Disasters R Us

by Pastor Mark Downey

I read recently that scientists had discovered that goldfish had a memory retention of two seconds.  So you could imagine two goldfish in a bowl complete with castle and plants talking to each other.  First goldfish, “Look at that castle.”  Second goldfish, “What is a castle?”  First goldfish, “Why do you ask?”  Second goldfish, “Ask what?”  There are an increasing number of people like that in our society.  But, goldfish swim all their lives in that bowl and are unaware of the water they swim in.  Some people are completely oblivious to the intellectual and spiritual sea we swim in with all of the philosophical undercurrents and riptides.  That ocean of information has been spawned by mass media and various mediums of persuasion.  When Daniel (12:4) spoke of “an increase in knowledge”, he may have been alluding to an information overload.  Because of this saturation bombing of the mind, the world is in a state of confusion and chaos.  And this is by design to mold public opinion like putty.  Before I launch into this message, let me first establish the premise and a few definitions. The Bible is looked at in a variety of prejudicial perspectives.  However, if we look at it simply as cause and effect, we can see God's design much better.  In other words, when God says for us to do something His way and we don't, then what He says will be the consequences, will come to pass.  He may even set up the basest, lowest scumbags of men to rule over us, if we fail to obey Him (Daniel 4:17).  The problem is that many who profess to believe in God do not follow through with the requirements of a believer.  It leads to cognitive dissonance and is complicated by non-believers submitting their demands for an empirical Bible.

There's an uncanny link between the cause of weather and the effects of calamity in nature.  But first, let's define cognitive dissonance (hereafter referred to as CD) before we relate the supernatural to the natural world.  CD is a state of opposition between mental processes, such as belief systems, and can be understood in terms of a means to an end, especially when an excess of abstractions are coupled with an equal amount of concrete tangibles.  When two competing beliefs are held simultaneously, a person is in a state of CD.  This mental state compels a person to create or modify new thoughts in order to minimize the dissonance (conflict) and remain in their comfort zones.

Thus, when a person is given the suggestion to lie without any justification, they will reconcile the situation by thinking that they are telling the truth.  This kind of psychological manipulation has been exploited for years by social engineers to persuade us that the emperor has his clothes on.  Otherwise, the people might feel very unpleasant and disturbed about naked leaders and take direct action to remove them from sight.  The Bible warns us about cognitive dissonance.  "And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, how long halt ye between two opinions?" I Kings 18:21.  And James 1:8, "A double minded man is unstable in all his way.”

To further illustrate this insidious bipolar mindset, people who smoke know it's a bad habit, but rationalize it by telling themselves that it keeps their weight down and that there's a greater health threat from being overweight.  Other people overcome the habit cold turkey.  They have resolved the CD i.e. the issues of gluttony and smoking.  The question persists as to why some people react to conflict with absolute incompetence. CD has been called the mind controllers best friend.

Early CD research in the 1950's looked at a UFO cult waiting to be picked up by flying saucers, just before the earth was to be destroyed by a massive flood on Dec. 21, 1954. When this date came and went, the cult leader figured God spared the world from the cataclysm, because the group of believers had spread so much light with their impeccable faith.  Most of the cult followers became even more fanatical devotees after the prophecy failed.  A few members left the cult when the world didn't end and realized the con game.  For those who stayed, being wrong turned them into ardent believers and perfect guinea pigs for CD.  However, their belief was not based on the Word of God, but on the word of man.

The mind control technique of CD spawned super-salesmen like cult leaders Jim Jones, Charles Manson and Marshall Applewhite.  Some conspiracy theorists have speculated that these cult groups were CIA operations.  The Bush family is no stranger to the CIA as Poppy was once its director and benefactor of such psychological warfare programs as MK-ULTRA.  In a slip of the tongue, George H.W. Bush admitted, "If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us."  If we can recognize the formula used by cult groups, it is not that difficult to identify a national government doing the same thing, but on a much more grandiose scale.

