PEOPLES IS PEOPLES... AND APES IS APES

from the September 20, 2011 eNews issue
http://www.khouse.org (visit our website for a FREE subscription)

There were once a much wider variety of human beings on this planet than there are now, according to new genetic analyses of Neanderthals in Europe and Denisovans in East Asia. Modern humans once interbred with these other groups, apparently sharing genetic material that includes the ability to fight off certain diseases. Yet, not all creatures designated as "hominids" are related to humans.

In 2008, a piece of bone and a tooth of what is believed to be a young girl were found in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia, along with stone blades and body ornaments. Twenty years ago the small bone and a tooth would not have been much to go on. These days, however, 40 mg of real bone from a fossil can tell researchers a great deal of information - if the bone contains enough genetic material for researchers to sequence the DNA.

Researchers were able to compare DNA all around, and it turns out that the Denisovan girl and Neanderthals are related, but not directly. According to comparisons of genetic code, the Denisovan shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals and modern humans.

"It amazed me that we found this other extinct group of humans," evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig, Germany, told LiveScience. "When we got this little finger bone from Siberia, I was totally expecting it to be either Neanderthal or modern human. When it was something else, that was totally surprising and shocking to me."

Ancient humans might bear some superficial physical differences from modern homo sapiens, but they were all still humans and able to breed with one another. In fact, interbreeding between modern-form humans and Neanderthals may have given us modern humans certain genes that helped boost our immune systems.

At the least, Neanderthals share key immunity genes with us, namely the HLA (human leucocyte antigen) class 1 gene. HLA proteins are important in helping the body defend itself against new infections. A variant called HLA-B*73 is found both in modern humans and Denisovans.

There's quite a bit of Neanderthal DNA floating around out there in the population. According to researchers, up to four percent of Neanderthal DNA and up to six percent of Denisovan DNA have survived in modern humans. It's been known for some time now that Neanderthals bred with the people whose descendants are now found in Europe and western Asia. Denisovan genes can also be found in the population of Europe and especially in the people of Asia and the oceanic islands.

No Missing Links
For more than a century, Neanderthals were portrayed as brutish, evolutionary missing links. They brought to mind the knuckle-dragging cave man, little better than apes themselves. Those pictures of Neanderthal are sadly incorrect. Evidence consistently points to Neanderthals as an extinct, but completely human, group of individuals. Neanderthals used tools, buried their dead, and even made musical instruments. The Denisovan bones were found with tools and body ornaments, which are both characteristic of human beings.

In the Bible, Adam's son Seth was born as a replacement for Abel, who was murdered by Cain. However, Cain, Abel, and Seth were not the only children Adam and Eve produced. Genesis 5:4 states that Adam lived another 800 years after Seth was born, and he begat sons and daughters. Seth's importance in the story comes from the fact that it is through his descendants that Noah is born. The only human genetic lines that survived the Flood were those that climbed on board the ark – namely, the genes of Noah's three sons and their wives.

With the Flood, God wiped out nearly all of humanity. He preserved one slender group of genes to continue on through the children of Shem, Ham and Japheth. It should therefore be no shock that we find the remains of other extinct humans that don't look exactly like us. Their gene pools were nearly wiped out.

Apes Are Still Apes:
On the other hand, paleoanthropologists are constantly seeking out new fossils they hope will finally provide science with the missing links between apes and humans. The newest human precursor is Australopithecus sediba. A. sediba was discovered in South Africa in 2008 by a little boy and his dog, and later identified as an australopithecine, a cousin of the famous Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy.

While A. sediba provides an exciting new puzzle piece for evolutionary paleoanthropologists, its similarities to humans - just like Neanderthal's differences - are superficial. A. sediba has been lauded for having hands strong enough to grasp tree branches while at the same time have hands that could use tools. Its pelvis is also more curved than other australopithecines, which the researchers believe would have made it easier for females attempting to give birth to babies with larger heads and brains. The fact that A. sediba itself has a small head, with a brain capacity of only 420 cc, doesn't discourage the scientists. They consider A sediba to be a possible human ancestor, and therefore the researchers see a human head-friendly pelvis in A. sediba.  Whether this is a case of, "If I hadn't believed it, I wouldn't have seen it," requires a second opinion.

"They are important fossils and remarkably detailed," said paleontologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in D.C..  Wood stood among those paleontologists  who were not yet willing to support A. sediba as a human ancestor. "I have some resemblances to Warren Buffett, but I'm not a billionaire," Wood says. "A few resemblances does not an ancestor make."

