"Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him."
--Hebrews 10:38 KJV
Note the words in italics: what happens if you try to read the verse without them?
"Now the just shall live by faith: but if draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him."
Clearly, something is missing here. What is it? The singular generic pronoun 'he.'
"Now the just shall live by faith: but if he draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him."
But wait! protests the Calvinist. A justified person can't lose his salvation, so how could God say that He would have no pleasure in him if he draws back? Well, before I come down to hard on the KJV here, let's see if the NIV managed to escape Calvinist bias:
“But my righteous[Some early manuscripts But the righteous]one will live by faith.
And I take no pleasure
in the one who shrinks back.”[Hab. 2:4 (see Septuagint)]
Oh, boy. Rather than hiding their bias in an italicized phrase, the CBT changed the personal pronout outright, obscuring the actual meaning even more.
Here is a quick rundown of the English versions WITHOUT a Calvinist bias (ie, they make 'just' or 'righteous' the antecedent:
ASV But my righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him.
AMP
But My righteous one [the one justified by faith] shall live by faith [respecting man’s relationship to God and trusting Him]; And if he draws back [shrinking in fear], My soul has no delight in him.
CJB But the person who is righteous will live his life by trusting, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.
ESV
but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.
HCSB But My righteous one will live by faith; and if he draws back, I have no pleasure in him.
Some versions are even able to play around with gender and number without making the one who turns back a different category than the just:
GNT My righteous people, however, will believe and live; but if any of them turns back, I will not be pleased with them.
But it looks like ALL translations based on the TR--starting with that bastion of Calvinist translation, the Geneva Bible--twist the text to separate the one who lives by faith from the one who turns away. An intersting exception is Young's Literal Translation, which makes the separation but blames it on being two separate quotes from the Old Testament:
and `the righteous by faith shall live,' and `if he may draw back, My soul hath no pleasure in him,'
Green's Literal Translation goes one step further, cutting the NT verse into THREE OT quotes, with reciepts:
"But the just shall live by faith;" "and if he draws back," "My soul is not pleased in him." Hab. 2:4; Zeph. 1:6; Mal. 1:10
The problem with that third reference, though, is that it switches the person from second to third--Green should have put the end quotes after "pleased."
Now, the theme of drawing back is a big one in Hebrews, with five different passages warning of the danger of drawing back:
Hebrews 2:1-4 — Warning against drifting away from the message of salvation.
Hebrews 3:7–4:13 — Warning against unbelief and failing to enter God's rest (drawing from Psalm 95 and the wilderness generation).
Hebrews 5:11–6:12 (with the core warning in 6:4-8) — Warning against falling away after receiving enlightenment and spiritual privileges.
Hebrews 10:19-39 (especially 10:26-31) — Warning against willful sin and the terrifying prospect of judgment.
Hebrews 12:14-29 — Warning against refusing God's voice and failing to receive the unshakable kingdom.
Calvinists have their work cut out for them, proving in each of the five cases that these warnings don't apply to anyone that God has already justified. But it appears they needed a little help in this fourth passage, cutting the link between the just person and the one that draws back--a link so obviouls that dozens of English Versions had translators who could see it, and weren't ashamed to admit it. It's odd that the CBT, in cutting themselves loose from a lot of the language of the KJV, were unable to do what so many other modern Bible Version editors have done, and cut themselves free from its Calvinist bias as well.
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Monday, 5 January 2026
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
In Which Michael Pearl Shows Himself to be Scripturally Illiterate
In this video, Michael Pearl attempts to dismantle the doctrine of pacifism, and in so doing he exposits Matthew 10, where Jesus sends out his disciples with no supplies. He reads the word "scrip" as if it were "script" and defines it as "Bible, books, notes, writing paper."
In fact, "scrip" is an old English word for the bag in which a traveler carried his supplies. Since Jesus was sending them out without supplies, he of course didn't expect them to tote around an empty rucksack. But in literally misreading this archaic word as something else, Michael totally misses out on its meaning. This didn't have to happen; had he just used a concordance to look up all seven uses of the word 'scrip' in the KJV, he would see it used six times in this same context, and once more--THE FIRST MENTION--for the shepherd's bag in which David stashed the stones that he took with him to take on Goliath.
David didn't wrap those five smooth stones in a book, or a bundle of writing paper; he put them in a BAG.
You can stop watching the video right there, because Michael Pearl does not have a sufficient understanding of the Bible to be trusted to explain the rest of what Jesus meant in those gospel passages.
In fact, "scrip" is an old English word for the bag in which a traveler carried his supplies. Since Jesus was sending them out without supplies, he of course didn't expect them to tote around an empty rucksack. But in literally misreading this archaic word as something else, Michael totally misses out on its meaning. This didn't have to happen; had he just used a concordance to look up all seven uses of the word 'scrip' in the KJV, he would see it used six times in this same context, and once more--THE FIRST MENTION--for the shepherd's bag in which David stashed the stones that he took with him to take on Goliath.
David didn't wrap those five smooth stones in a book, or a bundle of writing paper; he put them in a BAG.
