Video: Were the Pyramids Built Before the Flood?

Please! Watch this video first...



... and read what I wrote about it here, before you watch this next video and come to a conclusion on it.

Also, I don't like the 7:35-8:40 segment of the video below. I think it is a distraction from his otherwise tight logic.



Be sure to keep watching after the credits.

Related Posts:
Video: The Genealogy of Jesus Christ (According to Eusebius)
Video: The Curse of Jeconiah

Sunday night, May 19

A sister's father-in-law passed away last week, and six of the brethren in Hualian came down to see the family, and stay the night with us afterward.

Jared and Tracy, and my mom next to her, Brother and Sister Wang (Mei-zhu we call her, but she's not in the picture), and her sister, Sister Mei-Luan, and Sister Liu Ah Yi (Auntie Liu we call her.)

There's Sister Mei-zhu, Brother Wang's wife. Liu Ah Yi is cooking spaghetti for breakfast and Mei-zhu did the sauce.

Brother and Sister Qiu dropped in to see everyone. Once again I take a photo of everybody just as they've got that first bite of food in the mouth. My relatives can commiserate.

Glad to know the gospel meeting flyers I passed out a few months ago had SOME effect!

I was getting ready to leave the market, fishing out the key to my scooter, when a man walked by and said, "YOU'RE far from home!” We got talking about my scooter and scooter prices in general and how long I'd been in Taiwan and how my dad was a preacher and I was embarrassed thinking I ought to know him, and told him I was so sorry, but who was he? and he said, “You passed out a flyer.” He still had our number and address. I said, “Well, drop in and check out our services sometime!” It turns out he goes to the Lin Yang Tang denomination. I told him we try to do only what's in the Bible. Found out he'd been immersed. I told him that was very good. But we didn't have time to talk more.

86 year-old lady at the secondhand store

One thing I like about Taiwan is all the older people out and about and doing things. So many times I wish I had my smartphone camera mounted on my scooter so I could tap the screen at things I see in front of me.

On market street this morning, this 86-year old lady arrived at the secondhand clothing store with her walker/chair and pink clip-on fan. She most likely walked from wherever her house is.

The chair has nice roller wheels and handlebar brakes, with storage under the seat. The lady added a pink battery-operated clip-on fan, and her umbrella is hanging from one handlebar.

Any suggestions as to what I should tag posts about Taiwan's awesome oldsters? Please let me know in the comments.

What happened on Monday


My brother Jared helps teach Bible in Mandarin Chinese

Jared helping to teach Bible in Taiwanese

Jared and Brother Wang baptizing one of the gentlemen.

Folding up the baptistry.

Lunch on Sunday with three generations of the Qiu family :)

Did he ask me if I wanted another 4,425 satellites blocking my sunshine?

Please, the smog is bad enough in Kaohsiung.

Elon Musk posts photo of rocket stacked with 60 satellites that will launch tomorrow in SpaceX bid to beam high-speed internet to the world

The company recently filed plans with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch 4,425 satellites into orbit above the Earth - three times as many that are currently in operation.

And what about the rare people who have intense nerve pain anywhere there is good cellphone reception? Will there be no more pockets of dead space for them to move to?

“Musk compared the project to 'rebuilding the internet in space', as it would reduce reliance on the existing network of undersea fibre-optic cables which criss-cross the planet.”

It wasn't blocking the sun down there.

Now it's only one more step to using satellites to block the sun on purpose:

Scientists will copy effects of a huge volcano eruption to fight global warming in £2.3m study

“As part of a £2.3million ($3million) experiment partly-funded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates, a team from Harvard University will spray tiny chalk particles into the atmosphere 12 miles above the Earth to reflect some of the Sun’s rays back into space.”

That was saved under my "there-it-is" tag. Fans of the “Searching for Bobby Fischer” movie will understand.

And now this just yesterday:

Cambridge scientists are building a new research centre to develop radical ways to ‘save the Earth’

“Among such schemes being considered are the spraying of salt into clouds in order to make them reflect more warming sunlight back into space.”

Remember the 5-year Agricultural Plans when the government (I forget which one) thought central planning could feed everybody and they all starved?

Have you seen the movie Idiocracy?

Video: “How Long Were the Israelites in Egypt?”

Some videos make such an impression you remember them often through the years.

Nathan Hoffman has done four videos I think are brilliant, two of which cleared up Bible mysteries for me.

For instance, a few years ago I asked a visiting preacher how Moses' mother could be Levi's daughter Jochebed if the Israelites were in Egypt for 400 years. I forget how I got this number but wouldn't she have to have been at least 250 years old before she bore Moses? And they weren't living that long at that point. Jochebed's great-great-grandfather Abraham died at 175 and it was already a big deal for him to have Isaac at 100. Her uncle Joseph died at 110.