At the end of the day, A sediba is still an ape. She is an ape with long fingers and a wide pelvis. No tools or jewelry were found with A sediba. The apes did not bury their dead nor play handmade flutes. A. sediba simply represents the longing of paleoanthropologists to fill in the gaps between humans and apes on an evolutionary tree.

The difficulty is that the gaps are fairly large. Each new fossil discovery adds just one more individual to either the human family branches or the ape family branches. As much as paleoanthropologists want the two sets of branches to eventually run into each other, as time progresses, they look more and more like two, many-branched bushes and not one single tree at all.

Related Links:

• Neanderthal Sex Boosted Immunity In Modern Humans
  - BBC News
• Neanderthal Mating Gave Modern Day Humans a Boost
  - Bio News
• Human Ancestors Had Sex with Now-extinct Relatives
  - International Business Times
• Neanderthal Flute
  - NYU.edu
• Neanderthal 99.5 Percent Human
  - Live Science
• Neanderthal Man And The King Of Creation
  - Koinonia House eNews
• 2-Million-Year-Old Fossils Raise Human Ancestor Hopes
  - USA Today
• Fossil Trove Sheds Light On a Stage of Evolution
  - The Wall Street Journal

PEOPLES IS PEOPLES... AND APES IS APES

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe

The groundbreaking, "seminal work" (Time) on intelligent design that dares to ask, was Darwin wrong?

In 1996, Darwin's Black Box helped to launch the intelligent design movement: the argument that nature exhibits evidence of design, beyond Darwinian randomness. It sparked a national debate on evolution, which continues to intensify across the country. From one end of the spectrum to the other, Darwin's Black Box has established itself as the key intelligent design text — the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it.
In a major new Afterword for this edition, Behe explains that the complexity discovered by microbiologists has dramatically increased since the book was first published. That complexity is a continuing challenge to Darwinism, and evolutionists have had no success at explaining it. Darwin's Black Box is more important today than ever.

Book Link: Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe

The Grand Canyon Formation - Alternate Theories

from the June 14, 2011 eNews issue
http://www.khouse.org (visit our website for a FREE subscription)

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The Grand Canyon is a geological wonder, a vast chasm stretching 277 miles west to east through northern Arizona. The canyon offers one of the best geological cross sections in the world, with nearly 30 distinct layers found from the bottom to the top; its mesas, buttes, colorful slopes and spires illustrate the geological story of the great American southwest. School children are fed a simple tale about how the canyon was formed, but as any honest geologist will admit, nobody knows exactly how it got there.

The true cause of the Grand Canyon is still hotly debated among geologists, and all recognize there's no solid answer. There are too many missing pieces. The basic park ranger explanation is that the Colorado Plateau - 130,000 square miles covering northern Arizona, southern and eastern Utah, western Colorado and northwestern New Mexico - began to rise up 50-70 million years ago, causing the existing Colorado River to downcut. After millions of years of steady uplift, the Colorado River carved out the Grand Canyon. The higher the plateau rose, pushed upward by magma from deep in the earth, the more powerful the erosional forces of the river proved to be.

The Colorado River was tamed a great deal when the Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1966. The dam controls the flow of the river now. The Colorado's flashfloods once carried boulders the size of VW Buses, and it transported an estimated 160 million tons of sediment every year, scouring the canyon bottom. Still, many people consider the vast expanse of the Grand Canyon and despise the Colorado as an underfit river, one that could not have possibly hauled out all the necessary sediment.

A Few Puzzles:
The simple explanation does have serious geological issues. The Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California – the Sea of Cortez - which contains sediments from geologically young Pliocene layers - not older layers.  It appears that the eastern part of the Grand Canyon is much older than the western part of the Grand Canyon, but nobody knows exactly what happened.

The western end of the canyon is fairly young. Local sediments come from the Basin and Range area to the west of the Canyon and are from Miocene layers. No river could have carved through there until after the Miocene. There's also no evidence that an older Colorado River ran through the Grand Wash Cliffs at the western end of the canyon. There is therefore an upper Colorado River system to the east that did not originally continue west of the Colorado Plateau.

Alternate Theories:
The first thought, of course, is that the deposits were carried away by a different route. Perhaps the canyon was carved by a river that flowed down through Marble Canyon through what is now the Little Colorado River, draining into the Rio Grande. According to the theory, another small but steep and vigorous river rushed westward across the Basin and Range. It moved eastward by headward erosion until it ran into the upper Colorado. It "captured" the Colorado , caveman style, and the two married and carved the Grand Canyon in 4-6 million years, dumping into the Sea of Cortez like today.

