Before airing more audio from the first-ever televised predestination and free will debate, Bob Enyart challenges some COVID claims. And he also presents our nascent COVID Leftist Conspiracies list and our bulleted Understanding the Shutdown without Conspiracies. Then Calvinist pastor Brian Schwertley continues to argue for the false doctrine of Limited Atonement, not recognizing that God the Son Himself IS the atonement, and that because He has infinite value and worth, the atonement by definition cannot be limited. Jesus Himself said that, "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Mat. 20:28). So He was the Ransom. Will Duffy has a question for Calvinists, "How would Christ's death have been different had He hypothetically died for everyone and not a limited elect? Calvinists will struggle to answer this because they realize that any attempt to answer would downplay Christ's actual death and suffering." The second half of the debate, about God existing "in time", begins with time in heaven, God in time, and the nightmare of the alternative, which would be God always looking upon us a saved and unsaved, as Jesus as resurrected and unresurrected, as Adam as unfallen and fallen, etc.
* Extra-biblical testimony against limited atonement: Of course according to the Scriptures, God the Son became a Man (that was different), and He Himself was the sacrifice by giving His life, experiencing death (which is separation), first being separated from His Father (Mark 15:34) and having the Father's wrath poured upon Him, and then being separated from His body which He had received through the Incarnation. So the value of the atonement was infinite and could not possibly be limited because it was the value of God the Son Himself! For He Himself became our Ransom (2 Timothy 2:6). Many teachers though, sadly, have conditioned many believers to accept only extra-biblical arguments written by theologians and church fathers. Disagreement over the Bible itself presents sufficient difficulty, yet these teachers introduce as authoritative extra-biblical writings of greater extent than the Scriptures themselves. This enables them to find "proof texts" for unbiblical doctrines in uninspired books. So for those conditioned in this manner, we quote solid biblical truth penned in about 318 A.D. by Athanasius in his text, On the Incarnation. Though already handicapped by Platonic utter immutability, Athanasius nonetheless held a strong sense of the deity of Jesus Christ. As to his Bible-based statements which would refute limited atonement (even though that doctrine was not codified until 1300 years later), he wrote of Christ's sacrifice, "there was a debt owing which must needs be paid; for, as I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that... He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man's account with death and free him of the primal transgression. ... The death of all was consummated in the Lord's body... death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. ...that He might offer it as His own in place of all... suffering for the sake of all... He died to ransom all... as an offering on behalf of all. ... it was the death of all mankind that the Saviour came to accomplish... Again, the death of the Lord is the ransom of all... that body which He first offered to death on behalf of all, and then made through it a parth to heaven."
As stated, sadly, Athanasius was nonetheless under the sway of pagan Greek utter immutability. Thus, and only thus could he write, "Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way..." And worse, "For His being in everything does not mean that He shares the nature of everything..." Of course, Jesus did not possess (as a demon would) a man's body, but He "became flesh", it was "His body", and even after His ascension and forever He is "the Man Jesus Christ". So He wasn't simply "in" a body the way God's presence might be "in" Jerusalem or "in" a believer, but He "became flesh" because He became Man, and so He is now and forevermore, His favorite title for Himself, the "Son of Man". Athanasius likewise, and also falsely of God the Son, wrote of "His own impassibility" that though men mocked the Word of God, "He Himself was unhurt by this, for He is impassible..."
Athanasius, incidentally, is accused by some of having been a universal reconciliationist. The Bible, especially in Paul's epistle to the Romans, explains how Christ's sacrifice ensured that not a single one of Adam's descendants would ever be eternally damned because of Adam's sin. Universalists claim such passages mean that no one is forever separated from God. However, love cannot be forced. So if God brought everyone to heaven, He would merely be turning heaven over to Satan. Athanasius, of course, did recognize that deceased unbelievers were in hell and elsewhere he wrote, "Then, for the good, is laid up the heavenly kingdom, but for those that practise evil, outer darkness and the eternal fire."
