Separated from Righteousness Continued - Common Greetings - March 5, 2015

March 5, 2015 ©Homer Kizer

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Common Greetings —

Separated from Righteousness

[Continued from March 3, 2015]

In 2002, the Los Angeles Times published an article by then Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter in which Perlmutter argued the unthinkable as a response to the ongoing Intifada if this asymmetrical war faught by Palestinians threatened Israel’s existence:

Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was not an example to follow—it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Sampson in Gaza? With an H-bomb? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter? Or [should we] invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens? For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away—unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans—have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?

Perlmutter was thinking in terms of Israel striking European cities with thermonuclear weapons; he was thinking about a disproportional response to a new generation of Neville Chamberlains declaring Peace, peace, when there would be no peace for Jews, only another extended period of death, enslavement, and dislocation. He was thinking too small. His thinking was that of an American protected by distance and two oceans. And distance no longer affords America the protection of being geographically removed from the turmoil of the Middle East.

Does anyone really need biblical prophecy to understand that the Islamic Republic intends to become a revival of the ancient Persian Empire? Does anyone really need biblical prophecy to understand that Islam itself is experiencing “revival” pains? That in the womb of Islam is another century of expansion struggling to be born, a century that would have Arabic being the dominant language in a world-engulfing caliphate? Does anyone really need biblical prophecy to understand that in a one-world caliphate, Americans would be serfs and Europeans slaves in a medieval authoritarian hierarchy that would have women as a human sub-species? No, biblical prophecy isn’t needed to know that the Islamic Republic must never be allowed to possess nuclear weaponry; for there are really only two peoples of this world that would use their nuclear arsenal against others: the Islamic Republic and the nation state of Israel … the Islamic Republic would use nuclear weapons because they believe in God; Israel would use nuclear weapons because they no longer believe.

The ultimate statement of unbelief would be the annihilation of this world; would be turning the earth into orbiting gravel.

When Perlmutter suggested that European statesmen and peace activists would deserve being served up a nuclear winter for their neglect of the most basic human right—the right to live—Perlmutter knew that a nuclear winter would cost lives, lots of lives, but would eventually be survivable. The world would begin anew, only this time without Jews, Israelites. So while turning European capitals into nuclear wastelands—turning the Vatican, Mecca, Medina, Moscow into radiation hotspots—might be what appeasement politicians deserve, Israel would become just another suicide bomber, the righteousness of its cause being no greater than that of a ten-year-old girl wearing a suicide vest in a crowded market.

In Ron Rosenbaum’s book, How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III (2012), Rosenbaum writes that Israel could attack Moscow, European capitals, Islamic holy sites in an “abandonment of proportionality” in the aftermath of a second Holocaust … why would making European capitals nuclear wastelands be a disproportional response to a second Holocaust? Allegedly, Moshe Dayan said, that Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.

I have some experience in dealing with dogs and mad dogs. For three years I was the dogcatcher for a small southeastern Idaho town in which many unwanted dogs were dumped. I have had to bring under control dogs that bit people. And on one occasion in particular, the dog I had to take in was a pit bull that bit a little girl in the face. The girl was riding her bike on 12^th Street. The pit bull attacked her on her bike … she was on her way to the hospital by the time I got the call.

I had to pick-up the Pit, and I took with me my dog, a German Wirehair-Black Lab cross, a dominant male about four years old. He had the speed of a Wirehair and the front shoulder strength of a Lab. When the Pit saw him, the Pit attacked. I didn’t have to hunt for the Pit.

Hilly, my dog, had been in quite a few scraps, and he fought back before I could intervene. Even though he was physically taller and heavier than the Pit, I feared he would get hurt: he didn’t have a killer instinct. He fought to establish dominance, and once he established dominance, for him the fight was finished.

In probably thirty seconds, Hilly put the Pit on the ground and was atop the Pit, with the Pit displaying signs of submissiveness. But before I could move in to corral the Pit, Hilly turned and started to trot back to me. The Pit attacked him from behind. But Hilly’s wirehair coat didn’t let the Pit slash his flanks, and he turned back and pushed into the Pit and put the Pit on the ground a second time. Again the Pit became submissive. And Hilly turned toward me. The Pit attacked him again, and this time I had to move in to save the Pit, not something I really wanted to do … Hilly was going to kill him, and if I hadn’t gotten the Pit out of there right then, he would have. He had the Pit by its throat and was starting to shake the Pit to break its neck.

