Key Events
5 September 2018 - 30 October 2018
5/9/18, "Part of the Bible is part of the culture".  The view of a Samoan artist trying to explain that by using art his people can solve their deteriorating social problems.  One gets ample evidence of the social debasement of Polynesians (and other ethnicities) that on Saturday nights at the toilet block one has to clean after the boozy carnage caused by their carousing.  He even cited Mr Sam Neill who in his particular "magical" way was able to influence people presumably for good and "righteousness".  But we remember Sam Neill in his earlier days in the film industry playing the part of the Antichrist in the third film of a trilogy remaking the original Omen films.  Such films are an attempt by Hollywood to portray the Bible's prophecies about the Antichrist.
But the more immediate problems are exposed in this statement and in what this man appears to be trying to do.  He did waffle on a bit.  His philosophising was hard to fathom.  However, through the verbiage one could still hear him inadvertently stumble across a problem we find in most cultures including Korean, Chinese, many 'indigenous' cultures and of course in so-called Western' culture be it of the Roman, British, Nordic, Slavic or Germanic variations.  What has happened, especially over the last 2000 years, is that missionaries bringing out the messages of the Bible's "New" and "Old Testaments" often did not realise that the other cultures they stumbled across already had some knowledge of the Bible's Old Testament material.  The Bible itself alludes to this by noting Solomon's men went with the sailors of Hiram's ships to engage in commerce (I Kings 10:22 and II Chronicles 8:17-18) but no doubt also taking with them news about what God was doing in Israel at that time and how God's plan for the World with the Seed of the Woman Programme, fulfillment of the promises to Abraham etc., was still on the agenda so to speak.  That contrasts with the later situation in 586 BC when Merneptah-Hophra came to a very different conclusion ("Israel's Seed is castrated;  the Land flattened to the ground").
Previously, other societies around the world also had learned, or had been aware of,  how Israel had so wondrously and miraculously survived and flourished despite all the catastrophes that had afflicted the world up until Israel's deliverance from Egypt through the Red Sea.  But some five centuries had passed with little good news, if any, coming out of Israel.  That was mostly because Amalek was a massive trouble-maker for everyone in the Middle East (Home) until Kings Saul and David of Israel broke their power bases.  Solomon's men, perhaps backed-up or suppported by the men of Hiram and Tyre, Sidon and Byblos (Lebanese Phoenicians) explained why and how Solomon's nation of Israel was especially blessed by the One True God in the Plan God had for a world Saviour to arrive one day.
The most important message the New Testament Gentile missionaries could do was to explain how and when that Saviour arrived, Who He is, i.e., Jesus of Nazareth, and What He came to do with all the specifics of the Birth, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and Promise to return as explained in the New Testament (e.g., I Corinthians 15:1-4ff).  We now see how Old Testament material in the Bible prepared the Way for the messages of the New.  We learned that Jesus' Ascension necessitated by AD 30 Israel's leaders' surprise- and shocking-rejection of Jesus which will be overturned by a later generation of Israel.  That generation may well be our generation today one-third of which lives in Israel now but two-thirds of of the remainder of modern Jewry in continuing dispersion around the world.   
But all the good work (information) of missionaries, whether they be Jesus' or Solomon's, has been mixed with local beliefs and, unfortunately, superstitions as well.  So that moist cultures in reality now have a hotch-potch or mish-mash of understandings from God's Holy Word.  What all cultures and societies need to urgently do is to re-think or repent of these mix-ups and get a proper understanding of exactly what the Bible is saying.  One is endeavouring to do just that in the pages of the Aleph-Tav Bible Study Method.  Samoan culture seems from the writer's experience and perspective to have become a particularly destructive mish-mash judging by the words quoted above, which is sad.  Some of that may be due to extreme Lutheran views grounded into Samoans while they were under German colonial oversight.  It is no good trying to refashion yet another mish-mash of confusion especially through the very subjective pictures that come through art or music.
There is nothing wrong with such cultural expressions for enjoyment, entertainment, stimulation or whatever.  We can all enjoy great paintings, songs, poems and plays - comedic or tragic.  But if these 'cultural expressions' are being used to explain the Bible that will lead to further trouble.  Instead, they need to use the Bible's own words.  Preferably, for deeper analysis, they need to study their Bibles in the special language that God expressed Himself through, i.e., Hebrew.  But foremost, they need to believe which means they have God's indwelling Holy Spirit leading them through the Scriptures as they read, assimilate and study them.  That's why this Samoan's strategy cannot work nor can it in other cultures trying to do similar things as is the case even in the West and especially there as we have noted in many other paragraphs.
All cultures urgently need to understand the true message God is giving about His Plan in the Bible for mankind.  It is a wonderful redeeming Plan.  However, the blessed option available for everyone in this 'Plan' is only available to those who accept its terms, and the implicit advice, wisdom and exhortations to reject the World's demands for conformity with its plan (The Babel Project).  Rejection of the Bible's message leads to a very un-blessed eternal existence in a dark place separated from God and the Glorious future He offers to all who are reconciled with Him in the one and only proper way described in the New Testament (viz. I Corinthians 15:1-8).  But everyone must take that crucial step of Belief in God's point of view concerning the issue of Sin, how it enetered the World and in Whom it has been overcome, conquered and dealt with.  After all the first man (Adam) separated himself, and us by imputation and inheritance, away from God, Jesus came to reverse the issue and implications thereof 4000 years later.  God's own son took the step to reconcile us to Him.  So likewise we have to come to accept the One Who gave Himself (i.e., Jesus of Nazareth) on the Cross to buy us back from disaster or "redeem" us from Adam's act (Sin) of pulling away.  And look what a mess Adam's descendants now have made of this Earth as God long ago prophesied and explained in the Bible.   
5/9/18, "Record temperature rise also found deep in oceans".  Corals of the Queensland Coast are now shown to be bleaching at much lower depths. This means as we are saying the oceans are noticeably warming because of excessive heat in the Earth's core.  We put that interior heat down to two main potential causes.  They are either nuclear fission or fusion of heavy elements deep inside the Aerth's interior or away down at the central core (if there is one).  Or, the warming oceans are ther result of exceesive heat being absorbed at the Earth's core because the catastrophe which caused the ice caps and mountains to be formed destabilised the atmosphere and its gas balance formed by God in the Six Days of re-formatting in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.  We therefore think there is insufficient Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere and too much Nitrogen.  We are not sure what the optimum level of Oxygen in the atmosphere should be but we may be a little short on that too.  There are other gases that may equally be in short- or excess-supply to the detriment of life on the planet.  Some gases like carbon Dioxide also have different isotopes present such as Carbon-14 and -12.  Carbon 14 may be necessary for the health of hardwood trees hence hardwood forests as well.  If so, we really are in trouble if current levels of Carbon Dioxide are too low at 1-2% instead of the pre-Flood 6-8%.  If that is the case then we are heading for a far bigger disaster than most 'climate-change' experts are telling us!  Bleached corals will be the least of our worries.  What we need to worry about today is bad science and bad academia and unedycated jourtnalists who fail to understand what really is happening and joining world leaders in that if US President Trump is correct about the state of leadership in the world today. 
7/8/19, "All great change is preceded by chaos".  Apparaently a piece of wisdom from Mr Dipak Chophra.  One heard it mentioned on a TV entertainment programme.  This is an interesting comment from a Biblical pespective.  Genesis begins at verse two of the first chapter with chaos.  The Earth fell into it as a result of Satan's disobedience referred to in Ezekiel 28:12ff.   However, at the end of the Apocalypse, the world will be in a big mess again.  That's for two reasons.  Firstly, as Isaiah 24:5 points out, the Earth will be in a seriously polluted condition because of its "inhabitants'" actions in breaking God's commandments or failure to heed His advice on how to behave.  The implication is that Isaiah's point refers to the Latter Days.  It is certainly made in a prophetic context possibly because he had observed a major catastrophe of some sort of the Velikovskian kind.  The Holy Spirit inspired Isaiah to write that prophecy for our benefit so that we could understand where we stand on the time clock of God's Time-line.
However, from Economics and Science we also realise the pollution we see today  is the long-run result of Man's mining, fishing, hunting, population increase, manufacturing distribution and packaging systems etc.  They all have left a massive by-product of environmental damage and wastes not forgetting all sorts of social disruption as well.  These problems are all over the place especially regarding plastics in the oceans.  There's nothing wrong with mining or fishing etc., but the scale and rapaciousness of various incidents of both leaves other indirect sets of problems that degrade the Earth.  After 6000 years of this nonsense, the Apocalypse delivers another set of disasters to the globe as the angels pour out their vials of wrath, disease, pests, fires, or whatever.  What the angels deliver, what the Earth has already suffered from the Velikovskian catastrophes, and Man's own contribution to these disasters brings everything to a crescendo and denouement.  Eve so, of the three sets of problems, Man's contribution nevertheless has been the least devastating of the three.
The Good News is that just as God re-formatted the Earth for the Man after He had destroyed Satan's former mineral habitation here so too The Lord will re-format the Earth to recover it from the aforementioned damage.  It will not be perfect as Eden was.  It will be so good that people born into it from the generation of believers that survives the Tribulation they will have nothing to complain about in their lives.  But they will have to acknowledge their sin nature and seek God's forgivenes and look to Jesus' Sacrifice that saved them too.  This will be an interesting and indeed unique test for ten generations throughout the Millennium.
However, according to Revelation 20:7ff, Satan is briefly released to tempt one more group (generation) of mankind at the end of the Millennium to see who or how many will still rebel against Messiah's Perfect Governance over the Millennial Kingdom.  Some members of that Last Millennial Generation will heed Satan's persuasive powers and follow him instead of Jesus just as happens today.  That culminates in a move of this human army to reject Jesus in Jerusalem.  Of course, those people will be deceived into doing this useless thing.  Although Satan knows full well his plan cannot succeed he knew that anyway when he first rebelled long before God created Man.  Satan knew the score from the moment he rebelled but Adam did not.  That's why Jesus with Great Love, Mercy and Grace took the place of Adam to save him but did not do this for Satan and his followers.
Like most philosophers, Mr Chophra, which in Hebrew means 'cowboy' or 'hick', merely succeeds in repeating a piece of Wisdom from the Bible.  Either he cribbed it from the Bible or he simply realised by observation what has happened and how this world has on many occasions suffered much chaos only to recover because God enabled it to do so either with in-built stabilisers and healing mechanisms or by direct intervention.  Not that Mr Chophra, like most people, ever gives God the credit, or even if he does, invariably his readers never do as was the case in this TV programme.  When Jesus returns, the recovery will be another re-formatting session akin to that of the Six Days of Genesis 1 & 2.  The June 1967 Six Day War when Israel defeated all her agressors as in the Old Days is a hint that God is going to do a repeat act!  He will not necessarily have the same reasons for achieving this over six days.  Perhaps He will do this in one day.  We will have to wait and see.  It will be a wonderful experience for us to see what The Lord can and will do rather than what our environmentalists hope in vain to do.
8/9/18, "Death by design".  The title of a television documentary about the production of computers and mobile devices.  They note that despite the clean image the industry portrays itself to be, it nevertheless uses massive volumes of toxic chemicals and semi-toxic rare-earth elements in the production process, these elements continuing to have negative side-effects when the product is discarded or thrown away.  The industry's products are thus toxic both to the humans using them in the manufacturing process then as waste as worn out, defective, outdated and discarded models.  Sometimes discarded electronic products are stripped of their more accessible and valuable inputs such as gold etc.  Then the unwanted rubbish is dumped, often at sea, with less toxic materials removed and more toxic materials contained within.  When dumped either directly or indirectly at sea, waves break down that material into microscopic fragments unseen to the naked eye giving the impression the waste is dissolved and gone away.  It hasn't or does not 'go away'.  That waste ends up being eaten by sea-life as one species swallows another species as every sea-going species one way or another ingests these fragments of waste.    But electronics industry waste is not the only input into the sea where even greater volumes of packaging and other wastes also enter the oceans.  Many wastes are firstly or initially dumped into major rivers which eventually take them into the oceans.
As one of the speakers on the television programme said, the metals also get into the air, as well as into the sea, even though they mostly were originally stored in the land before they were mined out.  But air currents redistribute particles of these metals into the air everyone breathes.  Although one beneficial side-effect of that we picked up from another report suggested the carbon dioxide from China was feeding US grain crops and providing US farmers with bigger yields.  On balance, we are not so fortunate.  Most waste is negative and damaging.   
8/9/18, "The digital revolution has changed our lives in so many good ways ...";  The spokesperson implied ways that were good.  This came from the TV programme Death by Design.  The trouble is that evidence tends to show the bad side-effects normally outweigh by volume, frequency and intensity any 'Good'.
8/9/18, "... But we must make sure it does not rob us of our planet".  "Well it is", we would say, especially with the benefit of Bibnlical Wisdom behind us.  Anyway, the more hopeful plea was the conclusion of the programme Death by Design.  It tried to encourage citizens to lobby the manufacturers to behave more responsibly.  However, the Bible makes it clear only Jesus is going to solve this problem and its side-effects when He returns.  God's done this before of course (Genesis 1:2ff).  The chaos now enveloping us from issues like this is also intensifying the immediacy of the implementation of the Plan designed by God on His part and Satan on his part his plan as we enter the final stages (of both) as prophesied in the Bible, the one book no one is reading properly now if they read it at all.  The one book the world can read to figure out what God and Satan are preparing for this Earth, i.e., The Bible, is being almost universally ignored now as much in the churches and synagogues as anywhere else.  This is just like it was in Israel's and Judah's last days of independence in 722 BC and 586 BC respectively.   
Thus, the title of the programme Death by Design has a sort of double entendre for Bible students.  The prophecy about the consequences of Man eating of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden is now coming full circle into fullfillment as "@" or 'The At Sign' symbolises.  In another sense, this is all part of the Plan designed by God Who out of Love gave the Man a choice to obey Him to distinguish the Man from a robot.  Machines, or even the mythical androids of the science fiction films, have no choice nor indeed any ability to worship or snub God.  They can only do what is programmed into them.  Sadly, as God foreknew, Man is now placing himself under the control of robots or under the control of 'bots' on the Internet.  However, in the event the Man disobeyed, God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him will have everlasting life in the Blessed side of the Eternal Plan God has designed for all believers.  Otherwise, the unbelievers do end up in the part of that designed Plan that sends them into eternal darkness, tears and teeth-gnashing (Matthew 22:13, 25:30, Luke 13:28,  16:22ff).  
8/9/18, "Life is tough everywhere ... one should have stayed in Africa".  A comment from an engineer from Cameroun who was holed up in Irun, northern Spain, on the Gulf of Gascony in the Bay of Biscay and just on the Fernch border.   As we have been saying, many of the refugees swarming over the Earth should think how they can improve their own country, as we all have had to do in our's throughout History, rather than flee from a basket case to sponge off people in another country who have tried to work together to make their country better.  While Asian, European and some Pacific countries have been able to provide better governance, African and Muslim nations seem to be the ones doing the worst.  Africans are constrained by borders set disruptively across ethnic lines for them ostensibly by the Europeans.  But even the Balkans seem to have overcome those difficulties even though there are remaining tensions.  Anyway, after at least half a century, the Organisation of African Unity has done nothing to change Africa's boundaries.  Recently, Eritrea and Ethiopia and of course South Sudan have resolved some border alterations.  Even the South Sudanese change only resulted in even more disaster than the civil war caused by separatism movements in The Sudan.  It seems no one can win in Africa ("אופירה" in the Bible).  Perhaps that's why those countries are going to figure so prominently in the Ezekiel 31:1 to 39:16 Gog-Magog invasion of Israel.  The Africans ("Cushites") will be looking for easy and cheap  spoil in Israel rather than putting effort into making their own lands more productive.