If a cult group predicts the end of the world and their doomsday comes and goes without much fanfare, they respond to this dismal failure to prophesy by suggesting that their activities warded off the anticipated apocalypse and then begins the mental processing to proselytize us on the grounds that theirs is the most effective belief system for averting calamities.  The biblical admonition against false prophets is ignored.  A sane person might think that they couldn't predict anything even if their lives depended on it.  Such thinking would produce dissonance or conflict within the cult. Thinking that they had been successful does not produce dissonance, although CD is at the heart of the operation.

The inmates are running the asylum rings a familiar Pavlovian bell.  If the government can prophesize a 'war on terror' with no end in sight, we could be in a perpetual war for perpetual peace ad infinitum, going from perpetual yellow to orange Orwellian alerts, without much of a hullabaloo, other than the occasional planned demolitions of large buildings  and loss of life.  They can claim that by 'staying the course' in fighting terrorism, they have saved the country from some larger catastrophic disaster.

The concept of CD helps reveal why it's taking so long for so many Americans to assimilate the suppression and distortion of information leading to the truth that it is criminal politics, not non-jewish terrorism, taking us down the path of death and destruction. In spite of a controlled media, Americans are becoming cognizant that we were duped into war because we were lied to.  The CD noise machine tells the American people what they want to hear and see.  The medium is the massage: the President knows what he's doing and the war is going along just fine. Mothers of slain soldiers, like Cindy Sheehan, are snapping out of their CD and have zero tolerance for bloodthirsty war-mongers-for-profit.

The CD that life goes on and the good ole US of A is the greatest nation on earth is the luxurious thinking of fools.  When our enemies from within get desperate and when we come to our senses, the eternal war of good and evil between Jacob-Israel and Esau-Edom may escalate to biblical proportions even in our lifetime.  Things may happen like hurricane Katrina or bird flu's and the recent earthquake/tsunami in Japan, which are blamed on nature.  However, a much more nefarious source can be detected.  This is not to say that God is not in control.  Divine omnipotence ordains and condemns the conflict between order and disorder.  "I form the light, and create darkness… I the Lord do all these things" Is. 45:7.

Both self-destruction and self-control are self-imposed and subject to the laws of God. Could it be that weather is incumbent upon our Cognitive Providence?  In other words, our wisdom to discern the blessings and curses of nature through God.  Christian Identity has been preaching II Chronicles 7:14 i.e. how to heal our land, for years… decades!  The non-believer will scoff at such ideas, but no scientist has ever explained how weather works, especially cataclysmic events.  Science does like to play God though and strives to create life in a tes
t tube and also manipulate atmospheric conditions for malevolent motivations with this HAARP technology that they don’t want you to know about.  There's no doubt about it.  Mad men want to control you and the world.  Nothing could be more satanic than mortals at war with Providence.

The ultimate irony is that they suffer from CD more so than those they inculcate it with, because God is not mocked; indeed God mocks science (I Tim. 6:20).  "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God" (Luke 18:27).  If God is not the author of confusion (I Cor. 14:33), then somebody else must be.  That would be those who disregard, disobey and alienate themselves from the life God provides.  Not only that, but God darkens and blinds their understanding as they walk only in the vanity of their own mind (Eph. 4:17-18).  The New World Order boys are a sick-minded and dangerous lot. 

Truth is a mystery that is only revealed to the faithful (I Tim. 3:16).  When people don't love receiving the truth, God sends them strong delusion (II Thes. 2:10-11).  There is your cause of confusion and the effects thereof.  Jesus told the residents of Capernaum that the Day of Judgment for them would be worse than Sodom (Mt. 11:24) and that God would hide divine knowledge from clever intellectuals and give it to simple men (v.25).

Babel means confusion and modern Babylon may build great cities and wax rich, but it's destined for destruction.  There’s a reason they’re pumping the Trump Towers of Babel here lately; ‘the Donald’ is a team player; nobody gets that rich without selling their soul to the devils.  "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, they shall build, but I will throw down" Mal. 1:4.  "Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, and whose deeds are done in a dark place, and they say, "Who sees us?" or "Who knows us?" You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made should say to its maker, "He did not make me"; or what is formed say to him who formed it, "He has no understanding?" Isaiah 29:15-16.  What greater insubordination is there, than to tell God what His business is or should be?  And going about to make it so. This brings us to the verses in the Bible, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.  And the earth was without form, and void.   And darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” Gen. 1:1-2.  Evidently, in prehistoric times our planet suffered tremendous ruin.  We don’t have much in the way of specifics other than the term “without form, and void”, which in Hebrew is ‘tohu va bohu’ and may help us get a better picture of what was going on. 