I remember the preacher was in a hurry and simply said that it might have been a different Jochebed, which was not Biblically possible because the Bible says exactly whose aunt she is, which makes her Levi's daughter (see Exodus 6).

To try and fudge that is like saying it wasn't literal 24-hour days in Genesis but millions of years, when the Bible takes the trouble to specifically define each day of the creation week as one evening and one morning.

Nathan Hoffman did a video “How Long Were the Israelites in Egypt?” that has a very Biblically satisfying explanation as to how Moses' mother was definitely Levi's daughter Jochebed. As he demonstrates, there's no getting around the math of the ages of Moses' father, grandfather, and great-grandfather which the Bible took a lot of trouble to put clearly on record as well.

And please remember, the Bible missing a phrase in certain copies and not other copies is normal and not an issue of accuracy and reliability.

Just because SOME of the copies of the old Bible manuscripts are missing the last few verses of Mark doesn't mean the Bible isn't reliable, it just means they used scrolls back then and the ends often frayed off.

And when some of the copies have a whole Bible passage missing between two identical words, it just means that sometimes when the copyist turned his head to dip his quill in the ink pot and then turned back to resume copying, he resumed at the wrong same word a few lines further down.

Does It Matter What the Other Hand Is Doing?

Chemical Torture Karen Kwiatkowski on what the US-UK are doing to Julian Assange.

If this is true, then why do people still sign up for the military?

I always assumed that if a German christian soldier had found out about the concentration camps back in the 1940's, the proper thing to do would be to resign from the military, go awol, emigrate, flee the country, do whatever you had to do, to not be part of an apparatus that was committing atrocities.

Questions about the morality of serving in the military aside, it's like, government, as long as you're being open, transparent and aboveboard, I'll participate, but any time you venture into corruption and atrocities, expect a loss of propping up.

We'll even keep paying taxes since the Bible said to, but it didn't say we had to be the arms and legs of corruption. If Walmart was doing it, I wouldn't say, well I'm not working in the torture department of this corporation, I'm just a lowly cashier.

If you had the means, it's not even a mortal sin to change one's nationality. It certainly isn't advocating revolution and bloodshed (so easily co-opted) to fix problems.

I'd like to ask good people in the military, if you had a very comfortable lifestyle as an electrician or a plumber, if money to feed your family was not an issue, would you still on principle leave your job to serve in the military? Would you feel like, this is where God wants me to be to do the most good?

This is where I feel homeschooling didn't go far enough. 40 years ago, having a good foundation in the basics, reading, writing and arithmetic, seemed to put you ahead of what was coming out of the public schools, but it's not enough to stay afloat with homeless under bridges and the economy bubbled and popped at every turn to put people on the military plantation. Now your children need to learn to be electricians and plumbers, and makers of "tiny houses" (the Apostle Paul was a tentmaker too!), on the side, to have more choices in choosing an ethical career that doesn't conflict with Biblical duties.

One person told me that in Acts 10, there is no record of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, leaving the military when he became a Christian. Is that a sign that God would want a German christian young man to sign up for the military in the 1940's (assuming he somehow knew about concentration camps at that time)? Setting aside the question of leaving, surely Cornelius's example is not commanding us to sign up if we're not yet in.

God commanded us to pay taxes, I'm assuming he nowhere commanded us to either join or leave the military.

Who would work for Walmart if it had the same exit policies as the military?

You can resign from Walmart without threat of prison if its policies conflict with morality.

If you resign from entities like the military and the mafia, on the other hand, you almost have to go awol or be prepared for persecution.

Hmm, I wonder which scenario God and common sense would have me pursue.

Sermon 2019.05.05

Here is a rough idea of what my dad taught this Sunday for those who are curious. I liked it.

He was speaking in Chinese, so this was me jotting English furiously on the fly. Started seven minutes into the sermon and sometimes I couldn't keep up, so missing verses and sentences here and there, not just where I managed to scribble the word “missing”. Totally my own interpretation of what he was saying, so any mistakes are mine:

***

If your friends are rejecting God's word, they're not your friends.

Hypocrites praise God, with their hearts far from him. This is often the case with religious leaders. The Pharisees arranged the cross.

Abide in his word, then you'll know the truth. John 17:17 Thy word is truth. Reject the Word, reject truth.

If you are teaching that which contradicts the truth then you're teaching false doctrine. Some people think can they can update Christianity's ceremonies because “It's only a ceremony.”

God is not picky, to label him that would be an insult, but he is not lax or slack. The Old Testament is intricate, every detail fraught with meaning.