11/9/18, "Evolution of our bodies has not kept up with evolution of our lives".  A radio interviewer talking to a writer about change and "transformation" in human beings.  The interviewer made the quote but it may have originated out of the author's book.  She was only trying to look clever as is her wont.  But in the negative we could say "the devolution of our bodies does seem to be in line with the devolution of our lives".  Increasingly, the world is suffering depresion, drug probems, serious or new illnesses etc.  Our lives are becoming much more problematic with the relentless march of technology which is a sort of Pandora's Box of good and bad.  But so much of that technology and its handmaiden of science makes it difficult separating the good and bad bits in time to experience long-term net gains in our lives rather than more ugliness.  Even then, gains or loses are notoriously hard to define, identify or prove let alone quantify.  But God foresaw all that.  In all our S&T one thing we are proving is that we definitely are not like God (or "gods") as Satan suggested when he tempted Adam and Eve.  We are not like God because we have been unable to foresee all these problems.  God did.  That's why He has provided a solution.
Furthermore, our complex production, processing, marketing and distribution systems and their accompanying wastes are adding new complexities to 21^st Century lives as we struggle to stop any more plastic entering the food chain via sea and bird life.  Sea-life (Fish, whales, etc.) and even Albatrosses have been seen consuming plastic and, in the case of at least one albatross, regurgitating food for its young chick containing plastic waste the parent scoured from the oceans.  Quite often either sea-life gets entangled in plastics or the food it consumes does.
On a different front, the author also claimed the first time we knew about women producing an egg for reproduction was in the early Twentieth Century.  That is surprising.  The natural world has much information about seeds and reproduction.  One would only have to watch the birds and the bees and the plants to see that.  In any case, the world's most widely read book (The Bible, seed, zera', זרע) says a lot about seeds for both reproduction (procreation) and agriculture (e.g., Genesis 24:60, 28:4, 38:8-9 & 29, 46:6-7, Numbers 18:19, 24:7, Ruth 4:11-12, II Kings 11:1, I Chronicles 16:13-19, Ezra 2:59, 9:2).  Irrespective of the Bible, many ancient pagan rituals would not have made any sesne unless the ancients did understand much about eggs and seeds.  The author interviewed on the radio may have been talking in the context of modern photography and camera-based observations, otherwise this was clearly an example of the next point.
This generation is so blinded by evolutionism it has not only become wicked in God's eyes; also, its knowledge and wisdom have become foolishness to God (Isaiah 29:14, I Corinthians 1:25).  Twenty-First Century folk arrogantly believe they are the only ones to have known anything.  Our high levels of technology tend to breed this contempt.   People born now believe History only started from their day of birth.  This is why this generation is so vulnerable to the truisms of Hegel and Santillana.  Both philosophers noted people do not learn from History and are doomed to repeat its mistakes.  Only this time around the costliness of those mistakes is likely to be far higher than the costs of any previous generation's mistakes.  Indeed today's costs could well exceed the impact of the mistakes of all previous generations in just one because of the world-wide scales of output now in operation.  Although the Lord may have had Israel's welfare in mind when He said in Matthew 24:22, "except those days be shortened no flesh would be saved (survive)", that point might equally be said of our polluted world.  
14/9/18, 1080 poison debate in NZ highlights pollution problems.  A debate rages in NZ over the application of a poison named "1080".  It is dropped over large tracts of land to kill animals described as 'introduced' pests.  These naughty animals include Australian opossums (protected in the Lucky Country to prevent them going extinct there), deer, goats, stoats, rats and mice.  Many of the places covered by aerial poison drops are inaccessible to humans but are supposedly infested or overrun by those 'pests'.  The claim by one faction of environmentalists and the Government's Department of Conservation is that collateral damage to native birds and animals being affflicted by the poison is outweighed by the long-term effectiveness of 1080 in killing the natives' pesky predators.  However, some people in the countryside, also 'environmentalists' one assumes, are concerned the poison is a very cruel killer.  The poison '1080' is to them a blunt sledge-hammer straining at gnats in the battle against exogenous pests by also polluting the wider environment in a manner that indirectly affects humanity.  They also believe people would be better to farm these pests and build an economy using their furs and meat.
However, the point about "collateral damage" (see below) or in having to choose between two or more rather unpalatble mitigation options exposes the problems the World faces in cleaning up pollution or in protecting rare animals, birds and plants.  To eliminate one threat, innocents are exposed and get killed.  We may want to reduce the amount of plastic going into rubbish dumps, or into rivers and oceans which is far worse, but we have to radically alter our processing and economic systems too.  That could mean a lot of short-term unemployment and all the risks that exposes among humans or indeed risks to animals as they face hungry humans seeing their next meal in whatever grows or moves.  It is not just a matter of getting everyone's cooperation in the face of apathy and lazineess or refusal to even change one's habits by always taking a bag out with one when one goes 'shopping'.  These are insoluble conundrums.  In reality, the world is locked into them.  But not just in this aspect of the environment being discussed here but over a wide array of other problems too, many of them non-environmental like Internet hacking or tax avoidance.  There is no escape.  That's why the Bible's prophecies are so comforting.  They both explain why these problems beset us and what God's solution is.              
14/9/18, "Photos doctored in NZ's 1080 poison debate".  Anti-1080 protesters also claimed the authorities are doctoring photographs to exaggerate the levels of infestation and embellishment that goes on in the succeses of the Government's Conservation Department.  In turn, the authorities allege the protesters are misusing photography to embarrass the Government agencies attempting to control the pests with 1080 etc.  Here we see, in this local application, an increasing mistrust around the world of even 'photographic' evidence.  In England, surveillance cameras caught two Russians lurking around London and Salisbury as they organised a drop of a poison to kill off the Scrupole's, a Russian man and his daughter who had offended Russia's security system.  Mr Scrupole had been acting as a double agent for the British against the Ruskies.  The Russians allegedly wanted revenge.  In 2006, they took out a political opponent of Mr Putin's by poisoning him with polonium embedded in his sushi at a Euston Road Sushi bar.  How these people managed to ferry such highly lethal poisons without endangering their own health has never properly been explained.  Perhaps sensibly so to discourage otyhers from trying a similar feat.  Still, it all sounds rather fishy.   
14/9/18, "We don't deny the collateral damage".  A spokesman for the Government agencies trying to eradicate unwanted pests from New Zealand's countryside ("The Bush") publicly agreed some native animals or birds are killed by 1080 poison drops.  However, some of the worst incidents relate to many years ago when the scientists were less sure of the habits of the various native and introduced species involved or affected.  In earlier times, collateral damage to native species had at times been severe through smoe naive mistakes.  For example, the conservators now avoid the use of brightly coloured poisoned carrots because they are equally attractive to some native birds.  They now know opossums eat flesh so they can target them with poisoned meat that native birds won't touch as well as strategically targeting pests with vegetables and herbs they like.  But we are also reminded of the collateral damage that worries the world over another offensive by Syria's president Assad as he prepares to exterminate people he says are terrorists among the Idlib population in Northern Syria .... refer next item .. or for that matter in the Yemen where Saudi Arabia and the UAE are being very careless to say the least.  One supposes Chechniya a few years ago or Vietnam a few decades ago are by now conveniently forgotten let alone London in 1940-45 or Dresden in 1945.
14/9/18,  "It is their fault".  The words of the Russian President at a conference in Tehran between Iran, Turkey and Russia over what to do about a concentration of 'terrorists' in Idlib province in Syria.  As legitimate 'freedom fighters' they were effectively obliged to go there into humanitarian 'safe corridors' in exchange for abandoning their weapons.  Or the Syrian, Russian and Iranian armies drove them into Idlib province to get them out of the way.  Both the Russians and the Syrians want terrorists as far away as possible from the Russian naval base in Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast or from Damascus and other major Syrian cities.  The ambiguity in the translation from Tehran suggested Mr Putin believed that in his experience if terrorists are able to use civilians as human shields then that it is the civilians' "fault".  Judging by what happened a few years ago in Chechniya, it seems Mr Putin believes civilians are responsible for getting themselves into that invidious situation.  In the case of Muslims and their philosophy of life and world views, that may be true to a greater or lesser extent depending on the Muslim faction one is dealing with at any given moment.  Apparently this means it is permissible for the Russians and Syrians to bomb the hell out of everyone irrespective of their situation.  In NZ people are concerned about the welfare of animal pests and native flora and fauna.  In Syria humans are the collateral damage.
14/9/18, NZ anti-1080 protesters use children as shields from crime charges.  It was reported that police could not prosecute adults, for reasons to be explained next, for possessing native birds they used to make a protest at the doors of NZ's House of Representatives.  It is illegal to possess any protected native bird, dead or alive, in NZ.  The birds had all died but apparently not all of them from 1080 poisoning.  In fact it seems none of them died that way.  Some were mown down by cars on roads.  Others probably died from other but natural causes.  The dead birds had been stored in a refrigerator to preserve them for this protest.  But children on a day off from "home-school" had reportedly volunteered to lay out the birds on Parilament's steps.  Apparently the children cannot be charged so by employing them the protesters shielded themselves from any conviction.  One has to ask in what way are these protesting NZ adults differing in using children as human shields from terrorists reportedly using them in Idlib in  Syria?
19/9/18, Horrific conditions for 2 million kids in province of DRC but lots of "hope"!  We beg to disagree on the hope aspect.  This 'headline' is a summation of a discussion on a national radio station today about the situation in one province in the "Democratic Republic of the Congo ("The DRC") or "Congo Kinshasha" as we used to say before the place was known as "Zaire" for a few decades.  "Congo Brazzaville" is the name best known for the French colony on the north side of the Congo River.  When one was young (1950's), these places were always in the news for fighting and atrocities remembering especially the assassination of Mr Patrice Lumumba.
The correspondent here; prompted by the interviewer for some indication of the outlook for these 2 million children without food, schooling or protection from gangs seeking to enlist them to join the militias; suggested "we have lots of hope".  If our reading of the Biblical prophecies is accurate, we expect a huge cloud of people to join the Gog-Magog invasion of Israel according to Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16.  This will be a human crowd seeking "spoil".  One already knows (as of 2008) of Sudanese arriving in Israel believing it was already in the Messianic Kingdom.  The conditions in DRC are ripe for a contribution to this human wave of seemingly dispossessed and desperately malnourished and poverty-stricken hordes carrying baggage that apparently needs burning to prevent pollution from diseases related to infectious insets.  From today's standpoint, with the benefit of known (i.e., revised) History behind one, all this seems to be envisaged in the Bible's Prophecy.  It ednvisages a massive human wave advancing on Israel from the South (i.e., "Cush"), East ("Peres-Persia") and North.  The 'South', or "Cush", is Black Africa in effect.  Never before in our history books have we seen, as we do now, such a geo-political situation or configuration emerging so close to that described in Ezekiel and over such a vast region stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan and from Kazakhstan to the Congo.
Depending upon the degree of precision of our current array of calendars around the wortld, we are now in the second decade of the seventh millennium since Adam's fall in circa 4004 BC.  That 'date' is derived from Bishop Usher's reasonably accurate asessment of the Biblical chronologies.  Many others since Ussher have come to broadly the same date for Adam's Fall as calculated from Biblical data given a standard error of some fifty years or so.  Modern archaeological investigation concludes that the earliest signs of settled and sophisticated civilization with written records go back only 4000 to 4500 years and that would take us back to the Noahic Flood which destroyed most evidence of human civilization in the previous 1500 years.  Thus, based on our current Julian-Gregorian claendar, integrated as best as we know how with other more ancient calendars, our dating system may be reasonably accurate to within a few decades or even a couple of centuries, though less likely for the latter parameter.
Thus, from a Biblical perspective, this 'seventh' millennium is in effect a satanic counterfeit of Christ's "Messianic Millennium".  The current dating system, i.e., as in AD 2018, is a product of the masters of the Babel Project.  If we are correctly deducing from the School of Elijah model that only six millennia were allocated to Man's folly since 'The Fall', then we are clearly in an era where Satan is foisting a counterfeit millennium on us.  That's what the UN's so-called "Millennium Goals" two decades ago were about.  Satan does not care for them.  They are in effect a concession he gives to the do-gooders who are trying their 'best' to make the world a better place from their S.H.E.M-ite perspectives.  But their S.H.E.M-ite perspective's extreme materialist doctrine leaves that particular world-view closed-minded to the possibility of the existence of spirit beings called "angels" in the Bible and that the fallen angels are doing Satan's bidding here on Earth even though we cannot explain exactly how they do that.  God does  not use good angels these days to give us messages for "In these Last Days He has spoken unto us by His Son", obviatingany need for angels to transmit messages to us.  Anyway, today's almost universally S.H.E.M-ite policy analysts are saying in public these "millennial goals" are being achieved for the most part.  Today's report from the "DRC" would seem to negate that optimism.  Nevertheless they continue to "hope".  
True 'Hope' is only available in our trust in Jesus to accomplish God's Will.  The S.H.E.M-ites have rejected that view.  As Jesus taught us to pray, "Thy Will be done on Earth as in Heaven".  Unfortunately, as the Antichrist is being prepared and trained, it is Satan's will that is getting most of the running at the moment.  And he is stepping up the pressure all around, especially in The Congo at the heart of Africa-Cush.
20/9/18, "Space junk now getting to critical levels".  There are about 7000 tons of hi-tech junk and discarded booster rockets milling around up there.  This rubbish is beginning to threaten other satellites' ability to do their jobs without getting damaged.  A brief discussion noted the vast range of services we now rely on via satellites and how they are consequently at risk of interruuption.   Even tools such as spanners lost by astronauts doing R&M on their space stations are a threat.  A British company believes it has developed a net to trawl this junk back to Earth by burning it as it falls through the upper atmosphere.  We still think an event like circa 1445 BC when Joshua called on the Sun and Moon to stand still in Joshua 10:11 is by far a more likely and greater threat.  If they are worried about Man's space junk ("We need more space in Space") they should turn to the Bible or to Dr Velikovsky's research, or to both, to get a more realistic handle on the threats to electronic hardware up there in what is euphemistically known as 'Space' when in fact much of the stuff is in the Upper Atmosphere.  It's more correct to say "We need more space in the upper atmosphere"   
21/9/18, "We are in a state of increased disorder at the moment".  You don't say!  Ms Jacinda Adern made the point as she departs for her first visit to the UN as NZ's Prime Minister.  We have been pointing this out for some considerable time now.  We can only reinforce the view that The Bible has warned us that we now are reaping the full dividend of the breach of God's Covenant.
Essentially that refers to the mess bequeathed to us by the first man's disobedience in Eden which as Christian theology states is a sin imputed to all of us and inherited by one and all.  God's argument is that no matter which one of us was elected to represent humanity back then 6000 years ago in the Garden of Eden we all would have replicated Adam's error.  Equally, had Adam have made the correct choice all of us would be imputed with having made that correct choice too and everyone would have come into being through reproduction indide the Garden of Eden, the the Tree of Knowledge left untouched and the Tree of Life accessible to one and all for a lifetime which presumably meant until mankind received a resurrecetd Eternal Glorified Body as we now look forward to.  Possibly, after Adam made the corect choice, God might then have instructed pour first paerents how the use the tree of Knowledge but that we must leave for the realms of speculation.  Perhaps in a parallel universe another Adam did make the correct choice but we are not serious on that!
