Pope–Petrus Romanus–Francis Has Only a Few Years to Live?

The Arutz Sheva Israel National News is reporting that Pope Francis has only a few years to live and may retire like his predecessor Benedict.  If he steps down, then I will be the first to say the Prophecy of the Popes was wrong. People who read Petrus Romanus carefully are aware I have always been tentative, for it to be fulfilled Rome should be destroyed. If Pope Frank steps down and Rome is fine, the prophecy of the popes is undone. I have always maintained a wait and see position, my argument has been that past fulfillment compelled me to not dismiss it. I will dismiss it if this pope retires uneventfully. However, it could also mean that 2016 will mark its culmination, the jury is still out.

 

Pope Francis: I Only Have 2-3 More Years to Live

Pope Francis believes that he still has a maximum of three years left to live, he told reporters Monday, and indicated that he is considering early retirement.

“Another two or three years, and God will take me,” Francis said, speaking to reporters on his way back to the Vatican from South Korea. According to reporters on the plane, the pope was generally in high spirits despite the grim prediction.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184187#.U_Nce2P5M-d

 

Last PopeWatch the The Last Pope? for details on the Prophecy of the Popes.

Blood on the Altar

I contributed a chapter to this new book. Because the issue of same sex marriage is the definitive issue between liberal and conservative protestants, I framed it as the main issue and argued for the classical Christian stance.

Response to Joseph P. Farrell Genes, Giants, Monsters and Men

I have been reading Genes, Giants, Monsters and Men by Joseph P Farrell. While I am sympathetic to many of his speculations, I was taken aback to read him citing 19th century German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch. He is famous as an early proponent of the idea that the Genesis narrative were borrowed from the ancient Babylonians. This was expounded in his 1902 lecture, “Babel and Bible.”  Here is the page from Farrell’s book with an illustration from Delitzsch asserting the name Yahweh is found in ancient Sumerian tablets long before the time of Moses.
[i]

In truth Delitzsch is known today as a rabid antisemite that helped to fuel the rise of the Third Reich.[ii] His attitude toward the Hebrew Bible is laid bare in this quote from a later book:

The so-called “Old Testament” is entirely dispensable for the Christian church, and thereby also for the Christian family. It would be a great deal better for us to immerse ourselves from time to time in the deep thoughts, which our German intellectual heroes have thought concerning God, eternity, and immortality.[ii]

Delitzsch’s vitriol is characteristic of the prevailing antisemtism in Germany during that era. As to his assertion that the name Yahweh is nothing special, it is no longer seriously entertained by scholars.

Delitzsch (1850-1922) was one of the early pioneers of ancient near eastern scholarship. At that time, there was a new field called Assyriology dealing with the newly discovered cuneiform tablets. Of course knowledge has advanced greatly since that time. Today the language of the Assyians and Babylonians is referred to as Akkadian. Delitzsch  was soundly criticized by other German scholars during his day[iv] and as linguistic studies have advanced, scholars dismiss his assertions as extremely doubtful.[v]  Most lexicons assert, “No certain etymology of the divine name can be offered.” [vi]

This information is widely available in any good Hebrew lexicon, which begs the question of why Farrell is promoting  discredited19th century scholarship with absolutely no criticism offered? I asked Semitics scholar Dr. Michael Heiser for his opinion and he wrote, “No one should be taking Farrell seriously on biblical studies. His field is Patristics. He’s perpetuating outdated and refuted scholarship in a different field – Semitics. Yes, you can quote me.”[vii] ANE languages scholar Dr. Michael Brown handled this question at 1:01:39 in his August 24, 2012 radio show here.

I am still reading the book but this uncritical use of long debunked scholarship sends up red flags.

 

 

 

[i] Joseph P. Farrell, Genes, Giants, Monsters, and Men: The Surviving Elites of the Cosmic War and Their Hidden Agenda (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2011), 21.

[ii] see: http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/BabelBibelBias.pdf

[iii] Friedrich Delitzsch, Die Grosse Täuschung (The Great Deception) as quoted in Arnold and Weisberg, “Babel und Bibel und Bias” Bible Review 18:01.

[iv] see: http://www.logosapologia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Driver-Studia-Biblica-1885-Tetragrammaton.pdf

[v] Francis Brown, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs, Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 2000), 218.

[vi] Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 522–523.

[vii] Personal email 8/4/2014

Gnostic Christian – A Blatant Oxymoron

the-gnostic-soul-universeI have a confused commenter on my facebook wall who claims to be a “gnostic Christian.”  He was commenting on my link to Dr Peter Jones’ The Errors of Gnostic Texts. Many times I have pointed out to him that “gnostic-Christian” is an oxymoron because there is a contradiction with gnosticism holding that the creator God of the Old testament, Yahweh, is the evil demiurge. The same God that Jesus worshiped and quoted as the Father.

Astoundingly, this “gnostic” wants to have his cake and eat it too because he will argue that he follows Jesus while still calling Yahweh the evil demiurge. I cited instances of Jesus quoting the OT to no avail, he always twists the text to support his conclusion.  It’s so absurd that it is hard to know where to start but this evening I found the passage that ends the discussion.  When an expert in the law tried to trap Jesus he asked him for the greatest commandment:

“And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”(Mt 22:35–40)

Jesus is quoting directly from the book of Deuteronomy.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”(Dt 6:5)

Where the English translation reads LORD, the Hebrew text reads  יהוה Yhvh  or Yahweh.  So Jesus taught the greatest commandment is to LOVE YAHWEH.  It is not possible to be a gnostic and a Christian.