We Have Been Around for 5963 of 6000 Years of Man on Earth

 

For anyone who loves Scriptural study of the future, we know that it forbids making a prophecy about an exact date of the Lord’s return.  But how about signs to know it’s close?  There is a large group of believers who think that His return has no signs to warn us at all how near we are to His return. They say that it is “imminent,” or could happen at any time without any sign.  If you have read my blogs on the Last Days, you know that I discount this theory, believing that while we don’t know the exact date of His return, God will send us signs that the last day is coming.  This proposition is based on a quote from Jesus in Matthew 24:30-33:

“Then… they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other  ³² “Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. ³³ So you also, when you see all these things, know that  it is near—at the doors!

The fig tree gives us a sign that harvesting is near—the branches get tender, and the leaves sprout.  In like manner, we can expect signs for mankind’s harvest; we can KNOW that “it,” referring back to the Parousia, the coming of Jesus for harvesting His own (the “elect”), is NEAR.

I have a theory about calculating an estimated date of His return.  Please do not assume that the calculations in it is accurate, but it’s pretty accurate.  It probably has flaws.  This “close, but not perfect” result is just as God would intend.  He wants us to be as accurate as the fig tree.  There are signs to excite us, but not the exact date —that would encourage complacency.  This theory I will present does have a momentous and surprising conclusion. 

Before I get into it, I have to give credit to Michael Pedrin, a pastor in India from the Seventh Day Adventist Church (I’m not of that persuasion, but I’ll take any great idea from anybody, if it’s realistically based).  I made some changes on his base.

By way of introduction, he tells us that immediately after Jesus comes for His own, we get to spend a thousand years of freedom from Satan’s attacks, because he is bound for that time (Rev. 20:1-3). There, we will rest, finally, from the ravages of sin all around us and from our own nature. This millennium of one thousand years will be a “great Sabbath of rest” from the ravages of sin. 

The theory’s critical proposition is this: the rest is preceded by six thousand years of man on earth.

The key to this theory is simple:  it’s in the 6+1=7 equation.  Seven is God’s number of completeness and rest.  You begin a cycle with six, the number of days you work, followed by one day of rest. Then the cycle is complete.  Think of Creation:  All of earth and its inhabitants were finished in 6 days.  That was followed by the seventh day for God’s rest (Gen. 1-2).  God didn’t have to take six days to create—He could have done it in a second.  Nor was He tired, and needed a day of rest.  He did it as an example for us to follow. He focused on the 6+1 again by instructing His people on how to till the ground.  You plant and harvest for six years.  The seventh, you let the ground rest.  Leviticus 25:3-4:

Six years you shall sow your field…and gather its fruit; ⁴ but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard.

Jesus has some interesting words on this subject in Matthew 13:38-39:

The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. ³⁹ The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

He purposely ties in the cycle of earthly harvest with the cycle of heavenly harvest.  Jesus makes a comparison of land’s harvest, which we just saw to be 6+1, to OUR harvest.  There is good reason to believe that man likely is also on a 6+1 rapture scale.  If the heavenly harvest is followed by a millennium of rest, why not believe that six millenniums of man working on earth precedes it?  

The Apostle Peter gives us some tantalizing verses on this too.  In II Peter 3, he is telling us that there will be many unbelievers scoffing about Jesus’ return.  Then, in verses 8 and 9, he counsels us to be patient.  Then it seems that he is laying on us a big insider hint.  II Peter 3:3-4, 8-10a:

….scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, ⁴ and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? …..But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. ⁹ The Lord is not slack concerning His promise…but the day of the Lord will come….

Peter hints how important is what he’s going to say, by his phrase “do not forget this one thing.”  And what is that one thing?  In talking about Jesus’ return, God is willing to proportionately lay down the idea of “one day=one thousand years.” So, just as Creation was six days of work followed by one day of rest, and then substituting by Peter’s hint, you get six thousand years of work, followed by one thousand years of rest.