The strange fire was closer, but God said treat me as holy. If change an iota, then you're not setting something apart as holy. Like saying, "I can improve on the ship's captain's instructions."

Romans 3:4 - Let God be found true though every man be found a liar. God is right even if the entire world says something different. Naturally not everyone disagrees with God. But when you consider all the false religions and all the false Christianity out there, they make up a majority disagreeing with God.

... [missed]...

Even if an angel tells you something different, don't go with him to hell.

John 17:17 1. The word is truth. 2. It sanctifies us.

Reject the word, and you are rejecting sanctification. We are his special sanctified ones.

Glad he gave us the New Testament, not commands in list-form, but examples of real christians and their problems.

You and I also have problems. But can't say, “Well we all have problems, so we're all going to heaven.”

If we had to completely understand the Bible then nobody would be going to heaven. A genius can study the Bible for a lifetime, and still not know everything, but everybody can understand enough to start obeying.

“This part is not important.” What part of God's Word is not important? When he speaks he doesn't waste a word. I often waste words, God no.

Romans 1:2 - My brethren perish for lack of knowledge. [“Lack of education ... Bam! Elimination.” - "The Fox and the Hound" cartoon song, sorry couldn't resist.]

God can be patient with a lack of knowledge but not if we outright reject him saying, “If I accept that, it means my mom is in hell, so I can't accept that.” We reject him when we say our friends are more important, our life is more important.

Really the permanent is more important. We must be faithful unto death because the spiritual is more important than the temporal.

... [missed] ...

If we rely on God's word we can stand in the day of judgment.

Sometimes people are wrong because they don't understand. Diligently study to get God's approval.

Some don't know because they don't care, that's why they don't come to church, that's why they don't study at home. But God says if we are willing to know we will know.

Every age in the Bible had its preachers who were not starting new denominations but taking people back to the original Word... Ezra, Nehemiah ... One phrase repeated over and over, “As it is written.. ” They restored everything to “as it is written.” They discovered 100-year lapses.

But most people don't care and don't study. Or they study and they don't like it, and think they can change it to be more entertaining. God's way is too simple. It needs guitars.

But God has his purpose, Matthew 15 and 17, Deuteronomy 4 and 12. Don't add, subtract, change.

So study and learn and God will have patience. Nobody has complete knowledge but there is an ignorance that will send you to hell.

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! (Galatians 1:6-9)

Even if an angel... Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon religion, said an angel gave it to him. He made many propheies that didn't come true. The Bible says if a prophet prophesied and it didn't come true, you needn't fear that prophet. He even got the death penalty in the Old Testament. Told a Mormon that once and it just went in one ear and out the other. That is why people will be in hell.

I'm not the judge. Maybe God will make exceptions because he knows extenuating circumstances, maybe he knows the person couldn't understand. But God did tell me who I can fellowship. We are to love our enemies but we can't call them brethren.

“Let's have a council to decide how to make worship more interesting. Let's have a council to decide how to baptize, by pouring, sprinkling or immersing. What do you mean, 'We need to go to the Bible', that implies if I don't get in the water I'm going to hell and I don't like that.”

We sing that song, “Jesus, Jesus, I rely on Jesus,” [Chinese version]... not if you're relying on your feelings. You only care what you like, not what God likes.

Faith means: I trust that God is right, and I trust that his standard is right.

How does he guide us? By a voice in the ear? Or a feeling? How do you know if it's from God or Satan?

If it's contrary to God's Word, even if an angel directly tells you anything different, or a vision, contrary to what you have already received, don't accept it, rely on Jesus, but what did he give us to rely on? His objective Word.

“He guides me by feeling,” is subjective. His objective word guides us.

How do we know truth, objective and confirmed? By the miracles. That's why we can rely on his Word.

1. No contradictions with past revelation. 2. Must have miracles confirming it. 3. The miracles don't have to be repeated. 4. Witnesses to the miracles is enough.

Next week we will look at the attitude of unbelief and the verses that address that directly.

Truth has no contradictions. No wonder smart people reject Christianity when they see all the contradictions being taught in “Christendom”.

Jesus prayed that we would all be one, so that the world could believe. His prayer was answered. We are all to believe as one. All true Christians do believe as one even though we have no headquarters. Look at those meeting in Singapore and Taichung and Hualien, all one, but it is the truth making us one.

1 Corinthians 10:13 - No temptation has overtaken us but what we can bear. He restricts every temptation from exceeding your strength. If Satan had free reign the church would not exist. So don't give up. Some people smarter than me wonder why I can't see certain things. But like Paul, I may not have arrived, but I press on.