But this is what, where, why and how Jesus comes into play.  God Himself through His Only Begotten Son made the correct choice for one and all, but nevertheless with Lovem Grace and Mercy took on the penalty for us all even though not guilty of the sin and paid the price for one and all of us who did error did make the wrong choice.  What mankind is enduring at the moment is the full- or long-run consequence of Adam's (or our) choice to effectively go it alone here on Earth and do things our way with our science, technology, wisdom such as it may be, etc., etc.  God let the First Adam make that choice for every human born on Earth since Adam fell.  Mankind'songoing follies are currently proving God's point but with man to be saved no matter what jusr as Man's nonsense brings him to the brink of extinction.  God gave us the opportunity to obey or disobey rather than simply create a race of robots.  Unfortunately the first man made the wrong choice on everyone's behalf but the good news is that God's Son paid the price for that wrong choice so that we may be redeemed and look forward to a most hopeful outcome as below as long as we accpet our responsibility, change our minds (repent) and agree with God and accept His Son Jesus saved us.  This has to be a personal decision every man woman and child makes for himself.
21/9/18, "We need a message of hope". NZ's Prime Minister speaking again.  She  said there is a need for a message of hope as world citizens stare down the barrel of much uncertainty these (Last?) days.  Unfortunately, just as few listen to the Bible's message about the sin in the world not many look to its mesage of hope.  The Creator has promised that He will not leave Man to suffer these problems for an eternity or until he destroys himself and anything else that lives, moves or breathes on the globe.  But we are all accounted as following Adam and making his false choice.  God's Plan of 'Hope', foreknowing this situation would arise, seems to have required about six millennia to run before He intervenes to bring about the fulfillment of His Promised Hope.  God seems to have set aside about six millennia for everyone, angels included, to see what God always knew what would happen anyway when He put that first Man-Adam into that situation in the Garden of Eden where he made that fateful bad-choice on behalf of us all.  So there is Hope out there but only in the return of the Messiah of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, who will present to Israel the long-promised and -awaited 'Messianic-' or 'Millennial-' Kingdom of God as promised by God, and offered to Israel  but rejected by the AD 27-30 generation of Israel.  Although more Jews at the time probably still lived in Diaspora outside Israel at the time, as is the case today where two thirds or a perhaps half the world's Jews reside outside Israel.  So it was really a minority of all-Israel that made that fateful negative decision about Jesus of Nazareth ("The Nazarene").  Of course that is a parallel with Adam where just one man made a representative decision for us all - Jew and Gentile (non-Jew).
Of course when Israel of a future generation does change its mind about jesus and calls on him to Hoshannah ("save  us now") there will also be a great blessing extended to all Gentiles who believe along with all Jews who believe.  Jews who did or do not believe won't be in it either.  Unbelievers of all time face an Eternity outside God's Kingdom.  Apparently that is a place of darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth.  But trust in Jesus of Nazareth.  That's the true message of Hope.  
21/9/18, "We are a supporter of UN reform".  The NZ Prime Minister may or may not be aware that the world is being prepared for a new governance system as the Bible predicted.  The continuing failures of the UN system really do need an overhaul.  But the exhortations in this regard by the Prime Minister of a little country often placed in a little box on its own in a corner at the bottom of a world atlas will have little influence on the details of a plan long ago hatched. 
23/9/18, "Signs of ultra-orthodoxy becoming mainstream in Russia".  This came from a programme on an international televison station about the Russian State's involvement with the country's ancient Orthodox 'Christian' Church.  We say "ancient' because many of its theological and philosophical roots go back to the ancient pagan religions of the peoples of that part of the world.  A common feature of that is their "icons" or idols found in their churches representing ancient heroes they once worshipped as 'gods'.  The current Russian President, Mr Putin, seems to be a member and supporter of the church.  The programme tried to portray the church in a similar light to the so-called "far right" of Christian fundamentalism in the USA.  The programme seemed especially concerned about Mr Putin's links with the church and Russia's international policy.    
23/9/18, "Russia is the last bastion of true Christianity".  Members of the Russian Orthodox Church were saying this on the international televison station's programme of the previous item.  One questions just how 'christian' this church really can claim to be as one viewed Mr Putin giving a holy kiss to an icon or idol which is a distinguishing feature of this religious system.  Idol worship, either of physical icons or things like sports, sportsmen, entertainment stars etc., is very unchristian.  
23/9/18, West becoming liberal and losing basic Christian values.  Few would disagree with that.  But just how 'Christian' is Russia's state church?  Not much we would say.  Apparently; like most other state Orthodox systems that range throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa; the heresy of transubstantiation is taught at their 'communion' services or 'masses'.  Proper and true Christiamity repudiates this objectionable heresy, though we are persecuted for making the point.  
23/9/18, Orthodox-church supporting TV station backs Putin agenda. That was another key point in this international televison station's programme of the previous items for today.  In the USA there are plenty of television stations owned by church groups but many of them are somewhat estranged from proper Christian values often being used as cash cows in an ironic variation of Aaron's golden calf which angered God so much back there in the Sinai Desert some 3500 years ago.  The US churches with these televison stations seem to be repeating Israel's mistake.  "Beware of the leaven of the Televangelists", we say. 
23/9/18, Russian Orthodox church driving Russian policy on Ukraine.  Another claim on the international televison station's programme of the previous items for today.  If Russia is going to be a key participant in the Gog-Magog invasion of Israel in Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16, this may throw some light on "Gog's" identity.  'Magog' is written in the context "Eretz h'm'gog" (המגוג ארץ גוג) and literally means 'land the (or those) with Gog'.  Furthermore, "Gog" is the overlord of three identities named "Rosh", "Meshech" and "Tubal".  These can best be explained as "Russia", Moscow" and Tubalsk or Tiblisi the capital of Georgia or Gogia.  Thus 'Gog' may refer to some spiritual entity, as some have considered in the past whose name is somehow phonetically related to names such as Georgia, Chechniya, Caucasus, Cis-caucasus or 'Cossack'.  The many nations or regions listed in the prophecy are certainly taking very anti-Israel political positions largely fuelled by a virulent almost in-built anti-semitism.  So it would pay to closely watch situations in those regions  for the context of the Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16 prophecy.     
23/9/18, Russian Imperial legion believes its duty is to regain Ukraine.  This suggests there is still considerable support in Russia for a re-establishment of the former empire of both the Tsars and the Soviets. No wonder Russia's neighbours are afraid of developments in their big neighbour.  These points raised in this TV documentary on the Russian Orthodox Church suggest that the Gog-Magog invasion of Israel is indeed being orchestrated by mischievous thinking in Russia (Ezekiel 38:10) or by whomever really controls Russia.
23/9/18, New Russian law allows wife-beating.  That was the claim of a God-fearing Russian woman who now has stopped going to the church which does not protect her from a violent husband and father.
23/9/18, Jehovah's witnesses also being persecuted in Russia.  Not just people who disagree with the Russian Orthodox faith.  Russian law still restricts the activities of any religious group that is not Russian Orthodox according to the forementioned TV documentary.  It is interesting to note the JW's are regarded as unchristian.  
23/9/18, "Tonight, a revelation, a showdown of Biblical proportions".  This was spoken in a trailer for the next episode of a TV series named Lucifer.  It is about an angel apparently on Earth doing his father's business.  That was the term Jesus used to describe His mission to obey God's Will ("My Father's business", Luke 2:49).  The advertisement's statement of course mocks both the Bible and the Book of Revelation which is the last book in the Bible and all about the Last Days which is a period when the world will see much mockery of God's Word.  Little does the world realise that Revelation decodes or sequences all the Old Testament Prophecies of the Last Days (Jude 18).  For two millennia theologians have been floundering around with Revelation.  Dr Fruchtenbaum seems to be one of the first to use revelatio to sequence all the Old Testament prophecies.  Time will tell how correct his methodology will have been.   
24/9/18, "There is significance in what Jacinda Adern represents".  She is New Zealand's new Prime Minister but is notable for becoming pregnant soon after her election, or even during the election campaign, and giving birth to a baby girl.  Yet she has continued to manage the onerous task of being PM of NZ.  She did get six weeks maternity leave and one of her coalition partmers, Mr Peters, stood in as temporary PM during that leave.  Mrs Benazir Bhutto achieved the same feat a few decades earlier though one prays NZ's PM has a better fate.  We are reminded that three British or UK queens have given birth on duty to several children each (Queen Anne (1703-14), Queen Victoria (1837-1901) and Queen Elizabeth II (1952-).
More significantly, from a Biblical perspective, many women played important roles.  Some, not so good especially like Jezebel but others very brave and full of faith such as Malchat Sheba.  She is better known as 'The Queen of Sheba' who was Hatshepsut of Egypt & Ethiopia as we now know from reconstructed chronology and history.  However, the prophecy given to Eve in Genesis 3:15 which mentions the birth of both the Christ-Child and the Antichrist-Child, also prophesies a time when women would seek to usurp the man's role in God's plan for the dispensations and administrations that would unfold in the wake of Adam's fall.  An increasingly strident feminism is stalking the Earth, in these Last Days in a sign that we are in the Last Days clearly outlined in the Bible.  The feminism has become especially strident in the format of the Me Too Movement.  There women are complaining about many years of suffering in silent humiliation but they are now belatedly getting a resurgence of support in the registration of their long-held complaints.  They also hope to get compensation of some form or another.  The problem is, as one sees at the toilets, many young women, especially when they are young and with a bit of booze in them, entice men in various ways.  Certain men will act on perceived or real suggestions, that they may well later regret.  But the damage is done.  That is of course a very significant implication from the first act in which Adam and Eve 'felt' their particular act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden.  That can be ascertained from the description of their activity after their last foray into seeking knowledge from the forbidden tree.
But women in NZ are seeking policies to be implemented that give half of all directorships, positions in Parliament or Cabinet etc,. equality meaning 50% participation by women in these sorts of things.  However, one is of the view this relatively young PM was delivered something of a hospital pass.  Her political party leader suddenly decided it might be better for his party's image for him to stand down but just a few weeks before a national election campaign.  Her predecesor was a somewhat dour and colourless individual.  The party moved in favour of an attractive younger person.  That worked for the former leader is in a high Cabinet position.  His party shares government with two other political parties, though on a narrow majority even with the coalition of three parties, two small and one bigger to freeze out the largest political party.  However, the country has lost many experienced politicians into the opposition benches, as we say, including several very competent women in favour of a party that has already lost two Cabinet Ministers, both women, sacked for incompetence and in one case for possibly corrupt activity although more out of naivity than fraudulent intent.
On previously reported fronts, Mesdames Angela Merkel and Christine La Garde still front Germany's Chancellory and the IMF respectively although Janet Yellin is no longer in charge at the Federal Reserve Board.  But we still have two women remaining in charge of two very inportant financial institutions in a position to be involved with fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 5:6-11.   
25/9/18, "His flaws have made him more human and more lovable".  Those words came from a radio interviewer discussing Mr Tiger Woods sublime golfing performances.  But he fell into disgrace with his personal life.  His golf rating plummeted to 1100 or so from a semi-permanent number one.  But yesterday he brought his rating back to about twenty and won his 80th PGA tounament just two behind the all-time great the late Mr Sam Snead on 82.  Now the question is if he can overhaul Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors.  At age 43 he has a chance to overhaul Mr Snead's record but he needs another 4 majors to equal Mr Nicklaus' record.  Furthermore, Messrs Nicklaus and Snead won without all the hullabaloo that Woods has incurred over the last 5 years since 2013 when Woods won his last major.  But Mr Woods has overcome his moral problems and 8 operations, 4 on his knees and 4 on his back.  The operations and the medications gave him a lot of other trouble.  That even included an arrest for being drunk and disorderly which turned out to be a result of a medication mix-up.  That was all very unfortunate but turned out for the good in the end.  
However, there is an ugly side to the comment introducing this essay.  Those of us who followed Biblical teaching from the age of five are contradistinctively regarded as kill-joys and prudes.  Our blameless lives thus make us inhuman and unloveable.  We are hated.  At least we know that is because we follow Jesus (II Corinthians 2:15-16).    Just as Joseph with his family, Jeremiah with his Judeans and especially Jesus with everyone went in this regard, so go we.  Joseph, Jeremiah and the rest of us are sinners despite being blameless.  We all have faults, Jesus again being the exception.  
But even Jesus did lose His temper or at least get angry on occasions.  He even mischieviously teased-out certain responses (e.g., the Syro-Phoenician woman with the demon-possesed daughter) in a perfectly kindly and gentle way which some of us are even able to do from time to time though not perfectly as Jesus did.  On occasons our attempts at humour or light heartedness mildly back-fire.  Essentially, though, nowadays, the Christian following the Bible is a subject of mockery, ridicule, ostracism etc.  We don't get into Tiger Woods types of tangles.  But if we fail to win 18 golfing majors or 80 + PGA golfing tournaments or outsell sports stadiums with a music festival (Beatles at the Shea Stadium) we have become unloveable because we go through life quietly attempting to set a good decent standard.
Many people suffer from this disregard, more so in New Zealand than most other countries it seems especially when we hear so many people chortling over the airwaves all their mistakes and how they go on about "redemption" with scant regard for the true meaning of the word from the Biblical perspective.  If we do try to air our points about a better way on the radio they cut us off because we don't live by the rule that you must do something terrible like doing drugs, getting drunk, sexing etc to be in the in-group.  Otherwise, one is cast out into social oblivion.  Little wonder NZ has such high suicide rates and widespread depression aflicting people.
Unfortuately, this also may explain why the world is falling into such a mess.  Terrible things happening in places like Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, tend to push or hide under the carpet and under the radar the problems NZ is dealing with.  The blameless, though not sinless nor faultness, are completely taken for granted.  Worse, the second anyone thinks they have found a flaw in any one of us they come down on us like a ton of bricks at a moment's notice.  It is totally pathetic of course but that is in part what God was warning Adam and Eve about before they tempted fate and had a taste of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  There are no reward systems for such people on this Earth.  One does not get into trouble oneself but one is constantly having to cope with, or be burdened by, those who are in trouble because of their own nonsense.  Most people are in some sort of trouble because they blithely ignore any suggestion they need to consider a better way.  At least the followers of Jesus will get rewards stored for us in Heaven for their efforts during their lifetimes.  Those rewards will determine what our role will be in the soon arriving Kingdom of God.      
25/9/18, "There is no better come-back story".  That is something a commentator  said on another radio station about the Tiger Woods golfing story which one wants to observe here is indeed a very nice history of one particular person's very public life.  There is no denying that.  While Mr Woods' feat is admirable, should he be given greater kudos than Messrs Snead or Nicklaus especially when we remember their impeccible rocords in all walks of life?  One just hopes some other news story does not break out and smashes that observation into smithereens!
