Ted Walther's Private Diary

Oxford English Dictionary: victual, vital.

Short entry today. Bill Klimek of Spokane mentioned yesterday that the correct pronunciation of "victuals" is "vittles". I saw the spelling "vittles" before. I always assumed it was a working class, redneck hillbilly sort of word. Most people I know say "vick-chew-all-z". Seeing that the word victuals was one and the same as the word vittles, triggered another association. Vitals. If you are going on a journey, you have to take your "vitals" or "vittles" with you. In English, when you have a vowel between the letters "T" and "L", it is almost always ignored. Similarly with any consonant and the letter "R", such as in the word "summer"

So, the word victuals or "vittles" means food. Edible, comestible items that support life. If you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, you'll see that my hunch was correct; vital and vittle were originally the same word in Old English and in Latin. Let us play a game; what if English hadn't evolved, and the word vital still meant "food"?

Change the "ah-ee" diphthong to the short "ih" vowel sound, and vitals is identical to the word vittles. Vittles today differs from the word food in that it implies provisions for a journey, or some other form of life-giving supply that you don't take for granted. We do tend to take food for granted today. We haven't known famine in a very long time.

• It is VITAL that you do your job!
• It is FOOD that you do your job!
• Doctor: what are his VITAL statistics? (can he pay me?)
• Doctor: what are his FOOD statistics? (what has he eaten lately?)

The words Vital and Food have evolved so they aren't directly interchangeable. But if you look hard enough, you will find that in many cases they are interchangeable. But saying food where we normally say vital sure would sound funny. And primitive, and uneducated.

Vital and Vittle both come from the Latin "vita", for life. So the sense of vittle really is that of "sustenance", as opposed to food which is more along the lines of "that which you shove in your mouth and swallow for sustenance".

This etymology illustrates how very long ago the Latin language influenced the Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, and kindred tongues.

I have not yet met a believer in "Yahweh" who has read the book by Hebrew scholar Gerard Gertoux, The Name of God Yehowah — Its Story. Nor have I seen any Yahwist refute any of Gerard's excellent research. If you can't afford $60 for Gerard's comprehensive and thorough book, you can at least read the executive summary: Paradox of the Anonymous Name

In my time as a computer software engineer, I've learned a valuable lesson. The code that I wrote is not just for me. It is for others. It is a method of communication as surely as any other language. And the communication is not instant. I may have to read code that is twenty years old. People twenty years from now may need to read my code. So adhering to standards and conventions is important so people can understand in the future, and so we today can understand the past.

Because of the continuing and ongoing curse of Babel, languages do change. Sometimes they change very quickly. Language change is an instrument of God to keep the 70 races of man holy. That is, separate from one another. Just like an all boys or all girls school, a racially homogenous country will come to God more quickly.

Acts 17:26,27 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

How does this tie in to the Sacred Name? Simply this; languages change, and God is behind the change in languages. Who am I to undo his work? At the time the Bible was translated into English, "Jehovah" was an extremely accurate transliteration of the Divine Name, as I will explain below. The sounds attached to the letters in our language have changed over the past 500 years, but the meanings of the words have not changed.

If we always change our spelling to reflect our current pronunciation habits, we will have a very hard time reading older literature. Keeping older spellings gives us a connection to the past, to our history, and to who we are. For instance, the word "through" would be better spelled "thru". But we keep the "through" spelling because of installed user base. People have gotten used to it, and changing the spelling would distract them from what you are trying to communicate.

Jake Fronczak asked me the same question a few days ago. Here is the answer I gave him:

From: Ted Walther
…
Hm.. Greek Kuklos... Hebrew QU for circumference.... wonder if there is a connection. In English, U, V, and W are listed next to each other because they are the exact same letter. U is the more authentic one. Vav should be "U"

From: Jake Fronczak

Speaking of U, V, and W, how did Jehovah become the proper English pronunciation for YHWH? We have the letters and sounds for a more accurate transliteration. In fact it used to be written Iehouah.

From: Ted Walther

Iehouah and Jehovah. Let's see. Let's go back 500 years.

The letter J and the letter I are the same letter. That is why they are next to each other in the alphabet. You can see this in the Hebrew and Greek and Latin alphabets; the letter iota hadn't been split yet.

Until as recently as a hundred years ago, J was pronounced as "I" or "Y". If you read Charles Dickens, the Pickwick Papers, one of the running jokes was that Sam Weller, the working class man, still (according to ancient usage) pronounced the letter "v" as "w". And because he was trying to be upper class, he would insert the "v" sound every so often; generally where we today would say "w". This joke wouldn't have been so funny if it wasn't also hitting on a truth about how our language has changed. Dickens wrote the Pickwick Papers in 1837, less than 200 years ago.

You know how Hebrew has "final forms" for some letters? The letter J was an "initial" form for the letter I. Similarly, the letter "s" was a final form for the letter that almost looks like the letter "f".

So, until lately, the spelling Jehovah was identical to the spelling Iehouah. The alteration came in our speech; remember, the curse of Babel is still upon us. The Bay Psalm Book, the first book published in America, used the spelling Iehovah. You can see this yourself if you look through this PDF file: The Bay Psalm Book (1640)

If you go to Germany today, they will pronounce Jehovah as "Iehouah".