I want to make an additional comment about v 10, “the day of the Lord.”  The Bible has two contexts for that phrase.  First, the Sabbath is called the day of the Lord (Ex. 20:10).  Also, significantly, the Parousia, or the Second Coming of Christ is also called the day of the Lord.  See I Thessalonians 4:16-5:2, when Paul is comforting believers who were mistaken in their belief that Christ had already come: 

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. 5 But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. ² For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes…

 

My point here is, using the “day of the Lord” for both, God is perfectly willing for us to compare the Sabbath with His Second Coming.  The former is six days of work, then a single-day Sabbath, and God ties it in to the Return, which is followed by one thousand years of rest.  We’re suggesting that it is reasonable to assume that this is preceded by six thousand years of work for man on earth.

 

We thus have three proofs of the 6+1 for Man.  The big question is, how long has man been on earth?  Are we close to 6000 years?

 

Did you know that it’s possible to count, with close proximity, how long man has been on earth?  (PS:  As you can tell, we’re ignoring the rantings of atheistic evolution).  After all, Matthew 1 and Luke 3 give many names from Adam all the way down to Joseph or Mary, Jesus’ stepfather and mother. It has this thing about genealogy.  There are long boring lists of ages in Genesis. So let’s put to good use, for once, those lists of names in Genesis and II Chronicles.  They go from Adam down pretty much through the generations to the exile in Babylonian captivity.  Sprinkle in some Scriptural shortcuts and prophecy.  From there, a final nod to secular history.  Let’s go: 

 

 

Event

  

                                                                              Verse                               # of yrs    Note

  From Adam to Seth                                                    Gen. 5:3                                      130       

From Seth to Enosh	Gen. 5:6	105	1
From Enosh to Cainan	Gen. 5:9	90
From Cainan to Mahalalel	Gen 5:12	70
From Mahalalel to Jared	Gen. 5:15	65
From Jared to Enoch	Gen. 5:18	162	2
From Enoch to Methuselah	Gen. 5:21	65
Methuselah to Lamech	Gen. 5:25	187
Lamech to Noah	Gen. 5:28	182
Noah to Shem	Gen. 5:32*	502	3
Cumulative years Adam to Shem		1558
Shem to Arphaxad	Gen. 11:10	100
Arphaxad to Salah	Gen. 11:12	35
Salah to Eber	Gen. 11:14	30
Eber to Peleg	Gen. 11:16	34
Peleg to Reu	Gen. 11:18	30
Reu to Serug	Ge. 11:20	32
Serug to Nahor	Gen. 11:22	30
Nahor to Terah	Gen. 11:24	29
Terah to Birth of Abram/Abraham	Gen. 11:26*	130	4
Cumulative 2:Shem to Abram's Birth		450
Shortcuts: From birth of Abram
to promise to Abraham	Gen. 12:4	75
From the promise to Abraham
to the giving of the Law	Galat. 3:16-18	430
From the Exodus of Egypt to the
Beginning of Solomon's Reign	I Kings 6:1	476
Back off: From Exodus of Egypt
to Giving of the law (counted twice)	Ex. 19:1	-0.1	5
Solomon's Reign	I KI 11:42	40
Rehoboam's Reign	II Chron 12:13	17	6
Abijah's Reign	II Chron 13:1,2	3
Asa's Reign	II Chron. 16:13	41
Jehoshaphat's Reign	II Chron. 20:31	25
Jehoram's Reign	II Chron 21:5	8
Ahaziah's Reign	II Chron. 22:2	1
Athaliah's Reign	II Chron 22:12	6
Joash's Reign	II Chron 24:1	40
Amaziah's Reign	II Chron 25:1	29
Uzziah's Reign	II Chron 26:3	52
Jotham's Reign	II Chron 27:1	16
Ahaz's Reign	II Chron 28:1	16
Hezekiah's Reign	II Chron 29:1	29
Manasseh's Reign	II Chron 33:1	55
Amon's Reign	II Chron 33:21	2
Josiah's Reign	II Chron 34:1	31
Jehoahaz	II Chron 36:2	0.3
Jehoiakim's Reign	II Ki 23:36	11	7
Jehoiachin's Reign, then Exiled	II KI 24:6, 12, 14	8
Cumulative 3 from Abraham
to Exile in Babylon		1411.2
Time in Exile=Sabbath for Land	Jere. 29:10	70
From Artaxerxes' Rebuild Edict to Palm Sunday	Ezr1:1,2; Dan 9:25	483	8
Adjust: Birth of Jesus to Palm Sunday		-31	9a
From Jesus' Birth to Today		2021.9	9
Grand Total:  Lines 12, 22, 52-56		5963.1

 Wow! We be close.