In Isaiah 34 we have a vivid description depicting the total desolation of Edom as a perpetual monument of God's judgment for all successive generations.  "For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance… from generation to generation it shall lie waste; no one shall pass through it forever and ever" Is. 34:8-10.  The following verse contains the Hebrew phrase tohu va bohu where the only creatures dwelling there are scavenger birds: "And He shall stretch out over it the line of confusion [tohu] and the stones of emptiness [bohu]."  This is a metaphor for the architect's measuring line (horizontal) and plumb bob (vertical).  In other words, total desolation in every direction.

We find these two words again in Jeremiah 4:22-23 dealing with Israel in association with divine judgment.  "For My people are foolish… they have no understanding… to do good they have no knowledge… I beheld the earth, and indeed it was without form [tohu] and void [bohu]."  Here we see a picture of desolation resulting from God's judgment, which references the only other place in Scripture that deals with the tohu va bohu or more succinctly the confusion and emptiness of Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was without form (tohu) and void [bohu]."  "Was" in Hebrew means ‘became’.  Isaiah 45:18 corresponding to Gen. 1:1 i.e. God creating the earth in the beginning, tells us that He didn't create it in vain.  The word rendered "vain" is tohu describing chaos and confusion.  God did not create the earth in a wasted state; nevertheless, it somehow became a waste.  No matter how one explains the cause of this condition, there is a time lapse between the first and second verse of Genesis 1.  The effect of what happened to the earth is not speculation: it became a tohu!

To be fair and balanced, some Bible scholars do not believe that 'without form and void' means laid waste by judgment.  They suggest a mere land mass covered by water being featureless and unformed (tohu) without any inhabitants, unfilled (bohu). However, Jeremiah 4:23-27, which mentions the parallel to Gen. 1:2, informs us that mountains trembled and all the cities were broken down at the presence of the Lord by His fierce anger.  Cities usually imply people; therefore we have the implication of pre-Adamic peoples.  We might also notice trembling mountains as some kind of violent shaking.  This has a poignant association with Paul's exhortation in Hebrews 12:26 speaking of the voice that shook the earth for the removing of those things that are shaken so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.  What's most interesting here is the phrase, "Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven."  The word "shake" is the Greek word seio (#4579 - Strong's) from which we get the word seismology - the study of earthquakes.  Evidently, the 'Yet once more' mirror image of Genesis 1:1-2 (a pre-Adamic world of pristine beauty, becoming corrupted with the catastrophic occurrences of earthquakes, volcanoes, continental shift, floods and upheaval ending in total desolation), has Paul suggesting an encore performance.

The earth became a tohu and water covered it, and it says darkness was upon the face of the deep. This could be the abyss or 'bottomless pit' mentioned elsewhere in Scripture.  The abyss and darkness are foreboding.  Darkness is that which opposes God, Who Himself is Light. Imagine the abyss as a huge symbolic garbage can in which all adversarial elements against God are disposed of.

We Christians believe that if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature and the old ways are defunct.  If there is a new creation, then it is in contradistinction to an old one. The old creation hearkens back to the world that was in Genesis 1:1-2.  "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" II Cor. 4:6.  This is what God was doing with the tohu and bohu in Genesis and it continues to fluctuate to this day.  God took the "formlessness and void" out of the picture and made Paradise for Adam and Eve.  Then we see the Created Order as it ought to be, only to be followed by the Fall of man as the tohu va bohu begins to creep back into the pristine order of God's handiwork.

We can witness the Gospel of Jesus Christ designed to restore the mess made of it all by the Fall.  The Gospel is not about the hyper-individual, but about what God is doing. The Fall began a series of preoccupations with self-interests, rather than being about our Father's business.  The Bible is inspired and different than the millions of other books.  God created eyes and ears and helped to invent writing and reading; not so that man could write millions of books about himself, but so that we would have the faculties to fellowship with our Creator and that comes about by communing with His Word.