You can stop watching the video right there, because Michael Pearl does not have a sufficient understanding of the Bible to be trusted to explain the rest of what Jesus meant in those gospel passages.
Saturday, 25 October 2025
The Economic Inevitability of War
My heading reads, "People come to this blog seeking information on Albinism, the Miller kidnapping saga, the Duggar adultery scandal, Tom White's suicide, Donn Ketcham's philandering, Arthur and Sherry Blessitt's divorce, Michael Pearl's hypocrisy, Barack Obama's birth, or Pat and Jill Williams."
These are the main topics that have driven viewers to my blog for the last couple of decades, and I note that The Iran War is not listed as such a topic, even though I wrote on it prolifically back in 2012. It's ironic that what I expended so much effort on researching and predicting, when it finally happened, was such a non-event in the grand scheme of things that it's already been almost forgotten, less than a year later.
But such is the nature of war: every new war is fought because people forgot the lessons learned from the last one.
I grew up studying World War Two. The leaders of my day had all come up through that war, and one of the lessons they learned was that one typical cause of war is treating an enemy like a major trading partner, or a major trading partner like an enemy--especially when one swiches from one approach to the other.
Case in point, Japan. The US government disapproved of Japan invading China, all the while serving as a major trading partner, allowing Japan to build up a huge navy with steel purchased from America. But no problem, that navy wasn't being used to invade China, and the US wasn't at war with Japan. Right?
When the US finally decided that enough was enough and cut off Japan's supply of oil and steel, Pearl Harbor became inevitable.
But alas, the generation that learned that lesson is long gone from power, and the current generation are having to learn it anew for themselves. The West has spent the last three decades enriching Russia by buying their oil and gas--money which Putin stashed in Russia's war chest to get them through the inevitable sanctions that would follow his invasion of Ukraine--kind of like Japan frantically building the ships that would destroy Pearl Harbor in advance of the sanctions that would follow their invasion of China.
Ukraine, for their part, have largely removed the Russian threat--at least the conventional one. But what about China? Over the past three decades, the West moved most of its industrial facilities to this communist nation to save money, which means that now, should they decide to sanction us, we would be as outmatched economically as the American South was when they launched the War Between the States.
This is why wars are inevitable. The love of money drives free people to enable the leaders of enslaved countries, and greed for land drives the leaders of enslaved countries to invade their neighbors.
Free people could, should they so choose, live without supporting dictatorial regimes. But they can always live a little better when they do. But alas, dictatorial regimes are never content to enslave their own poeople; they are also driven to conquer their neighbors. So the cycle of: 1) Build up the enemy's resources while pretending they are not an enemy; 2)Finally admit they are an enemy and cut off supplies to their war chest right about the time it's full anyway; 3) Suffer attack and loss from the very enemy you enabled to infict it; runs its course at least once in every mortal lifetime.
I've lived long enough to see Russia go from a mortal enemy, to a major trading partner, and back to a mortal enemy again, with American-made missles soon to rain down destruction on Russia for the first time in their mutal history. Such is the inevitability of war.
These are the main topics that have driven viewers to my blog for the last couple of decades, and I note that The Iran War is not listed as such a topic, even though I wrote on it prolifically back in 2012. It's ironic that what I expended so much effort on researching and predicting, when it finally happened, was such a non-event in the grand scheme of things that it's already been almost forgotten, less than a year later.
But such is the nature of war: every new war is fought because people forgot the lessons learned from the last one.
I grew up studying World War Two. The leaders of my day had all come up through that war, and one of the lessons they learned was that one typical cause of war is treating an enemy like a major trading partner, or a major trading partner like an enemy--especially when one swiches from one approach to the other.
Case in point, Japan. The US government disapproved of Japan invading China, all the while serving as a major trading partner, allowing Japan to build up a huge navy with steel purchased from America. But no problem, that navy wasn't being used to invade China, and the US wasn't at war with Japan. Right?
When the US finally decided that enough was enough and cut off Japan's supply of oil and steel, Pearl Harbor became inevitable.
But alas, the generation that learned that lesson is long gone from power, and the current generation are having to learn it anew for themselves. The West has spent the last three decades enriching Russia by buying their oil and gas--money which Putin stashed in Russia's war chest to get them through the inevitable sanctions that would follow his invasion of Ukraine--kind of like Japan frantically building the ships that would destroy Pearl Harbor in advance of the sanctions that would follow their invasion of China.
Ukraine, for their part, have largely removed the Russian threat--at least the conventional one. But what about China? Over the past three decades, the West moved most of its industrial facilities to this communist nation to save money, which means that now, should they decide to sanction us, we would be as outmatched economically as the American South was when they launched the War Between the States.
This is why wars are inevitable. The love of money drives free people to enable the leaders of enslaved countries, and greed for land drives the leaders of enslaved countries to invade their neighbors.
Free people could, should they so choose, live without supporting dictatorial regimes. But they can always live a little better when they do. But alas, dictatorial regimes are never content to enslave their own poeople; they are also driven to conquer their neighbors. So the cycle of: 1) Build up the enemy's resources while pretending they are not an enemy; 2)Finally admit they are an enemy and cut off supplies to their war chest right about the time it's full anyway; 3) Suffer attack and loss from the very enemy you enabled to infict it; runs its course at least once in every mortal lifetime.
