Predestination, free will, 6000, 14 billion, or all of the above?

I was reading about the theory that the large hadron collider may be sabotaging itself from the future, which is an interesting thing. Also this week I had a conversation with a guy who has a kind of deliverance/prayer ministry. This person prays with people about their past, and invites Jesus into the memories, he believes that since Jesus is Lord over time he not only can heal the memory but also can actually change the past. This is also an interesting thought. Lately I have also been struggling with what I believe in regards to the age of the universe and how to see the Bible as infallible while also not neglecting the realities of creation. Don't ask me why, but these questions have been troubling me.

It may seem unrelated but I'll try later to explain why its not. I've also always been struggling and praying for God to reveal to me more clearly the relationship between how the Bible clearly teaches that while God has predestined before time began those who would be saved, it is also clear that each person make a choice to repent and come to him in faith through the hearing of the Gospel (which is also an act of will on the part of those who bring the word). How can this obvious act of choice and free will also be an act of sovereign predestination? Clearly both principles are taught in scripture, scripture cannot be in conflict with itself, so the only logical conclusion is that both things are true, and I don't understand it, and I want to. Anyway this conflict is similar to the conflict I feel regarding the seeming paradox between the scriptural and scientific accounts of the age of the universe.

It is hard to read the Biblical creation account, the work done on Biblical Geneology, and not come to the conclusion that the earth and universe are not more than 6000-8000 years old. However, when confronted with God's creation I am presented with scientific evidence (laws of physics that God has also ordained) that the universe is upwards of 14 billion years old. It would seem that there is a great conflict here between the Biblical and scientific record. Why would God say one thing in scripture and present another in reality? He cannot be trying to deceive us, because He is God, so clearly I lack wisdom in how to understand this apparent paradox.

In my struggle with this I've been flip-flopping between being and old earth creationist, to a young earth creationist, to considering what is real and not about evolution, and really I've just been praying that God would give me wisdom, because I've not been able to hang onto a firm belief. I've really been double minded on this issue like the guy in James 1, and I'm praying and believing that God will reveal to me the wisdom to understand these questions. It's important to me for a couple of reasons: One, I don't want to be double minded and inconsistent on an issue of scripture, and two, because I want to know how to direct my family in our homeschooling especially when it comes to this subject. It seems you can go one of three ways with the material that is out there, old earth creationism, young earth creationism, and synchronistic evolution (ie God used evolution to create). What should I teach my children?

The story of the Large Hadron collider got me to thinking about time travel, and the nature of time. The guy with the deliverance ministry got me to thinking about the ramifications of Jesus actually being Lord over ALL, the ALPHA and OMEGA, the beginning and the end, and what that really meant in terms of forgiveness and healing. My struggle with reconciling predestination with free will helped me to accept (albeit without understanding) that Biblical contradictions do not exist and that if two opposing ideas are presented as truth in scripture then somehow they both must be true, and this idea then lead me to apply this way of thinking to the paradox presented in the age of the universe. The answer suddenly hit me that the universe is both 14 billion years old and 6000 years old at the same time.

Some ideas floating around in quantum physics and string theory are that there are multiple or parallel universes all happening simultaneously. Take in to consideration the ramifications of this statement: Romans 1:24 "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves," It says that "God gave them up", this was an action taken upon people by the creator of the universe who, when He spoke, all that we know was created. Something big happened here. How can God maintain His perfect will while people are simultaneously living in direct opposition to it? I'm proposing that when "God gave them up" it created an alternate reality such as what is described in string theory. A reality that is no less real than the reality which is in God's will, but at the same time in direct opposition to God's will. For God to be able to allow for his creation to rebel against His will He would need to create a reality in which His will was not, however He would still have to remain ultimately sovereign over that reality.