A lot of this stuff becomes clear if you read through some old books, like the Geneva Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and things from the 1700's. Not that I read through them, but reading a few pages of each will be enough to convince anyone. Even the edition of the Riot Act on my website, it doesn't show the original letter forms, but the original scans I worked from showed all these traits.

So in English, the spelling Jehovah became standardized about 500 years ago, and it was a very good transliteration. Within the past two hundred years or less, there have been some more shifts in our language altering the pronunciation to Jehovah.

Yehowah is a better transliteration today, but since Jehovah is already the "standard", I go by it.

Similarly with Jesus and Yeshua. You know, I found in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1000 years ago they spelled it as Iosua. Pretty close to Yeshua, eh? The s on the end of Jesus, I don't know where that came from. In much older literature I see the name spelled as Jesu. Which again, when you understand what the letter J really is, and that the letter s in English could mean "sh" as well as "s", like shin in Hebrew, brings us pretty close. Even among ancient Hebrews, there were siboleth/shiboleth issues. Who are we today to quibble about Yesus or Yeshu?

I hate to break with tradition where necessary, Jake. My time in computer programming has taught me not to fix something without good cause. It is easier to retrain users a little bit than to alter a complex, functioning system. I spell Jehovah, but I say "Yehowah" out loud. So do my children.

There is more to our language than the 3,000 words that most people use daily. There are more than a thousand years of records and written communication that we still need to reference and look through, in several languages (Latin, French, Saxon, and English). God can change pronunciation to keep the nations apart, but spelling change cuts us off from that entire corpus of written history. Now today with our fancy computers it is even more important. Computers are dumb; if you change spelling, you can't even use the computer to reconnect the dots for you. If anything, keeping spelling consistent is more important now that we have computers, not less important.

But then, if people read their history and searched and inquired, as you, I, and a few others are doing, they wouldn't be such easy prey for false shepherds and cults.

From: Jake Fronczak

I had wondered whether the pronunciation changed along with the spelling conventions. I'm glad to know the story now.

It's very interesting to think that people like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale pronounced things differently than we do. I wonder what effect the mass production of audio and print material has had on the "evolution" of language - though people have a hard enough time understanding each other within the same language even now, from one end of the country to the other. Or even in the same town. Our thoughts and language are muddled despite all the standardization...

Imagine a sumo match between the two halves of an entire city. With a wet cold river and the entire city as the playing field. Welcome to Shrovetide Football.

Shrovetide Football is played twice a year, on the tuesday and wednesday of shrovetide in one little town in England. It starts and ends in the river Henmore. To score a goal, you also have to wade into a river and tap the ball on the goal post three times. The goal posts are three miles apart, and the town is right in the middle of them. The earliest recorded rule of the game was "You may not murder your opponent". The only rule of the game is that it ends at 10pm, and you can't play on church property. There can be any number of players. Anyone can join in. Players specialize; some are river men, others are runners, and the central scrum is sort of like rugby, sumo, and soccer. The ball, made out of cork wood, often spends hours floating on the river Henmore while the two sides battle it out. Anyone can join in the fun. The two teams are the upwards and downwards. Your team depends on which side of the river you were born.

Read it yourself for a good chuckle courtesy of the BBC and Metafilter. Ashbourne Shrovetide Football.

Pity North America doesn't have such quaint customs. Unless we slow down our pace of life, get to know each other, and create common ground, we likely won't either.

A friend sent in this short story by the most famous science fiction author of the last century, Isaac Asimov. Isaac Asimov was the Woody Allen of the science fiction crowd. The original source for the story was http://www.haverford.edu/writingprogram/Asimov.html

What Is Intelligence, Anyway? by Isaac Asimov.

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

In a case of synchronicity, a few hours after the Asimov article came in, my friend Jesus sent this post in, chiding a very smart science fiction author with a Ph.D. degree:

XXXXXXXX XXX XXXX,
Kind sir, please reduce your insular comments.

For many years I regarded the loyalty my father gained from his employees as incredible. To this day they all would like him to reopen some type of business where they could work.

This is my conclusion. Persons with a so-called college education tend to regard themselves as of some higher authority. Experience, and years in the XXXXXXX business have allowed me to appreciate the comment, "educated idiots".

best regards,
XXXXXX.

Today we are all taught that pi = 3.14159265358… etc. pi is a special number. You multiply it by the diameter of a circle, and it tells you how far you'd have to walk to get around the circle.

Atheists and skeptics point to one part of the Bible to say that the Bible is wrong. They read the verse, make some assumptions, and conclude that the author of the Bible believes pi is an integer number, valued at only THREE (3).

1 Kings 7:23 And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

Joseph Francis Alward did some calculations and concluded that the numbers in 1Kings didn't have to be exact. In the computer science field we round numerical values all the time. If we get 8.9, we'll round it up to 9. If we get 10.3, we'll round it down to ten.

If the circumference of the molten sea was precisely 30 cubits, then the diameter would be 9.549 cubits. By the rules of rounding, you would record this as 10 cubits. Just as the Bible says. Or the circumference and diameter could have been 30.4 cubits and 9.68. The numbers would still round to the Biblical values, and yield a correct value of pi.

