Fact-Checker’s New Mission: Debunking Reality

I saw something in the news that demonstrates how the truth has gotten lost. The government of Oaxaca, which is apparently part of Mexico, sent a disturbing statue to the United Nations complex, and oddly, it looked exactly like one of the beasts in the book of Revelation. Snopes, a leftist-controlled fact-checking (oxymoronic phrase) website looked into it, applied its staff’s knowledge of Biblical prophecy, and concluded the statue did not, in fact, resemble the beast.

Of course…it does. Why else would I be writing this?

I’ll post a photo of the statue. It’s fair use.

As you can see, it’s a big cat with oversized jaws, wings, and big feet. It’s very tacky. Bad art. Worse than a painting of Elvis hugging Santa Claus on black velvet.

What kind of cat would you say it looks like? A lion? A tiger? A jaguar? The answer is that it could be any of them. The long muzzle makes it look a little like a lion. The long body resembles a lion, tiger, or leopard, but not a jaguar.

It’s supposed to be a winged jaguar. Of course, there is no way to guess that. It’s not shaped like a real jaguar, and the coloration doesn’t help.

Where is a beast like this mentioned in the Bible? You can find it in the Revelation and Daniel.

Here is what the Revelation says, in chapter 13:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

The statue does not have seven heads or ten horns, and the Revelation beast doesn’t have wings. It does have the basic shape of a leopard, however, and its mouth is somewhat like a lion’s.

Strangely, Snopes doesn’t quote the book of Revelation in its bizarre analysis.

Here is an incredible quotation from a Snopes-employed theologist:

This claim is largely based on a biblical passage from the Book of Revelation in which the prophet Daniel speaks of a vision in which he saw “four great beasts.” Daniel says that the first beast “was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle.”

The Snopes crew thinks the Revelation was written by Daniel. Right away, you can see there are problems with their credibility. As most Christians know, the full name of the Revelation in the King James Bible is The Revelation of St. John the Divine. It was written shortly before the end of the first century A.D. (I love typing “A.D.” instead of “C.E.”)

Daniel was born in the 6th century B.C., and his work appears in the Old Testament, which was completed hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. Every New Testament book was written after Jesus’ death, which–I can’t believe I have to point this out–occurred circa 30 A.D.

How can a fact-checker not be aware of these things? How can any educated person not be aware? I’m not a Muslim, but I know Mohammed lived in the 7th century. I know the Book of Mormon was written (twice) in the 1800’s. Every American over the age of 12, regardless of religion, should know basic facts about Western history.

Snopes also calls Daniel a prophet. Christians agree with that, but Jews don’t. It looks like Snopes didn’t check.

Here is what Daniel saw, as recorded in the 7th chapter of DANIEL, not The Revelation of Daniel:

The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.

So what do we have here? A beast which is “like” a lion. Not necessarily a lion. And it has eagle’s wings. In other words, exactly like the statue.

Daniel was not a zoologist, and the creature he saw was not a lion, anyway. It was a manifestation of a powerful evil spirit. It looked “like” a lion, so the UN’s beast fits the description perfectly.

Snopes can be wrong. I hate to shock people. Sometimes fact-checking is really fact-shaping, and Snopes apparently has pretty low standards for staff hires.

I’m going to have to rate this story FALSE.

There is more to this. Daniel’s beast loses its wings. That makes it more similar to John’s beast, which has no wings. Maybe they represent the same spirit. I don’t claim to know.

Daniel didn’t say his beast had seven heads and ten horns, and the UN’s beast doesn’t have these features. Of course, if the wings can come off, as Daniel said they did, maybe some of the heads can come off, too. Or maybe Daniel and John were talking about two different beasts.

Snopes, as the authoritative fact-checker, goes on to prove that John’s beast was not really a beast in the Christian end-time sense. It says, “the beast in the biblical passage (which is referred to as a lion, not a jaguar) is generally thought to represent a kingdom.” Here, Snopes sheds its infallibility with two errors. The Bible says the beast is “like” a lion, as I stated above. It doesn’t say it was a lion. Jaguars are like lions. It also presents one interpretation of the beast’s nature as authoritative, which it is not.