To me this explains A LOT! This means that faith does more than move mountains. It actually causes you to exist in a new reality where even history is and always has been according to the will of God. So after our rebellion in Eden God created a schism in time. In one fork of that schism there exists a universe where the reality of God being absent is present, in that reality the lusts of man are what define truth (Because God has given us up in our lusts) and as of now the truth is that the universe is 14 billion years old. And in the other fork of the schism the universe is 6000 years old, God is the sole standard for truth, and people find their joy living within His will. The forks of the schism don't diverge from one another, but by God's grace they overlap, so that both are clearly evident, giving the people lost in the Godless schism an opportunity to make the transition to the "Kingdom of God" which is the domain of reality in which God has established His will. It is a matter of faith which determines which reality you exist in. Both are real, both are true, we can experience the consequences of each one, however one reality is going to last for all of eternity, and one reality will "pass away" (read Rev 21:1)

Think about this, when you repent, God says he remembers your sin no more, puts them as far as the east is from the west, etc. How can God do this? Because our sin occurred outside his will, when we repent we move inside His will. What is outside the will of God is not even in the same universe as what is inside his will! When you are saved you clearly make a choice to live in the reality inside of God's will. In that reality you were always saved, however, in the reality outside of God's will you were always damned. So see how it can be both? One thing happens in one reality, one happens in the other, they both happen to you, both are real and both are true.

When God "gave us up" to our lust, when he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden, it was not just a change in Geography and Relationship, it was a change in REALITY. We went from living in a reality that was within the will of God to living in a reality that was outside the will of God. Each one as real as the other, but the reality outside the will of God only being perpetuated in existence by the Grace of God (or by the Word of His power, Hebrews 1:3), for the purpose of saving those who He loved that still exist in that reality (John 3:16). At some point the reality outside the will of God will pass away only leaving the reality that is within God's will.

Here are some quick verses to think about along these lines:

1 Cor 13:9, For we know in part and we prophesy in part,10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (The reality outside of Gods will will pass away, and we will be left only with the perfect)

2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (Moving from one reality to the other)

Rev 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (I'm saying that the old heaven and earth are passing away while the new heaven and earth are appearing, and they overlap in a time of Grace)

Mathew 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (possibly talking about how consequences from the sinful reality rippling through to the redeemed reality, such as a marriage to an unbeliever, a child born out of wedlock).

Daniel 2:44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, (Kingdoms being rebellious realities that are in opposition to Gods will, God's will being all that will last)

Mathew 3:2 Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Right now we can repent and have the ability to move in to God's will, this will not always be the case, the kingdom of heaven will not always be accessible or knowable by those living outside the will of God).

John 18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. (Hmm, the king of the universe is saying that he is not in his kingdom? This really leans toward a dual reality in my mind.)

Romans 14:23b ...For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (it is by faith we live in God's kingdom, and it is by will that we live in opposition to His, these are the 2 realities.)

[UPDATE]I was sent this article by John Piper (who I am a great fan of) about the "two wills of God".


Just reading through the Piper article (and I've read this line of thinking of the two wills before) and still it sits wrong with me. God has one will but allows things that are against his will to come to pass? The reason it sounds like double talk is because it is. The Bible clearly teaches that God's will is never frustrated. So we are left with a problem. That there is evil in the world that some how we must not attribute to God, while maintaining that it was not against his will that it happened. That's because we are obsessed with trying to discover what is "true" and what is "false", when it is possible that we should also be seeking what is "sin" and what is "righteousness". And in doing so we may find that there are cases where 2 mutually exclusive facts are in fact "true" however one is sin and one is not.

We are faced with paradoxes of free will vs sovereignty, 6000 vs 14 billion, is God a watchmaker or is he totally sovereign, could it be all of the above? The only way to reconcile these things is if we are currently experiencing more than one reality (ie the two wills of God). I don't think this violates scripture at all, in fact I believe it affirms scripture all the more, taking many of the verses we take as metaphorical and making them very literal (for instance, "new heavens and new earth", "this age is coming to nothing", "being born again", "behold I make all things new", etc). If there are (at least) two realities, then stuff starts making sense for me.