When I lived on Poppy Lane off K-Beach Road [Kenai Peninsula] neighbors had a male Great Dane-Airedale cross that looked like an oversized Airedale. The dog was named Raymond, and he was notorious for killing Pit Bulls. There were people who illegally fought Pits, and it was said that if a Pit could last seven seconds with Raymond, the Pit was worth fighting … Raymond would grab the Pit wherever he could get a hold and begin shaking the Pit, breaking its back. And Raymond was everybody’s friend unless you were a dog that attacked him. Then he was your mortal enemy. He would kill you.

If a dog showed no aggression to Raymond, the dog and Raymond got along fine. As it was with Hilly, Raymond fought to establish dominance—the carnal reason for even human warring. But over time, Raymond acquired a dislike for Pits great enough that he didn’t wait for them to attack him.

Nations make war against other nations more often to achieve human dominance than for reasons such as the preservation of life. An Islamic caliphate will make war against secular Europe to achieve ideological and cultural dominance, but not so against Israel. Islamists’ hatred of Israel is great enough that these Islamists will kill a Jew just because the Jew lives. And this makes these Islamists like Pit Bull Terriers … saving them when God bring His wrath against them will be like saving the Pit that bit the little girl. It will be done because it is the right thing to do.

A dog too dangerous to bother doesn’t have to behave as a mad dog: the dog only needs to be too dangerous to be bothered by others—and other dogs know when this is the case.

Raymond was a dog too dangerous for other dogs to challenge. Hilly became such a dog. And both Raymond and Hilly truly enjoyed the company of people, who were to them godlike. And as an aside, after Hilly’s encounter with that Pit, Hilly changed how he fought another dog: he went for a front leg, grabbed ahold and jerked the other dog toward him, flipping the other dog and exposing its belly. He learned from that Pit.

I generally ignore the politics of the secular world for they are outside of biblical prophecies when these prophecies are rightly understood … biblical prophecies have earthly fulfillments, certainly, but biblical prophecies are ultimately about spiritual kings and alliances that cannot be seen with eyes but whose squabbling and warring affect physically living creatures, even to the very existence of life itself. Presently, all authority in this world comes through the Adversary, regardless of where the authority originates. Thus, the power behind President Obama isn’t a secret society or big Wall Street money or even his female advisors: the President fronts for the Adversary. A different president—say, a Republican Conservative—would also front for the Adversary. Of course, there would be differences in administrative styles, but that’s all. Until dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation, a one-time occurrence [see Dan 7:9–14, 26–27; Rev 11:15–18; 12:7–12], whoever exercises authority over others in this world receives that authority from or through the Adversary. This includes the Pope and other Christian hierarchal figures. This includes corporate CEOs, local politicians, school teachers, bank managers. This includes every policing agency, every military officer, commissioned and non-commissioned. And it is for this reason that it is generally pointless for a Christian to involve him or herself in the affairs of this world. Until the kingdom is given to the Son of Man all the Christian can do is help the Adversary solve his administration’s problems, and most of the time, the Adversary isn’t interested in whatever help you wish to extend him.

There is an exception, though: Israel’s Samson Option effectively pins the restraint of rationality onto the Adversary, for any effort by the Adversary to strong-arm Israel can result in the one thing the Adversary doesn’t want, at least not yet--and this is annihilation of the earth as a planet, the truly disproportionate response to a future Holocaust.

It is really the Adversary who has checkmated himself in him permitting Israelis to build nuclear weapons … what sort of a surface shockwave would need to be generated for this wave to produce corresponding waves in the earth’s molten [liquid] core, these corresponding waves coming together to form the equivalent to an oceanic rogue wave, a wave capable of blowing out the Ring of Fire, breaking the earth into halves that then tear themselves apart, leaving the earth as a future asteroid belt? Should we, today, give this future asteroid belt a name? The OBAMA Belt, the name an acronym for assured mutual annihilation.

Under President Eisenhower, the United States would have engaged the Soviet Union in a war leading to mutual annihilation. Warheads were then smaller even though dirtier. Less was known about the long term effects of a nuclear winter. And we were confident that the Soviets could not do us the harm we could do them …

At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Rachel Yehuda, a researcher studying epigenetics and intergenerational effects of trauma, has found that descendants of Holocaust survivors have altered stress hormone profiles: Holocaust survivors have lowered levels of cortisol, a normalizing hormone that aids recovery from trauma. Those who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have very low levels or cortisol, the reason for medical intervention in these cases.

But the children of Holocaust survivors, unlike their parents that have an accompanying low level of the enzyme that breaks down cortisol [so what cortisol the person has is preserved], also have lowered levels of cortisol but high levels of the enzyme that breaks down cortisol, meaning that the children of Holocaust survivors are biologically less able to recover from trauma than were their parents—and it is the fingers of the offspring of Holocaust survivors that are today on the trigger of Israel’s Samson Option.

