Diamanté smacks it out of the park

An interesting book

I’ve been listening to Seven Days in May, by Fletcher Knebel. It’s about a possible military coup.
Published in 1961, it was reportedly one of JFK’s favorite books. I’ve heard that he once mused that the events in the book could actually happen.

The book is set in 1974, so it was speculative fiction when it was written. Apparently, in the book, there was a war in Iran, which didn’t go well for the Americans, and resulted in an east and west Iran. The current President is a Democrat, who won on a promise to negotiate an end to the Cold War. He does, in fact, manage to wrangle out a treaty with the Soviet Union to destroy all nuclear weapons. This treaty is massively unpopular (according to the polls).
Meanwhile, a Lt. Colonel that works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff sees some irregular activity going on, and manages to get an audience with the President to tell him about it. The things the colonel talks about could be evidence of sedition, or it could be just a series of coincidental happenings.
I haven’t finished it, yet, but I do recommend it.

An article on Rev310.net

https://www.rev310.net/post/superheroes-and-superheresies

I started a Discord server

Click here to join:

https://discord.gg/ePDwBCeM

Pics of the Apoceclipse

The pictures from my phone don’t do the event justice. For a few seconds, I was able to view the totality without the dark glasses (it just looked like a black sky with the glasses on). It got quite dark, but we still cast shadows, which was cool. The temperature didn’t drop twenty degrees, though.

I’m skeptical

I am listening to Trinity Radio’s latest offering, and at one point, one of the participants suggests buying a few books by ancient authors (Plutarch, Josephus, Pliny) and study those writings for six months or so, and THEN study the Bible.

I disagree.

It’s like saying, “Spend six months eating horse vomit, so that you can really understand oatmeal.”

No thanks.

I think if you want to study the Bible, then read that, praying for the Holy Spirit to give you guidance.

Matthean Priority

This article gives the details, but Im pretty sure I had an unconscious suspicion of Marian priority from when I first heard the theory. It is presented that Mark wrote his gospel first, because he doesn’t include a lot of detail, then Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels, using Mark’s as a guide, while adding extra details that they got from an anonymous source called “Q”.

Qanon! What??

In any case, the idea is similar to claiming that someone named Cliff Notes wrote the first version of War and Peace, and then Tolstoy came along and added to the story, later.

It’s an excuse, as well, to downplay the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit in writing His Bible.

Chuck Missler taught that Matthew, being a publican, knew how to write in business shorthand, and he thus transcribed Jesus’s various sermons. If it is true that he had his notes to reference when writing his gospel, then it doesn’t make much sense that he would use Mark’s gospel.

Romans 1:16–“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

It makes sense to me that Matthew—the Gospel written to and for the Jews—would be written first.

I believe that Luke wrote next, and that his two-volume history of the early church (Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and then the activities of the church after Jesus’s ascension) were written as background information for Paul’s trial before Caesar. I get that idea from Chuck Missler, as well, but I don’t know Missler’s sources for either claim. I’ve seen an assertion that the “Theophilus” to whom Luke’s works were addressed was the name of the High Priest at the time, but that would mean that the High Priest had a Greek name.

I believe Mark wrote the third Gospel, based on Peter’s sermons, and John wrote the last, one based on his reminiscences (inspired, of course, by the Holy Spirit).

Happy Resurrection Day!

Jesus is risen from the dead! He has paid for all our sins!

This is kind of funny…

Freedomtoons focuses on Nikki Haley.

100 vs FRB

Over on the glibertarians website this morning, I mentioned a story about a state politician in Louisiana trying to pass a bill to make gold and silver official state money. I added that if he did not also deal with fractional reserve banking, then the scheme will eventually fail, and his “gold standard” will be blamed.

Another poster replied, asserting that economic growth is impossible if bank fraud was disallowed. He asked for one example of a society that was economically successful with a banking system that held to 100% reserves.

I didn’t know of any off hand, but I did find some info at the Mises.org and fee.org sites.

The Bank of Amsterdam is the first case, and here is a video by Jesus Huerta DeSoto talking about it (the video is in Spanish, but there is an English voice-over translating).

He makes a compelling case, but the argument can be made that the massive amount of silver coming from Spain’s looting the Americas at the time that the Bank of Amsterdam operated fueled the sort of wildcat speculation that fractional reserve banking promotes. It was during this time that the “Tulip Bulb Mania” occurred.

The other example is from an article at fee.org, and discusses the Bank of St. George, which was located in Genoa, and practiced 100% reserves, as well as the Bank of Amsterdam.

For a video on Fractional Reserve Banking generally, here is Dr. Bob Murphy.

And here is Joseph Salerno making an economic case concerning the effects of FRB.

I will note that FEE.org has articles in favor of fractional reserve banking, as well as those against.