There's a problem there, though. The Continental Divide would have prevented the Little Colorado River from reaching the Rio Grande, and the sediment evidence is not there.

Some argue that the old river flowed south at Peach Springs Canyon, until the river burst through whatever blocked the way to the western part of the Grand Canyon. Some argue that the Colorado Plateau tipped one way and then the other as it rose so that the Colorado River flowed in the opposite direction. Some argue the river flowed underground, or flowed northwest, draining into lakes in Nevada and Utah.

The deposits to prove these drainage systems haven't been found.  That's part of the problem; there is a lot of data that is just plain missing.

A Breached Dam:
According to one theory, two major lakes formed in the so-called Bidahochi Formation to the east of the current day Grand Canyon. The Colorado River overflowed the basins of the Colorado Rockies, filling the vast Hopi Lake and Grand Lake to the east. When the natural dam holding back the lakes broke, they gushed down, tearing out the soft limestone and sandstone layers of the Grand Canyon. With a rupture in the Kaibab Upwarp, the Colorado River changed course and followed the fissure down through what is now the western end of the canyon and south into the Gulf of California. In other words, the Colorado did not really cause the Grand Canyon at all, it merely followed the easiest path down to the Sea of Cortez after the Canyon had been formed.;

The breached dam theory has an interesting bit of support from the legends of the local tribes. More than 500 Native American sites in the Grand Canyon park indicate that significant populations lived in the vicinity throughout history.  In his video Grand Canyon, part of the Great National Parks series, Dan Goldblatt refers to a Navajo legend about the formation of Grand Canyon. In the full story, it rained in the land for many days. It rained so much that waters rose high over the tops of the mountains. After the rain stopped, whatever was holding back the waters broke, and the waters rushed down and carved out the canyon.

Young Earth geologists like Steve Austin believe that these great lakes were leftover from the Flood of Noah.  When the natural dam that held them broke, the waters ripped through the Kaibab Plateau with a fury. If the lakes were quite large - three times the size of Lake Michigan, by some estimates - the erosion would not have had to take the millions of years that geologists would have expected.

In the end, the scientists will keep battling it out. Only God knows exactly how that fantastic crevasse in the earth was formed, but every bit of information adds to the tremendous fun of figuring out the mystery.

Related Links:

  •   The Breached Dam Theory - Advanced Creationism
  •   Sedimentation in the Colorado River delta and Upper Gulf of California After Nearly a Century of Discharge Loss - Marine Geology
  •   The Grand Canyon as a Creationist Clock - University of South Dakota
  •   The Mystery Of The Pre-Grand Canyon Colorado River: Results From The Muddy Creek Formation - GSA Today
  •   The Muddy Creek Formation at the Mouth of the Grand Canyon: Constraint or Chimera? - USGS
  •   Making Sense of Grand Canyon's Puzzles - The New York Times

The Grand Canyon Formation - Alternate Theories

WAS ARDI OUR APE ANCESTOR?

Koinonia House 
from the October 06, 2009 eNews issue

A major fossil find has made its splash in the news recently - a primate named "Ardi" who is believed to date to 4.4 million years ago, 1.2 million years earlier than the famous australopithecine Lucy. Paleoanthropologists are making a big to-do about Ardi, just as they have other ancient ape species found in northern Africa. Despite all the fuss, Ardi - like her neighbor Lucy - is still just an extinct species of ape.

For the past 15 years, the delicate remains of a number of Ardipithecus ramidus specimens have been carefully exhumed and studied. When the bones of Ardi and her fellows were discovered in the early 1990's, they had been trampled and smashed into the mud, and getting them back out for scientific purposes proved a difficult, sensitive task. The bones were not laid out in the matrix in a nice, articulated fashion. Instead, they were jumbled and smashed to "smithereens."  Time reports that, along with Ardi's bones, more than 100 fragments from some 35 Ar. ramidus specimens were found at the site, but after putting them together and doing some digital reconstruction, scientists believe they have a good idea of who Ardi was.

Ardi is a unique extinct species, but she's still all ape. She had a small brain and an ape's large opposable toe good for grasping things. She doesn't neatly fit into a spot as humanity's missing link, which paleoanthropologists have expected to look like a cross between a human and a chimpanzee. The current excitement hinges on the fact that those who have studied her argue that Ardi was bipedal – that is, she walked upright. The males of her species also had smaller, gentler teeth than the huge fangs of chimps, and her hands were more dexterous than chimp hands.