What nation is foolish enough to attempt telling Israel what its security needs are? President Obama’s advisors don’t biologically think like Israelis do—and this they do not understand. They cannot put themselves into the shoes of an Israeli.

President Obama seems to think that he can dictate to Israel their security terms, that Israel needs America to protect it from its thuggish neighbors … who will protect America from Israel? Who is this person, this power? Who can guarantee the integrity of the globe? Who can guarantee that the Samson Option will never be taken from its box?

Epigenetic changes would seem to serve the purpose of preparing biological offspring for the conditions under which the parents gave life to their offspring; yet this is not the case for Holocaust survivors, whose offspring are ill-prepared to withstand starvation and are instead prone to PTSD … from just biology, the children of Holocaust survivors have almost as low of levels of cortisol as America soldiers suffering from PSTD yet they have higher than normal levels of the enzyme that destroys cortisol, which produces in them a mindset that cannot be replicated by the President’s advisors, and that might well not seem rational to the President’s advisors, but a shared mindset among the children of Holocaust survivors, meaning that the disconnect between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is really not bridgeable.

America came out of the Great Depression with a different mindset than the nation had when the Depression began: the poverty of the Depression was expressed by John Steinbeck in his realist novel, Grapes of Wrath (1939). Yet my own grandfathers were not rich but had money during the Depression. My paternal grandfather had an 80 acre farm in northern Indiana and no indebtedness. Something had happened in 1907 that caused him to “hate” bankers. So he had no money in a bank when the Depression bankrupted so many. As a result, he had cash, a market for his crops, and he experienced the best years financially of his life. He bought three tractors from neighbors going broke … I suspect he bought these tractors so bankers couldn’t repossess them, such was his dislike for banks and bankers.

My maternal grandfather sold his homestead on Lake Tahoe for 30 cents an acre in 1910, and returned to Michigan where he married a 19 year old school teacher; he was 35 and the marriage had problems from its beginning. Nevertheless, he acquired a job with Ford Motor Company early-on and became a tool and die marker. He was with Ford throughout the Depression. Sometime during the War, he left Ford and went to California to live with grown daughters. He was living with Mom and Dad when he died in fall 1948, at age 69.

The poverty of the Depression that Steinbeck described didn’t harm my parents or grandparents even though all of them dealt with this period of national shortage. But there was a residual effect: the “old” was replaced by the “new” even when the new was inferior to the old. Just the fact that the thing was “new” was enough to justify acquiring the thing. And this out with the old attitude produced the America of the Baby Boomers, the America that rejected the “authority” of the old, this rejection heard in the phrase, Don’t trust anyone over thirty.

Times of stress affect people in ways that previous generations really didn’t understand. These changes are actually biological—epigenetic adaptions—but these changes that separate one people from another can be bridged through respect … President Obama faces a dilemma: how does he respect Iran’s right to possess nuclear energy and even nuclear weaponry while still respecting Israel’s security concerns?

The Sabbatarian Christian can turn to Scripture and make assertive declarations about biblical prophecies that might seem true but that are not true. No one pays the Sabbatarian much attention. Nobody bothers to remember what this Sabbatarian previously declared about, say, a physical place of safety, or about Germany dominating a federation of ten nations, with the Pope being the head of this federation. Nobody pays much attention to what derivative splinters of the Sabbatarian’s ministry now say about the Middle East as the U.N. hurries traffic along: There’s nothing to see here, move on.

There might well be nothing to see: biblical prophecies are about what cannot be seen except by shadows cast.

Attention is paid to yappy dogs that terrorize no one, not even the mail carrier. Yet under a cedar a dog feigns sleep, one paw on a trigger to who knows what.

The yappy dogs that won’t shut up at night become cause to call the dogcatcher, who issues a warning citation to the resident. But it is the dog sleeping with eyes open, biding its opportunity to silence forever the yapping that most concerns the dogcatcher.

The Islamic Republic blows up a scale model of an American aircraft carrier … why? To display its yap?

The world is about to change in a manner that will preclude returning to where we are today. We will be changed biologically by what happens. And the President and all his women seem to have no comprehension of how insignificant they truly are.

Individually, we can affect ourselves through having love for neighbor and brother: having love for others changes us, causing in us epigenetic changes that carry forward to our offspring, while laying the basis for our favorable judgment from God. But we cannot affect the Adversary. We cannot cause the Adversary to feel fear or anxiety. There is only one dog here on earth that has that power, and that dog is Israel’s Samson Option, an irrational response to a perceived second Holocaust.

Perhaps for the unbeliever, a one-way trip to Mars might not be a bad idea.

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