The Word has come under attack from the beginning, but a remnant of His people are beginning to see the law and the prophets of ancient times, bringing a message that God is destroying evil, as well as creating good.  The Lord sits as a refiner and purifier of gold and silver and shall purge the dross far from His people.

In Isaiah 41:29, God describes idolaters as, "Worthless; their works are nothing; their molded images are wind and confusion [tohu]."  People get blown away by the idols of their heart. They are out of order and fallen from grace.  The effects of God's judgment can be devastating. Indeed, "The Lord makes the earth empty and makes it waste, distorts its surface and scatters abroad its inhabitants… the city of confusion [tohu] is broken down" (Is. 24:24:1,10).

The value of nature derives from the fact that God created it.  Man's actions have a direct impact upon the natural realm, the balance of living things in nature.  As Christians suffer from the cognitive dissonance (CD) to see nature stewarded and substantially healed, the vacuum has been filled with New Age pantheism, Earth Goddess worship, tree hugging vegetarian eco-terrorists and multinational corporate environmentalism.  When every man did that which was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6, 21:25), they had a trust issue with God even though they were told to "Lean not unto thine own understanding" (Prov. 3:5).  It's the worst kind of CD, because man begins to play God and in so doing, brings the wrath of God upon himself.

Insurance companies call the resulting uninsurable calamites "acts of God".  The wages of sin can cause a category 5 hurricane.  There are two factors that lead to the destruction of our environment: money and time.  Or to put it another way, those who think greed is good coupled with the mismanagement of our waking hours.  An Old English proverb says, "Idleness is the devil's workshop", but conversely, being overly busy with everything except God's agenda, likewise foments adversity and antichrist think tanks.

So much time and energy goes into the war between sin and repentance, that it has generated an industry of bureaucratic power mongers.  They champion humanitarian causes, while mucking about in other people's lives.  They operate as parasites and vampires who are healthy only when others are sick.  Their quotient of satisfaction increases in direct proportion to other people's misery.  The satanic image projected is an appearance of faithfulness, albeit an absence of any problem being solved.  If they really did what they say, they would be out of a job.  Besides, their job is to create chaos out of destruction under the pretense of deliverance from the maelstroms of nature and the axis of evils.

The vast majority of people in the world can see this method of operation, but they just didn't believe that politicians could be so insanely malevolent.  Hence, the tyranny of the mind controllers prospers when CD is the order of the day.  Or should I say disorder? God is not allowed to be a part of the evening news on TV and isn't even given an honorable mention when the red blips are moving on the double Doppler weather forecast.  There is no acknowledgement of reciprocity between the dialectics of God and the dialectics of man.  Every time you hear a so called expert commenting on the trends of extreme weather and calamities, you hear about global warming/cooling or the ozone layer, but nothing about the divine causes of drought or tornados.  "The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm" Nahum 1:3.

Do you think there's a connection between alleged natural disasters getting worse and people not getting a better relationship with God?  "With all thy getting get understanding" Prov. 4:7.   "I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labors of your hands; yet ye turned not to Me, saith the Lord" Haggai 2:17.  Would it be too farfetched for the weatherman to pray 'live - on the air' for a tornado to miss a community?  He might get fired.  "Ask the Lord for rain in the time of the latter rain.  The Lord will make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, grass in the field for everyone" Zech. 10:1.

Might destructive weather be a means to get people's attention?  To turn to God for help?  Could God solve the weather problem?  After a tornado ripped apart his town, a local man interviewed on TV said, "Maybe someone up there isn't happy with us."  "I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city… yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord" Amos 4:7-8.

If we examine the principle of 'rejected Sovereignty', when the Israelites wanted a king like the other nations and in essence saying that God should not reign over them (I Sam. 8:6-7), then by the same token, we should not be surprised that God's weather is also forfeited and substituted with man's weather.  If there's an absence of the Christian ethic in science and technology, you can expect the presence of an ethical tohu (formlessness).