In one reality man is given into his own will, this happened at the fall of man in Genesis. This new reality HAD to happen because "God's will is never frustrated", so it would be impossible for man to have fallen and then continue to live in a reality where God will is not frustrated. Impossible unless it was God's will for there to be a time and place where we were allowed to live in opposition to God's will, a reality that God willed to be directed by man's will. Everything about the reality of man's will is sin. God is still sovereign over it because he created it, allowed for it, and in the end he will destroy it. However, during his time of grace (being allowed to live while in opposition to his will), he reveals Christ to us. While he allows man to live in opposition to his will, He still obviously intercedes where he sees fit in what we would call "miracles" and "providence". Simultaneously there is the reality that is the will of God. It will last for eternity, and it's most commonly referred to as "the Kingdom of Heaven". There are no miracles in the kingdom of Heaven, or you could as easily say that there are ONLY miracles in the kingdom of Heaven, miracles being defined as the physical manifestation of God's will.

Since God is who He is, it would be unfathomable to consider that a sinner could enter into his glory. Not even a former sinner, because any sin (even past sin) against an infinitely righteous being would be worthy of infinite punishment in order for God to be called just. Hence our desperate need for the work of Christ, in that he entered into the reality of man's will for the purpose of creating a way for sinful men to enter into the reality of God's will. When we claim the blood of Christ we are "born again" into the new reality. Since no sinner can ever live in the presence of God the history of God's reality is that we never sinned, we were elect from before time began, and God alone is the author of our salvation, so now, by the blood of Christ (who, don't forget is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end) we are made a new creation, literally, new from the beginning of time. While the physical consequences of our sin may continue after our rebirth (for instance damage to the body from abuse of drugs or alcohol), at death, or upon the return of Christ, we will diverge from the reality of man's will and we will be left only with what God wills for our bodies, our lives and this earth to be.

For those that reject Christ there cannot be any evil attributed to God. He allowed them to live in a reality where they were free to live by their own will. This in and of it self is an act of Grace that is beyond comprehension, a travesty of Justice that demands the work of the Cross in order to be reconciled. The fact that people rejected God is on them, no blame can be placed upon God because his Kingdom was evident, even to those living by their own will instead of by faith. They chose to stay in the reality where man's will determined truth. They were, as scripture teaches, created from the beginning of time for destruction, just as the elect were created from the beginning of time for God's Glory. Why? Because it would be an equally outrageous travesty of justice to allow a sinner into God's Glory, as it would be to allow a saint to be destroyed in hell. The logical conclusion of a reality where man's will is the ultimate standard for truth is death, because even though God gave us over to our own lusts (rom 1:24) he did not give our lusts power over death. So from the sinners perspective, the choice is theirs now to decide whether or not they are elect from the beginning of time, or similarly damned. But from God's perspective, and because of Christ, he only sees in what reality we exist in now, and when the two realities diverge, either by death or by Christ's return, then our course is set (and will have always been set) for all of eternity. This gives a new meaning to the phrase "once saved always saved", meaning you were always saved, from the beginning of time, not just from the beginning of repentance.

I like this idea of two realities. I'll leave it, if I can see in scripture where it cannot be true, but I think this idea neatly affirms scripture (using scripture as the standard), while also explaining the apparent paradoxes we are so often confronted with. It also helps to explain election to me, and makes it clear that while sin and evil are never God's will, it is by God's will that they are allowed to happen so that man can be saved. So we can very clearly see that no evil comes from God, but instead, even the evil that does come, comes because of God's goodness and because of His love for us (the alternative being that he could have just wiped us out instead of allowing us to live in sin for any amount of time at all).

German, Google, and Jesus

German praises, Google translator, and Jesus:

Jesus is my joy,
My heart's comfort, the source of it's beat.
He sustains and keeps me,
He is my life force,
My eye's pleasure and light,
He's the treasure of my soul and gladness;
So I will not let Jesus from my heart and face.
It is well for me that I have Jesus,
oh, how strong I hold to him.
He gave me my heart,when I had fallen.
Now I will never relent to keep by his side.
It was Jesus who first loved me,
and He who gave me all that I am,
oh if not for Jesus,
I would not be but a dead and broken heart.