* Wuhan Flu: Those who seek to hold the Chinese communist government accountable for the lies and cover-up behavior that ignited the pandemic can use this map of China coated with the widely-recognized SARS-CoV-2 virus graphic...
* Biblical Principles Related to a Drastic Epidemic Mitigation: Consider historical accounts and biblical principles from Joseph, Moses, Nehemiah, and Jesus Himself. In the Book of Leviticus Moses wrote God's commands regarding infectuous disease mitigation 3,000 years before the age of microbiology ushered in by creationist Louis Pasteur. The Lord instructed the Israelites to quarantine, wash, observe, and even at times burn the personal effects of the infirm. That quarantine, of course, was for the person who was ill, and this was for the particular infectuous disease the Israelites were facing at that time. A biblical teaching from a couple centuries earlier in sacred history that is related to drastic action taken by a government in the face of a possibly existential threat comes from the time of Amenemhat III. (He's the source of the ancient expression, Amen, make it so.) The reason that God revealed the coming famine to Joseph was so that the Egyptian government could prepare for a looming drought. Pharaoh undoubtedly expropriated land over the nine miles of what is still today called the Waterway of Joseph. That Bahr Yussef brought the Nile's water to Birket Karun, quadrupling its water acreage. Also undoubledly, thistook a tremendous number of lakefront properties, when Birket Karun became the massive ancient Lake Moeris, filling that valley to become a huge resevoir. Joseph was not known as one of the twelve patriarchs of Jacob at that time, and any displaced landowners, even any who happened to believe in the Creator of the world, if they held the same position as many right-wing Christians today, would have fiercely objected: "The government has no just authority to take away my God-given right to control my own private property! And besides, look at the weather. Looks fine to me! There's no drought in site!" (Sounds like many Christians in January, February, and March 2020. See the almost non-existent daily deaths for those months, above.) When God authorized Nehemiah to return to Jerusalem and build the great wall of the city to mitigate possible future death from invaders, the descendants of Jews and others who had escaped Nebuchadnezzar's army seventy years earlier were living among the rubble of the cities overthrown. Undoubedly here too God's authority extended to the appropriation of land for the wall even over any objections of current residents. "You're not building a wall across my land!", to which Nehemiah if he were in a good mood would have said to his men, "Ignore him." Consider also the significant implication of Jesus' teaching that man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for man. Selah.
* The Cure is Worse: The COVID mitigation efforts appear to be worse than the disease per our own rsr.org/25-ways-the-shutdown-kills-people.
* List of COVID Christian Conspiracies: from the conservative pastor of DBC, after first angering the left with our 25 Ways the Shudown Kills People, now we've angered many on the right, our own natural consituency, with our list of COVID Conspiracies. Millions of Christians lacking discernment swallowed whole each of these absurdities, many of which are contradictory, and risk their mental health by endulging their paranoia...
- the coronavirus was never a real threat
- the government planned the pandemic (as a power grab)
- the media planned the pandemic (to get Trump)
- the global elite planned this (toward ushering in the anti-Christ)
- Fauci who had said "it's coming" planned this (to make money)
- China planned the pandemic (but infected itself first)
- the virus is a "Plandemic" (though China infected itself first)
- the CDC planned this (advertising in 2019 for pandemic workers)
- somebody, doesn't matter who, planned this (says my paranoia)
- this virus can't be natural (while it could've been, turns out it isn't)
- a SARS or COVID virus could appear naturally only every 800 years
- China created this as a biological weapon (then infected itself)
- people can contract SARS-CoV-2 from the flu vaccine
- coronavirus test kits are infecting people with the virus
- masks increase your risk of contracting the coronavirus
- Bill Gates is creating a vaccine to kill millions of people (delusional; he said that prosperous societies tend to have fewer children; see depopulation)
- God's command to not bear false witness doesn't apply to me
- KS City ordered churches to turn over membership roles
- the Mark of the Beast is a vaccine (Of course! How could it not be!)
