to be active in preaching, in spreading a witness. Why not lift the Isaiah 43 passage as one’s own. Even the resurrected Jesus calls himself at Revelation 1:5 “the Faithful Witness.” Whose witness was he?

    This might explain the Witnesses linkage of circle with the earth with “globe” (Isaiah 40:22) and “dynamic power” with E=mc2. (40:26) They are testifying to what God has done. Let the opposing counsel challenge them on that point if they must. While “globe” is not unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses, that application of Einstein’s formula to account for all creation pretty much is. It’s what you would expect a tenacious witness to do.

    (tomsheepandgoats*com)

    Half of [the chopped-down tree] he burns up in a fire; With that half he roasts the meat that he eats, and he is satisfied. He also warms himself and says: “Ah! I am warm as I watch the fire.” But the rest of it he makes into a god, into his carved image. He bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says: “Save me, for you are my god.” (Isaiah 44:16-17)

    That’s not too bright, is it? It’s part of a passage, verses 9-20, that circles around to reiterate, add details, and drive home the point of how dumb it is that his god, that he has made, should be made of the same stuff as fuels his stove. Three hundred years later, Diagoras of Melos showed just how dumb it was. His fuel running out while cooking lentils, he reached for a wood statue of Hercules. This was the god known for his mythical twelve labors. Diagoras broke it up, added it to the fire and quipped, Let Hercules perform his 13th labor. If Hercules truly was a god, stop him, do something about it. But as far as anyone knows, the god of wood instead performed his new assignment. Diagoras emerged well-fed.

    Jehovah’s prophet bullies them around, too. He doesn’t go so far as to chop them up for the fire, but he does tell them to put up or shut up:

    “Tell us what will happen in the future, So that we may know that you are gods. Yes, do something, good or bad, So that we may be amazed when we see it.” (Isaiah 41:23)

    He hauls them all into court two chapters later. Jehovah is there too and he makes them offer testimony that they are not just deadbeat gods in metal or wood form. That’s not entirely fair, since they can’t speak and Jehovah knows that. So, since they are mute, let them produce witnesses who will testify for them:

    “Let them bring forth their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say, ‘It is true.” (43:9)

    Tell about past events? Future events? Got anything anywhere up their sleeves to prove god status? There they are in court, so there will be no undignified badmouthing as when Elijah called out Baal for maybe being in the crapper when he didn’t show to prove himself. (1 Kings 18:27) No. This setting, convened by Jehovah himself, is more formal. And, whereas the idol gods all hem and haw and pick their noses, Jehovah’s not sweating is as to having witnesses to testify:

    “Let all the nations assemble in one place, And let the peoples be gathered together. Who among them can tell this? Or can they cause us to hear the first things? Let them present their witnesses to prove themselves right, Or let them hear and say, ‘It is the truth!’” “You are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “Yes, my servant whom I have chosen, So that you may know and have faith in me And understand that I am the same One. Before me no God was formed, And after me there has been none.  I—I am Jehovah, and besides me there is no savior.” “I am the One who declared and saved and made known When there was no foreign god among you. So you are my witnesses,” declares Jehovah, “and I am God. Also, I am always the same One; And no one can snatch anything out of my hand. When I act, who can prevent it?” (43:8-13)

    Just try tossing him into the fire. He’s not in statue form to begin with, so you can’t grab hold of him. He also has plenty of witnesses to testify that you don’t want to mess with him. Jehovah has deeds to his credit, spectacular deeds. One of them is quite recent, within the memory of the court attendees. It’s not every day that you wipe out the enemy’s 185K Plan.

    Sennacherib’s annals, preserved in various museums, boast of how he demolished town after town, showing no mercy, but Hezekiah in Jerusalem he let off with a stern warning and a fine.

    “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity and conquered (them). . . . I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself [Hezekiah] I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver . . . all kinds of valuable treasures, his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.”

    The blustering is conspicuous, not for what it says, but for what it does not say. He didn’t take the city. One scholar, knowing how these blowhards operated, opined that when Sennacherib’s scribes say 200,150 captives, we can dismiss the 200,000 as scribal embellishment to keep the boss happy, and settle on the 150 as closer to the truth. He may have bunted his way on base but the inning ended without the grand slam home run he had planned upon.

    My own people like passage for its courtroom theme. Maybe it’s because they get hauled in there from time to time. At any rate, they’ve adopted that 43:10-12 as their own: Jehovah’s witnesses have become Jehovah’s Witnesses. Critics are not so sure they like the idea. That passage just pertains to events back then, they fume, not to some modern-day preaching group. But that can also be said (and is by most Jews) about verses Isaiah applied to Jesus too, of which there are plenty. Beyond all question, Jesus’ disciples were to be active in preaching, in spreading a witness. Why not lift the Isaiah 43 passage as one’s own. Even the resurrected Jesus calls himself at Revelation 1:5 “the Faithful Witness.” Whose witness was he?