Health Insurance

Here's my question, does your auto insurance cover oil changes? No? Do you know why? Because there is a 100% chance that you will get an oil change, there is no way to insure against it.

Insurance by it's nature is a transference of risk from you to another party. That party accepts payment of a premium calculated based on the likelihood of the incident being insured against actually taking place and the cost and frequency of the incident. If the likelihood of the incident is 100% then the premium would just cost the amount of the incident times the frequency of the incident over the time period being covered by the policy (plus overhead to operate the insurance company).

Most of us think that our insurance plans should cover everything, office visits, prescriptions, etc. well this is stupid. What you are doing in actuality is simply paying an insurance company to pay your doctor bill. just pay it yourself? Weird idea I know. Real insurance would only cover those events with a statistical likelihood of occurrence of less than one, all other expenses would come out of your pocket and be negotiated directly between you and your provider.

When you involve a 3rd party payor, you have paid to extricate yourself from the process of negotiating your healthcare costs. When you do this you have basically given the healthcare and insurance industries the permission to spend your money how THEY see fit. So prices get disjointed from reality, and it naturally creates a kind of "ponzi scheme" where as long as more people are paying in than are taking out then the system continues to work. Add onto this government manipulation of healthcare prices and procedures via the printing of fiat currency to pay for programs such as medicare and medicade (this causes price increases simply due to the effects of inflation), and government regulations such as those regarding emergency room treatment, and you have the perfect storm for an out of control fake economy and you and I the consumer get caught in the middle with no power no control it. And that's the idea, because then we turn to congress to fix the problem. More stupidity on our part.

The insidious thing is that the way the law currently exists just ENCOURAGES this to happen. Why? Because "they" want single payer healthcare. The same "they" that gave us the IRS. In order for our consumer based economy to work as many people as possible have to waste thier lives away toiling in some beurocracy so that they can earn fake money to purchase cheap junk made by slaves in third world countries. Naturally, as people who wish to be seen as moral, we would resist such an idea, but along comes our favorite government programs (most of which are only necessary because government intervention has priced the average consumer out of the market for whatever the government program is providing), the fear of going to jail for not giving the government YOUR money (the illegal and unconstitutional IRS), and the fear of getting sick and not being able to pay for it, add all this together and whammo, they've got you convinced to commit a excruciatingly long and drawn out form of suicide called the "American Dream".

The best thing to do about all this is to WAKE UP!

How to destroy a nation.

(A thought inspired from this article.)

The destruction of the family is key to creating a population of adult children who are incapable of reasoning for themselves. These people must look toward "big brother" (if you will) to make decisions for them. Strong families raise children who are capable of entering the world as individuals, responsible for their own actions, and most importantly equipped with the mental and intestinal attributes that are required to take any independent action at all.

I believe we are preparing to enter a time of American history that has never before been seen. A time when most of the adults in society will have been raised in single parent homes, or otherwise in homes where the traditional family is non existent. Some exceptions aside, most of these people will be incapable of reasoning and will have a profound dependence upon the state for survival.

The tools used to destroy families, are:

• materialism, a constant barrage of newly created needs and wants that drives the individual to consume meaninglessly;

• debt, the method used to achieve the materialism, this includes fiat debt based currency;

• an unnatural/unsatisfying work environment, meaningless bureaucratic positions that pay just enough to expand the personal debt but never enough to pay it off, this work environment provides little real satisfaction (satisifaction is a marketed good used to sell a variety of products, if the work place were to provide that it would be defeating its own purpose), most of these work environments will look very similar to high school in their social interactions and politics;

• compulsory state education, both parents being occupied in their work environments in order to keep up with the demands of college, mortgage, and consumer debt, children will be educated by the state and taught how to accept the unnatural as normal (and this is also why the work environment so closely resembles the adolescent drama of high school, the purpose of the education system is to ensure that adult thought processes are inhibited prior to the person being released into society).