Enough of Mr. Alward's theory; I have two more to add.

First, look at how the measurement was taken. From brim to brim. A brim can have a lip on it. The Bible doesn't say if this was an interior or an exterior measurement. If "brim to brim" was being measured on the outside, that lip would have added extra inches to the diameter. Assuming a cubit is 18 inches, a 4 inch lip on the brim would account for the discrepancy between the diameter and the circumference. In fact, assuming the brim included a four inch lip would give you a very accurate value for pi.

1 Kings 7:26 And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths.

Did you catch that? The sea was a hand breadth thick. I just went and got a rule and measured my hand. I'm an adult male with small hands. My hand was 3 and 1/2 inches wide, 4 inches exactly if I included my thumb in the measurement. Four inches... the very depth that matches with the Bible's measurements! From this we know that the circumference was measured inside the tank, not around the outside.

Secondly, assume the "brim to brim" measurement was an interior measurement, not admitting of any lip. Where the heck does it say the sea was a perfect circle? Greeks were obsessed with circles. But the Bible says "round". You know, an ellipse is round too. So is a superellipse. There is any number of "round" shapes that are not circles. And their diameter and circumference are not related to each other by the value of pi.

Let us assume the molten sea was elliptical. The equation of an ellipse is x2/a2 + y2/b2 = 1 If you have a value for a of 5 (which is half of ten) and a value for b of 4.5, you will get your 30 cubits circumference. This is equivalent to an ellipse that is 10 cubits measured brim to brim, but also 9 cubits from brim to brim when measured at right angles to it. If you pick any other angles to measure the diameter at, you would get a number between 9 and 10. You can verify yourself using the Ellipse Circumference Calculator.

Greeks developed the complex Ptolemaic model of the solar system based on wanting everything to be a "perfect circle". Then the elliptical model came along, which brought about our current simple model of the solar system, as determined by Tycho Brahe. There are more ellipses than perfect circles in God's creation; maybe there were ellipses in Solomon's Temple too.

With these three different explanations revealed, let no atheist venture on this terrain again.

Assuming one bath measure is approximately 5 imperial gallons, the molten sea would have been 35 feet high. This should cause a reevaluation of all those pictures of the Temple showing a little wading pool type of bath. The molten sea must have been as tall as Boaz and Jachin. But the Bible says the height was 5 cubits. This raises several possibilities. First, that our modern understanding of a "Bath" measure as being five imperial gallons is way off. Second, our modern understanding of cubit as 18 inches is way off. Third, the molten sea was actually an enclosure surrounding a cistern, which was almost 30 feet deep, and filled with water. The depth of the cistern plus the height of the molten sea would then give the 2000 bath measures as reported, while using our modern values for them. The fact the sea was upon the backs of twelve bronze oxen makes it hard to credit this "fence around a cistern" theory.

A couple days ago I wrote some on The Difference Between Sheep and Goats, to try and understand some of the parables of Jesus. You may wish to review that article before reading this one.

Sheep are grazers. They munch grass. Goats are browsers. They prefer to eat bushes, shrubs, thistles, branches, and things like that.

The president of the Association of the Covenant People, Jim Reed, told this fact a few years ago. Jim said that you cannot tell wheat and tares apart until they are fully grown. The difference then is that the wheat, heavy with good fruit, bows its head in humility. The tare, a lightweight, keeps its head raised stiff and erect. What is the difference between wheat and tares? Humility.

How does that relate to sheep and goats? Look at their feeding habits. Sheep almost always have their heads bowed, in a humble posture. Goats like to keep their heads upright when they eat, so that the other goats can't attack them from behind. Sheep are humble, goats are not.

There is a possible difference, but I don't have the experience to tell if it exists. When a sheep is about to be slaughtered, it becomes silent, just as Jesus was silent before the Sanhedrin, Pontius Pilate, and Herod. How does a goat act when it is tied up for slaughter? This is a research question; I'll have to buy a goat and slaughter it to find out.

There is another difference between sheep and goats. Goat meat is very lean, with no fat. Mutton, the meat from sheep, is very fatty. We aren't allowed to eat fat by God's Law, but we are allowed to eat sheep. So this must mean that we should remove what fat we can, but not go overboard as the Jews do when they kasher the blood out of the meat with salt.

Goats produce four times as much milk as sheep. Goats are good dairy animals. Sheep produce wool which keeps people warm in winter. Productivity and value wise, sheep and goats are both valuable.

Sheep give birth in the dead of winter, three months before goats start giving birth in spring. I don't know if there is any significance to that. There may be some relation. The Bible shows that God's people always had a population boom when they were oppressed and poor. Goats on the other hand wait until economic conditions are good and life is comfortable, then they have children.

Sheep and goats both have the same gestation period, of 145-155 days. This is about 5 months. Calculating backwards, we find that sheep go into rut and have sex mostly in the middle of summer when life is good. Goats do most of their sexual intercourse at the end of October, when the harvest is in and winter is about to start.