"This find is far more important than Lucy," National Geographic quotes Alan Walker, a paleontologist from Pennsylvania State University who was not part of the research. "It shows that the last common ancestor with chimps didn't look like a chimp, or a human, or some funny thing in between."

While the popular news media readily state that Ardi walked upright, some researchers do disagree with that conclusion. First of all, the pelvis bones were seriously crushed, adding to the speculative nature of those bipedal claims. Also, Ardi's feet were nothing like human feet. She had that huge opposable toe and no arch.

Anatomist William Jungers of Stony Brook University is skeptical of the claims that Ardi was bipedal. He told National Geographic News, "This is a fascinating skeleton, but based on what they present, the evidence for bipedality is limited at best. Divergent big toes are associated with grasping, and this has one of the most divergent big toes you can imagine. Why would an animal fully adapted to support its weight on its forelimbs in the trees elect to walk bipedally on the ground?"

Kent State University's Owen Lovejoy believes that Ardi stood upright when she walked, but also acknowledged her comfort in the trees, saying, "She has opposable great toes and she has a pelvis that allows her to negotiate tree branches rather well. So half of her life is spent in the trees; she would have nested in trees and occasionally fed in trees…"

People are also excited about Ardi because she dates 1.2 million years older than Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), who also allegedly walked upright. Yet, there is skepticism about whether even Lucy walked around on two feet. Anatomist Dr. Fred Spoor and his colleagues at University College, London, performed CAT scans on australopithecine inner ear canals, which are responsible for posture and balance, and came to the conclusion that these creatures did not regularly walk around upright as is so frequently claimed (Nature 369(6482):645–648, 1994). Anatomist Dr Charles Oxnard used multivariate analysis to show that Lucy's big toe was opposable, just like in chimpanzees. In fact, B.G. Richmond and D.S. Strait reported in Nature in 2000 that Lucy's wrists demonstrated she was likely a knuckle-walker like other apes.

A major reason Lucy is often portrayed with human feet, standing upright like a human, is that human footprints have been found in the area where Lucy was discovered. The hardened ash the Laetoli footprints walked through was dated to the time of Lucy using K/Ar testing, and since evolutionists have already decided humans and Lucy did not co-exist, they have concluded that Lucy must have made the prints herself.  (According to the Biblical model, humans and apes were created the same day, and would have lived on the earth at the same time.)

While evolutionary writers make confident statements about the place of new skeletal discoveries in the history of human evolution, there is plenty of room for skepticism. The scientific community might assume an evolutionary relationship between humans and ancient primates, but still struggle to show a true relationship exists. It is wise to look closer at the evidence and question claims that our ancestors ever had feet with opposable toes.

Books & DVDs by Dr. Chuck Missler

Related Links:

 • Ardi Is a New Piece for the Evolution Puzzle - Time
 • Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found - National Geographic News
 • Ardipithecus Ramidus - Science
 • Standing (and Walking) Alone: - RAE
 • Meet Ardi - Answers In Genesis
 • New Evidence: Lucy Was a Knuckle-Walker - Creation.com
 • Lucy In The Sky: Case For The Tree-Dweller - True Authority

WAS ARDI OUR APE ANCESTOR?

Companion Bible Appendix # 5 - Creation versus Evolution

This is a new feature I have started on my blog. As often as I can, I will be posting one of the 198 Appendices of the Companion Bible. It is an amazing study and reference tool, and I thought that it might be helpful and interesting to preview some of the resources available in it. This Bible was compiled by one of the great scholars of the past, Dr. E.W. Bullinger. I have some of his other books in my Amazon Store that you can check out here. If you would like to access the entire Companion Bible in an online edition, it is available here. Hope you find this interesting and inspiring.

Companion Bible Appendix # 5 - Creation versus Evolution

Purchase Companion Bible

More books by E.W. Bullinger

Companion Bible Appendix # 5 - Creation versus Evolution

Iran, Hezbollah and Crop Circles?

By L. A. Marzulli

RaidersNewsNetwork.com -- Recently Mahmood Amedihijahd, the president of Iran has hinted that there will be a summer war in the region to rid the area of its enemies, think Israel here. For those who have followed his ongoing vitriol against Israel this is nothing new except that he’s announced a definitive time frame, this summer.