However, by far the greatest come-back will be the return of Jesus of Nazareth to install the long awaited Kingdom of God promised to Abraham and the prophets of Israel.  Jesus confirmed that Kingdom still would come in Acts 1:7.  In Acts, just before His Ascension, Jesus just pointed out that the disciples would not know when is the arrival of the Messianic Kingdom.  Nor that it would last a millennium according to the revelation later given to Apostle John.  What they would get in the meantime would be the permanent indwelling of God's Holy Spirit in each believer.  That would begin the Church Age, not anticipated or Prophesied in the Old Testament, wherein that would be the world's situation in respect to how God would witness to Mankind via Holy Spirit-filled Christians.  So far, The Church Age has lasted nearly two millennia as it acts as an interim organisation or body to do God's work, primarily as a witness, to cover things until the arrival of the Messianic Kingdom.  The Indwelling Holy Spirit in every individual believer, confirms they are indeed a saved believer and the permanently indwelling Holy Spirit would be a pledge proving The Truth of things to come like the Messianic Kingdom.
Confirmation of this comes in II Corinthians 1:22, where we read (NASB), " ... gave the spirit in our hearts as a pledge ...", 5:5, " ... gave us the spirit as a pledge .." and Ephesians 1:14, "... given as a pledge of our inheritance .."; where 'pledge' in each case is the Greek arrabown (αρραβων) or Hebrew "ערבון".  The Hebrew root 'erev' means evening.  Thus, as sure as the Light of Day follows the Darkness of Night so we will receive our inheritance, rewards etc., and that Jesus receives His Inheritance in the Saints (us) as per Ephesians 1:18.   The indwelling and infilling of God's Holy Spirit within believers is the evidence or pledge of that.  These are the only New Testament passages where we find αρραβων (or ערבון).  We find it directly written or transliterated into Greek from the Hebrew letters in these two epistles Paul wrote to his mainly Greek-speaking audiences.  So there are just three uses of this word in the New Testament.
Also, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew "ערבון" was used in that form just three times (Genesis 38:17, 18, 20) when Judah gave his ring etc., to Tamar after he unwittingly had made her pregnant after she disguised herself as a roadside prostitute.  By giving her some of his personal effects (gifts), which he obviously wanted back, he indicated he was quite genuine with his promise to pay her properly for her services.  As the text indicates, the rather crooked Judah followed with his payment but she had disappeaderd and no one else even knew a prostitute had been operating in that place where Judah had been.  As it turned out, in effect he paid her very well once everyone realised what had happened.  It is extraordinary Apostle Paul should choose that Hebrew word "ערבון" to transliterate into Grrek to say what he wanted to in respect to God's Holy Spirit being a pledge of God's sincerity.  Obviously, one has to read the whole story in Genesis 38 for the context and other chapters to also understand the significance of the role Judah was playing in God's Plan.  
As noted, eventually Judah paid much, much more especially when one looks at his life story in Genesis and understands how God in effect used that life story as a template for what Israel and Judah the nation would do over the next four millennia until today - so far!  Judah paid Tamar more than than the standard fee of a goat for an act of prostitution!  That of course immeasurably contrasts with the vastness of the price paid by Jesus for the enormity of our crimes, prostitution etc.  Judah's servants obviously could not find Tamar.  So his indiscretion initially did not cost him anything apart from his pledged personal effects which he presumably did get back when Tamar presented them inside his own household.  Eventually, however, he had to support her and her babies.  As he did with Joseph later, Judah owned-up and supported her and her child this time when Tamar presented the gifts (pledges) he had given her. Judah just gave them to her as a pledge until he delivered a lamb to her for payment for services rendered but she had disappeared, before he could deliver the lamb.  She had returned to her household until her pregnancy became very apparent.
In a parallel way those of us who are blameless, though not sinless of course, have received a Godly Pledge in this world guaranteeing we will receive rewards gifted us at the Judgement Seat of Christ just before the Marriage of the Lamb in Heaven while the Apocalypse continues on Earth for those silly or obstinate unfortunates who are currently rejecting Jesus.  On the Lord's return to Earth with us alongside,  we will use those rewards, talents or gifts received at the Judgement Seat of the Christ-Messiah in our activities and assignments in His Messianic Kingdom.  The more we have the more we will be doing then.
Note also in connection with this assurety of things to come, Apostle Paul wrote in II Corinthians 5:4 (King James Version), "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened (persecuted, vilified, ostracised etc.,):  not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality (as darkness) might be swallowed up by Life (as daylight)".  So Paul is, saying, that just as Evening (darkness) precedes Day (light) or Day (light) follows Night (darkness) all the nonsense believers or disciples and ambassadors for Christ are having to put up with, all the false accusations etc., don't really matter for we will be rewarded for our blamelessness.  Our Sin is already paid for and forgiven because we have confessed and trusted in Jesus' Calvary sacrifice on our behalf.  We thank God for that and regularly remember what Jesus did for us at Communion.  Jesus will drink of the vine again when He begins the Messianic Millennial Kingdom after Antichrist-666 is defeated.  So although there is much nonsense all around us, and the world ignores our contribution but glorifies in other people who do great things then botch-up big-time, believers are looking at a completely different set of 'role-models'.  Believers live in a completely different way exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth par excellence and perfectly; and supported by a prestigious cast such as Isaac, Joseph son of Jacob, Joshua and Jeremiah.
27/9/18, "Tharmageddon".  One has to admit this was quite witty.  A satirical quip quickly brushed aside by Parliament's Speaker today when one MP asked a supplemenatry question concerning a controlled kill of Thar goats in the Southern Highland High Country.  Apparently, the number of 'Thar' had been allowed to grow far too much above the agreed population the environment theoretically could withstand at the same time as providing a supply for hunters to shoot for sport.  We once again note that in these Last Days mockers, scorners and the like will abound as we come ever closer to The Rapture, or perhaps better to say 'as it comes ever closer to our time'.  After The Rapture, and sometime later the 'Campaign of Armageddon' during The Apocalypse, all of which these people are ignorant, everything culminates with the Lord's return wih all His saints (us) at the "Second" or "Last" Coming.  They won't be mocking so much then!  Every unbeliever at the time will be forced to bow their knee to the Mesiah of Israel as they are sent into damnation.  
28/9/18, "We can't trust technology because of the commerce of data".  This and the following point was raised in a radio discussion about the use of electronic voting for national elections etc.  The guest on the radio was an executive of "CISCO" reputedly the largest "networking" company in the world.  This headline actually links two points made by the radio compare for the first phrase and the CISCO executive replying with the second (next item).  Really a composite quotataion. 
28/9/18, "All technology is made by humans and is fallible".  A point made by the CISCO executive referred to above.  Anyway, we can say "Amen to that".  We ferquently make the point in various iterations but we base our comments on the Biblical Account of what happened in the Garden of Eden at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We take note of God's Word about all this in the Bible.  Hardly anyone else does.  
28/9/18, "Kindness and collectivism a starting point for a New World Order".  The first part was a direct quotation of New Zealand's Prime Minister giving her speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.  The news reader's bulletin added the bit about a 'new world order' although the PM may have said as such in her speech but the listeners did not hear that part of the news-clip on the radio programme broadcast's 10.00 am News.  However, most people had finished the conference so she spoke to a "near empty venue" and it is a big hall.  Anyway, the speech will go on the UN Record.  Within a week the Saudi Government murdered a dissident journalist in their consulate in Istanbul.  Subsequent revelations showed how gruesome all that was.  Hardly a good start for the NZ PM's "kindness and collectivism" and a "New World Order".  
28/9/18, "Cooper Cron, the Antichrist of Rugby league".  Another flippant comment on the radio this time describing an Australian Rugby League football star.  On 1/10/18, it was reported that he helped his side win that week-end's championship grand final with a stuffed up shoulder (the precise medical term being too complex for our readers or anyone but a medical professional one supposes).  Perhaps the man is something verging on the super-human as Antichrist will be (or probably is if our candidate is actually the '666') with his progenitor's arch-angelic genes. 
29/9/18, "Massive quake and tsunami swamps Celebes-Sulewasi".  By Monday 1/10/18, the death toll was already climbing to thousands and still increasing.  The tsunami also took many bodies out to sea.  The actual death toll will be very difficult to establish until authorities can discern who is no longer around.  A few weeks earlier, Lombok, also in Indonesia, had a massive quake.  Fortunately its survivors were spared  a tsunami.  Why some quakes are followed by these tsunamis while others are not requires some investigation into exactly what is causing these catastrophes.   The Words of Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 24:7, Mark 13:8 and Luke 21:10) about the Last Days before the coming of the Messiah of Israel and, by implication, the rise of the antichrist, are especially apposite.  One commentator later in the day on a different radio station reminded us of the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami that struck off the coast of North Sumatra fourteen years ago.  Then 250,000 died.  Is this latest event in Sulewasi on a similar scael?  Apparently not but the region does seem to surround a massive volcanic crater.  One of the volcanic arms, the northern-most one, if that's what we are indeed dealing with, is in effect one of the arms of the large four-armed octopus-like island.  the towns most affected by the quake appears to lie on part of an apparent volcanic rim sticking out above the ocean surface.  This would be a humungous volcano.  Alternatively, it is the site where a massive asteroid hit the Earth at some stage in this planet's geological history.
1/10/18, New Zealand: a testing ground for the Global Agenda.  Over the week-end the PM was talking about NZ not being unilateralist like the USA and Mr Trump's Administration in the US White House.  According to NZ's PM this country  is "multilateralist and globalist".  One here interprets or paraphrases the PM as saying 'the NZ way is far better than go it alone or on a self-interested basis'.  At the same time many people today were complaining about all the new taxes going on petrol thus driving-up motoring costs.  No one suggested they might give up motoring as this author decided to do away-back in 1993.
One radio correspondent rang a station to say NZ is the only country with a deregulated petrol distribution system, or 'market', from refinery to vehicle petrol tank.  He complained that NZ's petrol-pricing system was not fair.  He asked, "Why should NZ be the only country that does not regulate the way petrol is supplied to motorists?"  One might ask in return, "would you like Venezuela's system instead?"  Venezuela's 'socialist' regime of Chavez and co., over-regulated petrol.  They made petrol or fuel prioducts dirt cheap for motorists.  The economy became utterly distorted as proper price signalling failed toi allocate resources efficiently.  Subsidies encouraged wasteful resource allocation.  Then as world oil prices fell from $140 a barrel to $40 the country's cash reserves disappeared.  At current prices near $80 a barrel one assumes Venezuela must be recovering a little bit.  Let's hope that if $200 a barrel becomes a reality soon if Saudi Arabia lashes out at everyone because it got caught murdering journalist Kashoggi in its Istanbul consulate, Venezuela learns some lessons in basic economics from its recent past.  For, the country lost any ability to buy from abroad the things Venezuelan's were getting away below true cost.  Standard economics such as you cannot consume more than you earn went out the window and now Venezuela is a basket case.  It can be repaired because the country is actually quite well off with various assets it has especially the largest known reserves of oil.  But beginning with regulated petrol markets, the economy went into a tragic decline.   
Less cynically, frequently there are calls from every Kiwi sector to set the highest or world-equalling high standards.  NZ is regularly exhorted to aim to be top-quality suppliers of food, hygiene standards, production standards, animal welfare, etc.  But that is why the global agenda in effect hires NZ to set experiments for the improvement of the world economy and efficiency.  One of those experiments the Westphalian Illuminati hope to study is how well a deregulated electricity or petrol market works and study how people adapt to such experiments and whether medium- to long-term application of such policies delivers in the long run optimum resource allocation.  In other words, NZ is a laboratory for cultural, economic, social and political experiments designed to improve global operations - not just NZ's.  The new and young NZ Prime Minister supports this.  So it is no good complaining about petrol or electricity prices for the experiment in NZ is too valuable for the academics abroad to allow voters here to allow an 'elected' government to unravel these deregulated markets and re-take some control of them.
One also suspects that NZ gets favourable treatment from the world system as long as it does maintain these 'experiments' and ignores the electorate's complaints.  We suggest the electorate needs to be careful because the country could once again slide downwards to becoming a Venezuelan basket case.  But that aspect is never discussed here.  The general population is too apathetic or uneducated to understand what really is happening.  Those of us who are aware of this model from the Bible and God's instruction to us via His Holy Spirit are routinely persecuted or ostracised whenever we speak out.  On the other hand, Governments are not the best at managing economies as Venezuela has shown with visible chaos.  NZ was slipping into that Venezuelan or Greek Class in the early 1980's.  The Lange-Douglas Labour Government (July 1984-Novemnber 1990) economic reforms then drew the country back from the Greco-Venezuelan brink.
It may be nasty medicine but sticking with aspects of the global agenda like this is the smartest, practical thing to do.  Admittedly, these things come down hard on many people.  The trouble is that when one looks at the hardships in The Congo ("DRC"), Mali, The Sudan, Iraq; Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey overwhelmed by refugees from other nearby crises;  Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Myanamar, Indonesia with its Ring of Fire disasters (earthquakes, volcanos and tsunamis), these globalist-induced 'hardships' seem light in comparison.
The Good News is that the Bible assures us help is on the way.  Sadly people are more likely to accept the wrong messiah as Messiah (wrong christ as Christ).  That is, the world will get sucked in by Antichrist-666's deceit.
2/10/18, Victoria University now suspects quakes emanate from the deep.  For the first time that we have heard from The Academy, the University's sesmic researchers now believe the fault lines seismologists love to observe are not causing earthquake movements.  Instead much deeper subduction zone conditions, which really are part of the Earth's molten interior, are driving earthquakes.  One has been pointing to this for years in these pages.  One also thinks the recent quake, having studied a map of the Celebes-Sulawesi region, must have been driven by a massive volcano that surely lies beneath the north coast of the island and south of the arm of Celebes that encircles the main island.  All this points to our thesis from the Bible that the Days of Noah would be characterised by the after-effects of the Great Flood as the globe warms up.    
3/10/18, "Girls menstruating younger because of poor diets".  That came in a news item this morning on a radio station.  We are interested in this because of our Biblical anthropology.  God's command that mankind go out into all the world and populate it was often ignored as men preferred to gather in large communities which were able to develop and support societies that provided comfort and protection from dangerous things.  Fair enough.  After the Flood in circa 2450 BC, some people did attempt to obey God's command in that respect, i.e., spreading across the entire globe.  However, the vast majority remained in Sumer or Lower Iraq and the Persian Gulf region.  That was ancient Babylon of the generation where they began building the Tower of Babel circa 2100-2000 BC.
The interesting thing here is that those who did travel further afield to live were not supported by the rest of the human community so intent in making a name for itself as the Bible notes.  And that presumably was why so many people did prefer to stay in the main populated area as people do in cities today.  Thus, the widepsread and sparse populations scattered further afield around the globe ran into problems such as poor diets.  But lifespans also fell in those marginal societies.  With poor diets or insufficient nutrients in whatever diets they could manage, people tended to develop diseases like rickets which affected bone structures.  In that event the girls probably did menstruate earlier and because life expectancy would be low it meant girls were giving birth quite young and their children likewise.  That meant the average length of a 'generation' was nearer 15 years than 30 or 40 or more.