Remember what Jesus said:

Luke 16:8 … for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

Sheep and goats both become sexually mature at a year and a half old. Both grow horns. Both are scared of dogs and wolves and can die of fright if a dog chases them.

Update on 2787-12-13: A few more facts found in William Patry's blog.

Sheep tails point down, goats tails point up. This continues the humility theme found in their browsing and grazing habits.

Sheep have an IQ that is 50 points higher than goats, yet goats have more "social" smarts. If we look at the Christian countries today, the populations tend to be both smart, and trusting. The other countries are like goats; clever, quick on the draw, socially smart, bull-headed, unashamed. People think goats are smart for the same reason they think the sons of Ham are smart; because they are curious, outgoing, extroverted, always escaping their fenced in areas and flouting social conventions. This article should be helpful in understanding: The IQ Illusion — Why Some People Seem Smarter Than They Are.

Sheep have 54 chromosones, goats have 60. I assume this means you can't interbreed them. This makes them genetically distinct. I don't know if there is some numerological significance to the numbers fifty-four and sixty.

End of Partry commentary

Our English expression to feel "sheepish" indicates that sheep can be embarassed and show shame. Goats are never ashamed. I refer you again to the IQ Illusion article refered to above. In addition, this article, Urban Law 101: Adventures in Lawyering, should flesh out the ramification of the IQ Illusion.

According to Sheep 101, male goats have a strong odor because of scent glands near their anus. Sheep have scent glands near their eyes and hooves. Presumably male sheep (rams) don't have such a strong odor as bucks do.

Goats are independant. They are more tolerant of being by themselves. Sheep have a much stronger herding instinct, and feel a much greater need to be part of a flock. Could it be that Protestants are goats and Catholics are sheep?

In Genesis chapter ten, God clearly separates humanity into seventy distinct races. In the Bible, the words "tribe", "nation", and "race" mean the same thing.

In Genesis chapter eleven, some Satan worshipers decide that God's plan is no good. They want to create one human race, with one skin color, one blood type, one behavior pattern. And most importantly, one ruler. Themselves. So they started up a state-run megaproject to use up the peoples strength. They called it "The Tower of Babel".

God didn't roll over and play dead. He confused the languages of the conspirators so they couldn't talk to each other. At least, they couldn't talk and be understood. Finally the different families (another word for race, tribe and nation is family) went their separate ways, each with its own language.

Note, the Bible says the languages were confused. God didn't create new languages out of whole cloth. He bent and twisted them just as a strong man might bend a steel girder. I believe all languages originally were Hebrew. The more sinful the people were, the faster their languages evolved away from Hebrew. The languages the least like Hebrew are spoken by the people who are the least Hebrew in other respects. The confusion didn't stop. It is with us today. The printing press and television and internet have slowed the rate of confusion, but God will not be stopped. I've noticed that despite the internet, people using the exact same English words are misunderstanding each other more and more. Even when people use the same words, spoken the same way, with the same grammar, syntax, and accent, God can (and does, and is) confuse the speech between them. Keep your ears peeled and you will observe this yourself.

I talked to a Sacred Name person yesterday, named Samuel. He says "elohim" instead of God, "Yahweh" instead of "Jehovah", and "Yahoshua" instead of "Jesus". He felt I was teaching false doctrine when I said publicly that when speaking English, use English words. In the conversation, I mentioned that the name Samuel is a Hebrew name, and is Hebrew it is properly pronounced "Shmool". He said that his name is not "Shmool" and he didn't like being called "Shmool". I reminded him that in Hebrew there are no vowels. His name is shin-mem-lamed. This allows a lot of room for different pronunciations. Notice his inconsistency? Jehovah is a Hebrew name, so Samuel insisted it MUST be pronounced "the Hebrew way", but Samuel is a completely different name from Shmool, even though every other English speaker recognizes that Samuel is also a Hebrew name. Why not pronounce it the Hebrew way then? I told Shmool he should go all the way and speak Hebrew, but that idea hit him like a lead balloon. Saying "Yahweh" and "Yahushua" and convincing others to say things his way seemed good enough for him. Forcing people to change their pronunciation without solid Biblical backing for such a policy reeks of coercion and pride.

Since all languages came from Hebrew, and God changed them himself, just as he split the races apart, who are we to undo the differences between languages? Did God give us permission? Jehovah is the correct English form of the divine name. If you want to pronounce it the Hebrew way, Yehowah is about as close as an English speaker can get. I believe that if we obey Torah and quite trying to create a One World Order populated by a One Human Race, we will all learn Hebrew to read the Torah, and then over time gradually stop using all the other languages. If we remain diverse in our gene pool and separate (ie, HOLY) in our national boundaries, the language confusion will end and we will all speak one tongue; Hebrew! But forcing people to speak Hebrew now is counterproductive, and even destructive. Look at the 36 men who died at the battle of Ai; God said "you are in jail for 40 years" and they said "no, we have our courage now, we'll go take the land you promised us". I fear that if they aren't practicing magic, or guilty of pride, then they are going against God's plan of linguistic confusion. The penalty of course, they are already experiencing, they are isolated from others and limited in their proseletyzing effectiveness. But this boosts their blind pride; makes them feel they are of the special elite who are "called out" and "chosen" and "saved". But they are quick to criticise me for legalism when I ask why they don't wear tassels (tzitzit) or keep other commandments.