- any conspiracy always explains whatever crisis occurs
- COVID deaths, low for many weeks, were then greatly exaggerated
(disproving conservative conspiracy, deaths plummeted May 6th - July 6th)
- $39k paid for each ventilator use (So what? Most have gone unused.)
- government plans to forcibly remove children from homes (i.e., Washington)
- 5G wireless technology helps to spread the coronavirus
- churches have been shut down but not mosques
- medical examiners routinely attribute traffic deaths to COVID
- the CDC designed guidelines to overcount COVID deaths
- the CDC quietly reduced COVID death count by 23,000
- the COVID vaccine is unsafe (yet one doesn't even exist)
- Fauci profits from a (non-existent) HIV vaccine
- the left is using this crisis (yes, but they use everything, even normalcy)
- to receive any of the $100 billion HR 6666 testing money institutions must require everyone entering their facilities to have taken the (non-existent) COVID vaccine.
Countless extreme variations of conspiracy are racing through the web giving the paranoid an adrenaline rush. For example, a nurse practitioner owner of a succesful clinic tells people that China's phase one bioweapon has killed about half-a-million Americans (and countless millions of others around the world) yet the governments of the U.S., Japan, South Korea, etc., are hiding the true death toll. (Why? You'll be better off if you don't ask.) Separately, online videos are claiming that President Trump signed a bill enabling charging with attempted murder anyone who does not wear a mask. (No word on whether the law requires masks while sleeping and showering.) Millions of people have spent decades of their life being reckless with their mental health, indulging their paranoia, and now the consequences are seen everywhere. (For BEL's main related page, see kgov.com/conspiracy-theories.)
COVID Leftist Conspiracies:
- Trump-led racists fabricating Wuhan lab origin
- Those urging return to work want people to die
- HCQ used safely for 60 years now a very dangerous drug
- _________ please send suggestions for leftist or Christian conspiracies to Bob@kgov.com. Like the people in the Bible and taking the Lord as an example, we are far more interested in confronting bad behavior among us Christians, and exposing the misinformation spread by believers, than we are in talking about the overtly obvious left-wing conspiracies.
Understanding the Shutdown without Conspiracies: Please send suggestions for this section to Bob@kgov.com.
- For decades epidemiologists have considered shutdowns (ex. Colo 1918)
- Mankind through the 1900s lacked the wealth to even try a global shutdown
- Like 2002 SARS virus, SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats to people
- Lancet: By Dec. 11 a Wuhan wife gets a person-to-person infection
CHINA'S ROLE
- CNN: China officially obstructs, censors research on coronavirus origin, etc.
- FNC: The first reporting journalists and doctors were "disappeared"
- Univ. of Toronto: China by 12/31 censoring Wuhan pneumonia, SARS, etc.
- CNN & WSJ: Police: 'Dr. Wenliang a liar' and force him to write self-criticism
- Caixin Chinese outlet: Gov't issued gag order, destroys some samples
- AFP: China state media: Wuhan lab live coronaviruses differ from CoV-2
- WHO 1/5: No evidence of significant human-to-human transmission
- NYT 1/6: For a month China rejects US help offer of virus expertise
- WHO 1/14: Possibly limited human spread but China says not sustained
- The World Health Organization dutifully submits to China's misinformation
- WHO 1/21: Finally admits serious human to human spread in Wuhan
- WSJ 1/23: Wuhan locked down after 5M people left city without screening
- NYT 2/6: Former rights lawyer and journalist Qiusi disappears in Wuhan
- WSJ 2/19: Communists revoke press credentials of 3 reporting in Wuhan
- South China Post: Pres. Jinping further censors "illegal" social media posts
- Guardian: Detained reporter a past employee of China's main TV network
- CNN 3/13: China's Foreign Ministry promotes a US virus origin conspiracy
- 4/22-4/29: China arrests 3 reporters, threatened Australia & EU for research
- WaPo 4/30: China hid & faked data, silenced critics, thwarted investigation
- CNBC 5/3: Hid severity to increase medical imports and decrease exports
- Cover-up implies Wuhan Institute of Virology lab worker was patient zero
- Patient zero spread the virus to and through the Wuhan wet market
- The communist Chinese lied and covered up igniting a pandemic