I've lived long enough to see Russia go from a mortal enemy, to a major trading partner, and back to a mortal enemy again, with American-made missles soon to rain down destruction on Russia for the first time in their mutal history. Such is the inevitability of war.
Monday, 13 October 2025
What now, Google?
Whilst the US Federal Government is locked in shutdown, something unexplained has happened to this blog: it's gone viral. Unlike before, it's not a single post that has gone viral, but viewership of the blog in general has shot up from one or two per day to dozens--and in the past few days, hundreds. I can't imagine why, other than that Google is no longer suppressing me in their search results. For example, a search on the phrase "white man blog" brings up a link to this blog in the very first line, something that hasn't been the case for many years.
I'll let my readers know if and when I figure out just what happened to bring this about. And, since I now have so many more readers, I'll make a point of posting more frequently than I have been for these last few months.
I'll let my readers know if and when I figure out just what happened to bring this about. And, since I now have so many more readers, I'll make a point of posting more frequently than I have been for these last few months.
Thursday, 14 August 2025
A life not wasted on education
There's been a bit of a buzz recently regarding a ground-breaking discovery by a young mathematician who goes by the name Hannah Cairo. You won't read anything about it in the linked article, but this teenager who is generally regarded as female is actually an imposter in that role, having started out life as a male whose Christian name has been so effectively wiped from the record that I will just be referring to him in this article as Cairo (in that, at least, I have literary company).
What interests me the most about this story is not that a teenager was able to solve a 40-year old problem in higher mathematics, but that doing so was able to propel him over several of the barriers that have been erected to keep free-thinking individuals out of higher education. Cairo, you see, will be entering a doctoral program in mathematics at the age of seventeen. What’s so unprecedented about this is that he not only doesn’t have a master’s degree in the field, the usual prerequisite for embarking on a doctrinal program—-he doesn’t even have an undergraduate degree. And for what it’s worth, he’s never even been to high school; he went directly from homeschool to taking advanced college math classes.
Now, the vast majority of universities to which Cairo applied did turn him down, citing the usual standards of their gatekeepers. But he was accepted by the graduate schools of Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland, who were somehow able to make enough exceptions to their enrollment policies to squeeze him in.
Decades ago, I noted the irony of Lynn Conway bragging about being the only woman in her electrical engineering graduate program at MIT, when in fact Conway was a man named Robert at the time (it's also very interesting to note that Conway went on to become a tenured professor at the University of Michigan, without having jumped through the requisite hoop of first obtaining a doctoral degree). Now, I note the irony that an alleged female math prodigy can’t be celebrated as such because it would only bring attention the fact that he’s actually a male. The article can only emphasize Cairo’s youth as an unusual aspect of his accomplishment, not his alleged gender. And I have to wonder whether Cairo would have stood any chance of hurdling over the entrance barriers to the PhD program he’s now entering had he not been granted special handling due to self-inclusion in the protected class of transgender.
What does it tell you that, as a male, Cairo would have been sent back to high school to jump through dozens more hoops on his way to eventual stardom, but as a female, he found the hoops magically disappearing before him? The movie Some Like it Hot seems eerily prophetic on this note.
What interests me the most about this story is not that a teenager was able to solve a 40-year old problem in higher mathematics, but that doing so was able to propel him over several of the barriers that have been erected to keep free-thinking individuals out of higher education. Cairo, you see, will be entering a doctoral program in mathematics at the age of seventeen. What’s so unprecedented about this is that he not only doesn’t have a master’s degree in the field, the usual prerequisite for embarking on a doctrinal program—-he doesn’t even have an undergraduate degree. And for what it’s worth, he’s never even been to high school; he went directly from homeschool to taking advanced college math classes.
Now, the vast majority of universities to which Cairo applied did turn him down, citing the usual standards of their gatekeepers. But he was accepted by the graduate schools of Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland, who were somehow able to make enough exceptions to their enrollment policies to squeeze him in.
Decades ago, I noted the irony of Lynn Conway bragging about being the only woman in her electrical engineering graduate program at MIT, when in fact Conway was a man named Robert at the time (it's also very interesting to note that Conway went on to become a tenured professor at the University of Michigan, without having jumped through the requisite hoop of first obtaining a doctoral degree). Now, I note the irony that an alleged female math prodigy can’t be celebrated as such because it would only bring attention the fact that he’s actually a male. The article can only emphasize Cairo’s youth as an unusual aspect of his accomplishment, not his alleged gender. And I have to wonder whether Cairo would have stood any chance of hurdling over the entrance barriers to the PhD program he’s now entering had he not been granted special handling due to self-inclusion in the protected class of transgender.
What does it tell you that, as a male, Cairo would have been sent back to high school to jump through dozens more hoops on his way to eventual stardom, but as a female, he found the hoops magically disappearing before him? The movie Some Like it Hot seems eerily prophetic on this note.
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