God told our ancestors, "If ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments… then I will give you the rain of your land in its due season" Deut. 11:13-14.  Yes, every time like clockwork. It will be normal predictable weather year after year. Again, Ezekiel tells us prophetically that when we are cleansed of idols and given a new heart and a new spirit, God will move us to keep His law, "And I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you" (Ezek. 36:25-29).  We have a choice between the hardened hearts of Monsanto getting rich on chemically fertilized, genetically altered hybrid corn for our diet or obeying God's way of giving us an undefiled natural diet for health and happiness.

Paradise before the Fall must have had perfect weather and beautiful agricultural conditions.  Notice, however, that two trees (of life and of knowledge of good and evil) were presented as a condition to maintain the utopian state.  Whatever they were literally, takes a backseat to the violation which reconstituted the mechanics of the tohu va bohu.  That forbidden fruit, which is symbolic of the cause of cognitive dissonance (CD), was and still is our own self will over God's will.  Make no mistake about it, those who willingly fail to worship the King, Jesus Christ, "Even upon them shall be no rain" Zech. 14:17.  In principle, this means the world we live in today is wrought with apostasy and even the Christian should prepare their lives to feel the impact of further unseasonable, unpredictable, catastrophic weather, caused by both fallen man and by the Most High.  But, comfort yourself by overcoming the CD, having the wisdom that each day is one day closer to the Day of the Lord and His return.

As for the enemies of God, they cringe at the very thought of reconciliation i.e. "That God may be all in all" (I Cor. 15:28).  Super egos wash themselves in the limelight with dark piety.  As Bush started his tour of Katrina's aftermath, he said, "I'm not looking forward to this trip. It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of secret weapon you can imagine." As if he doesn't have people working for him doing the unimaginable.  Another traitorous president, FDR, said, "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way."

A little known devilish spawn of one-world government is the Club of Rome, which gave birth to the environmental movement.  They designed a fraudulent computer model as "proof" that the scarce resources of the earth could not sustain global development.  Put plainly, they assert that there are more people than there is food to feed them. Therefore, the Club has called for a scientific reduction in 90% of the world's population and incorporate a global form of feudalism whereby private property becomes a thing of the past.  In real terms, it is raw genocide married to an insatiable lust for 'eminent domain' as standard government policy.

Social engineering is an inside job of the power elite to manipulate us commoners. These truly wicked individuals exhibit a total lack of respect for Western Civilization and one would think they have a "covenant with death"; a secret closet full of skull and bones.  Isaiah 28:15 renders the wicked like this, "Who say, we recorded a Treaty with Death, and with hell are in agreement; if the rushing storm should pass, it shall not come upon us; For we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed ourselves with deception." The merchants of war have 'false accusation' down to a refined science.  They puff themselves up while pointing to others.

In 1997, Sec. of Defense, William Cohen revealed, "Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.  So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations."  The Soviet Union discovered and militarized the Tesla scalar wave, which Brezhnev was undoubtedly referencing at the SALT talks in 1975, suggesting the limited development of new weapons "More frightening than the mind of man can imagine."

Well imagine this: the perfect weapon has always been the secret weapon and the US government is keeping a poker face with its stacked deck of cards. If the effects of weather weapons and accountability can be placed at the feet of nature or God, then those victims of untold suffering will never have the opportunity for a redress of grievances.

Our weather has been stolen from us.  For years this atmospheric warfare has been waged on a daily basis worldwide.  Chemtrails are a big part of this game.  The paradigm shift for all weathermen is now trying to forecast the corporate intent of extreme machinations, and not the natural meteorological processes of earth's atmosphere.  We are observing weather events that simply have never occurred before, never!

We currently (2011) have had two new record breaking disasters (following Fukishima).  From April 14-16 there were 241 tornadoes rampaging through 14 states killing 46 with over 1000 people homeless.  This storm system has been declared the worst tornado outbreak in history.  And in Texas, massive wildfires have burned 1.4 million acres and hundreds of homes; evacuating whole communities across the state.  There were horses and wildlife on fire.  It has been declared the worst wildfire season in state history and officials say the blazes may not be contained until June.