There are two long run implications from this we believe.  Firstly, later anthropologists found the graves of these people in marginal societies found in Peking, Java, Central Africa and the Netherlands.  Using neo-Darwinian and fake world-views they developed theories of earlier hominids evolving from apes when they discovereed these ricket-infested or human skeletons of malnourished populations.  We now know that was nonsense but the idea of mankind evolving from apes 150 000 years ago has persisted with ape-women such as Lucy being invoked.  Lucy lived in 1 million BC but now they have decided the first ape that 'became' human did so 150000 years ago.  'She' lived  in Central Africa, or perhaps in Chad.  'Her' descendants presumably established the Egyptian civilization as the first in this world and that meant ancient Egyptian 'civilization' was "African".  Most of that too is nonsense although the earliest Egyptian societies probably were "African" (אופירה).
The second implication is that the descendants of those marginal societies now living in much bigger populations have been able to survive by establishing these shorter-run generation cycles.  Combined with the implications of the Fall of Adam there comes about a decline in the viability of the genomes through each generation.  Each next-generation foetus develops or incurs an extra bad gene or two as the new person forms in the womb.  That means those societies will suffer more cancers and other diseases as the generations progress at a more accelerated rate than for other societies.  This increased disease-risk is directly related to the number of generations that have had opportunity to accumulate a bigger proportion of mutated genes.
But all that goes right against the whole idea of "Evolution".  From a Lamarckian evolutionary perspective that may have had some advantages but not from a neo-Darwinian point of view.  Nevertheless, it is the Biblical perspective that best explains what is happening in many 'indigenous' societies and the Biblical perspective therefore suggests we should be doing more to help those communities.  The Biblical perspective is therefore more loving and caring than either the neo-Darwinian, neo-Lamarckian, or Catastrophe-Evolution slash Punctuated Equilibrium approaches (S.J. Gould, Velikovsky, Hoyle and Wickramsinghe).  That means we need to put more rsources into surveilling and monitoring such groups to give them a better chance of taking advantage of modern medical science to alleviate or mitigate their suffering especially by getting in early in diagnoses.  Unfortunately, the absolutist neo-Darwinian silo-thinking of the scientific fraternity blinds the thinking of policy analysts and prevents them from considering these realities.
4/10/18, "Tim Berners-Lee says the Internet has failed humanity ...".  (Refer 9/7/18, "It gives you infinity in the palm of your hand".)  Sometimes described as "The Founder of the Internet", he is now reported to be disgusted with the way the Internet has travelled or trended.  Apparently he is setting up a company to do something about the problem.   We point to problems such as hacking, use of the Internet for pornography, and use of the Internet for social communication to the extent that no one talks to anyone outside their Fakebook Silo.  But as we have noted in many previous items The Internet is Man's attempt to create a Tree of Knowledge like that which was available in Eden.  Mr Berners-Lee and his team formatted the "@ Sign" to link the computers needed for the Internet's system to operate.  Little did they realise that '@' is equivalent to "אכול" in Hebrew which means 'a all' or according to Strong's Concordance 'at all' which can be expresed as '@".
It seems obvoius to us that when God advised Adam to leave the tree of knowledge alone he should obey God.  Adam did not obey God.  Religious people, and some philosophers, ever since have recognised this and tended to oppose the pursuit of science or to lobby to control the use of science and technology.  The Amish even chose to  reject any new technology developed after circa AD 1600.  However, as Bible students and even some others realise, once the genie is out of the bottle there is no stopping it.  Only Messiah can and will do that.  Fortunately, the way things are now and given the view expreseed in the one liner here, Messiah's appearance cannot be far away.  His coming is in two tranches, so to speak.  Firstly, He raptures the Church into Heaven.  Then when Israel comes to her senses about Jesus of Nazareth, The Nazarene, He will respond to their plea to "save us now" ('Hoshannah',  נא הושיעה). 
4/10/18, "... and it (The Internet) killed journalism".  This rejoinder came from the radio station host and his contributor on the show.  We say journalists and their bosses and media owners long ago destroyed journalism.  They have steadfastly refused to give any print or air-play to our Three E's and C's in Environmentalism-Climate Change; Egyptology-Chronology; Evolutionism's four theories and the null hypothesis to all of them in Creationism.  They only talk about human causes of 'Climate Change' by pushing Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.  They ignore the real cause of 'Global Warming'.  They only and dogmatically trot-out the narrow rigid neo-Darwinism line that rules the academic roost.   Journalists the world over ignore the enormous debate about the other three or four systems of Evolutionism (neo-Lamarckian, Catastrophic and Punctuated Equilibrium or even Theistic Evolution).  Not that any type of evolutionism makes any sense.  They portray all Creationism as saying the whole universe is 4-6000 years old.  They simply say nothing whatsoever about the obvious nonsense that is Egyptian chronology nor all the implications that lead from that terrible error in the Academy's view of world history.  In short, as far as we are concerned, the Internet did not kill journalism.  True journalism, apart from some occasional practitioners of the art such as Orwell, Levin and Koestler, has not been in existence for a century or so.
4/10/18, "I-Phones blamed for disruptive kids at barber shop".  A hair salon operator has increased prices to cut children's hair because the parents who bring them pay no attention to their kids' boistrousness and misbehaviour as the mum's and dads surf the Internet on their I-Phones awaiting their hair-cut.   The salon owner said she has noticed this becoming a problem in just the "last five years".
This makes some sense in our view that on 1/1/01, the world entered the satanic counterfeit millennium.  About 1800 years ago the early formative fore-runner of the Vatican, with its heretics, estimated how long the Lord would allow for the Age of Christendom to last.  So they re-jigged the existing 'Julian' calendar, possibly in the thousandth year of that former 'Roman' calendar begun circa 750 BC.  So we entered the Satanic counterfeit millennium celebrated in the ninth month with the collapse of ther Twin Towers.  That announced, for the benefit of Satan's lieutenants, the birth of the Antichrist, Satan's only begotten son who is, as prophesied in Genesis 3:15 and other passages, the counterfeit of Jesus the True Christ.
Thus precisely on the eve, please forgive the oxymoron, of Christ's millennium that follows the Apocalypse, we are now in the eighteenth year of that counterfeit millennium.  It began with the UN's 'Millennium Goals" all of which are now turning out to be own-goals (c.f., Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, other Latin- and Central-American republics).  But the children born in the first year were, "five years ago", 12-13 and are now 17.  Of course the kiddies born around 2005 are this year turning 12-13.  So our salon-owner in Auckland, NZ, was observing a parallel problem we are observing at the toilet block in central Wellington.  Chaos is on the way and it begins with the children now coming into the world as the rest of us retire.
9/10/18, "The IPCC is not an activist group".  So said a NZ Canterbury University professor on a national radio programme discussing these activists' latest "IPCC Report on Global Warming". The report bemoaned the last decade's relative inactivity in actioning programmes to reduce carbon and methane inputs into the environment ("emissions").  They say these gases result from human activity.  But any increase in methane-input into the atmosphere is overwhelmingly due to non-human activity.  All the methane from the world's rotting vegetation from previous catastrophes is being released as the frozen tundras in the northern hemisphere thaw in the overall global warming process.  'Global Warming' in this sense has been in operation ever since circa 2000 BC or about 500 years after the Flood as the globe's ambient temperature made its earliest inroads into the ice blocks formed at the poles and on the new mountain ranges formed in Noah's Flood (circa 2500 BC).
Anyway, the IPCC's own data tells it that Antarctica is melting from underneath because of the warm- and in some places thermal-earth up to 3000 metres of ice sits on.  About a quarter to a third of Antarctica sits on ocean water where no land mass formed underneath.  It knoiws that volcanos in oceans are warming water heating oceans generally and undermining the ice shelves jutting into them, the Indian Ocean in particular.  They know the volcanic area around Erebus is where the ice long ago retreated from, assuming it ever did exist there exactly because of earlier volcanic eruptions.  At the North Pole, the science mafia knows that the Arctic has been melting for at least 1200 years.  In AD 800 or even earlier perhaps, Vikings were exploring the retreating ice cap in the north (The Arctic).  In the Pacific Ocean, they also know some island atolls are 'sinking' because of normal erosion, ocean currents, and natural subsidence sometimes exacerbated by fresh-water draw-off for human sustenance.  In the past, temporary residents on those atolls migrated to some other uninhabited atoll or place to live, oftentimes as far south as the Shaky Isles of NZ. 
In the face of those facts they never publicly talk about it is obvious the IPCC indeed is an activist group.  The minute any organisation denies such things normally proves they are exactly what they say they are not.  It's the same with people who call for humility.  They are the ones who need lessons in that!
9/10/18, "There is no absolute truth in History".  We love this one.  A statement from a biographer of the Mitford sisters who is writng some novels based on the individual lives of Diana, Pamela and Nancy.  The woman is merely a novelist.  Therefore, as a fiction writer she cannot be expected to know much in reality which is to know that there are inded absolutes in History or more precisely in His Story.  Adam and Eve did eat from that forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  There was a Flood that destroyed Noah's generation.  We are now feeling ther after-effects of that Flood via the ice caps' meltdown and the impact on the Earth's system from the catastrophe that caused the world to flood and the mountains to form.  After the first few generations repeatedly failed to heed God, some noble individual exceptions apart, God elected Abraham to become a nation through which God would reval His Way.  Or, at least that was His Plan.  We know all too well how well Man obfuscates and frustrates that Plan.  But God is driving it through nevertheless.  After all, He is the Creator!
So Israel failed for the most part in that calling.  God temporarily postponed the remainder of Israel's role in his Plan of Redemption, i.e., the physical and soteriological salvation of this Earth.  Its environment will be saved physically.  Its inhabitants, apart from believing people who are saved soteriologically and physically, will also be saved  physically only.  This Redemption is principally for the Man (soteriologically and physically).  That's because only Man is "made in His Image".  Between times, i.e., from AD 30 to now so far, the world falls inevitably into grwoing chaos.  That's until the time comes for the Last Seven-year Stage of the associated plan for Israel's soteriological and physical salvation in order to finish fulfilling the Abrahamic Covenant in ther Messianic-Millennial Kingdom.  At present, God's Witness continues to be effected by the already soteriologically-saved True Church of the Christ-Messiah or 'His' body (or -kohel, -ekklesia, -kirk, -church or congregation).  This 'Church' now undertakes God's Work and Witness.  So far, the Church of the Christ's work has continued for about 1988 years to 2018. Unfortunately, the Rome-based Babylonian fake-Church and its allies in the Orthodox-, some 'Protestant-' wings and many charismaniac-churches have usually been confused with the True Body of The Christ.
The Church's Age ends, paving the way for the resumption of Israel's Last Seven of the 490 of Daniel 9:27, by or with "The Rapture".   It is a situation several New Testament passages refer to (to fulfill the former Jewish Festival of Trumpets).   However, this word is one we use to collectively describe the specific verses of Matthew 24:36-41, Mark 13:32-37, Luke 17:22-37, I Corinthians15:52, I Thessalonians 1:10, 4:13-18, probably Titus 2:13 and Revelation 3:10.  In addition, there are other passages where sense is only made if The Rapture is what the writer had in view.  Such verses include John 14:1-3, I Corinthians 1:7 ("Coming of our Lord Jesus The Christ") and I Corinthians 1:8 ("in the day of our Lord Jesus The  Christ"), I Corinthians 5:5, II Corinthians 1:14 (?) and Colossians 3:4.  This is Absolutely True His Story.       
15/10/18, "Taupo Eruption now thought to have been 40-200 years more recent".  NZ's Lake Taupo came about because a massive volcano erupted 'thousands of years ago' leaving a massive hole for streams to flow into the newly-formed lake's basin.  That made a huge lake in the middle of NZ's North Island. Of course some of the lake's water may have come up with the erupting material from a watery cavern deep below the surface just as the water that fed Noah's Flood came from the deep underground caverns (Genesis 7:11).  The lake may even be a catchment for a massive underground cavern itself receiving water from other deep underground sources.  Not that anyone can seriously explore the existence or presence of such waterways.
The key point here is that combining re-calibrated Carbon-14 dating with tree-ring analysis, a NZ seismologist has discovered that the time used until now to date the most recent major Taupo eruption inadvertently omitted other samples further out from the crater perimeter.  Those samples, further away from the lake, apparently have a higher ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 because samples near the crater were in effect 'contaminated', to use the term in a more general way, with an excess of what he called 'old carbon'.  That, he said, came from deep inside the volcanic crater.  In his view, 'old carbon' from the Earth's interior had long since lost its share of carbon-14 by eons  of decay leaving only carbon-12 in the sample.  Or, that 'old carbon' never had any of the heavier isotopes because the Carbon-14 isotope is only found in samples of animals or plants that have absorbed it from the atmosphere.  That would mean, however, the 'old carbon' would be very old indeed in our opinion thus raising a different problem (*).
However, the most recent eruption, a very big one indeed, left a massive spread of volcanic ash stretching hundreds of miles beyond the crater.  The most recent eruption  is generally thought to have been in AD 200 but now sems to be between 40 and 200 years earlier.  Using analysis of a larger or 'wider' set of radio-carbon dated samples and tree-ring analysis, and "wiggle-matching", this researcher-seismologist looked at published data and re-calibrated carbon dates with 'known' tree-ring sequences to come up with this newer date. He claimed a lot of earlier, 'younger' or further-afield sample-dates had been unintentionally discarded in previous attempts at analysing the data.  He was the first to consider a possibility that a bigger proportion of 'old' carbon had concentrated more in samples nearer the centre of the explosion and that those readings had unintentionally predominated in the overall result thereby causing the original conclusion to become slightly biased.
The issue is not really 'contamination' as such, that being a general problem for all radio-metric dating systems.  It's certainly not 'contamination' as we found in samples in Egypt dating Pharaonic Egypt where vandalised tombs were not protected from rain and floods.  Ancient Egypt's vandalised tombs suffered from 'contamination' which swept in with additional infusions of carbon-12 from Egypt's calcium carbonate based rocks and soils during the rainy seasons or from carbon-12 saturated waters from annual Nile River floods.  In general, one really needs to know where the carbon came from.  The researcher interviewed today noticed that near the volcano old gas with no carbon 14 was contaminating the dates they had been using.  So as one travelled further afield from the central area where there was less chance of old carbon-rich gas affecting the sample, one then tended to find the tree ring dates and carbon dates turned out to be diverging.  The tree-ring sequences suggesting a more recent or 'younger' date for the most recent major eruption and the carbon-based data showing older dates.  The researcher got volcanologists to study how the old carbon gas got out of the volcano and was then able to contaminate samples nearer the eruption region.  Eventually they re-calibrated a date-range between a minimum of 40 years and a maximun nearer 200 years. 
(*)  Carbon is an element just like Hydrogen, Iron, or Florine and Iodine, or, for that matter, Uranium.  In the original creation of the Earth, it presumably held carbon in one form or another, especially as diamonds.  Then the Earth became "Tohu and Bohu" as the Hebrew states in Genesis 1:2.  In the specially re-formatted Earth specifically designed for animals and plants and Man, God used carbon extensively in the make-up of life as well as many other elements in the "dust" (אדמה).  So the extent to which carbon is "organic" or "inorganic" becomes a little problematic.  If the 'old' carbon cited above had fewer Carbon-14 isotopes, or none at all because of its 'inorganic' nature, thus posing as Carbon-14 fully decayed as Carbon-12 alone, then we have three questions.  When did that decay occur if it did at all in a particular sample? Or where did the Carbon-14 component in the sample then come from.  Or what sort of process generated Carbon-14 at some stage or stages of the Earth's History so that it would or could get into any sample of any sort at all?  We take the view that although dating things using Radio-Carbon-14 or any other radiometric system is an ingenious idea, it rarely can deliver the goods or work in practice because of all the technical and 'contamination' issues raised in this essay.  Nor do we really know the answers to those three questions.
