Another Bad Year for Global Warming
October 3rd, 2009Will Our Grandchildren Know What a Hurricane Is?
Dan from Madison is upset that I haven’t mocked the Global Warmers this year. Usually I put up a hurricane frequency chart and then gloat about the utter wimpiness of the season.
Here is the chart:
As you can see, it peaks and centers at September 10. This is October 3, and a rough guess, by eyeballing, says 3/4 of this year’s hurricane probability is gone.
I will try to be a nice person and not gloat, but I think I should remind everyone how certain the Gore groupies were that we were going to die in a wave of killer storms. There was no room for doubt. It was a sure thing. Then we had four weak seasons in a row. This year has been the weakest yet. It’s as if hurricanes are becoming extinct.
If they were wrong about the consequences of global warming, why would they be right about global warming itself? By the convoluted logic of the left, global warming (and chiggers and leprosy and the McKinley assassination) was somehow caused by the election of George Bush, whom they all hated. Anything that tended to discredit Bush got them excited, so global warming had them doing cartwheels. This means their opinions on global warming were so colored by bias that they were essentially worthless. If George Bush had been tied to waffles, naked liberals would have been out in the streets demanding laws banning them, and liberal scientists would have linked waffles to everything from trout infertility to Down Syndrome.
Now that I think about it, back in 2004, one candidate was tied to waffles. But it wasn’t Bush.
Man does all sorts of bad things, but he is not capable of changing the weather. Not yet. God is not ready to hand that power over to us. And judging by the hurricane situation, he seems bent on proving it.
Even if we could increase the temperature by a couple of degrees, we would simply be going back to a state that has existed within the last thousand years, and if my meager knowledge of history serves, it did not destroy all life on the planet. In fact, it extended growing seasons and made winter less miserable.
Often, what a person says depends on what his reward is. This is a good thing to keep in mind when you come across nutty arguments purporting to explain things that otherwise might be considered acts of God. Rational beings have an unlimited capacity to rationalize and deceive, and they often use these tools toward evil ends. The Bible tells us that toward the end of time, we will see earthquakes, famines, perversion, wars, and signs in the heavens. Weather anomalies fall in the last category. Someone is at work, trying to explain them away. And I don’t mean Al Gore.
Last night I found I had a new Robert Morris on the DVR. His show has been featuring a series on the Holy Spirit. Wonderful stuff. This guy seems to be right on the money. Last night he explained that the Pentecost phenomenon the disciples experienced after Christ’s ascension is for every Christian, even now. He dismantled the “it only happened once” argument.
I was a little sad while I watched it. He said something that occurred to me years ago: the first mass baptism of the Holy Spirit was presaged by the confusion of tongues in the story of the Tower of Babel. Jesus has a pattern of undoing bad things that happened in the past, such as the fall of man. In the tower story, man tried to make himself all-powerful by his own efforts, and the rewards were failure and disunity, and the disunity was imposed via linguistic barriers. In the Pentecost story, men submitted to God’s will in their quest for the power to serve, and they were united and empowered successfully, and the evidence was a new common language. The connection is obvious. I knew that a long time ago, but the information was of no use to anyone but me, because I didn’t do anything with it.
Some people claim the gift of tongues is exclusively for corporate worship, and that it is always accompanied by interpretation, but that’s an assumption. The Bible does not say that. Some say the fact that the foreigners who heard the disciples heard their own languages means that the gift of tongues always manifests itself in languages already known, but that, too, is an assumption, and it contradicts the references to “unknown tongues.” Jesus himself referred to the gift of tongues when he told the Samaritan woman at the well about “living water.” The first psalm mentions it, when it prophesies that believers will be like trees planted by rivers of water. The twenty-third psalm refers to the baptism of the Spirit, using oil as a symbol: “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” I think Zechariah referred to tongues prophetically when he wrote about Zerubabbel (“seed of Babel”) having a big role in reforming Judaism. The seven-bowl menorah in the Holy of Holies, fueled by oil (symbolizing the Spirit) is a reference to the baptism of the Spirit.
The scriptures refer to tongues over and over, both explicitly and prophetically. The reason Christians fight it is that the enemy is terrified of the Holy Spirit. After all, the Holy Spirit is what enabled Samson to slaughter a thousand idolaters in one day. It teaches you what the scriptures mean. It frees you from habitual sin. It improves your character. It tells you the enemy’s secrets. The enemy would rather face weak Christians who are not connected to the power supply. Better yet, teach that weakness is righteousness and defeat is success. Teach that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is heresy. So when you are weak and you fail at what you were intended to do, you have the crazy idea that everything is going according to plan. Our successes are supposed to outnumber our defeats, by a huge margin. You may be martyred some day, but you’re not supposed to lose consistently, over the course of your life.
Anyway, a long time ago, a few things were revealed to me, and I was probably intended to go out and spread the news, like Robert Morris, but I left the church and wasted two decades walking in circles. When you don’t do what you’re asked to do, someone else gets to do it. I wonder how much better my life would have been. This guy has a magnificent church. The music team is beyond belief. He has a wonderful mission. I think he’s doing it right.