In the recent past Ahmedinejhad has declared that, the holocaust didn’t exist, that Israel is a withered tree soon to be plucked by it’s roots and that the tiny nation should be wiped off the map. There’s not much wiggle room in those statements. It’s not like Israel and the Iranians are going to sit down and chat about their political differences soon. Facts are that Iran has backed the terror organization Hezbollah, who’s leader Hasan Nesrallah has sworn to destroy Israel and has recently boasted that the new rockets that he received – thanks again to the Iranians – can reach everywhere in Israel.

You may remember last summer when Hezbollah attacked Israel resulting in a war that Israel clearly won, having knocked Hezbollah from its position in southern Lebanon. Nesrallah, who probably holed up in Iran during the conflict, reemerged after the dust had cleared, promptly declared victory for Hezbollah. How’s that for spin?

It is documented that many of the weapons that Hezbollah armed itself with came from Iran, by way of Syria. Recently Ahmedinejhad paid a visit to the Syrians and discussed regional politics. This led to the statement I quoted from in the beginning of the article about a summer war in the region.

The Israeli’s have not been sitting idly by doing nothing. Various postings from Israeli news agencies have hinted that they have been preparing for this, ‘summer war’ and are bracing for an all out conflict.

Former Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared, "It’s 1939 and Iran is Germany." Make no mistake that Netanyahu is a man who has been involved in the ongoing Middle Eastern Conflict from almost the beginning. So it just may be that unless cooler heads prevail a full-scale war with dire consequences could envelop the entire region.

So how does this relate to crop circles? I’m glad you asked.

Recently there was a posting by a crew of researchers based in England who set up cameras around a field hoping to document what was responsible for the hundreds of crop circles that have manifested in the fields throughout England for several decades. Here is the link, which will take you directly to the story and show you what the circle looked like.

What makes this particular crop circle interesting is that because the field was surrounded with cameras, it assures us that pranksters – who have admittedly designed some of the circles – were not responsible for this one. The film crew stated that they believe the circle was made in four microseconds. In other words the technology that was used in making the crop circle is beyond our current understanding of the physics.

What adds to this is the sighting of an enormous UFO over the English Channel several weeks ago. Two different pilots sighted the mile wide ship separately.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the phenomena of both the crop circle and the UFO are real. Would that change what you believe? Would you have to rethink your worldview – your religion, ethics? Morality?

Here’s where I think this all going. One of the most poignant of ancient prophecies is found in Ezekiel, chapter 38 & 39. To summarize it tells of the nation of Israel being gathered from the four corners of the earth and reestablished in their homeland of Israel. Immediately afterward a confederacy of nations attack and Israel responds with what I believe is the use of their nuclear arsenal. Of course they will use this as a last resort but from the text it appears that they are about to be overrun by an overwhelmingly superior military ground invasion. So the Israeli response is one of survival.

Adding to this is another text roughly 2,000 years old, which tells of "men fainting from fear from what is coming on the earth." (Luke 21:26)

Here’s a possible scenario that I believe we might be looking at in the near future. Israel is attacked simultaneously by a confederacy of nations. When it looks like they are about to be overrun they respond with their nuclear arsenal – neutron bomb. Immediately following that, mile-wide UFO’s manifest in the sky over Jerusalem and other capitals of the world. The reason for this is that these ‘aliens’ will declare that they genetically manipulated us thousands of years ago and in fact are our progenitors. They will then proceed to tell us that the religions of the world were, in fact their doing and that the miracles of Jesus, Moses and others were manipulated by E. T. Here’s an excerpt from my new book Politics, Prophecy & the Supernatural.

Chapter 14—The Coming Great Deception and Luciferian Endgame

It is time to create an amalgamation of the three areas of the study of this book: politics, prophecy, and the supernatural. Following is an outline that gives an overview of the most pertinent points.

The ongoing struggle in the Middle East is cause for great concern to all the nations of the world. The jihadists of radical Islam are bent on destroying the state of Israel and the "Great Satan" (i.e. The United States). Hamas and Hezbollah are in fact at war with Israel and are ramping up for another attack. Al-Qaeda will join forces with Hezbollah and Hamas to attack their sworn enemy, Israel. The prophecies found in the Bible are 100 percent accurate and reflect a "God" who knows the future because he is outside our space-time continuum.

The Fatima apparition changed the worldview of thousands of people in an instant and could very well be the harbinger of worldwide deception. Those who were in the field that day, who saw the "miracle of the sun," for the most part became believers that the apparition was of Mary. As I have pointed out earlier, I believe this was a deception and that the apparition was not the Mary of the Gospels. There are supernatural events currently taking place on a global scale.

