Boasters' shams are the worst shams

 Boasters are naturally falsifiers, and the people, of all others that put their shams the worst together.

 

-- Roger L'Estrange 

Love first invented verse

 

 

 Love first invented verse, and form'd the rhime,

The motion measur'd, harmoniz'd the chime.

 

-- John Dryden 

Some blockheads were deliberately made

 

Archaeologists Find Cube-Shaped Human Skull in Mexico...

Trump is the greatest . . . murderer

 

 

Like some rich or mighty murderer,

Too great for prison, which he breaks with gold,

Who fresher for new mischiefs does appear,

And dares the world to tax him with the old.

 

-- John Dryden 

The Two Jars of Zeus

 

 

Two jars are set upon the floor of Zeus –
from one, he gives good things, the other, bad.
When thundering Zeus gives somebody a mixture,
their life is sometimes bad and sometimes good.

Achilles to Priam, Iliad XXIV 525f.

Thomas Paine: Isaiah did not predict the virgin birth of Jesus

 ... Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. 14), has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary, and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years. ...

Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story is simply this:

The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies towards Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2), Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign. This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason that he would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says, ver. 14, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;” and the 16th verse says, “And before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning Syria and the kingdom of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings.” Here then was the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise; namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good.

Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps Isaiah knew of one beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any more to be trusted than the priests of this: be that, however, as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, “And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare a son.”

Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as God is true.

But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii; and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons and daughters carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. ...

-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason 

 

Thomas Paine doubted the historicity of The Slaughter of the Innocents because John the Baptist survived it without fleeing to escape it

 

 ... This writer [Matthew] tell us, that Jesus escaped this slaughter, because Joseph and Mary were warned by an angel to flee with him into Egypt; but he forgot to make provision for John [the Baptist], who was then under two years of age. John, however, who staid behind, fared as well as Jesus, who fled; and therefore the story circumstantially belies itself. ...

-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason 

By this standard Jesus was a false prophet because the world didn't end, but so was Moses because no prophet like himself arose to lead Israel

 

 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

--  Deuteronomy 18:22

Imagine borrowing $200,000 to become an LCMS pastor lol

 Whatever happened to Romans 13:8? And have you ever listened to some of those numbskulls who come out of the seminaries? They take "This is my body" quite literally, but not this:

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 

Becoming a pastor was a lot easier in Jesus' day.

All you had to do was sell everything, give it to the poor, and follow.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

-- Luke 14:33

The most expensive non-Catholic seminary educations in the country in 2022 were, drumroll please, in the church of my ancestors, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

  

 

The blood curse in Matthew indicates Jesus' Jewish opponents didn't get the Ezekiel memo, either

 

Nothing could be more Jewish than the blood curse, except maybe Judaism arguing with itself about it.

When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.

-- Matthew 27:24f.

The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. 

-- Ezekiel 18:20

Jesus certainly didn't get the memo:

... the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechari'ah ... shall be required of this generation.

-- Luke 11:51

The Torah was divided on the subject:

The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin. 

-- Deuteronomy 24:16

Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

-- Deuteronomy 5:9

Beauty's bloodless conquest

 War brings ruin where it should amend;

But beauty, with a bloodless conquest, finds

A welcome sov'reignty in rudest minds.

 

-- Edmund Waller 

How do you cleanse the land of the blood of the innocent Jesus when it is God himself who defiled it?

 

So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.

-- Numbers 35:33

 

New Testament "theology" is pretty clear that it is the Jewish god who is ultimately responsible for shedding Jesus' blood:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son ...

-- John 3:16

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all ...

-- Romans 8:32 

God sent his Son to be our sin offering ...

-- I John 4:10

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

-- Romans 5:8. 

The penalty for Jesus' murder is death according to the Law of Moses, but who could possibly kill God, the murderer, except God himself?

 

The Christian atheist Thomas J. J. Altizer, who died in 2018 at the age of 91, wrote in 1966 that the transcendent God of the Bible had truly died when he immanentized himself and entered human history through the Incarnation and was crucified. As a leading representative of The God Is Dead movement, the highly animated Altizer instantly became a pariah in America, which at the time literally wanted to kill him over it, as his obituary remembered:

 He even went on the “Merv Griffin Show,” a popular television talk program, though the event, held before a live audience in a Broadway theater, was a debacle. He was given two minutes to speak. “The response was a violent one,” he wrote later, “forcing the director to close the curtains and order the band to play forcefully, and after this event a crowd greeted me at the stage door, demanding my death.”

But logically one should really go a step farther than Altizer and say that the Jewish god actually committed suicide according to this God Is Dead "theology" because God did all this on purpose.