German Philosopher Johann Gottfried Fichte wrote an interesting essay in 1806, an Address to the German Nation. John Taylor Gatto credits this essay with the creation of our modern day school system and the success of the Prussian military machine. I myself do not see the connection. But the essay is a good one for historical insight, and for a spirited defense of the Biblical concept of racial separation and racial unity.

After reading Fichte's essay, I can clearly see the beginnings of German unification. Germany is composed of almost a hundred distinct races, but they do share a language. In the same way, Ephraim contained many sub-races, but they were all Ephraim. From the essay, I also see the origin of the nationalism that swept Europe throughout the 1800's, where scholars trudged through the countryside recording peasant folk tales, folk songs, and folk costumes in an attempt to define the authentic "culture" of their nation. Maybe later I'll write about this, especially "kulning", the songs that Norse women sing to cattle.

What is Germany? Germany today, and Germany back then? Israel passed through Germany. I've seen credible scholarship saying that the Germans are the original genetic Romans who migrated from the original Rome in an ancient white flight. The mercenary and warlike nature of Germany makes them good candidates for being Ishmael or Edom. But Gad was a warlike tribe of Israel. In the British Israel movement, opinion swings between calling the Germans "Assyrians", and calling them Israel. Germanies identity in the Bible is under confusion; maybe we aren't meant to know who they are yet. But their role in the European Union, and their history with Napoleon, Hitler, and the Holy Roman empire, shows clearly that the Roman Empire never died. It is still with us, and Germany and France together are the heart of the Western leg of the Empire. Russia inherited the East leg of the Roman empire, headquartered in Byzantium. I think Germany is Rome.

I find it interesting that the essay that got German reunification started, and led to revival of the Western Roman Empire, was actually advocating Biblical nationalism, the exact opposite of Empire. All it took was Germany to reunite, and its power started increasing and its imperial ambitions came into play. This led to two world wars. As in the first world war, Germany has lately been making love songs toward the Muslim world, trying to woo them and inflame them against America and the other Anglo nations.

Assyria went through several cycles of decline and rise, which you can read about in Steven Collins books. So with the Roman Empire. The beast ain't dead yet. Did it even recieve its death stroke yet? I don't know.

Susan sent this short story in. I really like it. It answers the question, "what good is reading the Bible when we can't even remember it all?"

The story is told of an old man who lived on a farm in the mountains of Kentucky with his young grandson. Each morning, Grandpa was up early sitting at the kitchen table reading from his old worn-out Bible. His grandson who wanted to be just like him tried to imitate him in any way he could. One day the grandson asked, "Papa, I try to read the Bible just like you but I don't understand it, and what I do understand I forget as soon as I close the book. What good does reading the Bible do?"

The Grandfather quietly turned from putting coal in the stove and said, "Take this coal basket down to the river and bring back a basket of water." The boy did as he was told, even though all the water leaked out before he could get back to the house. The grandfather laughed and said, "You will have to move a little faster next time," and sent him back to the river with the basket to try again.

This time the boy ran faster, but again the basket was empty before he returned home. Out of breath, he told his grandfather that it was "impossible to carry water in a basket," and he went to get a bucket instead. The old man said, "I don't want a bucket of water; I want a basket of water. You can do this. You're just not trying hard enough," and he went out the door to watch the boy try again.

At this point, the boy knew it was impossible, but he wanted to show his grandfather that even if he ran as fast as he could, the water would leak out before he got far at all. The boy scooped the water and ran hard, but when he reached his grandfather the basket was again empty. Out of breath, he said, "See Papa, it's useless!" "So you think it is useless?" The old man said, "Look at the basket." The boy looked at the basket and for the first time he realized that the basket looked different. Instead of a dirty old coal basket, it was clean.

"Son, that's what happens when you read the Bible. You might not understand or remember everything, but when you read it, it will change you from the inside out. That is the work of God in our lives. To change us from the inside out and to slowly transform us into the image of His son." Take time to read a portion of God's word each day, and remind a friend by sharing this story.

The Bible talks a lot about sheep and goats. The thing most relevant to us today is that the human "goats" will be destroyed in everlasting fire, but the humans in the "sheep" category will be saved. So what I've wanted to know for years is, what is the difference between sheep and goats? Living in the city, divorced from the land, I've been lucky to learn a little about goats from firsthand experience.

Just spoke to Lalo Codona today. He owns a ranch with sheep and cattle in Northern California. Lalo knows a thing or two about sheep and goats. What is more, he has been keeping the sabbath years and jubilees as God's Torah (Law) commands. Here are some of his observations about sheep and goats.

Sheep don't seem as "smart" as goats do. Goats are always jumping over their fences or finding clever ways to open the gates that hold them in. When it comes to escape, goats are artists. Sheep tend to stay put. Sheep are smart enough to cluster together when dogs or wolves are around. This makes them easy to herd.

Sheep are "dumb" in that they blindly follow each other. Lalo described a time that one sheep jumped over an imaginary fence. Next thing he knew, all the sheep went and jumped over the same imaginary fence. Goats also follow each other, but they are independant minded, and little sub groups keep splitting off and rejoining the main group.