The 'Little Ice Age' that only ended 150 years ago and lasted for 5 centuries is no comparison to the statistically improbable series of events during this past decade.  The frequency of hurricanes and earthquakes is the most noticeable.  But what people do and don't notice at the same time is the strange high-altitude lines being scribbled in the sky from military aircraft spraying chemicals.  The freakish trails do not evaporate like natural condescension or con-trails, but rather linger and slowly diffuse over hours, turning the sky into a mutant grease slick producing a rainbow corona.  People would be up in arms if they saw someone pouring buckets of oil into the local water reservoir and yet the air we breathe seems to be fair game.  Their CD does not permit them to see or question the possibility of weather engineering.

Off the west coast of Florida, while Katrina underwent rapid intensification, many odd holes bounded by squares in the eye of the hurricane could be seen from satellite photos.  Even a casual observer can see square and right angle clouds after a good dose of spraying and invisible HAARP zapping.  Maybe it's the occult signature of a square and compass.  Who knows what lurks in the minds of madmen.  All occultists worship nature or aspects of it, rather than the Creator Himself.  They not only worship what is created, but also fulfill the prophecy of Daniel 11:38 and worship “The god of forces.”; thus, the occult worship scientific knowledge.  God is not impressed with pathetic magicians trying to impersonate His omnipotence.

Their favorite expression is, "out of chaos, order" or as one of their minions expressed, "That which we destroy, we create."  But, as we know, chaos is tohu and tohu is a reciprocal judgment from Heaven for being in opposition to God.  Our Lawgiver gives us the law of effects and desolation, blessings and curses.  Any number of disasters has the potential for population reduction and governmental confiscation of land.

Up to a third of the uprights on the Alaskan Pipeline are threatened with a major rupture if the permafrost continues to thaw, which would release 1 billion barrels of oil per day. A landside at Mt. Rainier could send rivers of volcanic mud and ash into populated urban areas of Seattle affecting 2.4 million people.  An eruption at Yellowstone could kill everyone in a 600 mile radius.  A levee failure in the Sacramento Delta would jeopardize the water supply of 22 million people.  The New Madrid fault line in Missouri recorded the most powerful earthquake in US history in 1811, ringing church bells as far away as Boston and is still active.  A volcano on the Canary Island could create a tsunami wiping out the entire eastern seaboard of the US.  God has provided a long list of potential trouble spots around the world.

The point is that any disaster can result in the destabilization of governments.  This is the objective of the satanic orders; to process the herd mentality under their total control; to incubate the plans of the New World Order as the purpose and meaning of life; to generate nations to rise up against nations and bring forth famines and earthquakes.  A bleak future of doom and gloom, which Hollywood movies celebrate: "For men's hearts failing them for fear" (Luke 21:26).  Disasters R us; we have always brought it upon ourselves. 

On a positive note "The son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory" should give every Christian pause for hope and thanksgiving.  "Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he" Prov. 29:18. How much CD do we risk before we cross the threshold of devastation?  We're in a world of conflict to heat, to cool, to feed, to clothe, to house the species and we hesitate between two opinions?  One side has a vision of a fossil fuel economy and someday being a proud shareholder of Halliburton, while the other side has a vision of being God's covenant people and living by every word that proceeds from His mouth.

Christianity has a real answer to the ecological conundrum.  It offers a healthy and balanced spirit to nature, originating from the truth of its creation by God.  It provides the wherewithal to heal our land. If people are content with the status quo and deny something is happening to our skies, then they ain’t seen nothing yet.  God will have to provide more side effects of CD to convince them that their worldview is flawed.  God is not the cause of death and destruction; man brings it upon himself.  "For the wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23.  The blessings and curses have been spelled out.  Let us not waste (tohu) our time and energy from finding the truth of God.  The truth is: Gods desire for man has always been Paradise and eternal life.

We can still make a choice between darkness and light.  F. Scott Fitzgerald put it this way, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.  One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”  We are inundated with opposition to the Word, but we can "Prove all things, hold fast to that which is good" (I Thes. 5:21).  "And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" Romans 12:2.  It doesn't hurt to ask for God's forgiveness and protection against the violent forces of nature and foul weather and then hold up our end of the bargain.  The Christian believer can then see the Word of truth.  We don’t have to be little children any longer if we mature in Christ and not be tossed to and fro and blown away by every wind of doctrine by the trickery and cunning craftiness of those who lie in wait to deceive, because we are a redeemable people and thank God, we have a Kinsman Redeemer.