Remarks on Job

The Whore of Babylon from russian illuminated ...
The W of B.

Accepting predestination and the sovereignty of God on the one hand is
not a reason not to act as though you can change things on the other.
Fatalism is never commanded in the Bible.

Job worked hard all his life to get into the situation he was, but
nevertheless when he lost everything, he said “the Lord giveth, the
Lord taketh away”. When he had his losses restored I would assume he
also worked and tried to make the best of what he had, even though he
would have acknowledged that it was a gift. He didn’t just sit back.

That’s why I’m not in favour of just sitting back and accepting the
Anti-Christ, the beast, the Whore of Babylon, the False Prophet, just
because these entities are prophesied in Scripture. We are to reject
the mark of the Beast, and not acquiesce in that mark being put on our
flesh. We are the sheep of another Shepherd, and our brandmark is
written on the fleshy tables of the heart.

The devil will always say, “you cannot change it, because even your God
has prophesied it. Go along with my plans uncomplainingly. If you
challenge what false prophets and wicked people are doing, it looks as
if you are complaining against the sovereignty of God” But this is not
the case, as the Word shows what believers are to do in such cases. We
should not be amazed and put to a crisis of our faith over it, but we
should act in whatever way we can to resist it. That issue of what
happens to faith is the true lesson of the Book of Job. As you can see
from the dialogue at the start happening in the halls of eternity
between God and Lucifer. Lucifer claims that Job only believes because
he has had the charmed life. His faith is of no value because he never
had any reason to doubt it. This is a central reason why God allows
Satan a lease over Job’s life for a season. The test of faith is
absolutely crucial.

In this day and age people’s faith is tested by godlessness in the
media, in the fact that the so-called scientific consensus is so-clled
rationalist, which means that basically society considered as an
acceptable credo only that which can be emoirically proven, and hand in
hand with that puts faith in a very low position – except for when
psychologists state that individuals can get some purely carnal benefit
from it. These days for a person to know God means they have to put
their faith against the sniggerings of know-all atheists from all
quarters. But in Job’s day people were not up against the so-called
rationalists and their fairy tales about evolution and billions of
years and a creator-free origin. People basically knew there was a God,
in that there were no serious voices in society voicing any other
possibility, and so the inner certainty of his existence was not a
difficult thing as today.

And yet God has always used faith as the basis for differentiating this
on his side from those who are not. Works were only ever acceptable as
the fruit of faith, but only faith ever pleased God. It is written that
“without faith it is impossible to please God; for he that cometh to
God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek Him”. So what do we have here with Job? Is the devil
right that Job’s faith is cheap? Or will he make a statement of faith
even after his comforts are stripped from him with all the severity
that the cleansing and trying fuller’s fire of God can muster?

Well, what says the tortured, inmpoverished Job with the rotting flesh,
the dead family?

“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the
latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this
body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and
mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed
within me.”-Job 19:25-27.

There we have it. This man, who has been blasted beyond measure, utters
with faith as strong as knowledge, a prophesy of Christ, and of the
Resurrection. And this testimony has gone down as among the most
beautiful words of history, a sentence of incredible value – worth more
than all his possessions.

He was not tried for ever because he did not need to be. After he was
shown to be of faithful integrity and the devil shown up to be a
speculating, fraudulent accuser, everything went back to the way it had
been before.

God was able to bring everything back to normal again.

And of course much more than “normal”.

Just as God is able to wipe every tear from your eye, and will do so one day, if He finds faith in you.

Best,

Uncle Davey
(publ. Sept 2006 on Usenet)

Announcing the new changes on this blog for 2011!

Google Android
Google Android's WordPress application greatly facilitates posting when away from a computer.

I’ve decided to take up the challenge by the folks over at The DailyPost, and be part of the postaday2011 challenge. That means that at least once a day there will be a new post on this blog, so please subscribe and get ready for what will be hopefully a mix of the entertaining and the thought-provoking, as I have tried to provide so far.

Some days there may be more than one post, but the idea is to not let a day go by without a post.

As readers of this blog could see recently, I have worked out how to do posts here from my Android phone, so that’ll be the main way of doing diary-style blogposts, the Diary of a New Decade series even when on trains and the like. Also I started the ICMTSU series, which has two posts in it so far, and that is  there to chronicle things which would be too ridiculous or strange to make up. For those not familiar with this old Usenet abbreviation, ICMSTU  means “I can’t make this s**t up”.

Another change in 2011 will be that all the YouTube video added in 2011 will be also placed in here as it is uploaded to YouTube. I’ll try to keep that current to within a week. This starts from my last video in 2010, my New Year Huliganov address video, which sets out what the plans are for the YouTube channel , which is here.

Basically a new video appears whenever the preceding one has hit 100, or becomes sure to hit it within days. The older YT stuff will be posted in chronological order, except where occasionally as with the Jimmy series I decide to put them all up at once.

Continue reading “Announcing the new changes on this blog for 2011!”

Usenet Fragmentia – 1st Dectave

Uncle Davey’s Fragmentia – 1st Dectave – More bright ideas from your favorite virtual uncle!  

The idea of Fragmentia is to make, over time, a digest of the best fragments of the posts I have made to Usenet, whether ideas, soundbites, jokes and witticisms, observations, coinages, or even some typical Usenet “flames”. The criterion for inclusion is that the extracts work without a lot of context setting, and also that either the use of language or the idea has some originality about it. All work is mine unless otherwise stated, and, with few exceptions, originally written for Usenet in the month given below each fragment. Where of interest, I have also given the person addressed. To see the original content, use Google’s Usenet archive searching on the most unusual phrase in the section and limiting it to the stated month. Some of these comments were answered – even on occasion very competently, and looking up the thread will show you what my opponents said.