ESTIMATED COVID-19 FATALITY RATE
- Lancet 1/24: 3% SARS-CoV-2 mortality rate
- WHO 1/29 & 2/10: 2%, 3/3: 3.4%
- Fauci 3/11: 1%, i.e., a rate 10 times higher than the flu's 0.1%
- RSR's 1.2% COVID-19 lethality estimate (based on NYC) 12x the flu rate
AMERICA'S REACTION
- 1/31: President Donald Trump insightfully cut off the US from China
- The Dems, the media, Fauci, and the WHO criticized Trump's "overreaction"
- AP: New York ordered nursing homes to accept 4,500 infected patients
- US Media: Defends China and NY, almost exclusively criticizes federal gov
- 3/12: Trump announces unprecedented cutoff of US from Europe
- We conservatives, also fearing the virus, did not criticize cutting off Europe
- US media and all the left flipped position to now claim Trump underreacted
- Epidemiologists, security consultants, etc., given a free hand, will overreact
- Prosperity meant eventually nations would try the epidemiologist proposal
- Europe's nations closed their borders and not for conspiratorial reasons
- First time ever millions (all liberals) hope a drug, HCQ, fails to save lives
- Shutdown flattens the "curve" but as at rsr.org/25-ways it also kills people
- Leftists and epidemiologists seem oblivious to mass death from recession
- NY Gov. Cuomo's Dept of Health ordered nursing homes on March 25th (and reversed on May 10th), "No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission." That incompetence led to approaching 5,000 deaths, or nearly 25% of New York's fatalities while hundreds of emergency hospital beds went unused at the Javits Center and on the USNS Comfort.
- Late January to late March when a tiny fraction of Americans were dying from the coronavirus, the epidemiologists had justification for their predictions that a major wave of death was coming soon, whereas many pro-Trump conservatives were solidifying a premature belief, based on what they were seeing, that this disease was a minimal concern.
- As worldwide daily fatalities for this brand new cause of death race past those of most recent endemics and pandemics and have tied malaria and AIDS and approach pneumonia, U.S. fatalities have average 1,800 deaths daily and higher for a number of days in April and May 2020, and for that duration COVID-19 was the #1 cause of death in America...
- Millions of Christians swallowed whole the rsr.org/COVID-conspiracies
- Conspiracy allegations make it harder for politicians to back down
- The cure is worse than the disease per rsr.org/25-ways-the-shutdown-kills
* Masks: The world's mitigation efforts have suddenly promoted a medical industry question of effectiveness into a public controversy. For the sake especially of medical staff, hopefully we will improve our understanding of the dynamics involved, even after a hundred years of enormous experience and a lot of study. In 1977 smallpox, a disease from a highly transmissible airborne virus, was eradicated. Three of ten victims died. In case of a reemergence, nursing protocols reiterated even this century call for those around a suspected case to wear masks. With all our conspiracy-minded friends have learned against masks, undoubtedly each would still wear a mask if their work (or love) required them to be around folks like that poor girl, shown here. The mask conspiracy item listed above states the false belief that those who wear masks increase their risk of transmission. Such conspiracists must conclude that over the last century those who wore masks to minimize risk actually increased disease transmission. It appears thast most of those who come to that conclusion and who are also angered thereby don't assume that recommending masks is a well-meaning but ill informed policy, but rather, there must be nefarious reasons motivating the thousands of medical experts who advise wearing them. This later is an indication of a progressing mental health issue evidenced by paranoia.
* Traffic Deaths Being Marked as COVID: [Update: An actual crash death in July of a coronavirus-positve motorcyclist was challenged and removed from the COVID death toll.] If you play a trick on your Christian friends and read any of a thousand Bible verses to them, not telling them it's from Scripture, about half will say they disagree with what you've just read. So when Christians en masse instantly accept the claim that coroners are marking traffic fatalities as COVID deaths, that overwhelming uncritical acceptance alone is a good indicator that, as it appears on it's face, it's fake news. Here's a typical BEL email correspondence...