However, in that enigmatic case of Tutenkhamen's tomb, all the main problems just cited, with the possible exception of the third question, disappear, thus rendering that site and its contents as a rare and uniquely accurate set of samples for radio-carbon dating.  But the ramifications for an 800 BC date rather than 1300 BC for Tutenkhamen are vast compared with a 200-year or less re-dating of Taupo's last or most recent major eruption.  The statistical standard error for the Taupo situation is less than 1% and quite acceptable and uncontroversial.  However, in the case with Tutenkhamen's (and possibly one of his sister's) personal possessions hurriedly stashed higgeldy-piggeldy into that under-ground tomb, there is ae 30-35% error for the Tutenkhamen case.  The re-dating of that 'Taupo' Eruption really has little impact on anything other than providing a platform to explain the far more seriously important and paradigm-busting Egyptian chronology problem in relation to radio-carbon dating.  In that sense, today's interview on a NZ national radio station is quite interesting and very useful.  There may be some implications in the volcanic analysis for the prediction of earthquakes and volcanos.  Otherwise, there is little impact.       
19/10/18, Sufi Muslims want no sects and unity of Muslim, Christian and Jew.  One heard this on a discussion on a NZ radio station where the radio compare was talking to a Sufi Muslim media commentator and analyst.  This 'expert' had "strict credentials" according to the Kiwi radio compare.  The guest commentator contributes to a Middle Eastern Arabic language radio station, in the Arabic language.  The local radio station compare gave this man a one-hour slot to discuss the suspected murder and carve-up of Mr Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist of Turkish origin according to the analyst commenting on the etymology of the surname.  We had wondered just how 'Arabic' that surname was.  It may even be Kurdish in the opinion of the editor of this blog (the undersigned).  If Kashoggi does indeed have Kurdish ancestry, then the current tussle between Ankara, Riyadh and Washington over how to expose or cover-up this murder has far more far-reaching implications, than the commentators already are aware of to date, could possibly predict.
The main interest in the comment is that in the 3-D Aleph-Tav Bible Study Programme we do indeed consider one definition of "Christendom" to be a cover-all term for the so-called Three Monotheistic religions.  Although Islam really is Duolatry and it is arguable Roman Catholicism is likewise Duolatry with its Mariology-Venus 'Mother of God' doctrines or dogma.  As stated elsewhere, during the Crusades (circa AD 1100-1300), Muslims, Jews and Christians were all seen to be one whole group, i.e., 'Christendom', because all three faiths believed in a 'christ' or 'messiah' (משיח).  They sharply differed from other faiths such as paganism, Hinduism, or from philosophies such as Zoroastrianism, Bhuddism, Confucianism, Daoism etc.  More accurately, the main branches of the Christian churches i.e., Orthodox, Roman Catholic and many Protestant denominations along with the many Muslim sects all believe they have permanently replaced Israel in God's Kingdom Plan.  They re-arrange what that Kingdom is in a multitude of different ways to reflect the strange opinions of their many sects and sub-sects.  That's what really makes them all Messiah-doms from the original Hebrew term or from the Greek "Christ-en-doms".  But they all overlook many scriptures, perhaps most significantly Acts 1:6-8 where Jesus' answer to the disciples about Him returning to bring in the Kingdom of God instead received the answer, "It is not for you (them) to know the times or the seasons  ..." i.e., for the arrival or eventuality of that blessed kingdom.  Christendom misreads that to mean God will never present that Kingdom to Israel.  Worse, most of Christendom does not any longer believe that kingdom ever will come because of its heretical views predicted to be the case according to the Epistles in the New Testament:  [Jude 18 (mockers), Matthew 24:11 (false prophets), 24:24 and Mark 13:22 (false Christs or Messiahs and prophets), II Timothy 3:1-10, II Peter 2:1 (false prophets and false teachers)].
Putting aside the disbelief of much of modern Christendom, instead, as Jesus continued in Acts 1:8, in the meantime, the true Church of the Christ, of both believing Jew and Gentile, would receive the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirtit as a pledge, down-payment, deposit or even sign that indeed all facets of the Millennial-Messianic Kingdom would be set up eventually.  Again, in the meantime, that pledge or seal of the Holy Spirit would place the believers; Jewish and Gentile now without the "Middle Wall of Partition" separating them as per Ephesians 2:14; within a unique and permanent relationship with God attainable through belief in the Son and His Act of Redemption on the Cross in AD 30.  And in that unique relationship to then continue God's Work of Witness to His Plan, Will or Testament for Mankind in the wake of Adam's Fall (circa 4000 BC) and the subsequent  Redemption in Jesus (AD 30).  
Of course, God specially created us in His "Image" (Genesis 1:26-7) making our 'form' that which the Messiah would permanently dwell in for Eternity (God dwelling with Man, Immanuel, אל עמנו).  It is in Him (Jesus) we currently reside as one united Body of the Christ.  Yet, again for the meantime, believers remain with unbelievers in this carnal temple (body) until the First Resurrection.  One does not want to participate in the Second or Last Resurrection!  But the Body of Christ is signified with the seal of the Holy Spirit as a permanent indwelling reminder of God's Plan.  In part, or to a great exten, this blessed position is what enables us to hold on to what we do in fact know and believe.  So, we should be witnessing to that Plan, obviously ensuring unbelievers hear what is the soteriological entrance ticket, so to speak, that allows us to participate in the Body of Christ and all its privileges and persecutions and in mutually understanding God's magnificent Plan.  Thus, once knowing, understanding and being assured of our salvation, we should be growing and maturing and beginning to feed on the meat of Prophecy rather than just the the milk of basic salvation (Hebrews 5:12).  But it is no good trying to feed on the meat if one is not firstly saved and in receipt of the permanent indwelling Holy Spirit of God.
In conclusion, at some vaguely specified date in the future, implied Jesus, the kingdom would indeed be introduced to Israel as the primary recipient who will accept it for themselves and their believing ancestors, and on our Gentile behalf.  As we know, some 2000 years has passed and so we now find ourselves on the precipice of the kingdom's fulfillment as the world slips into utter degradation, pollution, political, social and economic chaos etc.
19/10/18, "Governments surviving Arab Spring repressing all dissent".  The ones that have survived the 'Arab Spring' and remain vibrant dictatorships include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Sudan, and Syria.  Libya and Yemen are in chaos.  Tunisia seems to have retained some improvements attributable to the Arab Spring that turned out to be an antarctic winter for most.  Russia, China, Myanamar and many non-Arab others are also enforcing various degrees of repression as the world's problems increase and the means to control those problems slip ever further away.  It is a recipe for a world dictator to take over now.  It seems most governments are riven with pettty jealousies, political infighting and intrigue.  Governments are 'managed' by politicians who either have no idea what their underlings are doing or cannot control what their 'civil servanrts' do.  Coming up against massive corporations often a lot bigger than many nation-states, governments face dwindling tax bas concurrent with increasing dissatisfaction with services and rising expectations about services the electorates think they ought to provide etc.
As this situation deteriorates on a scale dwarfing previous crises-eras like AD 1190 (the Crusaders' loss of Jerusalem), 1618-48 (Thirty Years War), 1776-1789 (Secession of the British-American colonies and French Revolution and ensuing Napoleonic Wars ending circa 1815), 1914 (WWI) and 1939 (WWII), God will send Jesus of Nazareth (The Nazarene) to evacuate the Church of the Christ out of this darkening denouement The Enlightenment is struggling to stave off.  The 'Establishment will thus look to the Antichrist who will use extreme force and discipline to bring about a temporary and short-lived apparent salvation of the system.  But he will only use that to stir up the world to destroy Israel.  Anyway, all his work at bringing about his utopia will be sleight-of-hand.  During the Apocalypse, God will send His angels to wreck that plan of Satan's son the Antichrist thus leaving much more destruction on the Earth which only Messiah will be able to repair. 
19/10/18, "No One on Earth can do anything to Saudi Arabia".  And Mr Trump is in a very awkward situation. The world awaits Mr Trump's decision on the guilt or otherwise of the Saudi Regime in the disappearance of Mr Kashoggi who entered Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul to never be seen coming out and completely vanishing from the face of the Earth.  He went in there to make arrangements for a divorce from an Arab wife to marry his fiance a Turkish woman.  Mr Kashoggi is a noted journalist and had been writing for the Washinton Post, the daily newspaper that uncovered the Watergate Conspiracy organised by President Nixon's supporters.  Ironically, just as Nixon failed to expose his assistants who organised the Watergate Hotel break-in etc, and instead attempted to cover-up their relatively mischievous and harmless misdemeanours; so too Mphammad bin Salman ("MBS"), Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince likewise might have been unaware of the plot to execute Mr Kashoggi.  For a couple of weeks, MBS, like Nixon, then embarked on a strategy to de-escalate the issue.  No one can really be sure what happened or who exactly was responsible for 'the idea' during that 'Watergate Crisis'.  The two intrepid Washington Post journalists Bernstein and Woodward, conviently assisted at crucial junctures by "Deep Throat" uncovered the scandalby.  Likewise, no one can be sure exacty where MBS got involved with this thing but many journalists led by those working for  Al Jazeera of Qatar have kept the scandal in the limelight as has President Erdogan of Turkey.
19/10/18, "MBS", the Saudi chief, could collapse world economic order.  This commentator interviewed today on NZ radio suggested Mohammad Bin Salman, the current Saudi Arabian Crown Prince who seems to have been given virtual full command by his elderly father King Salman (Solomon), could do this by acccident or design.  According to the source here, MBS has never had anyone tell him what he can or cannot do.  He sounds like a spoiled brat.  It sounds like he has some sort of Divine Right of Kings philosophy to which we hold here but not in the way MBS obviously interprets it.  Kings' Divine Rights do not allow rulers to indiscriminately execute opponents or people he dislikes without law, court procedures and fair, open, transparent judicial trials.  To pursue his objectives, according to the source quoted here, "MBS" will even go to such lengths as bringing down the world economic order with the oil weapon presumably.
So when this source said that, we immediately thought of Zechariah 5:6-11.  However, according to that prophecy, it is a woman or two that will presumably be most active in doing that, not a spoiled male brat whose daddy may well be moving to rein him in especially under pressure from the USA and/or Turkey perhaps.  But we are now aware that Turkey may well be using this horrible situation to play some tricky diplomatic games.  Modern Turkey's inheritors of a millennium or two of Byzantine, Constantine and Ottomen Machiavellian-ism may well be trying to put a wedge between the USA and its Arabian ally, these two nations also being in formal or informal alliances or cross-alliances with Israel and Kurdistan.  Of course, Turkey is officially in NATO.  In that sense, Turkey is part of the North Atlantic Tarshish Alliance.  NATO is nominally in alliance with the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) of Arabia and her neighbouring emirates (shebas).  That's why we suspect these two groups - Tarshish and GCC - so intrinsic to our understanding of the actors in the Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16 Gog-Magog invasion of Israel and the way they are enmeshed with Turkey looks very, very msichievous (Ezekiel 38:10).  With which wind is Turkey blowing?
Few understand that "Turkey's" coasts, or the Quays of Tor-Tyre, were part of ancient Punt ("Put" or פוט, Ezekiel 38:5).  But Turkey's hinterland, its eastern parts dominated by Kurds, was once part of "Meshech and Tubal".  In Ezekiel, "Rosh, Meshech and Tubal" in this future episode are subject to, or suboordinate to, that entity entitled or named "Gog" according to Ezekiel 38:2.  At the moment it is very difficult deciding whether Turkey, or parts thereof, are either a participant in the axis anti-Tarshish-GCC alliance or crucial partners in the latter.  So these sheanigans between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the USA on one axis and between Turkey, Russia and Iran over the Syrian Question as they line up with quite different opinions on the future fate of Syria in contrrast to Tarshish-NATO's views on Syria again look very, very mischievous.  Many of these participants also seem to be individually divided within themselves thus drawing us to the aspect of 'nation against nation' concept used by Jesus in Matthew 24:7, Mark 13:8, Luke 21:10.
We see in all this a further shift into deepening diplomatic and political complexity to an even higher risk level or new magnitude of intricate manoeuvering therein so that no human analyst can possibly assess all the issues any longer because we have no analytical tools to handle such complex geo-political situations.  That is a recipe for massive miscalculation.  That will not lead to a nuclear war because that technically cannot happen anyway.  But it could certainly list into something like the Ezekiel Gog-Magog situation.  As the relevant texts say, it is God who puts "His hooks" into the Gogite nations' "jaws" and drags them to disaster leaving Israel free and safe for a short time of up to seven years as foreigners help them clean up all the mess until Antichrist signs a peace treaty with Israel.  Immediately that treaty is signed, over the seven years of the Tribulation which starts when that treaty is signed, Antichrist nevertheless prepares and gathers gathers his forces against Israel for the End-Tribulation Armageddon campaign.  That may well mean that Satan's 'evil design' and God's Plan are taking over as we move further into this phony time of the beginning of Satan's counterfeit millennium which isn't starting that well given all this world's problems.  In effect, God and Satan take the world's situation out of man's hands for the final denouement of a negative kind for non-believers but for a positive kind for believers and ultimately for repentant Israel as well.
20/10/18, Good versus Evil Indian Festival: Dozens killed by train.  As thousands of religous adherents burned an effigy of a Ten-headed demon, a train ploughed through worshippers gathered at the rear of the crowd.  That group was standing on railway tracks to get a decent view but did not hear a train coming.  Thousands of exploding fireworks which were part of the celebration nullified the warning sirens of the approaching train.  The train did not, or could not, stop so people were run over in their dozens.  The event was the "Dashera Festival".  The event celebrates the victory over "Ramayana".  It was held in the north in the disputed Punjab-Kashmir territory.  In this case it was a Hindu festival.
It is interesting to see how a ten-headed demon is associated with the triumph of good over evil.  The Bible has a ten headed monster representing a stage of the last empire of Daniel's prophecies.  Did these people get the idea of a ten-headed monster from Biblical sources?  Probably yes, but we can definitely say they got the idea of Good versus Evil from the Bible's statements away back in the days of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Every human family, no matter how far away from the main centres of civilization they migrated to, nevertheless retained some information of one sort or another about our first parents' (Adam and Eve) responsibility in plunging us into our current dilemmas regarding Good and Evil.  The Bible even declares in Isaiah 45:7 that God had to "create" evil in order that, as we understand from other parts of Scritpure, there could be a choice for angels then men to make between doing good or evil.  That 'choice' or 'free will' is what distinguishes us from robots which most people are nevertheless beginning to worship or be beholden to.  This all shows that the Bible is the only source of God's Wisdom to the world which unfortunatet rejects for false gods be they robots,  "Ramayana", Allah or someone other than the Triune God of the Bible.  
20/10/18, "Arab governments are autocratic and repressive".  That came from a Middle Eastern Observer based in Lebanon regularly interviewed on a Middle Eastern International television news service.  We would add that their Islamic religion is one of the main drivers behind inherent discord which only autocratic or dogmatic regimes can control if any form of civilised society is to be possible.  But we are also aware of the Bible's prophecies on the matter and of the long term consequences of sin.  According to Genesis 16:12, "He will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand shall be against him, and he will live to the East of all his brothers"; and according to Genesis 27:40, "Away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling, and away from the dew of Heaven above, by your sword you shall live, and your brother you shall serve", the Bible rrecords these two prophecies God gave respectively over Ishmael and Esau.  These two patriarchs fathered the Arab nations of the East (Ishmaelites and Hagarenes) and West (Edomites and possibly Temanites or Yemenis) of the great Arabian Peninsula that juts into the North-west Indian Ocean.