The items are not especially sorted by topic, they are mixed together. There are up to ten fragments per page, and the rules of the game are that only spelling mistakes are corrected, no new thoughts are added.

As ever, with my productions, the right of reply exists in the comment section. The fragments are not sorted, so a certain amount of disjointedness is part of the fun, but as you sequentially peruse each “Dectave of Uncle Dave”, you’ll soon start to pick up the threads. They will be gathered into a “Fragmentia” section on this blog – they used to be a section on the previous site (now incorporated here) www.usenetposts.com. I’ll be adding to these from time to time, they go back basically to the end of 2003, although some things of mine are earlier, but in the main the earlier writings were reiterated and better written in the post 2003 writing.

First Dectave

1.

“I would like to know how these Creation-rejectors are so sure that so-called ‘pseudogenes’ don’t have a perfectly viable raison d’etre which they simply don’t know about.

They are so ready to say “science is in its infancy” when it suits them, but if they think they’ve found a trap for us, then they are oh so certain that certain genes are redundant, that they are mistakes, that they would have been created out. Well why didn’t they evolve out? What we don’t use gets lost, right?

So what about the fact that only a small percentage of the human brain gets used? Why did the rest evolve, if it doesn’t get used? Is the size of the human brain a pseudogene? Or is it a place to hang those parts of the soul that don’t get needed until the resurrection body?

Creation rejectors think they know a lot of things, but when it all boils down to it, there’s nothing they can say that proves the non-existence of God that they so long to achieve.”

(December 2003)

2.

“You’re making distinctions that don’t exist in the Hebrew. This is not dividing the Word, it’s multiplying it, subtracting it and adding to it, and taking it to the n’th power, where n = nonsense.”

(December 2003, addressed to Robert Sowle)

3.

“Bacteria aren’t the products of evolution, they’re the products of devolution.

Most of the bacteria that attack humans are human cells or organelles of human cells that have gone wrong.

There is in the talk origins FAQ somewhere a discussion about a bacterium that evolved under scientific conditions from some woman’s cells, and they rattle this out as proof of speciation sometimes. What it does prove is that human cells give rise to bacteria, which of course is devolution, the exact reverse of evolution. Hardly surprising not much of this is done and they don’t like to emphasise it.

So with bacteria it’s a bit like cancer only they move around with a life of their own. they can of course go on to speciate of their own accord, usually getting weaker, not stronger, and then the next devolution from a higher animal cell creates the next new disease, unknown before, as with the HIV retrovirus.

Probably this bacterium able to metabolise nylon, if it came from another bacterium not able to, was a devolution, or a falling away from, the other. It is probably a more basic organism than the parent organism. Weaker, not stronger.

These are devolved, not evolved, organisms. God never made them, as such, they were part of the human body, and other animal and plant bodies.

Same with viruses. They could not have been a part of the evolutionary chain as they need higher organism to survive on. They are rogue parts of DNA of higher organisms, that’s how they are able to control the DNA of higher organisms.

Nematodes didn’t evolve, they devolved from insects, that’s how they know how to control the consciousness of their host insect and make it seek water. Such a mechanism could never have evolved by trial and error. Had the host not gone to water, that would have been the end of the line for that attempt. If it didn’t need water, why make the host go there?

And all this devolving of life, which causes disease, decay and death, didn’t start until after the Fall of Man.”

(December 2003, addressed to H. R. Gr?mm)

4.

“Is there a coffee so strong it will wake you out of this slumber?”

(December 2003, addressed to Robert Sowle)

5.

“There are some 30,000 species. Had evolution been true, over 100 times that number could have evolved in the time they say is available.

The number of Biblical kinds involved here is probably closer to 3,000. They all started out as freshwater kinds and some became saltwater after the flood.”

(December 2003, addressed to David Jensen)

6.

“Mammals are a group of living creatures where there is body hair and the mother suckles the young with milk.

The building blocks God, as the prime Engineer, saw fit to use on them and on us are similar enough to allow a technical name in common, but the created purpose of mankind is one thing and of animals it is another.

Have you ever pondered the oddity that we alone are an intelligent species? I could not be having this conversation with an orang-utan or a sperm whale, however skilled the translator.

Why didn’t evolution manage that for any other species?”

(December 2003)

7.

“I thought your website and your work was great, but I have to say I disagree with you about subjecting Usenet to the same laws as the rest of society. These people need somewhere to go to let off steam. Better here than daub it on our fences.

Some people do have opinions which are not respectable and are antisocial, and most forums are not available to them. Nevertheless they want to give expression to their ideas, regardless of the quality, the same as anyone else does.

Sometimes the product of those expressions is quite disturbing, but that is the true face of your fellow man and neighbour on this planet. May as well be informed about it. You’re never gonna be able to regulate and control it out of existence.”

(December 2003, addressed to artist Amanda Angelika Berry)

8.

“You may well be a nicer person than we are, but have you been forgiven your sins because of the Blood Jesus shed for you on Calvary?

It’s not about being nice, it’s about being forgiven.

That’s how we see Christianity, anyway. See John 3.16”

(December 2003, addressed to self-confessed witch “Jason Harvestdancer”)

9.

“All I can tell you is that my wife keeps silent in Church, although she does sometimes laugh if there’s a joke in the sermon.

If I asked her to speak publicly in the Church she would consider that ‘spousal abuse’ and not the reverse.

But then, she is a well-balanced woman, not like some women, trying to be men.

I honestly pity the men they marry, few will be spared mental illness at some stage in their lives.

Does that make me an ultraconservative?”

(December 2003)

10.

“There was no time as we know it prior to Creation, and as Christ is an uncreated being, He also exists outside of constraints of time and space.”

(December 2003)