Forwarded Conversation
Subject: "My cousin knows somebody?"
------------------------
From: K********
Date: Thu, May 14, 2020 at 8:44 AM
To: Bob Enyart <bob@kgov.com>
Bob, I gave my friend a link to your program, and he did enjoy it. But our text exchange went as follows. To my friend:
Didn't u say u knew someone whose kid died in a wreck but they put COVID on her death certificate and he has to fight the hospital to change it for insurance purposes? It's interesting all the messages around that start with "my friend knows someone" or "my brother knows someone" etc.
His response:
Yes. And I heard it again from my doctor Monday. He has a client who’s son just died in a motorcycle accident in Vancouver. They listed the death as Covid. Also my buddies grandmother who was 92, no Covid symptoms, just old, week at the end of her life died in the hospital of natural causes. Listed as Covid. I know a girl in Hawaii that just had a friend pass of pancreatic cancer, listed as Covid. No conspiracy when you hear it over and over again.
Sent from my iPad
----------
From: Bob Enyart <Bob@kgov.com>
Date: Fri, May 15, 2020 at 9:19 AM
To: K********"
Cc: B********
Hey K*******! I've cc'd our dear friend and graphic artist extraordinaire B****** because of the Vancouver area traffic deaths, two of the more tragic ones were children from his town. Brad, if you're aware whether the local news reported a recent motorcycle death in the Vancouver area, please let us know. I'm fishing out another spreading conspiracy for our RSR show for May 15th and for our list at rsr.org/covid-conspiracies.
K*****, using my lie detector mode, when I read the above exchange, I'm thinking as though I'm interviewing a suspect's friend, and I'm spotting evidence of evasion and likely false information...
Q: Didn't u say u knew someone whose kid died in a wreck but they put COVID on her death certificate and he has to fight the hospital to change it for insurance purposes?
A: Yes.
Oh really? And that's it? With such a pointed question, the only answer is, Yes. Not, "Yes," and then offer the identity of the gal who died, or at least your friend's identity? What's missing that would appear in a truthful answer is: "Yeah, it was Jerry Berry's kid brother, Mark. He died last Tuesday over on Main and 15th. It was a reall mess." But instead of details about the case he knows of personally, he then obfuscates by throwing in questionable and likely uncheckable details about a different case.
A continues: And I heard it again from my doctor Monday. He has a client who’s son just died in a motorcycle accident in Vancouver. They listed the death as Covid.
Ah, now he gives more details than he just did for the person that he knew. But it turns out that traffic deaths in Vancouver and its surroundings, like in all major cities, are contemporaneously reported and in the last month according to local and Canadian media there were:
- three motorcycle accidents in the past month and as of a report six days after the one with the most serious injuries, no report of fatalities
- a baby boy was killed and parents injured in a rollover crash on Highway 97 C
- two Abbotsford children killed when drowning in a crashed and submerged ATV
- a Vancouver island pilot killed in a far-distant Canadian miltary helicopter crash
- two fatal boating accidents in the last ten days
- new recommendations from a fatal train crash a year ago
- finally charges issued in a nearby Malahat crash two years ago
- but no fatal motorcyle crashes [UPDATE: other than the tragic one that B***** found from November, which he truly doubts was marked as COVID related.]
And even if there had been, the doctor's account would have turned out to be false. Doctors are hardly less susceptible to personalizing the conspiracy theories they spread than are others. And ironically, there's undoubtedly a slightly paranoid doc in Vancouver who's saying a motorcycle death in your friend's city was marked as COVID. (Televangelist faith healers know that trick. They tell donors in Singapore that God raised someone from the dead in Kansas City and when in KC say they did that in Singapore. Piece 'o cake.)
A continues: [with two examples that were not fatal crashes marked as covid deaths]
These just add details that even if true wouldn't corroborate the original false statement but they're meant to imply that they corroborate it. Lies often are detectable by the details added in order to make them sound more believable. Like, the friend "has to fight the hospital to change [the cause of death] for insurance purposes." Oh, really? Right.