These are the original 'Arab' nations of today.  Tne term 'Arab' actually comes from the Hebrew (ערב) for 'Evening'.  It also happens to be the root word for the Hebrew for 'pledge' ("ערבון") and is also read "surety" (ערב) in Genesis 44:32 where Judah, the son of Jacob the Patriarch of "Israel", told younger brother Joseph, who had arisen from slavery to become the PM of ancient Egypt, that he (Judah) had placed himself as a bond-servant (ערב) to Jacob.  His own sons would become Jacob's if he did not return Benjamin, the younger brother of both Joseph and Judah back to the elderly Jacob.  The reason for applying the Hebrew word for 'evening' as a nation-race (Arab) is that the caravans (C-arava-ns?) of the Arabians travelled at night following the Moon to enlighten or guide them.  The Moon thus became their god.     However, Arabians also were infamous for their trade in slaves as far back as 4000 years ago until very recent times.
However, it is in an absolute and fabulous positive sense that the word arrabown, transliterated into Greek, Apostle Paul used to point out the Christian receives God's peaceful and loving Holy Spirit as a Holy "Pledge".  This is a guarantee, some translations use "down-payment" or even "seal", that the believer will one day inherit all the blessings of life in a resurrected body in God's Eternal Kingdom.  That blessed eternal era, where we are, in some ways, bond-servants to an absolutely Good Master who does everything for His servants, was only possible because Jesus of Nazareth (The Nazarene) became one of us and by His Personal Sacrifice for our sin on Rome's Cross in Jerusalem in AD 30 paved the Way for our entry into God's Eternal Presence.  This begins with a millenniaum on this Earth in Jesus' Messianic Kingdom. Therein, He rules the world through the nation of Israel peopled by all the former Jewish saints along with, spread around the rest of the globe, all living and currently deceased Gentile believers including some ancestors of modern-day Arabs who once believed the true God not the fake foisted on Arabs by Mohammad.
There are of course some Arab Christians who reject Mohammad's message.  Unfortunately, for the most part, Arab rejection of those truths is why Arab animosity, not only to one another but especially virulently directed at Israel and the Jews of today, is exported to, or inherited by, all other nations that import the religion of Mohammad (Islam).  Sadly, nearly every country in the world seems to be doing that.  Or, other nations are allowing large numbers of Muslims to domicile in non-muslim nations.  Once domiciled in certain numbers (critical masses), immigrant Muslims begin declaring parts of the host country as part of the Islamic nation and subject to Islamic Law.  The military regime of Myanamar is one country determined to stop that.  However, most other countries regard Myanamar's actions as reprehensible.  Faced with islamic dogmatism, it is difficult to see how else any nation can resist Islam.  China is trying to 're-educate' the large Muslim populations of North West China just as the Chinese dealt with Tibet's Buddhists.  There is no 'human' solution to this dilemma apart from Jesus Who will decide on the matter.  In the interim, we are not quite sure what the Antichrist will do about Islam.  Most likely he will force Islam to submit to him, not to Allah or Mohammad.  Execution will be the path for Muslims or anyone else that does not worship Antichriist as God.
20/10/18, "We need guard-rails on our social media".  The comment of a US politician who was concerned about the interference the Russians, Chinese and Iranians are allegedly trying to achieve in American elections.  Apparently, these countries are using social media like Fakebook and bots to form as much tension and dissension in the election process rather than try to get one candidate in power over another.  That seems rather pointless unless these countries are somehow committed to undermining and eliminating 'Democracy'.  There would be little point wasting resources doing that because the Greeks showed us the limitations of 'Democracy when they had a go with it twenty-five centuries or so ago.  One agrees with Sir Winston Churchill on the usefulness of Democracy.  One is a constitutional monarchist as it happens and one looks forward to that most perfect monarchy under Jesus of Nazareth in the Messianic-Millennial Kingdom and beyond.
In reality, this is just another story in a long line of others pointing to the problem we now have with communications technology and how that is destroying the very facbric of society.  It is just another aspect of the fulfilling prophecy given to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge God had installed or planted in the garden of Eden which, it would seem, was intended to be used in Adam's instruction but only after he had learned to obey God.  Unfortunately, adam failed that lesson.  Each one of us would have too if we were Adam.  That's what a Christian believes because he be;lieves that Jesus of nazareth ,. the Son of God, incarnated Himself into our world in order to pay for Adam's disobedience and return us back on the path God originally intended for us.  In Revelation 22:2, in the next Universe and on the New Earth, there is a tree of life with fruit presumably to 'eat' and leaves presumably to 'use' with no access prohibition whatsoever.  By then, we will be back on the path so rudely interripted when Satan tempted the First Adam to disobey God.  At least one gets, as they say, a 'Second chance' if one chooses to accept it.  
21/10/18, Ebola and Muslim fanatics kill villagers in North East Congo".  Towns and villages near the Congolese border with Uganda are terrorised by Ugandan muslim rebels and Ebola and unseen disease.  Seen and unseen enemies are a major problem for doctors and the Congolese Army.  We see this situation at the heart of Africa-Cush, being a factor in generating the horde that will one day attack Israel as per the Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16 Gog-Magog invasion.  The diseases they will bring to, and threaten thereby, the Jewish communities in unwalled villages in The Holy Land (Ezekiel 39:9). 
21/10/18, "No magic bullet against Ebola".  But plenty of Muslim bullets adding to the carnage.  Muslim fanatics are rampaging and killing people as they wage a jihad in the Congo with support from their Somali allies El Shobab.       
21/10/18, Turkey's Erdogan leads investigation into murder of Kashoggi.  The Arab journalist murdered in a Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, took place on Turkish soil.  That angered the Turks for obvious resaons.  But Turkey also needs Saudi trade and finance assistance to help prop-up its flagging economy also under pressure from American trade barriers and tariffs.  Turkey is also the ancient base for "Meshech" (Moscow today) that Ezekiel 38:2 suggests is subservient to 'something' or 'someone' entitled "Gog".  As we endeavour to explain who today play the roles of the groups mentioned in the prophecy, this latest error from the Saudi rulers, or Mohammad bin Salman ("MBS") who seems to have taken control of most of Saudi Arabia's levers of power, helps give more light on the prophecy.
The Arabians currently control most of ancient Babylon's ancient or former territory straddling southern Iraq or the Plains of Shinar and the northern waterways of the 'Persian' Gulf around Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, the latter three forming the Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC.  The most recent major exodus or flight of Babylonian Chaldeans, mailnly out of the over-irrigated Plains of Shinar, probably occurred about 3000 years ago.  Since then, Arabs have dominated the region of ancient Babylon.  So, are we perhaps witnessing the Arabs losing control of the region as its leaders make a series of disastrous miscalculations?  Their chief actor at the moment, the Crown Prince nicknamed MBS, failed to sell off some of the country's holdings in the state- or 'Crown-' owned oil-conglomerate Aramco.  He wanted to do this to generate a capital base to begin re-directing the Arabian economy.  Arabia, or MBS, is under pressure from internal and external economic advisors and 'climate-change'.  The world's fanaticism about carbon-based energy systems causing global warming forces Saudi Arabia and its neighbouring emirates to diversify their economic bases also looking to the day when the oil runs out or because they cannot sell oil any more.    
Another strategic mistake, along with isolating Qatar, is Arabia's disastrous war in Yemen.  A few months ago, MBS and his team of buddies tried to kidnap the Lebanese Prime Minister by luring him to visit Riyadh then imprisoning him there in an admittedly nice posh hotel.  A couple of years ago, MBS did that to other members of his very wide family until they pledged obedience by handing him most of their wealth.  In that sort of medieval aproach, MBS seemed to be taking advice from Mr Putin who did something similar in Russia with his country's oligarchs.  In obviously medieval Arabia, MBS sees fit to do that sort of thing to his own family and to a visiting Prime Minister in Twenty-First century Saudi Arabia.
However, China also appears to have at least imprisoned or abducted the Interpol Chief who went 'home' only to find himself now trapped there.  He may have been a Chinese spy in Interpol which could explain a lot.  Presumably Interpol is going headless at present but international headlines are largely silent on that matter as Mr Kashoggi's abduction has taken all the screens and front pages.  Returning to MBS-controlled Saudi Arabia, they have been jailing many more of their own Arabian dissenters and journalists plus a few foreigners of that ilk.  The Kashoggi abduction in the consulate in Turkey (Istanbul) appears to have capped that off with a coup de non-grace.
From the perspective of these pages, one also has to look to see if what is really behind all this nonsense coming out of not only Arabia but the entire peninsula is a move taking place to hand over the region to the new masters of New Babylon.  That is the Antichrist and his entourage.  From this perspective, perhaps the 'new Babylonians' are using their sleepers amongst the royal family's in-house advisors or 'Cabinet' to make MBS look like a clutz.  Without MBS's knowledge, or perhaps telling him only a part of their intention, they realised they could lure Kashoggi into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.  They knew from an earlier visit a couple of weeks previously, because Kashogi had dropped his wife for a Turkish floozie with a surname reminding us of Genghiz Khan and needed Saudi divorce papers.  On this scenario, the 'botch-up' was deliberate.  Maybe, President Trump's advisers knew that too which could help explain the White House's reticence to castigate MBS.  So, in this scenario, there has been a 'set-up' on Saudi Arabia's rulers in order to put in motion King Salman's and MBS's replacement by a more compliant branch of Saudi royalty.
Longer-term, after the Gog-Magog invasion of Israel when the world's new Ten Nation governance regime is brought into place, it will be outski for any Arab ruler of those deserts and the Edenic oil underneath them.  Perhaps of relevant interest, in the 1950's, we did see some of King Saud's brothers usurp the throne and put Faisal then members of the Sudairi Seven, i.e., Khalid, Fahd, Abdullah and now Salman onto the throne.  So there could be some sort of coup that re-arranges the power base in Riyadh, Mecca and Medina.  But whatever way these events turn, the Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16 Prophecy still seems to be the most likely 'game in the town' we label "The Middle East" which is of course the Middle West from a Chinese perspective.
24/10/18, "Erdogan wants Saudi Arabia to drop quarrel with Qatar and unite Sunni Islam".  That was the opinion of a research fellow at the New America Foundation whatever that is.   The Americans do too but for different reasons mainly to do with Iran and world oil-based economic security.  
24/10/18, "Importance of Kashoggi was the pulpit he was given".  Other dissident Arabians in London and Washington were bin Laden supporters so they have less influence than someone like Kashoggi apparently a Muslim Brotherhood sympathiser.  With that background, Kashoggi has become a leading and respected commentator on what is happening inside Saudi Arabia.  But that suggests The Washington Post and other media organs are backing the brotherhood, presumably because it is a true representative of Islam.  Our advice to the Post is to stop letting these philosphers urinate on your doorway with this crap about a supposed Nice Face of Islam.  There isn't one.  And if the reader thinks the writer's language here, the writer claiming to be a Christian, should not use such language well here's a surpsise for you.  When Jeremiah and Jesus had to point out the stupidity of Israel's leaders, they too used unparliamentary language.  Compared with Jeremiah, Jesus was rather reserved with His ascerbic comments.  One cannot suffer fools promoting Islam.
Some commentators believe Turkey's President Erdogan, clearly something of a scholar and a shrewd tactitian, wants a united Sunni front incorporating the Muslim Brotherhood which Egypt is currently persecuting along with Saudi and Emirati financial backing.  But one really needs to look at Erdogan's manoeuvres from the hindsight of the History of the 'Caliphate" (Çalafi- or Salafi-Islam) and its incessant internecine wars as one capital or another from Spain to Iran-Iraq (e.g., Bagdhad, Istanbul, Medina, Cairo, Tunis, Madrid) sought to impose an Islamic-wide caliphate as a base to set up a world-wide caliphate and bring about the Biblical prophecies about the Kingdom of Israel's Messiah.  However, under that theology the Jews are to be destroyed by the returning Imam and Jesus Himself unless they submit to Allah.  That's why one really must disregard any notion that Islam has any sort of 'Nice Face'.  It hasn't.    
24/10/18, "Hubris has gone to their heads".  Apparently, according to the source making that point, Saudis normally prefer to "pay-off" enemies rather than confront or kill them.  But they got caught up with so much hubris under the MBS regime that they badly miscalculated over this bungled job in killing Kashoggi.  From that perspective, the source believed, it's doubtful now MBS can survive.  From the 'Antichrist perspective' we alluded to above, "hubris" is one of the favourite, most useful and successful tools Satan uses to trip-up very fallible and gullible humans.  Otherwise Satan uses sex.  But a Saudi ruler gets as much of that as he wants anyway with the religious and political regime he operates under.  Thus Satan would need to use 'Hubris' if all the Kashoggi nonsense is indeed part of a plan he has concocted for his son's imminent regime. 
24/10/18, Underwriters' nightmare:  "NZ now second riskiest place on Earth".  As one came to edit this on 30/10/18, at about 3:25 p.m., we had a 6.2 earthquake centred in the lower  North Island which sent ripples from Christchurch in the South to Gisborne in the North-East.  At the time, in Wellington, a group of Christians was demonstrating on parliament grounds because the House of Representatives' Speaker (Mr Mallard) had unilaterally removed a reference to Jesus of Nazareth in the official prayer that opens each daily session of Parliament.  He also removed NZ's British monarch who is the nation's Head of State from the prayer. We suggest she would be more perturbed than Jesus of course but then even she in her graciousness would simply turn the other cheek.  The only wally in the exercise is the Speaker who ducked the demonstration, chickened out, and sent a representative from his staff to meet a crowd of quacks outside.  We say 'quacks' because their unsophisticated understanding of the real world they inhabit is the main reason why they even demonstrated.  If they could only realise, as we note, that since 1/1/01, Satan has been quietly introducing his counterfeit millennium and if they knew their Bibles and History (His Story) they would also know Jesus is quietly leaving these people to their devices because He Himself is going to take vengeance on these disbelievers. Those Christians should know 'vengeance' is the Lord's not our's!
Anyway, returning to the main story as edited on 30/10/18, New Zealand's shakiness does not just come from sloppy thinking.  The high "riskiness" of NZ ws the conclusion of a study by insurance house "Lloyds of London".  Their report was assessing world-wide insurance risk.  Apparently the country was third in the list behind Bangladesh and Iraq until floods and earthquakes in the Bay of Plenty helped NZ to leap-frog into second-place above Iraq.   The data in this world-wide survey is usually a couple of years behind the play so one might expect Indonesia to sneak into first or second in a year or two.  As the radio compare noted when he heard this from one of his radio station's news reporters, he quipped, "this means insurance premiums must inevitably rise on the back of this news".  However, one has been warning of this for years (c.f., 31/3/17, "Wellington, New Zealand's capital, could be cut off with a 'disastrous' earthquake").
In a later report, we heard the Canterbury Earthquake had an unusually big impact on the NZ economy compared to similar quakes in other countries like Japan or even Indonesia for that matter.  So New Zealand somewhat artificially has ended up so high on that list from Lloyds re-insurers.  But  insurance, or more precisely property-insurance, is not going to get any cheaper in NZ and has already risen significantly.  