    This might explain the Witnesses linkage of circle with the earth with “globe” (Isaiah 40:22) and “dynamic power” with E=mc2. (40:26) They are testifying to what God has done. Let the opposing counsel challenge them on that point if they must. While “globe” is not unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses, that application of Einstein’s formula to account for all creation pretty much is. It’s what you would expect a tenacious witness to do.

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Language in Which God Wrote the Universe

    If Isaiah 40:22 is not a lesson in science, all the more so 40:26 is not. But could it be another example of the Bible being accurate when it happens to touch on matters of science?

    “Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who brings out their army by number; He calls them all by name. Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power, Not one of them is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26) What are “these things?” They are the heavens, the stars.

    Got it. It’s not a science lesson. Yet, not to overanalyze the point, it turns out there’s a connection between “vast dynamic energy” and these “created things.” It is even described with mathematical precision: E=mc². It has been demonstrated numerous times since World War II. The tiniest bit of mass times the speed of light squared yields a staggering amount of energy. Surely, the reverse must also hold, that a source of infinite energy can convert some of it to mass.

    Why should this relationship be this is written so compactly? Why shouldn’t it be a hopeless hodgepodge of a mathematics mess? If you jam the keys of a piano together, it sounds like garbage and it looks like garbage in math. But if you do harmonious music, the mathematics is elegant. Notes that harmonize are simple ratios of each other. Notes that don’t are not.

    Basic laws of physics are expressed in the terms of often-simple mathematics. Newton discovered that force equals mass times acceleration, for example (F=ma). From Galileo: the distance a ball falls in t seconds is 16 times the square of t. (d=16t²). Why shouldn’t the answer be a hopeless mishmash, like your sock drawer, instead of a compact formula? It was enough for Galileo to proclaim that “God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics.” For centuries, scientists pursued their topic as though a religious quest, as a means to uncover the design of God and thereby give him praise.

    When Kepler worked out the laws governing planetary motions [they move in ellipses, not circles] and published the results, he suddenly let loose with a paean to God, smack dab in the middle of his treatise. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was one of the Bible psalms: “The wisdom of the Lord is infinite; so also are His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises! Sun, moon, and planets glorify Him in your ineffable language! Celestial harmonies, all ye who comprehend His marvelous works, praise Him. And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exists. that which we know best is comprised in Him, as well as in our vain science. To Him be praise, honor, and glory throughout eternity.”

    Does it not dovetail with this proclamation from Revelation 4:11? “You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.” 

    Those early scientists didn’t experiment much. Instead, they worked out the math, since they were convinced that underlay how God designed things. When they made experiments it was mostly to confirm results. Newton once said it was done to convince the “vulgar,” (He also told how he made up the story of the falling apple to dispose of pesky people who asked him how he discovered laws of gravitation.) And Galileo, when describing an experiment of dropping two different masses from the top of a ship’s mast, has his fictional creation, a fellow named Simplicio, ask whether he actually made such an experiment. “No, and I do not need it, as without any experience I can confirm that it is so because it cannot be otherwise,” was his reply.

    Can one just sit and think the makeup of the universe? Turns out that you can, assuming you are very smart and you have correctly identified the variables. Newton played with the notion of firing a giant cannonball from a mountaintop with just enough velocity, not too much and not too little, that it’s ordinary straight line path would be continually offset by the earth’s pull so that it would orbit the planet indefinitely. He obviously didn’t perform such an experiment, it was all in his head. Working from a few known quantities (radius of the earth, distance a body falls in the first second) he deduced laws of universal gravitation: The gravitational attraction between two masses (m1 and m2) is F = k(m1·m2/r²). Like Kepler, gave God all the glory:

    “This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of world, but Lord over all.”   Mathematical Principles, 2nd edition.

    It gets more beautiful and stranger still. In 1785, Charles Coulomb published the law of force between two electrically charged bodies, q1 and q2: F =- k(q1·q2/r²) where k is a constant and r is the distance between the two bodies. What even the dumbest person in class can’t miss is the law’s identical form to that of gravity, a wholly different phenomena, outlined above with Newton. The gravitational attraction between two masses (m1 and m2) isF = k(m1·m2/r²)The only difference is that electrical force can attract or repulse, depending on whether the two bodies have equal or opposite charges; gravity always attracts. “The universe is whispering its secrets to us in stereo,” says the book ‘The Universe Speaks in Numbers,’ referring to the cooperation of physics and mathematics, but it might also be applied to this case of how different phenomena share the same formula.

    Is this another way in which humans are created in God’s image—that we can speak the same language as He in establishing creation? Usually it is his sense of justice that we are said to resonate with, or the quality of love, but is pure thought another? “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible,” said Einstein.

    However, a funny thing has happened over the years in connection with the language of mathematics. If you can speak the language, you can create sentences with it. In time, mathematicians began devising different mathematics, using different axioms as starting points. These were often bizarre mathematics, with no conceivable application to reality. But, then, just as bizarrely, it turned out that some of them did apply.