Sheep are paranoid and loyal, goats are open and curious. Sheep know the voice of their master. If a stranger comes around, whether human or canine, they run away. Goats on the other hand love to come up and check out the strangers, say hello, and maybe eat food from the strangers hand.

Jubilee year: In the Jubilee year of 2001, something amazing happened. Normally sheep lamb in the dead of winter, in December and January. That is California. Here in my part of Canada, they start lambing in late January. In the Jubilee year, Lalo had a "double crop". The ewe's gave birth in January. Everyone was surprised when they gave birth again in June and July. Everyone assumed that was it for the year. But then they gave birth again the next January. Do you remember the story of Jacob, when Laban gave him as wages the spottled, speckled, and ring-straked sheep? Those are the "low quality" sheep. Weavers don't want to use their wool. They want pure white wool. But Jacob understood that go forth and multiply doesn't discriminate based on the color of wool. Or skin. All the Jubilee lamb's, the miracle lambs that were born in the summertime of the Jubilee, were ring-straked, spotted, and speckled. Lalo figures there is some significance to that, but isn't sure exactly what. It is certainly a blessing to have twice as many lambs.

Commerce: commerce and trade have been harmful to sheep. Because they've been breeding sheep to have big meaty lambs in time for Easter, the lambs are coming out of the womb too big. This makes it hard on the mothers, causes more miscarriages, and makes it so the shepherd has to assist at every birth. On Lalo's biblical ranch, the sheep are starting to have horns again, and the ewe's are giving birth unassisted. They are smaller than average, but they are in good health. In my area, all the sheep have had their horniness bred out of them. You can't tell a ram apart from a ewe, because they don't grow horns.

Bill Klimek of the Kehillah Beth Miqlat referred me to the website of Lalo Codona. I am blown away. I need to finish studying through it, but it looks like an answer to prayer.

There are several unsolved problems with the Jubilee count. First, how is it that Israel only neglected 70 sabbatical years over the course of 490 years, when the Jubilee years were also kept as sabbatical years? The three standard methods of counting the Jubilees do not take this problem into account. The three methods are these:

• After the 49th year, the 50th is Jubilee. From the fiftieth, count seven years to the next Sabbatical year.
• After the 49th year, the 50th is Jubilee. From the fiftieth, count six years to the next Sabbatical year.
• The 49th year is also the 50th year. Keep counting six work years and one rest year.

Bill says that Lalo Codona is a real observer. Lalo Codona was a shepherd for more than 50 years, and what is more, he put the Jubilee year into practice. So he is able to tell you what worked and what didn't work. He really lived it. The Jubilee isn't just theoretical for him. His sheep lived or died based on his application of Torah.

You may read his articles on how to calculate the Jubilee and Sabbatical years here: Codona Christian School - The Bible Jubilee.

I really am enjoying reading Lalo's website and hope you will too.

PS: Yes, Lalo Codona keeps sabbath on Tuesday. That doesn't invalidate his work on the Jubilee. He has his reasons. As the Apostle Paul said, at this point in time we "see as through a glass darkly", but in the end we will all see clearly.

My friend, the New Jersey Genius, Ralph Rene, figured out thirty years ago that we are in a period of global cooling. He based this on the fact that crocodiles and orange trees have been migrating south. When the earth gets cooler, plants head south.

Then today I find this cool website, Not by Fire but by Ice THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW! by hypnotherapist Robert W. Felix. He is an old earth evolutionist, but he does have the facts on hand which explode global warming myths.

A large part of Felix' work is on underwater volcanoes. He makes a good case that the increase in carbon in the atmosphere is coming from underwater volcanoes. Further, he shows that the number of underwater volcanoes is increasing dramatically, that they are heating up the oceans, and thus making the air moister. This in turn is making the storms bigger and badder. Check out his website; don't believe his conclusions, but look at his facts.

In the end, Jehovah is the ultimate weather God, and the whole world is in his hands. If an ice age starts, it will be because of our sins. 500 years ago Europe had an ice age, and then it repented fairly quickly with the Protestant Reformation. I hope we don't have to go through that again. The Black Plague was no picnic. Even today the land we had at our disposal before the ice age of 500 years ago hasn't been restored to us. How much more land are we going to lose in the next ice age?

There is hope; when we repent, Jehovah will warm up the earth and even Siberia and Antarctica will be warm, tropical, lush farmlands.

As the old hymn goes, He makes the grass the mountain's crown Listen to the MP3.

One atheist in Australia got so angry at the Mormons that he dressed up like a Mormon missionary, flew to Utah, and started knocking on Mormon's doors trying to convert them to atheism. Part of his "faith" was that Mormons are descended from monkeys. The Mormons responded fairly well I thought. Here is the video; good for more than a few chuckles: Atheist Missionary Bothers Mormons. The video shows why atheists don't go around being missionaries. Atheism and evolution sound quite absurd when you reduce them to the bare facts and try to preach it.