 Note 1: We do not need to record all of Seth’s life.  Only from his birth to the birth of his son, Enosh. Same treatment throughout.  (Since the question here is, "How long each person been on earth?" we don't care what age Adam was when created. Gen. 3:3 says "When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son....Seth." Similarly, 3:6 says "When Seth had lived 105 years...")

 Note 2:  Interesting point about Enoch:  He is the 7^th generation, and he deserved a special kind of rest—a rest from dying (Gen. 5:22-24).  There’s our 6+1 again.  Six generations of men dying, followed by a single generation of rest from dying.  In the same way, I’m suggesting that there will be 6 millenniums of men dying, followed by a single millennium of men, raptured, in heaven, not dying.  That’s our fourth proof that this theory is real. 

 Note 3:  Gen. 5:32 actually records that Noah “was 500 years old…begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth.”  They were not triplets, and Shem was only mentioned first because he got the birthright (i.e, from his descendants would come the Christ.) So Noah wasn’t 500 when he had Shem.  So, how old was Noah when he begot Shem? Find out by comparing Gen. 7:6:  Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth” with Gen. 11:10: This is the genealogy of Shem: Shem was one hundred years old, and begot Arphaxad, two years after the flood” If Shem was 98 at the time of the Flood, and Noah was 600 at Flood, then Noah had to beget Shem at 502. 

 Note 4:  Gen. 11:26 says: Now Terah lived seventy years, and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran” We see the same problem as Noah and his sons; here again, Abram was not the first son.  So, how old was Terah when he begot Abram?  Compare verses again for the answer.  Start with Gen. 12:1, 2:  Now the Lord had said to Abram:  “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you (Canaan, the promised land); I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing….  Note that it required that he move away from his father’s house and family to receive this magnificent promise.  But in Gen. 11:31-32, you’ll read that he broke God’s requirement--the whole family left Ur, and they never got to Canaan. And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot (and more) …. and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there. ³² So the days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.”  So they only went, as it turned out, halfway to Canaan, and stopped in Haran.  Now read Acts 7:4: Then he (ie, Abram) came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell (ie, Canaan).  There is every reason to suspect that Abram packed up and headed for Canaan quickly after his father’s death. He was, as you will see, old, and he didn’t want to die outside Canaan, which means he couldn’t get God’s promises. Finally, the clincher verse:  Gen. 12:4:  …And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.” I believe that when Terah died, Abram left Haran.  We conclude that at the time of Terah’s death at age 205, Abram was 75.  Thus, Terah was 130 at the time of Abram’s birth.

Note 5: A small portion of the exodus trip was counted twice.  Experts say God didn’t waste any time, once they started their trip, to get them to Mt. Sinai to give them the Law.  It took, best estimate, 47 days, which is .129 of a year.  So we backed off .1 year because it was counted twice in the shortcuts.

Note 6:  Since Jesus came from the tribe of Judah (Rev. 5:5), we followed only Judah and descendants’ births.  Even when the tribes split up, we only follow David’s line, since he was from the tribe of Judah.  His son’s son was Rehoboam. And down from there.

Note 7: While we generally assume that once Babylonians took over the government (Jehoiakim was a “puppet” for the last 8 years), that the exile immediately began, so the land would get its denied rest.  Truth is, it was delayed.  II Ki. 23:36 and 24:6-14 clearly show that the real exile didn’t take place until the eighth year of his son’s reign.

Note 8:  Daniel’s 9:25 prophecy shows that “62+7=69 weeks” was the time period indicated from Artaxerxes’ edict to “Messiah the Prince.”  It is assumed by experts that “weeks” could be translated as “sevens,” with no explanations as “seven what—weeks, days, years?”  Because the time period from the Artaxerxes edict to Jesus’ hearing the hosannas on Palm Sunday  (i.e, “Messiah the Prince”) was, historically, 483 years, the “weeks” must be years—69x7 years, or 483 years.  