It seems the existence of UFOs and alien abductions are supernatural events that are orchestrated by fallen angels/Satanic forces. Prophecies written over twenty-six hundred years ago describe a time in history where a confederacy of nations will come up against Israel described as, "a land of unwalled villages."

Israel will respond to this attack by using its nuclear arsenal.

Shortly after the war between Israel and the jihadists, great supernatural events will manifest on the earth (as I have discussed regarding the "great rebellion" in 2 Thess. 2.)

The following is a scenario that I hope will never happen; however, I believe that we might see something along the lines of what I am about to propose. The Ezekiel 38-39 war will unfold as the prophecy indicates, and those nations that come against the "land of unwalled villages" (Israel) will be destroyed by a nuclear response. The world will watch all of this in horror, just as it watched the coverage of the Lebanon war this past summer (2006).

I believe that this nuclear exchange will be the trigger for the supernatural to manifest.

I have a theory regarding this, and it is that Satan and his cohorts will use this nuclear exchange as the event they need to manifest the UFOs over multiple cities on earth. The timing will be perfect, as the world will be holding its collective breath as it witnesses the destruction not only in the Middle East but in the United States as well. The world will be ready to embrace a "savior" to end the senseless destruction. While this might sound extreme, I point to the text from Luke 21:26, "Men will faint from terror, apprehension of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken" (NIV). It will be the beginning of the Great Deception. This deception is that the ET’s are here to help us through this time of chaos, that they are true progenitors, and that they have created numerous holy men, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, to try to enlighten us. They will say that they will show us who God is. Remember the quote from the alleged Pleiadian cosmonaut, Semjase? We will be told something very similar to the lie that Semjase told Billy Meir, that God is a force. To reiterate, this goes against Judeo/Christian theology in that God is not a force but rather is personal, and we can know Him.

Can you imagine if over the city of Jerusalem and perhaps other cities around the world, UFO craft manifested in broad daylight and remained hovering indefinitely? I believe something along these lines will happen, and when "they" arrive, "they" will tell us the reason "they" have manifested because we resorted to using weapons of mass destruction, or nuclear armaments. They will say they have chosen to intervene at this time because, they will say, they genetically manipulated us, and they want to see us survive as a species. But because of the recent destruction, they have chosen to take action to assure that end.

Will this singular event (the manifestation of UFO craft) change everyone’s worldview, instantaneously? If people see a demonstration of the kind of technology and power that the UFO will demonstrate, coupled with the holographic imagery depicting the miracles of the Bible and other faiths, as I’ve discussed before, most will believe what they are seeing. This will cause the "great falling away" discussed in length in this book. Most people will believe the lie that they see in front of them. Hence, worldviews will be drastically altered.

It is important to remember that the war of the Ezekiel 38-39 prophecy, which will have just transpired between Israel and the jihadists, will be primarily driven by religious reasons and the corresponding religions: Judaism and Christianity, which are based on supernatural events that happened millennia ago (events like the parting of the Red Sea, the ten plagues of Egypt, Jesus rising from the dead on third day, etc., all of which are supernatural occurrences that are part of each religion’s foundation.) Therefore, what if the "aliens" proclaim that they were in fact the supernatural force responsible for creating all of the world’s religions in the first place, and that alien technology was responsible for creating the miracles found in the Bible and other "holy" books. Recently on the History channel, Barry Downing, author of The Bible and Flying Saucers, and a Presbyterian minister, expounded on this theory by saying that Jesus’ resurrection occurred when he – Jesus—was beamed up from earth by a flying saucer. He also believes that the pillar of cloud that is described in the book of Exodus was a UFO and was also responsible for the parting of the Red Sea.

I quote from Downing’s writing because he is discussing the Ascension of Jesus. He is equating it to direct intervention from a UFO. Here is what he says:

" . . but I very much suspect that the ascension cloud was the same UFO which led the Israelites through the Red Sea, gave Moses the commandments, carried Elijah to heaven, "descended" like a dove at the baptism of Jesus, perhaps carried away bodily at the Ascension. This was probably the same "cloud" which brought two men to meet Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration, and probably the same type of UFO, which brought angels to the Shepherds at Christmas."