October 3rd, 2009 at 10:58 AM
If you’re really interested in some of the data that was used to purport global warming and some recent research and documentation regarding it and how that affects the whole GW argument here are a couple of links. The first one really explains what the second one is all about.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/10/global-warming-proven-deliberate-fraud.html
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html
And finally, a mirror posting of the original article which got this started.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/mirror-posting-of-climate-audit-article-on-yamal-a-divergence-problem/
October 3rd, 2009 at 1:18 PM
There you go spitting into the wind again – well, if it were windy……
October 3rd, 2009 at 1:59 PM
No! You FOOL! Don’t you SEE? There were no hurricanes because the whole WORLD is uniformly BOILING and the Government is hiding it from us! Hurricanes aren’t forming because the planet is equally TOO HOT and we’re all secretly dying from the heat!
There’s no such thing as Alzheimer’s! It’s secretly an epidemic of heatstroke!
/sarc
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:40 PM
Richard, you are a hoot!!!
October 4th, 2009 at 1:30 AM
Steve, just to support that you’re on the right track, how’s this for heresy?
Garden of Eden ~ Garden of Gethsamane (sp?)
Same spiritual rankings.
Adam chose not to redeem his bride, Eve.
Jesus persevered, sweated blood, didn’t break faith with his Father, and accepted what he knew was coming.
He paid the price that Adam forfieted, He redeemed His bride; The Church.
Imagine had Adam sweated that blood and had allowed himself to have (unjustly) borne Eve’s punishment and suffering?
Jesus is called “The Last Adam”
Adam could have, but didn’t.
Here’s he scary part. Jesus could have chickened out, just like Adam. After all, he was subject to every pain and temptation of man.
Only the stakes were more that just dominion over the Earth.
I think the poker term would be “all in”.
In the end, the Good News is that we’re not redeemed just to the staus Adam enjoyed in the Garden. Fact is, our redemption is to the level of Adam’s maker, Christ Almighty. He has redeemed us to himself.
Don’t get me wrong, this is no put down of Adam. The torment of Gesthemane occured in Eden, too, and was simply too much for Adam to bear. I rather doubt any of us would have done better.
Kind of puts agonizing over that McMuffin (or for me, that smokin’ plate of fajitas), into perspective, eh?
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
P.S.
For your trucks blind spot to the rear? Curb feelers. White ones, with red tips!
/snark
/begs forgiveness
October 4th, 2009 at 7:58 PM
Jim, you are the only person I’ve heard (other than myself) to suggest that Adam could have redeemed Eve. Cool. Nice comment to a great post.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:10 AM
I read Zechariah on Shabbos/first day of Sukkot. Just happened to also be studying my youngest son’s namesake, Ezra, a contemporary of Zechariah.
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In Jewish tradition, Nechemiah IS Zerubavel. There are many instances of dual-named Biblical people of importance, especially so in exile, e.g. Hadassah=Esther.
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“The scriptures refer to tongues over and over”. The Christian scriptures do. Speaking in tongues isn’t found in the Jewish Bible. Anywhere. There was confusion of tongues due to the introduction of multiple languages in the story of the Tower of Babel. A mispronounced blessing that isn’t immediately corrected requires a sin offering — a substantial religious disincentive for altering the service or “freestyling” in any manner. Aaron’s sons were executed by God for altering he Divine service. Doing anything unusual without a direct command from God through Moses or one of the recognized prophets was bad news.
October 5th, 2009 at 8:41 AM
To a Christian, Old Testament references to tongues are pervasive and obvious. You are talking about pshat. I’m talking about metaphors; things that were encoded by God so that they would only be understood at the proper time, by certain people.
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When you say the references don’t exist, at the most basic level, you are denying the validity of Christianity and commencing an argument over whether Judaism or Christianity is correct. As I have said before, I would prefer that commenters not do this, because it’s a waste of time and leads to bitter feelings.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:52 PM
Please give me a passage (or many, if they’re “pervasive”) from the OT that suggests a metaphor (or many) about speaking in tongues. I tried Googling for references to speaking in tongues on the OT and couldn’t find any.
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I don’t have a problem with Christians speaking in tongues, but when it’s attributed to the OT (as when saying “scriptures” as opposed to “Christian scriptures” or even “post-OT scriptures”), it’s not unreasonable to ask for specific examples without being accused of trying to topple Christianity.
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That something could be Christian and have no OT source doesn’t invalidate Christianity. Scripture may be seen as chronological, as well, with subsequent covenants having differing (but not contradictory to precedent) rule sets: Noachide, Abrahmic, Isaac, Jacob, Twelve Tribes, Mosaic, Aaronic, Judges, Prophets, Davidic, Solomonic…
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All I wanted to assert was that MY scriptures (those canonized pre-3760 in the recognized Biblical calendar system) have no references to speaking in tongues. Even the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_in_Tongues makes no reference to a hint of the practice being anywhere in the OT.
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If highlighting a difference between OT scripture and Christianity is an attack, it is difficult to reconcile claims of not being dogmatically supercessionist.
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It doesn’t cost me anything to admit that scripture is clear that Abraham’s father worshipped idols (Joshua 24:2 “even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods.”) yet subsequently Abraham rejected his father’s practices as he became the first monotheist.
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Accepting that speaking in tongues is entirely post-OT shouldn’t be bothersome.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:58 PM
I provided several references in this blog post. I don’t claim they refer to people speaking or praying in tongues before Jesus arrived. I don’t think that happened.They hint at it happening in the then-future. Such a reference would mean one thing to a Jew living in David’s time (or now) and something else to an early Christian.
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Christians believe many things that happened in the Old Testament foreshadowed and validated things that happened after Jesus showed up.
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Christians in mainstream churches are less likely to believe this stuff. But then they are our Reform Jews.