England is not famous for its good food. England is almost as bad as Germany for eating disgusting internal organs and pork parts. England has a big reputation for bad teeth. When you look at the list of their distinctive foods, you'll find out why. Almost all contain stupendous amounts of refined sugars, or animal fat.

If there is ever a food dish you are curious about, check out this page, which describes the distinctively "English" foods: The American's Guide to Speaking British: Food and Drink. Found on Metafilter, this is also a good description of the distinctively British Foods: The GirlAlive British Food Experience.

There are a very few good English foods. Cornish Pasty is good. Ploughman's Lunch is nice as long as it has cheese and not ham. As is the "Barley Sandwich". I didn't see it on the above list, so I'll tell you: Barley Sandwich is code for "beer". Shepherds Pie is my personal favorite. Crumpets are nice if you have some spread that doesn't include refined sugar, and if you can get crumpets made from unbleached flour. Vegemite/Marmite do taste delicious on toast and crumpets, if you have real butter on them. Almost everything else on the list above is forbidden by God's Laws. Perhaps Brits wouldn't be so short, mean, and nasty if they ate real food like that outlined in God's Law.

I have to admit, most of the foods listed on the above two sites do TASTE good. But they are death to the bones. With the above information, you should now be able to safely visit Britain without offending God. At least, without offending him too much.

The Lunar Sabbath is starting. Shabbat shalom.

PS: Here are some of the foods covered by the above webpages: Crumpets · Piccalilli · Marmite · Branston Pickle · Scotch Pies · Yorkshire Pudding · Sticky Toffee Pudding · Cornish Pasties · Jamaica Ginger Cake · Jelly · Flapjacks · Bubble and Squeak · Chocolate Spread · Lemon Curd · Smarties · Haggis · Custard · Spotted Dick · Pickled Onions · British Hot Dogs · Lucozade · Selkirk Bannock · Christmas Pudding · Jaffa Cakes · Scotch Dumpling · Mushy Peas · Toad In the Hole · Scotch eggs · Oatcakes · Irn Bru · Parson's Beak (Parson's Nose) · Black Pudding · Sarny · etc...

PPS: I was born right around the time multi-culturalism started getting a foothold; even now the state of "British" Columbia is run by British ex-patriots, and high tea at the Anglican (Episcopalian) church is still an event to be invited to. There is something very comforting about a four-o'clock tea with all the scones, biscuits, trifle, butter, thick cream, jam, marmalade, and other condiments.

For years I've wrestled with the issue of magic. What is it? God hates magic and those who practice it. Was I wicked and evil for reading the popular fantasy novels that involved so much "magic" and "wizardry"?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. — Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961.

The magical viewpoint (or at least some magical viewpoints) doesn't believe in randomness. One of my anthropology professors told us about an incident during his fieldwork where a house on stilts collapsed on someone sitting under it. The natives looked for the witch who caused it. The professor said, "Look, the stilts were rotting, anyone could see that the house was going to collapse." The natives said, "Of course, we know that. But why did it collapse when Joe was under it?" — Kuro5hin comment of dennis, on 2002-05-11

There are many opinions of what magic is. I've narrowed it down to three that seem relevant from the Bible point of view.

Firstly, magic is an attempt to decieve. In this sense, magic is witchcraft, which means to enslave the mind by means of potions, gossip, and other non-overt methods. Mainly, magic is an attemp to deceive the onlooker into believing that you have "supernatural" powers, and can do things that ordinary mortals cannot.

The Egyptian priests were great practicers of this first type of magic. Two weeks ago Mark and Ashley Rattee reported that turning a stick into a living snake is one of the oldest magic tricks known to man. That would explain by the Egyptian priests were so dismissive when Moses turned his staff into a snake. They all knew that chestnut. They weren't expecting his snake to eat their snakes up.

Can you see how priests benefit from the first type of magic? Even if they don't have superpowers, if the people believe they have superpowers from "the Gods" and their own cleverness, the people will serve and obey them out of fear. It is from this that we also get the word "priestcraft".

Secondly, magic is a mystical attempt to tune your consciousness to vibrate in resonance and harmony with the universe. Once this resonance is set up, you can shape and guide the universe into doing your will. It is this weak, useless type of magic that scholars focus on, calling it sympathetic magic. Pronouncing name exactly right, uttering spells, burning incense, and making offerings fall into this category. Making offerings and burning incense are legitimate things to do, but not for the purpose of practicing this second type of magic.

A key plank to Egyptian magic was the utterance of secret names. If you knew someones "real" name and pronounced it just right, you had power over their soul according to the Egyptian system. The whole Sacred Name movement today are practitioners of this second type of magic. They think that if you pronounce the name of God right, that suddenly it will have some power that you can use. But if you say it differently, you don't have any power and are rejected by God.

Also bred out of Saul was the ability to understand the purpose of the commandments. He felt, as did all of his race, that keeping the law had magical benefits. That the ceremonies had to be done just right to get the magical effect. And it was difficult if not impossible to keep the commandments "just right". Saul's Jesus creation had kept the commandments "just right" and therefore one could rely on Jesus' magic and not his own. — Message of the Sunrise Angel.