Downing embraces, in a nutshell, what I call the "alien gospel," which is synonymous with the subtitle of this book; The Coming Great Deception & the Luciferian Endgame. Simply put, the "alien gospel" will reveal that the "aliens" created humankind by genetically manipulating primitive man (early humans) thousands of years ago; therefore, they are, in fact, our progenitors. Hence, they will present the supposed missing link in human evolution. They will claim that they are responsible for genetically engineering the leap between apes and humans. This, of course, will dovetail neatly with Darwin’s theory of evolution that has been taught now for over a century as a fact, not a theory.

The idea that the aliens, or ET, were directly involved in the miracles and/or supernatural events that are the foundation for the world’s major religions will cause the great deception that will draw people away from what I believe is the truth of the Gospels—and replace it with a lie.

What if the aliens have holographic film of Moses parting the Red Sea, or the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus? Imagine seeing the exodus from an aerial view: Moses raising his arms, the waters parting, and the Israelites going through the sea on dry land. Imagine then, the aliens claiming that this miracle was really the intervention of extraterrestrials and their superior technology that allows them to manipulate matter.

Or what if the holographic film shows the tomb of Jesus being struck by a brilliant beam of light, and, moments later, the stone is rolled away and Jesus emerges. What if, like the reported apparition at Fatima, we see an image leave the ship and float toward the cave, and we realize that Jesus’ resurrection too, is once again, the intervention of extraterrestrials? Could this deceptive event, or revealing, be the catalyst that will cause the great falling away or apostasy that is described in 2 Thessalonians 2 in the Bible?

I believe that everyone seeing this holographic film will "realize" this new "truth" and will embrace it. All of the old prejudices and wars that have been fought for centuries over religious beliefs will fall, of their own weight, in the light of this new revelation. This will be the beginning of a one world religious system described in the book of Revelation: "All the inhabitants of earth will worship the beast" (NIV). Millions will be caught up in the deception and the great falling away, the Apostasy, as I discussed earlier will be complete.

I know the scenario I just described is fantastic, but let me remind you of the writings of Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:9 where he says that Satan comes with all "signs and lying wonders."

I think the church has underestimated the power of the Luciferian Endgame, as it has used the comfort of a pretribulation rapture as panacea for the deception that might befall every man, woman, and child on the earth. Remember too, that Jesus himself warns, "For false Christ’s and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible" (emphasis added) (NIV, Matt. 24:24).

I believe that the seemingly unrealistic scenario that I have described above very well may be the Luciferian "Endgame." In other words, I believe that fallen angels disguised as aliens will in fact manifest and lay claims to the creation of the human species and execution of the miracles that have happened on earth; this will be the great "lie" against which the Bible warns. Although this may sound preposterous, in the "Supernatural" part of this book, UFO sightings, the Fatima apparitions, Mothman prophecies, crop circles, and the abduction phenomenon are just a few examples of supernatural events that either have occurred or are occurring in real time. I believe that these supernatural events are harbingers of something far worse than the evil forces that have already come upon the earth. So why will people believe the lie, which will state that aliens are our creators and the force behind all miracles on earth? Let us examine the reason.

BOOKS BY L. A. MARZULLI

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Iran, Hezbollah and Crop Circles?

Environmentalism: The Religion for an Eco-theocratic Superstate?

by Phillip D. Collins

RaidersNewsNetwork.com -- In a recent address to the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C., Czech President Vaclav Klaus declared, "Environmentalism is a religion. It does not belong in the natural sciences and is more connected with social science." According to Klaus, this religion is purely a statist one designed to enthrone policy professionals that hope to "rule from above." Klaus asserted that this religion worked in tandem with "multi-culturalism," "internationalism," "social democratism," and other fashionable ideologies to accelerate the global tectonic shift towards "supranationalism." These contentions seem to be reinforced by the admonitions of one of the environmentalist movement’s leading ideologues: Albert Gore.

A cursory perusal of Gore’s Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit reveals the religious character of environmentalism. Replete with inherently religious terms like "heretical," "moral," and "spirit," Gore’s book virtually qualifies as a sacred text. However, the religion that Gore espouses is hardly amicable to Christianity. Gore assails Christianity for the purported suppression of the "goddess religion," which he contends provided humanity with a "spiritual sense of our place in nature" (260). According to Gore, those who think otherwise hold "heretical" beliefs (258).