    The comic strip tyke character Calvin’s eyes bugged out of his head when his stuffed tiger Hobbes (turned real tiger when nobody was around), suggested a simple arithmetic homework problem would require use of “imaginary numbers!” The kid had all he could handle with real numbers! He either sloughed off his assignments on Susie or doomed himself to a failing grade. Who would not recoil at imaginary numbers, based on the square root of minus one? Surely, there can be no such thing; any number times itself, even a negative number, is invariably positive.

    But it subsequently turned out that imaginary numbers (also colled complex numbers) are essential to quantum physics. The topic cannot be understood (to the extent it is) without them. It is as though a product essential to earth cannot be manufactured on earth, so it is exported to some weird planet for manufacture and then the results are imported back where they prove useful.

    Similarly, strange non-Euclidian geometries have proven essential to understand relativity—which not everybody does, but nobody does without the offbeat math. Albert Einstein cruised the Atlantic in the company of a statesman friend who later reported: “Dr. Einstein explained his theory to me every day. By the time we arrived, I was fully convinced that he really understands it.” You need the “crazy” math to do it. There are countless other examples of “crazy” math in time proving itself useful.

    Writing bizarre math statements in the language that God uses, then finding some, but not all, of those statements used in creation, produced a strange effect on immodest mathematicians. By that time, along with the rest of evolution-fed society, they had become dubious of God. So, they thereby rechristened “creation” as “reality” or just “the universe” to escape any God implication. It began to seem to them as though they were the creators of the language, of which “God” utilizes only a subset. The feeling grew and has become popular that humans have invented mathematics, rather than discovered it. As with Darth Vader to Obi Wan, the pupil had fancied himself the master.

    Mathematics plainly exists “out there” somewhere, but if you’ve quit believing in God, where can the “out there” be but within our own heads? It must be that they invented it themselves, they reasoned. Why does it fit reality so well? To hear their account, it’s as though the learned one fuss and fret, tossing away one measure that doesn’t work after another, till they finally find something that does work to describe something. You mean that there were a few thousand wanna-be Galileos describing gravity in all sorts of harebrained ways, until the master himself came along and found a way to reduce it all to a few letters and numbers? I’m dubious. “The first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense,” G. K. Chesterton said.

    Something about this revised “dissident” view reminds me of Larry King telling how it was with 7-Up. The soft drink was wildly successful—but only after the inventor flopped with 1-Up, 2-Up, 3-Up, 4-Up, 5-Up, and 6-Up. To add insult, the new view of math conforming to us rather than we to it is applied by atheistic thinking to creation itself. The reason the universe is so precisely tuned to the needs of life, these persons say, is because if it were anyway else, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. Douglass Adams addresses people who believe that God must exist since the world so fits our needs by comparing them to an intelligent puddle of water that fills a hole in the ground. The puddle is certain that the hole must have been designed specifically for it because it fits so well. it is a brilliant illustration. All that one must do for it to be perfect is find an intelligent puddle of water.
     
    Backtracking in time, Physicist Heinrich Hertz observed of the mathematics underlying reality: “One cannot escape the feeling that these equations have an existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.” We do indeed get a lot out of them. So much so that some became completely oblivious to what was “put into them” in the first place and who did the “putting.” “One cannot escape the feeling,” Hertz stated. Yet today’s materialistic society has managed to just that.

    Can you “prove” to the ones favoring invention (as opposed to discovering) that they are wrong? Frankly, you cannot. Best to admit it. As with all things human, the heart decides what it wants and then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale for it. This lends the appearance that the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. Best admit it. it is beyond the scope of “proof.” It’s sort of like when Trump met with the newly elected Mandami and everyone thought there were going to be fireworks. Instead, the meeting appeared friendly. So media asked Mamdani, didn’t he previously call Trump a facist? The New York mayor begins to him and haw (because he had) whereupon, the president interjected: “Just admit it. It’s easier.’

    Oddly, though mathematics has proven so astoundingly successful at describing the universe we live in, its success lies in giving up on a greater goal. Long before Galileo, Aristotle and his contemporaries wanted to know WHAT things were. They didn’t bother much with description, since that seemed of secondary importance. Only when scientists reversed priorities did they discover mathematics served as an amazing tool of description, though not explanation. This lack of explanation was a sore point for some of Newton’s contemporaries, steeped in the tradition of Aristotle. Leibniz, who independently of Newton, discovered calculus, muttered that Newton’s gravitational laws were merely rules of computation, not worthy of being called a law of nature. Huygens labeled the idea of gravitation “absurd” for the same reason: it described effects but did not explain how gravity worked.

    Newton agreed. In a letter to a Richard Bentley he wrote: “That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.” Is the latter goal, discovering what something is rather than just how it works, reserved for the mind of God? Perhaps that explained why Isaac Newton wrote more about God than he did of math and science combined.

    ******  The bookstore