Note 9:  From Jesus’ birth to today may seem obvious, but Scriptural things are never that.  It’s not “2020” (which I’m modifying to 2020.9, when I’m publishing this, OK?)  He was born, best guess, 2 BC.  Finally, there is no “zero year.”  So, Jesus’ birth to today is 2020.9+2-1, or 2021.9.

Note 9a:  We’re counting something twice again. The note 8 shortcut took us out to Palm Sunday.  Jesus was 32 then.  Proof?  We have, in another blog, shown that Jesus was crucified in 30 AD.  He was that age on Palm Sunday too.  Note 9 says he was born 2BC, and there is no “zero year.”  Thus, we have counted 30+2-1, or 31 years, twice. So we’re backing it off.

So, mankind has been around for 5963 years, see my totals.  So only 37 years, best guess, til’ 6000 is up and those alive then (and the dead in Christ) blast off to heaven for 1000 years of rest.  Now, if you’re over 70 when you read this (as I am), this 37-year-away rapture calculation could be considered a buzzkill. It would be so cool to be alive already when He comes.  But I thought again—I believe that Christians of that time will have to endure the 7 years of trouble (see my blog elsewhere), so you really want to miss it. It’s 7 years of persecution and disease and martyrdom before the rapture.  So, subtracting 7, for my younger readers, it’s only 30 years before such terror begins—if my data are accurate, which they are quite possibly not.  If you’re a Scripture thinker, please comment to me if you find any mistakes.  But, hey, if you’re old, that still leaves two things to consider: Anybody that dies before the last days, if a Christian, his or her soul goes to a wonderful place.  Your soul is very alive, conscious, and will love it.  (It joins the body at the rapture).  But you need to MAKE SURE that you’re a Christian.  You tune up your car before a trip, right?  Even if it isn’t making any telltale noises, right?  Just so, I highly recommend you read some of my many blogs on what it takes to be a Christian. Or, you can try a much better way: Put all the complacent assurances you’ve cherry-picked from Paul, and set them aside.  Start reading Scripture, hours at a time.  Read with fresh eyes what Jesus said involving what it takes for heaven—and what kinds of people go to hell.  Read Luke, Matthew, the Gospels, writing down every sentence the World’s Greatest Teacher said about (eternal) life or (eternal) death.  You’ll be surprised at the result.  Please don’t be afraid to break from your denomination on some points (as I have).  Seminarians and pastors have led us into an “easy believism” which they substitute for the Gospel. It’s not a conspiracy:  It’s just the way the Western hemisphere is headed. We are sliding, ever so quickly, into downright Apostasy.  A sign of the last days, wouldn’t you know it.

The Honor Killing That Went Awry

I used to think “honor killing” had to do with killing a Muslim daughter that committed a dreadful sin, like fornication or pregnancy, outside of marriage.  But an HBO Documentary Film, “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness” changed my mind. Please read on for your own enlightenment. 

More than 1000 women are murdered in Pakistan each year by male relatives who believe the victims have dishonored their families.  Here is the story of a young Pakistani woman who was the target of one of these honor killings.

It happened three years ago in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. It’s not a backwoods or ignorant area, since five million people live there. The girl, Saba, is 19. She is very pretty—on the right side of her face. On the left, it’s a different story.  A gunshot blew away her cheek from eye to jaw.  The surgeon did a terrible job of sewing it back together, but at least she is alive. The eye and teeth were miraculously untouched.  She also suffered a defensive wound on her right arm.  

It all began when she fell in love with Qaiser, a young man.  As typical in Muslim culture, they only met a few times, but talked on the phone.  He was kind and didn’t get angry, and she was in love.  Her father, at first, was planning their wedding. The problem was, her uncle objected.  “They are not of our status. They are poorer than us.”  He suggested that she should marry his brother-in-law.  A much older man whom she knew little about.