Snopes cites a guy named Safwat Marzouk. He studied and served at liberal universities, and he’s a Huffpo contributor. Liberal theologians generally are not actual theologians. A theologian is a person who studies God. Most liberal theologians are just secular scholars who study religion. It’s not like they go around healing people or prophesying. There are atheist theologians.

Here is part of a blurb about one of Marzouk’s books:

Safwat Marzouk offers a biblical vision for what it means to be an intercultural church, one that fosters just diversity, integrates different cultural articulations of faith and worship, and embodies an alternative to the politics of assimilation and segregation.

People who actually know God don’t write books like this. They tell people how to be saved, how to pray, how to be healed, how to cast out demons, and so on. Marzouk is not the kind of person God anoints to interpret scripture. Scripture can only be illuminated by the Holy Spirit, as seen in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. The guy who wrote the Snopes article doesn’t know that story.

I assume Marzouk isn’t the authority who told Snopes Daniel wrote the Revelation. Even if his understanding of scripture is carnal and wrong, he must have some idea what the Bible says. After all, becoming a Bible expert is easy. You only have to understand one book. I assume Marzouk knows the Bible from cover to cover.

Snopes also says, “this statue was created to depict a ‘guardian of peace and security,’ not an apocalyptic monster.” This shows that the person who wrote this article is completely unfamiliar with Christianity. The Revelation isn’t about monsters. It’s not Jurassic Park. How could the writer take it upon himself to write something so silly without making even a cursory effort to learn about his subject material?

The Revelation isn’t always literal. Often, the figures in the book represent other things. I don’t think humanity will ever see a giant winged cat pop out of the ocean. No Christian expects that. Maybe the spirit the cat represents actually looks like a cat in the spirit realm, and maybe it doesn’t, but the Revelation doesn’t say anything about actual monsters running around causing physical destruction by physical means. The spirits in the Revelation take many forms, but there is no reason to think they will take those forms in the physical world. For example, Jesus appears as a slaughtered lamb in the Revelation. I very much doubt he will appear on Earth as a sheep.

As for the statue representing a guardian of peace and security, again, the writer has no idea what Christians believe. Just like Jesus, we believe all other religions are evil. The fact that a person of another religion offers us something he claims is some of pagan remedy or protection doesn’t mean we believe what he says is correct.

Yoga is Hinduism. People who push yoga say its purpose is to make us healthier and more relaxed. That’s the pagan claim. The Christian view is that Hinduism was inspired by Satan and that Yoga can lead to demonic oppression and damnation. Jews pay rabbis for amulets and charms to help them with various problems. They’re supposed to help. The Christian view is that demons accompany amulets and charms and bring people curses. I could list more examples, but the point is obvious. A statue that resembles an evil spirit mentioned in the Bible, which comes with a benign alternative explanation provided by people who worship vile spirits, is not a surprise to us. We expect things like that, and we don’t give any weight to claims from people we know to be deluded.

Mexicans who worship evil beings may think the statue represents a benevolent spirit, but to Christians, their beliefs are repugnant and false. A world leader will arise, and the Bible calls him the beast. It makes perfect sense that a statue sent by well-meaning pagans would actually honor Satan and give him a stronger foothold in a complex dedicated to one-world government.

The UN will presumably be the beast’s seat, at least at first. It’s no surprise he would be honored with a statue there. It’s appropriate.

If Christianity is correct, every other religion is a path to damnation, and people of other religions serve Satan whether they know it or not. Expecting Christians to accept the judgments of people we consider demon-worshipers is proof of ignorance.

To me, the statue looks like a threat and a warning. It says, “I’m almost here. You have already lost.”

My wife noted that the statue is decorated with a rainbow of colors. Can that be a coincidence? The beast will love sexual perversion. He will tell the world we don’t need a God who tells kind, loving people what they can do in their own bedrooms. This will be one of the beast’s major appeals. The world is crying out for a god who approves of sexual sin. It’s the main reason people hate the real God.

It’s pretty obvious that Snopes made no effort at all to learn about Christianity or the feelings Christians have about the statue. The mission wasn’t to disseminate truth or debunk lies. It was to discredit Christians and portray us as superstitious rubes. The truth doesn’t matter any more. Oddly, leftists, who are more deceived than anyone, think conservatives and Christians are the worst liars and dupes. In fact, the only people who know or care about the truth are Christians.

I’m not saying most Christians know or care about the truth; just that the people who do are Christians.