Overcounting and undercounting obviously both occur and both for unavoidable and for bias reasons, and often these cancel each other out and regardless, because the number of cases is by far the greater factor, getting the count "accurate" is not as important as most people think. If millions of people are infected, and a hundred thousand people are claimed dead from the virus, but the deaths were overcounted by double, that would mean that, for example, the death rate was 0.02 instead of 0.01. The overcounting, and the undercounting (as with nursing homes and via state governors who want to look like they did a great job reducing deaths), these factors both go into the number in the numerator, and it's the denominator, that is, the number of cases, that is so vastly greater, that makes the difference in evaluating the real world happenings. UPDATE: At any rate, K****** just emailed:
It's obvious some of that overcounting went on. But the "I know someone's sister" ... is all over. "My wife's a Farmers insurance agent and just last night a fellow agent said one of his 'prospects' told him a similar story.
Thanks K******, I'm obviously not saying the doc or your friend are going to hell because of this. (People go to hell if they reject Jesus Christ.) But I am admonishing them and ten thousand others by pointing out that regarding God's Ten Commandments, when they're endulging their paranoia, they believe they can reject His command, as maybe the Amplified Bible would put it, "Do not bear false witness against your coroner." They're so sloppy with the retelling of stories, and so eager to have people believe them, that like with the game telephone, only somewhat intentional, each time they or someone else repeats what they've heard or read on social media they have the opportunity to falsely remember/misspeak/personalize the story or add a detail they imagine must be true, in order to make the claim sound more convincing. When it comes to fake news, the left has nothing on the right. After all, they say, never let a crisis go to waste.
Thanks K******.
In Christ,
- Bob Enyart
KGOV.com - RealScienceRadio.com - rsr.org
* Washington State Interdiction & Bill Gates' Sterilization: Christians would do well to review the case of Typhoid Mary. The current discussion by Christians is much like that of pacifists who have the luxury of being pacifists because they live in a mostly peaceful state. Yet once violent state-sponsored aggression breaks out (like in WWII including when the Japanese kidnapped tens of thousands of Korean and other "comfort women") then their false pacifist teachings are exposed as all-along erroneous and dangerous. Similarly, the false case is easily made that because human beings are sinful and control freaks, we should have anarchy because governments can't be trusted. Likewise for an unprecedented deadly epidemic (which is not COVID-19; rather we have an unprecedented overreaction), regardless of the fact that politicians generally are wicked, there remains authority for government to interdict when there is reasonable evidence that someone is recklessly spreading a deadly pathogen.
If Mat Staver apologizes for his May 1 fake news, beyond his "Corrections have been made to this message", I'll start reading his material again, but he's paranoid and spreads paranoia. As the widely-trusted former dean of Liberty University Law School and chairman of Liberty Counsel, his fake news headline “Kansas City, Missouri, officials are now requiring every church to submit a list of members” harmed those unknowingly struggling with paranoia and mental illness. The damage was just as though he had harmed those struggling with pornography by emailing them a dose.
Here at BEL we rather dislike being in the position of having to defend, for example, the egregiously evil Bill Gates from the libel that he's creating a vaccine to kill 15% of the world's population. Being himself, along with the rest of the godless left, obsessed with abortion and overpopulation, he points out that healthy and propsperous societies tend to have fewer children and a million Christians think he's admitting that his vaccines are designed to kill people. Really? Right out in the open? Even if such a thing were true, he'd just go ahead and say it? As to to the vaccines he has funded being used to sterlilize millions of women, for certain he has not funded the development of any infectuous disease vaccine being used anywhere in the world, that was designed to unwittingly sterilize people.
Today's Resource: Predestination & Free Will Debate
Bob Enyart vs. Brian Schwertly
Can God change? Does He change? Has God pre-planned all events? Is your life following a complete script, written before you were born? Has it been decided in advance which, if any, of your children will go to heaven or hell?