Since her male relatives had the last word, she was desperate.  Upon Qaiser’s parents’ suggestion, she decided to run away to Qaiser’s house, and his parents would see to it that they marry in court.  Which they did.   But her relatives paid a surprise visit the wedding day, before she got any “alone” time with him, and kidnapped her.  Her parents told her “return home to uphold our family’s honor, then Qaiser can come and take you back honorably.” But she was fearful of what they might do to her.  Then her parents put their hand on the Quran and promised her they wouldn’t harm her.  That finally decreased her fear.  But that night her uncle and father put her in the car, took her to the river, and started slapping and beating her.  She begged them for mercy, but her father put a pistol right at her brain, clutched her neck to keep her still, but she was able to tilt her face at the time he shot her, which means the shot ripped through her cheek instead.  Assuming she was dead, they put her in a bag and threw her in the river, and left.  But she fought off shock and amazingly climbed out. And she was taken to a hospital.

Authorities have laws against this, so now her father and uncle were on the run. Qaiser rushed to the hospital.  In an interview with Qaiser at the hospital, he said “my love for her is very strong.  I’d die without her.”  He seemed like a level-thinking good man. 

Police were assigned to guard her at the hospital.  She believed, because her parents took an oath on the Quran, Allah saved her.  “It is a sin.  They broke that oath and now the wrath of God will fall upon them.  I will never forgive them, no matter what happens or who comes in the middle. Even if someone powerful asks me, I will not forgive them.”  Then she spoke of the big picture.  “The world should see this—brothers, sisters, parents…So this doesn’t happen again.  They should be shot in public in an open market. With God’s will, I am going to fight this case.”  The Sharia law in Pakistan, though seemingly modernized, has a "get out of jail free" card:  the court will release a killer if the family of the victim forgives him.  Cultural pressures usually saw to it that that was what happened.  And the local families were already beginning to lean heavily upon her to forgive her father and uncle in court.  If she did that, they won’t spend 20 years behind bars. This is for shooting her in the face, up-close and personal. So, forgiveness would let them off scot-free, of attempting to murder their own child because she wanted to live a quiet life in love with Qaiser her chosen husband.  Was her not wanting to marry upscale a reasonable excuse for killing your own daughter?  How perverse is that?  But there was more to it.  They accused her of rebelling against her parents.  The loss of honor by the parents was enough to make her worthy to die.  Family honor was more important than her life.  Also, the father and the uncle were the family breadwinners.  Taking them away would definitely make the family scrounge for a decent living.     

The investigative policeman, Ali Akbar, caught up with Saba’s father and uncle and jailed them awaiting trial.  He was also interviewed, and said, “In my opinion, Islam teaches nothing about “honor killing.”  It teaches that we should safeguard the rights of all human beings, be it a man or a woman.  God has given her the right to choose freely.  Yet on the simple matter of marrying the person she loved, she had to pay such a heavy price.  What happened here was totally against religious values."  Hey,a moral man in Pakistan.  I think he really believes that, since he went through the hassle of chasing and finding a dangerous criminal, who would most likely be released.   But the truth is, as I point out in another blog “Are the Christian God and Allah the Muslim God the Same?”  the Quran is all about hatred and revenge, with only a few phrases about tolerance.  It is also highly misogynistic, and clearly points out that women are not as valuable or trustworthy as men.  It is easy to see how a perversity like honor killing could arise out of a culture rooted in the Quran as a foundation.  I firmly believe that the real God cannot bless such a culture, and that is why Pakistan remains one of the poorest countries on the planet.

Saba got no support from her family for wanting justice. So she went to live with her husband’s family.  In the interview with her sister Aqsa, who is about 16 I would guess, I was shocked to hear how assertive she was backing up her parents.  There was no reticence at all, which is surprising considering how she watched while they deceived and tried to kill her very own sister:  (Someday that could be her). “All our family did was to preserve their integrity and honor.  Who can tolerate such betrayal from a daughter who runs away and marries without their consent?  Our family was respected by the entire community.  People who feared us now taunt us.”  (The use of the word “fear” is a telltale statement).  “We’ve stopped going anywhere …because of the shame she has brought upon us.  People say my father neglected his kids.”  (One could only wish he had done so).  Her thinking was totally corrupted, thinking that the daughter was the betrayer.