After all, Jesus allowed himself to be crucified according to the wide evidence of the gospels and the New Testament, which insists that Jesus went to the slaughter like a sheep and opened not his mouth (Acts 8:32). This is exactly what one should have expected of a truly Divine Man bent on death.

This problem again illustrates the limits of "theology", Aquinas' queen of the sciences.

Her rational talk about God goes only so far, which Tertullian recognized when he said that the resurrection is certain because it is impossible (certum est, quia impossibile).

There are more things than the resurrection which are impossible.

 

 

Wretched are the doomsayers, for they are ever frustrated

 The most wretched sort of people are dreamers upon events and putters of cases.

-- Roger L'Estrange

God hates bells and smells

 

The daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet.                 

-- Isaiah 3:16 

Incense is an abomination unto me.

-- Isaiah 1:13

Vatican rules that appearances of Jesus in Normandy in the 1970s were not genuine in part because his predictions of the end of the world by the year 2000 didn't pan out lol

 

Vatican Finally Shuts Down French Town’s Decades-Long Jesus Claim

 ... The instruction also noted that the reported appearance of Jesus had said the world would end before the year 2000. “Clearly, this purported prophecy was not fulfilled,” it said.

Um . . . 

I am coming soon.

-- Revelation 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20 

This puff piece in Crisis Magazine about the Catholic Steve Bannon never mentions that Bannon is an ex-con who advocates Trump 2028, which is unconstitutional

The Catholic Case for Steve Bannon’s America

John Mac Ghlionn, Crisis 

 

... his sentiments spring from conviction, not contempt ...  

 

I mean, holy cow, he was convicted of contempt.

 

Steve Bannon loses his appeal of his contempt of Congress conviction

 

Steve Bannon fuels latest talk of third Trump term

 

When the gales of November come early

 

Does anyone know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours? 

Well, Mr. Pope, sir, the ladies aren't going to shut up about that Mary co-redeemer of the world stuff lol

 

Mary Helped Jesus Save the World

Monica Miller, Crisis 

 

Monica Miller must have had this essay in her desk drawer ready to go, just waiting for this moment to arrive. She begins right out of the gate reminding the pope, an Augustinian, that none other than St. Augustine had said

Two parents have generated us for death; two parents have generated us for life. 

The observation is as true as the comparison is false. Adam and Eve were husband and wife. Mary and the Holy Ghost were not.

Yes, St. Augustine's mother was also named Monica.

Later in her essay our Monica reminds the pope that Mary instigated her son's mission at the Wedding at Cana, dontchaknow.

She is the New Eve, the true and effective helpmate of the New Adam. 

Apart from how this is creepy connubial Christ talk, our Monica apparently sees herself in a similar light, trying to move her son the pope along in the right direction.

But kinda more like the old Eve than St. Monica, to be perfectly frank, our Monica finds her "hath God said" opening:

The [pope's] Note doesn’t say that the Co-redemptrix title for Mary is heretical but, rather, “inappropriate” and is discouraging its use for the reasons indicated. It is important to note that the document certainly acknowledges that Mary is “the first and foremost collaborator in the work of Redemption and grace.”

Doesn't say?

This is absolutely comic.

But wait! There's more:

My purpose here is to clarify and highlight that while, thus far, the Vatican has rejected the Marian title “Co-redemptrix,” nonetheless, Mary was and is God’s chief co-worker in the salvific mission of her Son.       

Thus far?

Monica is nothing if not hopeful about the future for Mary, Co-Redemptrix. And subversive:

And while the Church, for now, will not honor Mary formally under the title of Co-redemptrix, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the faithful cannot, in our private devotions, honor her in this way. 

For now?

You see what I mean. 

But our Monica rightly has every reason to be hopeful, because she understands the logic of her position, a logic which was born when the early followers of Jesus decided that their crucified master wasn't dead but was a resurrected god.

Once you introduce that first novelty, however, you have to explain where this god came from, hence the virgin birth idea, which is totally absent from Mark's Gospel, and under attack in John's. From there the novelties just multiplied.

It took a long time for that logic to do its work to elevate Jesus' mother, although our Monica highlights it already acting upon the imaginations of early Christian luminaries like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, and others.

We did not get, formally, the Immaculate Conception of Mary until 1854, and the Assumption of Mary until 1950. These are modern age developments! Papal infallibility dates to 1870, Daily Reception of Holy Communion to 1905.

Mary The Co-Redeemer in 2052 anyone?

The Reformation tried, not entirely successfully, to rescue the church from this line of thinking through its rediscovery of Paul, whose thinking was nowhere Marian but Christ-centered.