• continuing education, "Education" (meaning the certifications provided by the state), will be believed to be the key to progressing in life. This will keep the public constantly and willingly indoctrinated, while at the same time burdening themselves with debt that not only has no asset but also is not subject to discharge due to bankruptcy, thereby requiring the debtor to use their "education" to enter into the bureaucracy and continue the cycle. Education is not inherently evil of course, however just like a hammer, you can use it to build something, but it's easier to use it to kill something.

• television/entertainment media, any time that a family may spend alone where individual conversations may take place will be controlled by television or other media. In this way the nature of any conversation will be controlled by the subject matter of the tv program, video game, music, etc. Education, Television programs, and other entertainment will promote the unnatural idea that children are to rebel against their parents, and that strong family relationships are unnatural, this will be seen as normal. Children will be taught via television that parents are unreliable sources of wisdom, and that wisdom should be sought from education, and that education is always provided by the state. Then when the kids go off to "college" to be further educated to receive a beurocratic position to pay off debt and aquire more things in order to purchase satisfaction, the adults, who at this point may or may not be the biological parents of the child, will be relieved to see them go.


• love = romance, television and media will be used to teach that love equals romance and that conflict is a sign of hatred. This, along with easy divorce laws, are important because if people were to realize that conflict is to be dealt with by remaining in relationships they would accidentally stumble upon a profound source of satisfaction in relationships that costs no money. This idea will be expanded to include churches, political parties, as well as families. Ideally no relationship will ever survive any conflict, the only relationship that will remain conflict free will be the individuals relationship with the state, that will be easily accomplished through marketing campaigns via the internet, television and other entertainment media. Any conflict that may occur with the state will be easily resolved by allowing the person to simply change political parties, the conflict being attributed not to the state but to the political party being left.

The ideal lifecycle for a modern slave would be this: Born, as soon as possible placed into daycare so mom can go back to work, watches television most waking hours, put in school as soon as possible (we don't want the kid to "fall behind" do we?), any time the kid is not at school he is either with peers or with parents, but only with parents or other adults under the supervision of the television to control the possible subject matter of the conversation, graduates high school, gets student loan, further rebels against any remaining moral standards while in college, graduates college, school debt is now due, gets a corporate or bureaucratic gig, goes to work 8 hours a day, goes home watches television at night, mows the lawn on Saturday, watches football on Sunday, repeats. Retires from job, becomes ward of the state (because kids are busy working to care for him, nor is their relationship sufficient to really care anyway), goes to adult version of daycare (nursing home), watches television most waking hours, dies.

Randy Brogdan For Oklahoma Governor

Maniac Muslim Suicide Terrorists

Where do they really happen? Maybe I'm not well informed, but it just struck me that I can't recall there being really a significant number suicide or terrorist attacks in the US or in Western Europe carried out by Muslim extremists. The only attacks I can think of are 9/11 and 7/7, the motives of both of which are seriously in question to say the least. Then there is the Madrid bombing, and I'm not to up on the legitimacy on that story. And the 1993 WTC bombing, which was probably the closest to being a real terrorist attack, and it was pretty much a complete failure in terms of what it intended. I can't really think of a whole lot more.

I mean, I can think of hundreds of scenarios that have been imprinted in my mind from shows like "24" and from movies, but I can't really recall actual factual attacks.

Seems like the main place that suicide and terrorist attacks take place are in places where we have occupying forces. Outside of that it seems to me like they are very very very rare, despite the fact that we're all expected to believe that at any moment some crazy jihadist is going to jump out of the bushes and blow us all up.

I just watched the movie "Traitor" with Don Cheadle, it's not bad, but it's premise is these Muslims blowing up crap all over the world. It actually has a nice balance of pointing out bad US policy and showing that Islam isn't just a seething cauldron of evil, but it still had this premise that there are these bad Muslims that are going to bomb the US and kill a lot of Americans at any moment.