24/10/18, Venezuela funding Central American economic migrants walk to the US border.  According to this view expressed today, there is an attempt to annoy the USA, which Venezuerla's socialist government believes is undermining their oil-rich but economically-stricken nation, and that Venezuela's government is behind  this mischief.  However, further south or Venezuela lies Argentina.  It is the 'silver state' and homeland of current Roman Pope George Maria Bargoglio who has been poking his nose into Nicaragua's affairs, and into other world crises, as you would if you were the Vatican's leader (prince).
In regard to the prophecies in Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16 and Revelation 20:8, one is also looking for a solution to the identity of "Gog" with all his lands of Gog ("Magog", המגוג ארץ).  Intriguingly, the Argentianian pontiff has many of the appropriate credentials to actually be 'Gog' and the false Prophet for antichrist since we are aware the latter has been with us for 17 years now.  So is Rome's boss practising with a binch of central Americans as they march on the Rio Grande Border betwen USA and Mexico.  Is that mini-crisis erupting out of central America; and exercising the USA as the country enters a crucial set of elections for its Senate and House of Represeantatives; becoming a dry-run for the hordes "Gog" is organising to invade Israel?  Of course we may well be just drawing on coincidences with all this.  However, the Golden One, the Antichrist, needs a a false prophet or herald just as John the Baptist has done and Elijah will do for Jesus of Nazareth who now needs a Second or Last Herald for Jesus' Return Visit.  We understand, from Dr Fruchtenbaum's analysis, someone plays a parallel role for antichrist-666.  Antichrist's 'herald' or false prophet is the beast who arises out of the Earth (Revelation 13:13-14).  The second beast gets everyone to worship the first beast that arose out of the Sea (presumably the Mediterranean, Revelation 13:1) who survives a deadly wound (Revelation 13:12).
Whether "Gog" also does the role of the false Prophet is rarely considered, if at all.  That is because most Bible commentators have neglected to distinguish and separate between the Aleph-Gog-Magog (א) incident of Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:16 from the Tav-incident (ת) in Revelation 20:8 at the end of the Millennial-Messianic Kingdom which is a long way off from now.  Whereas the Ezekiel Gog-Magog invasion of Israel seems imminent.       
24/10/18, "Brexit will impede science and make it suffer".  A statement emanating from Europe no doubt from the CERN-brigades.  They want more and more money to sling electrons around hadron colliders to see how many more sub-atomic particles they can discover.  What they are really trying to do is prove God does not exist to salve their consciences.  But they need enormous sums of money for that.  Also, they must feel they need British money and scientists to help in the project.  But Brexit may mean they no longer can because Britain outside the EU will not be allowed to participate.  The anti-Brexiteers are getting desperate it seems.  And statements like that only re-assure Brexiteers they can call the EU's bluff because the EU needs Britain more than the other way around.  Anyway, a desperate plea like this probably indicates Britain is definitely going to exit as we long have been predicting.  Britain; according to the Bible being a member of Tarshish, if not The Leader by virtue of her control of Gibraltar since Spain-Pontus ceded it to us; and on the Doctrine of the Going Concern which admittedly is under very serious threat at the moment;  is a more attractive proposition out rather than in the EU.  Far worse to be in the latter especially if that means reliance on energy from autocratic Russia to keep many EU economies going and the UK's when her oil runs out and she is prevented from using her coal under today's manic nonsense about coal and global warming.  Out of 'Europe', Britain will probably be able to thumb her nose at that problem.   As the news reader commented, "I have no idea how science can suffer because of Brexit".  
27/10/18, External universes solve problem of Entropy for Evolutionism.  In "20/4/18, Many more particles or many more universes"? and in "17/7/18, "You have to change to evolve", we looked at the latest models to explain what makes up electrons, neutrons and protons.  One decided to comment on this in the wake of the spurious claim in the item previously about science allegedly suffering if Britain exits the EU ("Brexit").  Here, one is going to explain why we need so much money for 'science'.  Today one heard on a radio programme an explanation of "Entropy".  This is the tendency of everything we see all around us and throughout our 'Universe' descending into disorder, or worse, chaos.  As the expert on the radio explained, when we tidy a kitchen or room, before long it gets untidy again.  That's because there are so many events that can cause it to become so and very few that either keep the room tidy or make it stay tidy somehow.  Factors that cause disorder might be an open window allowing the wind to scatter and displace light objects like paper.  It might be one's spouse grabbing a plate from the cupboard, eating something from it and leaving it lying higgeldy-piggeldy in the kitchen sink with food remains on it.  Only rarely does an event reverse that untidiness when, for example, someone goes in and inputs energy and information to make the room or kitchen tidy again.
So how come we see order in this entropy-dominated universe?  Hey presto, let's dream up parallel universes where there is no entropy.  They can somehow solve our problem as they must have, so the evolutionists assume.  Or how else do we get order in our Universe?  So they investigated atoms, electrons, neutrons and protons at CERN and other places.  They now have discovered 17 sub-sub-atomic particoes.  (Refer previous items for more detail). What one also realised today is why CERN said the "Higgs Boson" revealed the possible or plausible existence of other universes if its 'weight' exceeded a certain value.  They can then go on to say we have "almost certainly" discovered the required other universes to solve this entropy problem in ours.  The other universes somehow intersecting or intervening in ours, perhaps through special sub-atomic particles, explain how order came into our Universe of Disorder and Entropy.  One also notes they use this fancy term "entropy".  This word diverts people's thinking from dwelling too much on the issue, which people possibly would do if the discussion used plain words.
In a world trying to disown and disbelieve God (Romans 1:21-23), the purveyors of what we all the "Babylon Project" do not want us to come to these quite simple facts about our Universe.  Surely order only came into the Universe because God ordered it so (Acts 17:24, 26, Romans 1:20, 8:22, 12:2, I Corinthians 8:6, Ephesians 1:4, 3:9-11, Hebrews 1:2-3, 10, 11:3, II Peter 3:4 and Revelation 3:14).  The purveyors of the Babylon Project are not interested in mankind knowing these things the Bible teaches.  For example, in Acts 17:26: " ....(God)  .. hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of Man's habitation" supported by what is implied in II Peter 3:8 (School of Elijah principle), that God has set in order all things to complete His Good, Perfect and Acceptable Will or Plan, Project, Will or Testament (Romans 12:2). While on this subject, it is also worth noting astronomers see what does in fact appear to be Order in the Universe.  But one must look far enough out into Space and into what in effect is the light reaching us from the earlier history of the universe.  This is on the understanding the light and sounds of events in the far distant past in the Universe are still hanging around.  They and moving in various directions so that we can pick them up or read or listen to them with our specialised instruments.    Also, they think they can see a boundary out there where the Ordered or "Steady State Universe", of Sir Fred Hoyle and others, became at some point in the universe's history disordered.  
On the other hand, if the Higgs-Boson ("in which", they said, "the Universe somehow receives its Mass") is lighter, below or less than a certain value then they have to search for even more sub-sub-atomic particles in their search for order in the Universe.  It seems to this observer, CERN-ites would prefer the Higgs-Boson Particle to be a higher value so that they can pursue their ideas about other parallel universes.  Also, it would seem either future directin for exploration would need an even bigger, better and more expecnsive machine.  The one they built at CERN rendered redundant another machine that was partly constructed in Texas.  Another machine would presumably render the CERN site redundant too.  What a ghastly waste and future for the poor of this world!  Whichever way they do decide things must be going, they are in effect putting off the certainty that God created everything so that they can still say "we still do not know" even though God is Creator is statement of the obvious.    
The Bibe,of course provides the siolutions and answers.   
29/10/18, "Czech your facts:  Do you want Brat-Slavs here?"  A little play on words one dreamed-up as the radio stations in NZ today went on an on about a Czech man allowed into NZ to stay as a long-term resident.  Unfortunately, he reportedly continued with his druggy background and actually is currently in prison on drug-trafficking charges.  He had entered NZ on a false passport.  He associated with gangs but apparently represeneted NZ at the sport of 'kick-boxing'.   Despite the the false passport, NZ courts allowed him to stay in NZ because he claimed he could not receive justice in Bratislava, former capital of Czechslovakia now two independent countries (Czechia and Slovakia).  The Czech also claimed the police in his homeland were corrupt so he could not hope to expect protection nor a fair trial in a drug case there.  The Czech authorities had asked about extraditing him but NZ authorities apparently suggested they do not bother because of the time and complexity involved.   One alert listener pointed out he could be returned to safety in Europe as Czechia is a member of the respectable EU.  Thus, he could be re-located in another member country of the Union where he could receive protection and/or justice.
Meantime, there are calls for the NZ Immigration Minister to throw him out of NZ.  Many are upset with the Minister because he has let the man stay in NZ in exchange, so the idea goes, for him passing on information to NZ Police about criminal activity in Europe or elsewhere.  One wonders if Interpol might be involved.  However, its head official, a Chinese, has disappeared in China in a manner that might resemble the fate of Mr Kashoggi inside Saudi Arabia's Consulate in Istanbul.  It is beginning to look like nowhere is now free of, or immune to, lawlessness.  Roll-on that man to be preceded by the removal of the current restrainer of Evil (II Thessalonians 2:6 ff).
[Postscript 2/11/18, in an announcement today, the Immigration Minister is calling for an inquiry into his department's systems and practices.  This came as a former Immigration Minister and now private immigration consultant who originally took up this Czech gangster as a client on the man's fake passport but unaware of that, has publicly questioned the Immigration Department.  He said its officials try to keep the Minister out of the loop as much as possible.  Ministers routinely say they do not know anything as questions are either "operational matters" or "sub judice".  That is all very convenient for corrupt, inefficient or just plain-, stupid, ignorant or inept officlals.  It seems the cabinet-appointed Minister only gets material put before him at the whim of the officials.  There may be a massive corruption scandal here too.  Just another hint that the Antichrist's supportedrs are setting things up for his ascendancy.  There may be other explanations to the many bizarre events going on but our Biblical perspective seems to have the best explanation for events in NZ and abroad].
30/10/18, Advertising on the Internet now controlled by Algorithms ... ;  An expert of advertising on the Internet was speaking on radio and pointing out that just as expert bankers did not properly understand the complex CDO's (Collateralised Debt Obligations) in the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) so Geeks have no control over these algorithms.  The GFC exposed the problem of algorithms in finance, banking and commercial markets.  Of course, the GFC compounded with Goldman Sachs knowing there was a good cahnce those CDO's would collapse then deliberately took out insurance on the CDO's failing.  That was because CDO's usually had many delinquent loans packaged together with loans having secure returns.  When those CDO's failed, Goldman Sachs could recover their money.  But that only bankrupted huge insurance companies in the USA once the thing collapsed.   Even people in Silicon Valley are concerned about this algorithm-problem in advertising because the advertisements are often mind-controlling or mind-destroying when targeted at young people as they very often are.  As the interviewer said ...  ,
30/10/18,  "...  Even Silicon valley can't control advertising algorithims".   As we know, only Satan, the anagram for "Santa", and his henchmen can control the Ethernet a.k.a., Internet for after all he is the "Prince of the Power of the Aeros-Ether" (Ephesians 2:2).
30/10/18, Another admission from the bankrupt house of seismology.  That's our headline to explain something revealed after today's 6.2 earthquake that shook much of NZ today.  It was very deep, supposedly about 200 kilometers deep.  Funnily enough, the sparsely populated King Country region of Taumaranui was the quake's centre but lttle shaking was felt there.  Instead, cities as far apart as Christchurch and Auckland felt the thing far more strongly.  There seemed to be two mini waves of shake, rattle and roll.   Wellington, much nearer the centre, where the writer felt the quake, only only got a mild gentle roll or two that was barely noticeable.  However, the Parliament where they had abandoned the prayer mentioning Jesus of Nazareth (refer postscript in 24/10/18, Underwriters' nightmare:  "NZ now second riskiest place on Earth") tends to sway quite a bit with any quake.  Wellington's Parliament Buildings have been placed on massive rubber shock absorbers just like many other buildings along Wellington's infamous fault line.  So in them life can be a little more exciting than in the single-story toilet block where the writer works.  The seismologist speaking for his mates, said the Earth's surface directly above the quake did not fel much because it was so deep.  Instead "outlying regions" experienced much more activity.
Precisely what we are saying.  All earthquakes are the result of massive disturbances at the globe's inner or central cores.  Quakes are not activity along existing surface faultlines which are just the evidence of a previous disturbance caused by eruptions, churnings or whatever deep inside the globe.  Faultlines are like wrinkles on our faces.  They do not cause old age.  Old age, i.e., the decline of our genes and interior organs, causes wrinkles.  But that is not obvious to modern seismologists.  Earthquake and volcanic activity is energised by factors to do with cosmology and unstable higher elements which are generating nuclear-style forces deep inside the globe.  Those forces, if not contained within, ultimately are expresssed as energy released by quakes and voilcanos on the Earth's outer crust.   The Bible's explanation of the Earth's history explains why we are getting more quakes and volcanos along with the related global warming which is one of the most topical points of discussion in the world today.  Dr Velikovsky's work helps us a lot.  But it is still ignored by the academy, certainly in public pronouncements.  The Academy learly considers Velikovsky valid, in private or in-house.  Together with God's outline in the Bible as the primary explanation from which to interpret observable or scientific data, Velikovsky's work helps give The Chiurch of Christ the information it needs to urge the world to accept the Bible's messages about God, His Plan of Salvation for every man and woman and His explanation of His Plan for the Universe and this Earth.
On a concluding note, in some ways Veikovsky's situation reflects Jewry in general.  For he personally must have seen the Bible's messages, especially about Jesus and in particular about His comments on the "Queen of the South" and the One Sign she received (Hat-Sheb/p-Sut or The Sign of the Sheba of the South), were historically valid.  Velikovsky's research almost certainly proved that.  Whereas one's own Three Dimensional Simultaneous Equation Proof has virtually confirmed Velikovsky's thesis.  So why did Velikovsky not, in public anyway, receive Christ and accept His Divinity and Purpose?  Israel's leaders witnessed Jesus performing the Three Messianic Miracles they themselves had declared to be true signs of someone's Messiaship.  Yet Israel's leaders, followed by the majority of the nation, rejected Jesus even though he met them on their own terms, apart from agreeing to follow their additions to the Law of Moses.  Likewise, Velikovsky, as far as we know from public and some private information, never accalimed Jesus of Nazareth.
Velikovsky's observations about Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt and Ethiopia together with Josepus Flavius' statement about her countr more or less proved his point about the dating of the 18^th Dynasty, that it ruled between 1000 and 800 BC not 1500-1300 BC.  One also proved Velikovsky's points about the 19^th Dynasty dating at the sites at Beth She'an, Jaffa and Memphis (read Memphis, Merneptah and Ramesses and the Winged Disk of Judah).  At Beth She'an and Jaffa, the evidence is visible at the archaeological sites.  For Memphis, we only have his photographs but that site could be dug back up again.

Don Stewart Researcher
http://donstewartresearcher.com/book
http://don-stewart-research.blogspot.co.nz;
Email: dons@fresher.net.nz 
Phones: 0064 (0)210 2989 320 (mob); 0064 4 384 7648 (landline)
Address: 35 Vivian Street, Wellington 6011, NZ, 31 December, 2019