The Bible is correct. God is real. Jesus Christ is God. The Holy Spirit and his gifts are real. Miracles are real. Prophecy is real. There are too many witnesses to deny any of these things.

This week, my wife told me about a vision she had. A friend of hers has a girlfriend, and the girlfriend has a younger sister. The friend is a heavy-duty charismatic Christian. He made the mistake of letting the girlfriend and her sister move in with him.

My wife dreamed she saw a woman fighting her daughter. The daughter wanted to do destroy someone, and the mother was trying to prevent her. They were striking each other with some kind of supernatural energy. Both went down, but only the daughter got up. She regained her strength, but the mother didn’t.

After this, my wife saw the mother with her two daughters. They were very young. She was dedicating them to Satan. He appeared as a silver snake with the head of a lizard. He accepted both daughters, but he was more interested in the younger one because he wanted to make her powerful.

Next, my wife saw a notebook with someone’s name on it. She saw the middle initial “M.” When the notebook was opened, she saw a purple flower printed inside it.

She called her friend and asked him a couple of things. She wanted to know if anyone in the house owned a notebook like that. He said the younger sister had one just like it. She then asked what the girl’s middle name was. He said it was Mary.

Their mother doesn’t live with them. She is bedridden, like the mother in the vision.

My wife told her friend the girls and their mother practiced witchcraft. So far, he doesn’t believe her.

My wife hadn’t seen the notebook before, and she didn’t know the girl’s middle initial. She didn’t do a cold reading, either. It’s not like she said something like, “Does the letter ‘M’ mean anything to you?”, and the friend said, “It’s my girlfriend’s sister’s middle initial.”

If you don’t know what a cold reading is, you should look it up. A cold reading can make anyone look psychic to gullible people. You ask vague questions. When you get affirmative responses, you ask follow-up questions. When you get a negative answer, you ignore it and ask a different question. When you hit, you pursue it. Most people will only remember your correct guesses. This is not what my wife did. God showed her the notebook and the girl’s middle initial, not to mention her family’s involvement with witchcraft.

The story shows that the supernatural is real. God and Satan are real, and so are the gifts of the Spirit. Universities are full of people who think they know more about Christianity than actual Christians. They think real Christians are like adults who believe in the tooth fairy. It’s unfortunate their pride is taking them to hell. It’s even sadder that other people listen to them while discounting legitimate testimony from millions of reliable witnesses.

You should never listen to “rational” secular sources when it comes to Christianity. Their nutty theories always fall apart, usually because they are concocted by people who are driven by the irrational, emotion-based urge to debunk Christianity. Example: James Cameron once claimed he had found the tomb and ossuary of Jesus, and by that, he meant an ossuary his bones remained in after he died. An inscription said the ossuary was inscribed, “Jesus son of Joseph,” and other ossuaries in the tomb indicated Joseph’s wife was Mary. Worse, there was an ossuary for the son of Jesus. Problem: other ossuaries with the “Jesus son of Joseph” exist, and Jesus can’t be in all of them. Jesus and Joseph were very common Jewish names in the first century, and Mary was even more common.

It’s as though Cameron were looking to prove an American grave belonging to a man named John Smith, son of Jim Smith and Mary Smith, belonged to a particular John Smith, without any other corroborating information.

Non-Christian Bible scholars have a long history of being proven wrong, but Christians have a long history of being fooled by them.

It may be that spirits influenced the Mexicans who made the trashy statue. Maybe the spirits want to get the UN ready for the beast, and the Mexicans have no idea they’re being used. On the other hand, maybe it’s just an ugly statue that has nothing to do with prophecy. One thing is certain: Snopes is wrong. The statue does look like the creature Daniel mentioned.

And Daniel didn’t write the Revelation.

Where can you find real truth when the people who claim to define it publish fake truth? Snopes isn’t alone. Journalists have become extremely unreliable, and other fact-checking organizations get debunked all the time. The world is sinking in a sea of deception. Paradoxically, we are inundated with more information than ever, but important truths are harder to find than they were in the past, and the falsehoods people believe are less plausible and more tightly held.

I’m glad I know the Holy Spirit. I wonder what absurd misconceptions would be dear to me if I didn’t. Maybe I would seriously believe Chaz Bono is a man. I hope I’m not on Earth long enough to get that crazy.