January 16, 2011 ©Homer Kizer
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Commentary — From the Margins
Web Bot & Silence
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1.
Intended to predict stock market trends, the Web Bot Project begun in 1997, the project being the production of Clif High and George Ure who call themselves the Time Monks, uses computer technology and sophisticated algorithms to monitor Internet chatter: words in a dynamic lexicon are assigned numerical values. The Time Monks then use a technique called Asymmetric Language Trend Analysis (ALTA) to develop predictions from a fully-populated, computer-generated modelspace. The basis for these predictions is the assumption that changes in language precede changes in behavior, with this assumption being biased towards negative events (i.e., catastrophic events). The assumption holds that language changes originating in a collective unconsciousness of humankind will reveal what the collective consciousness doesn’t yet realize. And when this assumption is coupled to the present prince of this world [the Adversary] being the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:1–3), some scriptural basis exists to support the modeling; however, what the modeling would better reveal is what is known to the Adversary than what will actually happen in the future.
The Apostle Peter wrote,
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christos] in them was indicating when [it] predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. (1 Pet 1:10–12 emphasis added)
The prophets of old did not understand all that they proclaimed in the name of the Lord, for they were not born of spirit [that is, born as a son of God from having received the spirit of God the Father], but spoke from inspiration of the spirit [pneuma— breath] of Yah, who would enter His creation as His only Son (cf. John 1:3; 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14). Peter, like Jude (v. 5), linguistically shortcuts what John carefully explains when John writes that in the beginning was the Logos who was God [theos] (John 1:1), that it was this Logos who made all things made, not the God [ton Theon] who was “one” with the Logos as Adam was “one” with Eve (Gen 2:24). For the prophets of old did not know that the creation itself—that is the physicality of things—concealed the Father from Israel and all of the world (see Eccl 3:11): they did not know the Father or even know of the Father, the Ancient of Days, with the possible exceptions of Daniel and David. Even today, except for His sons, the world does not know the Father, whom Jesus came to reveal to His disciples (John 17:25–26).
If the prophets of old spoke under inspiration of the breath of Christ [then Yah], the worldly chatter—if it could have been heard and analyzed—that would have existed in the days of Daniel would not have revealed the Father, nor the things of the Father, nor what the Father intended to do at the end of the age. Those things were sealed and kept secret; therefore, the chatter two centuries later, after Alexander died in Babylon II, still would not have revealed the secret things of the Father, let alone knowledge of him. When the Quran War Scroll was written, the chatter of the age would have (by what was being said) kept the visions of Daniel sealed and secret; for Daniel’s visions were sealed by events in this world seeming to fulfill the visions. So now, leaping forward two plus millennia, what has changed other than the production of a means to collect, read, and analyze the chatter of the world? Does the collective subconscious minds of human beings know the things of God? Can the collective subconscious reveal what it doesn’t know? And can angels reveal to men what they themselves do not know?
Perhaps the better question is, would angels reveal directly or indirectly to humankind what angels know and believe?
Paul wrote,
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. / Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. (Eph 4:17–25 emphasis added)
Until human beings are truly born of God and speak the truth to one another, the conscious and unconscious minds of humankind are alienated from God and cannot know nor reveal the things of God: the chatter of this world will be about the things of this world, even to natural and artificial catastrophes about which the prince of this world has some beforehand knowledge. But the chatter of this world will not reveal the things of God that were not revealed in the 1st-Century, when the visions of Daniel were still sealed and kept secret. So when Jesus told His disciples, “‘But concerning that day and hour [when the Son of Man will come] no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man’” (Matt 24:36–37), knowledge of when the Second Advent would occur was held only by the Father, who would not reveal this knowledge until it was time to unseal the visions of Daniel. Then, not before then, the Father through the parakletos would reveal to the one He has chosen to give completeness to prophecies of old, those things that He wants known before He brings the end of the age upon humankind.
If the one whom the Father has called to give meaning [linguistic objects] to the words [linguistic icons] that the Logos gave to the prophets of old were believed—Jesus said that if they kept my word, they will also keep yours (John 15:20), with the corollary being that because they will not believe me, they will not believe you—then the chatter of humankind would disclose the things, the mysteries of God. But because the one called by the Father is not believed, the chatter of humankind is silent about the things of God. The Web Bot cannot “hear” what the world does not know.
If suddenly the Web Bot started to pick up chatter about the Passover or the Second Passover, then those who subscribe to the Time Monks’ predictions would know, albeit darkly, about a mystery of God that is certain to occur, but no chatter will be heard. In order for the coming of the Son of Man to be like the days of Noah, knowledge of what the Lord intends to do must be closely held by the sons of righteousness, meaning that there will not be much said about the Second Passover liberation of Israel except by a statistically insignificant number of Sabbatarian Anabaptists. There will be no hype, no linguistic anxiety, no widespread preparation, no sudden collective food storage or return to 18Th-Century self sufficiency. Rather, chatter will be about the Greening of America and of Western Europe, with references being about solar panels and getting off the power grid through new technology.
The silence says more than many words could, but the silence reveals just how many sons of God there truly are.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."