The first Adam, completely counter trend, was the only man not born of woman until the last Adam. Of course Paul was not thinking this through when he said that Jesus was "born of a woman" in Galatians 4:4.

Well how did Jesus escape original sin then?

We are not told, only that as Paul's theology developed Paul plainly said that Jesus "knew no sin" (II Corinthians 5:21), and was made of different stuff:

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

-- Romans 5:14

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. ...

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. ...

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

-- I Corinthians 15: 22, 45, 47.

The answer of Matthew 1:18, 20 and Luke 1:35 is that that different stuff was "of the Holy Ghost". And that pretty much explains how the fourth and fifth centuries came to be spent, not on Marian concerns, but Christological.

The Marianists major in the minors. 

Pope Leo attempts to put an end to all that Mary "co-redeemer" jibber jabber

 

 Jesus, not Virgin Mary, saved the world, Vatican says

... In a new decree approved by Pope Leo, the Vatican's top doctrinal office instructed the world's 1.4 billion Catholics not to refer to Mary as the "co-redeemer" of the world.

Jesus alone saved the world, said the new instruction, settling an internal debate that had befuddled senior Church figures for decades, and even sparked rare open disagreement among recent popes.

"It would not be appropriate to use the title 'co-redemptrix'," said the text. "This title ... (can) create confusion and an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith." ...

Those, His brethren, all died, the coup de grâce for the parousia

 

Firm grasp of the obvious

 

MI Church Shooting, Fire was Motivated By Anti-Religious Beliefs

NBC News

Because he's insane?

 

Why is Peter Thiel Talking So Much About the Antichrist?

Valerie Hudson, Deseret

The Gospel According to St. James Johann David Donald Bowman Hamel Gambolputty Vance 6:31

 Do unto others, good and hard, before they do unto you.

The heart of man looks fair . . .

 The heart of man looks fair, but when we come to lay any weight upon't, the ground is false under us.

 

-- Roger L'Estrange 

Birthed by Henry VIII's sexual sins, the Anglican Communion splits over its latest ones

 

The seeds of Anglicanism's destruction were sown in its own beginning, but no one ever talks about that anymore. A not little original leaven has nearly leavened the whole lump.

The Anglican Communion Is Coming Apart

Not even two weeks after the Church of England unveiled Sarah Mullally as the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, a network of conservative Anglicans has exploded what fragile harmony or consensus existed.

... “We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority,” [Archbishop of Rwanda Laurent] Mbanda wrote.

... Nobody expected Gafcon to approve of the choice of Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. The former senior nurse turned bishop previously led the project to introduce gay blessings and also represents the first woman to ascend to the throne of Saint Augustine in Canterbury Cathedral, an issue for certain Gafcon provinces that do not ordain women as priests or bishops.

... Mbanda said the Global Anglican Communion was closer to a rebrand than a new organization and that it was the revisionist Anglicans in the UK and North America who were the true schismatics. 

... Felix Orji, a Nigerian bishop who leads an ACNA diocese in Texas, said some provinces which have had a foot in both camps will have “an intense battle over this issue.”

... “We’ve been pleading for repentance, for rapprochement, and now you have a woman, and this woman is in favor of everything we’re against,” the ACNA bishop said. “And so there is no hope. If the Church of England had chosen a male who is evangelical, I don’t think that this decision would have been made.” 

... “It is important that the primacy of England should not take precedence over the primacy of Scripture,” he said. “We cannot allow our affection for England to trump affection for Christ and his Word.” 

OMG The Week says Peter Thiel is a devout Christian ...

 He is most certainly not a Christian, devout or otherwise.

... neither adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind ...  shall inherit the kingdom of God.

-- I Corinthians 6:9f. 

And why did Thiel's boyfriend, with whom he was cheating on his so-called spouse, die just like all the people die who cross Vladimir Putin? On which see below. 

Meanwhile The Week here adds to this decidedly not Christian horror show by quoting a fornicating Episcopal priest who has the gall to call Thiel . . . heretical!

As an Episcopal priest, “I find Thiel’s warnings heretical,” said Kevin Deal in the San Francisco Standard. In the Bible, the Antichrist represents “a foil to Christ,” not “a tool to sow fear or division.” Thiel is cynically weaponizing “the language of faith” to serve his own ends. 

Mr. Deal, formerly Mr. Neil, adopted his girlfriend's surname when they married after living together for over a year, including while at seminary. They were married, of course, by a female Episcopal priest. All of which was celebrated, of course, by The New York Times.

Thiel is heretical to these people because he is Republican, not because he is a faggot.

The UK Daily Mail here. 

If you're looking for the Antichrist, look no further than these principals. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the antichrist is in your midst.