Thirdly, magic is making deals with supernatural beings, angels, or demons. God did not give us permission to do this. When the daughters of men mated with angels, they were practicing this third type of magic. When King Saul consulted with the spirit medium and spoke to the "spirit" of the dead prophet Samuel, he was practicing this third type of magic. This type of magic is called necromancy, the attempt to communicate with the dead. The dead are not alive, but wicked spirits masquerade and pretend to be the dead ones. The story of Doctor Faust, where he made a deal with the devil in exchange for his soul, is in this third category of magic. So is the ouija board.

These then are the three types of magic: Witchcraft, Vanity, and Necromancy. The second type is called "vanity" because it is mystical mumbo jumbo that doesn't work. The first and third type do work, sort of, for different reasons.

Jehovah gave us the physical laws of the universe, and taught us science, so that we could go out and master this universe. We don't need magic. Magic is the slow way around. It works by accident. It keeps the people running on the treadmill of state.

Did you know that the NASA moon landings are the biggest and most spectacular examples of state sponsored witchcraft in the past century? Yes. Not that any potions or spells were involved. But it is a giant deception, making people believe that the USA has superhuman powers that no other nation possesses. There is a reason that no other country has ever gone to the moon. After twenty years of fanfare, Japan has quietly abandoned its effort to put a man on the moon. India is trumpeting its planned moon mission, but it too will back away when it finds out it is impossible. Jehovah hasn't yet given us the power to visit the moon.

Swedish Red and White cow

If you defiled yourself by touching a dead body, a bone, by walking over a grave, or by being in the same room as a cadaver, you had to be sprinkled 3 and 7 days later with the ashes of a red heifer. On the seventh day you bathed, and were clean. But anyone touching the ashes of the red heifer was unclean for the rest of the day.

Jews today make a big deal about the red heifer being "pure" red. These pure red heifers are almost unknown in history. I submit a different test. The two year old test. Point to a cow and ask a two-year old child, "what color is that cow?" If they answer red, then you have a red heifer. I performed this test on some Scottish Highland cows, which cows have thick shaggy red fur. The results were positive; Scottish Highland cattle are suitable for use as red heifers. So is the Swedish Red and White breed.

One mystery to Jew and Christian alike is, what does the red heifer sacrifice mean? Why is it done? What does it symbolize? How does it fit in with the rest of Torah? I'll let you read the description of the red heifer sacrifice before we continue.

Numbers 19:1-22
And Jehovah spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
This is the ordinance of the law which Jehovah hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke:
And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face:
And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation seven times:
And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn:
And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the even.
And he that burneth her shall wash his clothes in water, and bathe his flesh in water, and shall be unclean until the even.
And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation: it is a purification for sin.
And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: and it shall be unto the children of Israel, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them, for a statute for ever.
He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.
He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.
Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of Jehovah; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him.
This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.
And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean.
And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days.
And for an unclean person they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel:
And a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon the persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave:
And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even.
But the man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of Jehovah: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.
And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them, that he that sprinkleth the water of separation shall wash his clothes; and he that toucheth the water of separation shall be unclean until even.
And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth it shall be unclean until even.

Messianic teacher Rico Cortes talks for fifty minutes about the mystery of the red heifer. He concludes that the red heifer was a symbolic type and shadow of the Messiah, and that the death of the Messiah on the mount of Olives "fulfilled" the red heifer sacrifice in every way. Rico Cortes may be right. I didn't find his argument too convincing.

In todays Bible reading at church we read Exodus 9. Remember a few days ago I said the "scapegoat" was Cain, and that the Torah is a commentary on the book of Genesis? I was referring to the sacrifice of the two sheep on the day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. There is a similar parallel with the Red Hiefer. Read these verses and tell me if you see the connection:

Exodus 9:1-11
Then Jehovah said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, Thus saith Jehovah God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.
For if thou refuse to let them go, and wilt hold them still,
Behold, the hand of Jehovah is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain.
And Jehovah shall sever between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Misery: and there shall nothing die of all that is the children's of Israel.
And Jehovah appointed a set time, saying, To morrow Jehovah shall do this thing in the land.
And Jehovah did that thing on the morrow, and all the cattle of Misery died: but of the cattle of the children of Israel died not one.
And Pharaoh sent, and, behold, there was not one of the cattle of the Israelites dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.
And Jehovah said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh.
And it shall become small dust in all the land of Misery, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Misery.
And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.
And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians.

Do you see that? God killed all the heifers of the Egyptians. Shortly before that, he had turned the Nile river into blood. Blood is red in color. What next? Moses took some ashes and sprinkled them over Misery, causing boils. Where do you think the ash in the furnace came from? Could it be the Egyptians were burning all their dead heifers that were lying around stinking up the fields? The ash was deadly to the Egyptians, and salvation to Israel.

It looks like a parallel to me. I still don't know what it means, or why the heifer had to be red, or why touching the ash made anyone unclean, and how the heck did it make the unclean clean. May Yehowah open our eyes to know his truth. May he accept our new wine offerings, our blood and grain offerings, offered with a humble and contrite spirit.

Several years ago, historian J.R. Dunn wrote an article called Summer's Lease. He handily debunked global warming. This month he posted an update in his blog. You can read it here: Resisting Global Warming Panic.