Breaking Covenant With God

When you became a Christian you made a covenant with God. If he doesn't exist, then obviously neither does your covenant with him.

But if you only have a guess as to whether he exists or not, if you only have some interesting theories as to how he doesn't exist, is that enough evidence to break your covenant with him? Would you break covenant with a real person on that much evidence? Or would that person be justified in calling you a faithless man with no word of honor?

Here is someone that if he exists, you are breaking covenant with. If you find out in the end that he exists, are you going to be able to look him in the face with your reasons for why you thought he didn't exist?

The rest of my photos from April 2019

This little fellow was so cute. No matter what direction I tried to shoot him from, he always carefully turned his body to keep those antennae between us.

A Baptism in Hualian

My brother Jared and his wife Tracy live in Hualian and love working with Preacher Wang and his wife and the church in the nursing homes there.

我弟弟和他的老婆住在花蓮，很喜歡跟王弟兄王姐妹及教友，一直去老人之家幫忙。

On Monday, my brother immersed someone into Christ.
星期一，我的弟弟幫一個人受浸歸入基督了


Further teaching afterward.
此後的更多教導

Sister Wang (pronounced Wong), the preacher's wife, wrote:

The new brother, Huang Tian Jin*, had been living in the nursing home for a few days. He attended our assembly a few times, and today at 7 AM Brother Jared taught him about the plan of salvation. He understood and was willing to be immersed, so Brother Jared immersed him. Thank the Lord we could have a part in this work of service. God bless.

傳道人的太太，王姐妹，寫：

新的弟兄名叫黃天金 剛住進老人之家養護科幾天。來參加聚會幾次 今天早上七點白傑瑞弟兄專程教導他得救的方法 他明白也願意接受耶穌當救主 白傑瑞弟兄幫他受浸了。感謝神 我們能參與這事奉工作 願神祝福

Brother and Sister Wang on the left. My brother and his wife on the right. The new brother in the middle.傳道人和他的老婆在左邊，我弟弟和弟媳在右邊，新弟兄在中間。

Brother and Sister Wang
王弟兄姐妹

Brother Wang and his wife have a real heart for the elderly in nursing homes. Almost every day of the week, unless some thing comes up, they are at the nursing home around 6 in the morning, helping to spoonfeed those who need it, and Sister Wang helps blowdry the residents' hair after showers. Sometimes they are able to have additional Bible studies, while on Thursday mornings they have a set Bible class with the residents.

王弟兄合他老婆很關心老人。幾乎每天早上約6點去老人之家幫忙餵飯或吹頭髮，有機會就幫人查經；星期四早上有固定的查經課。

Brother Wang preaches 3 times on Sundays, and for years it used to be 4 times until two nursing homes were merged this year:

星期天的時候王弟兄都準備三個課程講道（已經好幾年來要那天講道四次，不過今年有兩個養老院合併了）。

* The 7 AM worship service at the nursing home. (They have to get there at 6 AM and wheel about 40 people in their wheelchairs from their various rooms on various floors. The preacher and his wife and the preacher's tireless brother and his wife and son and daughter, and my brother and his wife, and sometimes other members would also be available to help with this.)
7 AM 老人家的敬拜 (還要提早6：00到接每一個要參加的老人，約40位左右，從各樓各房間推輪椅到聚會場。王弟兄姐妹，王弟兄的不倦的弟弟合他的老婆合兒子女兒，我的弟弟合弟媳，而有的時候其他，都幫忙。）

* The 9:00 AM Bible class lesson at the church building.
教堂的9：00的查經課

* The 10:00 AM worship service at the church building.
教堂的 10:00 敬拜的課

（And there used to be an afternoon 3:00 worship service at another nursing home which ended this year when two nursing homes merged.）
（有兩個養老院合併，所以3點的敬拜就沒有。）

These are all the people who attended the 7 AM nursing home worship service this last Sunday, about 40 of them in wheelchairs who were wheeled to the meeting place. About half of them are brethren; good down-to-earth Taiwanese people about to pass into eternity who have been reconciled to God.
上個星期天 7：00 老人之家的敬拜，約有40位做輪椅的，都要被推到敬拜場。一半是弟兄，跟神和好的台灣人。

The Hualian church has a 3-day summer camp each year. One of those days is spent in the nursing home for Bible lessons and activities with the elderly. Adults and children are both welcome. If you are interested contact Brother Wang at 0919923720.

花蓮教會每年辦三天的夏令營。其中一天我們一直在老人之家，有聖經課，還有機會跟老人互動。大人小孩都歡迎。有興趣的話通知王弟兄 0919923720

*The Chinese name Huang Tien Jin is the surname Yellow with the given name Heavenly Gold.