Gore claims to be a Baptist (244). However, almost every assertion that he presents represents a departure from traditional Christian theological precepts. For instance, Gore re-conceptualizes the Godhead as God, nature, and man (255). Rejecting man’s universal position as imago viva Dei, Gore declares: "We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment ... Man is organic with the world" (21). Gore also expresses the belief that the totality of human intellect is "detached" from man and constitutes a "new disembodied mind" (251-52). This "new disembodied mind," Gore contends, possesses absolute omniscence and can "observe the movement of matter everywhere" (251-52). Such ideas are nothing new. Gore’s monistic Weltanschauung is merely the latest incarnation of the belief in an emergent deity within the immanent cosmos. W. Warren Wagar explains:

Nineteenth-and early twentieth-century thought teems with time-bound emergent deities. Scores of thinkers preached some sort of faith in what is potential in time, in place of the traditional Christian and mystical faith in a power outside of time. Hegel's Weltgeist, Comte's Humanite, Spencer's organismic humanity inevitably improving itself by the laws of evolution, Nietzsche's doctrine of superhumanity, the conception of a finite God given currency by J.S. Mill, Hastings Rashdall, and William James, the vitalism of Bergson and Shaw, the emergent evolutionism of Samuel Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, the theories of divine immanence in the liberal movement in Protestant theology, and du Nouy's telefinalism--all are exhibits in evidence of the influence chiefly of evolutionary thinking, both before and after Darwin, in Western intellectual history. The faith of progress itself--especially the idea of progress as built into the evolutionary scheme of things-is in every way the psychological equivalent of religion. (106-07)

The "faith of progress itself" was also one of the defining pillars of the anti-Christian Enlightenment. This anthropocentric religion, which reached its nadir with the bloody French Revolution, venerated progress as the product of man’s apotheosized Reason. Goeringer elaborates upon the Enlightenment view of progress:

Reason, working upon nature, would enhance the quality of life for each and every one of the Enlightened. The Atheist philosopher Condorcet preached the doctrine of a coming Utopia, where indefinite progress would bring forth a "natural salvation" of plenty and immortality. Progress held that since the universe was knowable, enlightened man could become the subject of history rather than its object. Mankind could fashion nature to its wishes; the efficacy in shaping the natural order was limited only by time and the sheer limits, if any, of reason. (Goeringer, no pagination)

Not surprisingly, the Enlightenment also venerated nature. Goeringer states:

Nature was just that — the natural, real world. It was not the realm of the supernatural, the demonic, or the godly, but the empirical or rational "stuff" of which the universe was, and is, made. Nature could be understood through reason; through logic, scientific inquiry, and open mind of free inquiry, nature would yield her secrets. (No pagination)

Of course, there are some crucial distinctions to be made. The Enlightenment’s view of nature was not as overtly spiritual as Gore’s, although many Enlightenment thinkers did view the decoding of nature’s secrets as analogous to divine revelation. Moreover, while Gore promotes a doctrine of emergent deity, his religion seems to eschew progress in favor of an anti-industrial, agrarian feudalism. Thus, modern day Enlightenment proponents like the Randian Objectivists clash violently with Gore’s environmentalism. These distinctions aside, there are some ideational commonalities that share an overall aversion for Christianity.

Gore's vision is purely global in scope, as is evidenced by his proposed "Global Marshall Plan." This hypothetical policy would stipulate the formation of a "trust fund" to generate revenue for environmentally sound products (349-50). The money for this fund would be confiscated from offenders of "mother earth," namely those segments of industry that are guilty of increasing carbon dioxide emissions (34-50). Further delineating his framework for an eco-theocratic state, Gore proposes a form of universal education that will "monitor the entire earth" (357). Gore’s hypothetical state would also mandate "an annual tree census" (357).

Given the supranational character of Gore's proposed social and political machinations, the claims of Vaclav Klaus certainly gain more credibility. In his address to the CATO Institute, Klaus specifically identified the world’s gradual migration towards global governance as a threat to liberty everywhere (Mooney, no pagination). Klaus contended that environmentalism was providing the ersatz religion for a gradually developing superstate (no pagination). If he is correct, then Gore qualifies as the high priest of the emergent world theocracy. Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, enjoyed an international audience and won an academy award at the Oscars. Evidently, the evangel of the new ecclesiastical authority is spreading. Heretics, beware.

Sources Cited

Goeringer, Conrad. "The Enlightenment, Freemasonry, and the Illuminati." American Atheists 2006

Gore, Albert. Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Houghton Mifflin, NY: 1992.

Mooney, Kevin. "Environmentalism Religion Rather Than Science, Says Czech Leader." CNSNews.com 12 March 2007

Wagar, W. Warren. H.G. Wells and the World State. New Haven, CT.: Yale UP, 1961.

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FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Environmentalism: The Religion for an Eco-theocratic Superstate?