The problem is that it never happens. 9/11 is the sole precedent of evil on the scale that would even come close to justifying the terror threat level, the Dept of Homeland Security, the war against terror, etc. And personally I'm pretty much convinced that Muslims in the caves of Afghanistan had almost nothing to do with 9/11, and I'm for sure that Muslims in Iraq had nothing to do with it. If you're not convinced you might want to do some googling on it and take a look at http://www.ae911truth.org/ and watch the documentary "Loose Change". I know, I know, it's a lot of reading, and the idea that 9/11 went down in any way contrary to the "official" story is an idea that you've been conditioned to respond to in a certain way. But it might do you some good to see what someone besides Fox News has to say on the subject.

We keep getting told that there is this enemy out there that hates us and wants to kill us. But really, unless I'm just mind blocked or ignorant of hundreds of acts of real terrorism, it seems like almost all suicide "terror" attacks are directed at getting foreign troops out of an occupied land, and almost none of these attacks are directed at killing evil, bacon-eating Americans.

It took me a while to come around, but Ron Paul finally convinced me how stupid our current foreign policies are even if we were under attack by terrorists. I guess it never occurred to me until now the extent to which we really just aren't.

It's actually an uplifting and relieving thought to realize that our supposed enemies are either totally incompetent, or really not all that motivated to attack us. Even better to think that maybe they don't even exist at all. I've had the privilege of traveling to several places on earth that are very poor by American standards. The people I met there didn't seem like they were sitting around plotting America's demise. In many cases the people I met led lives that were full of rich relationships and meaningful work, and were devoid of addictions to cheap materialism.

On that note here's another lie I just realized. That the rest of the world hates us for our wealth. I really think many of them are laughing at us, or maybe crying for us to change because they see that we've missed the whole point of life. Most of them don't even give us a thought, they're busy tending to their families, their farms, their God, and the few things they treasure.

The ones that hate us have a right. When we send our soldiers to contain and/or kill them, or when we send our corporations to enslave them. I don't like that about us either.

Suppose a foreign army came in an occupied your town. Supposed in their search for the "bad guys" they killed your wife and children. Suppose they wouldn't leave and treated you like the enemy and took away your liberties. How would you respond? I think I'd do what I could to get them to leave. Someone pointed me to the book "Dying to Win" which seems to support the hunch I'm having with actual facts and research, I'll have to check it out. When it comes to gauging how much the average Muslim hates me, I've come to the conclusion I can almost completely dismiss terrorist attacks in countries where there is an occupying foreign army, and that's pretty much the ONLY place where this kind of terrorism happens. With this aside, it seems now our differences are cultural and theological, things we can work through and discuss.

This realization is uplifting to me. I can now much more clearly focus on "sticking to the man", and not worry so much about the Muslim, except in gaining his friendship and assistance. It sure seems like it would make it easier for me to tell him about Jesus if I saw him as a human being and a friend, instead of a suicidal maniac.

My Recipe...for DISASTER!

I was making a peach cobbler the other day with fresh peaches. So I was boiling the peaches and was left with this pink peachy liquid, and I thought to myself, mmm, this might make a good soda. So I filtered it, added some sugar, put it in a 2 liter pop bottle and added some yeast...then I forgot about it.

The next day I received a frantic call at work from one of my kids, there had been an explosion in the kitchen...I remembered.

Yes, the yeast consumed the sugar producing carbon dioxide (as it is supposed to), however I may have put to much yeast in and I might have let it go a little long. The results were spectacularly disastrous:

The explosion literally blew the cabinet doors in half, not just open, the wood splintered down the middle, both doors:

The bread machine was sitting in front of the cabinet on top of the fridge prior to the explosion:

Here is what is left of the bottle, the lid stayed on, that probably helped:

Well by God's grace no one was near the explosion, Julie and the kids were in the other room, studying the sun, right when they read about solar flares they heard a big boom!

I'm sure there is some deep lesson for me in here somewhere, but I'm still just reveling in the awesomeness of it all!

I will have to modify my recipe and fermenting procedures moving forward. I thought it was pretty cool. Julie, well, not so much...:)