Mom chimed in: “I could have scolded, explained to her. This is what happens when honor is at stake. No woman should disrespect others.  No woman should ruin her parents’ reputation.  This girl here (pointing, lovingly I guess, to Aqsa), if she does this sort of thing, she will be beaten.  If she stays home, I will get her married in a good way.  I prayed to God, “My daughter has done this, make me die.”” So mom is unrepentant of her assistance to her murderous husband, and despite Aqsa’s loyalty to mom, her mom still threatened her too!  Mother love on display.

The interview with Maqsood, Saba’s father, and Muhammad, her uncle, in jail was the strangest of all.  Here are her uncle’s words, which clearly show resentment that Saba lived:  “What my brother did was absolutely right.  I guess she survived.  It was her destiny.”   Saba’s father was also totally unrepentant:  “Whatever we did, we were obliged to do it.  She took away our honor.  I am an honorable man.  So I said no, I will kill you myself.  You are my daughter, I will kill you myself.  Why did you leave home with an outsider?  I haven’t seen the boy yet.  If I had seen him, I would have killed him too.  He has brought such destruction upon our home.  Just look.  I’m behind bars right now.”  (His logic about why he is in jail is beyond me).  The interviewer couldn’t resist.  “You’re locked up because you tried to kill your daughter.”  His answer:  “Lady, Islam does not permit the girl to go out of the house.”  (A total lie).  “Was she dying of hunger?  She got everything.”  Interviewer:  “Does Islam permit murder?”  Reply:  “No…”(actually, he was wrong.) “but where is it written that a girl can run away with a stranger?”  Interviewer: “What did you say to your wife?”  Reply:  “I told her “I have gone and killed your daughter as per my desire.”  My wife cried.  What else could she do?   She is just my wife.”  About his family who he left potentially starving without a breadwinner:  “The Lord will provide for my family too.” 

Saba, with her husband and family, is content, to use her word.  I tend to believe her.  Qaiser’s mother said, “She’s my daughter now.”  As to the question of them being poorer:  “We will live off what we have, and she can eat with us too.”  Saba says she’s heard that her father is asking for forgiveness.  Despite his brave words about honor earlier, he really doesn’t want to spend his life in jail--but he won’t condescend to speak with her.  At this point, she insists she still will not forgive him.  Her uncle did beg her forgiveness, but she told him to go away. 

Saba has a forward-thinking lawyer, who does many of his cases pro bono.  He feels that “honor killing” cases should be treated as any other murder/attempted murder case.  But Sharia law puts a misogynistic twist.  Most of the time the daughter is usually dead, so that makes it easy that the near relatives of the victim can get together and forgive the killer.  Her lawyer asserts:  “That is one more reason why honor killings are rising.  This is not just Saba’s cause; it’s society’s cause.”  He believes that the judicial system should be changed, not to allow such compromise.  But it will take time to change people’s mind.   “Seeking justice is a long, drawn-out process, and women are at a disadvantage.”

Saba begins to relate the growing pressure on her:  “They say we must listen to the influential and dominant men of our neighborhood.”  The male elders of the community play a major role in making the parties reach a compromise, and here is where the truth really comes out, about her inability to even make her feelings known, since she is trained from birth to obey the men and not speak up.  The elders expressed their dominance in refusing to meet with her; and they parroted the same charge as her father: she ran away, and society will not respect people who allow that with their daughter.  Her lawyer, in meeting with them, does a lame job of pleading the rights of the girl who is thrown away by her family.  But they sat there with arms folded, not an ounce of compassion on their faces, and they insisted that the real issues are honor “and land.”  (I don’t understand how “land” enters the picture).  They did hint that, if honor is not maintained, that fights between families could grow worse.  An interesting statement; it makes me think that if a family kills off another (dishonorable) family, they might even have community support in taking their land. Why not, if killing is treated so lightly here?    They say, if Saba forgives, then everyone will live in peace.  (The thing is, both families were there, and they were all calm, and I never saw any inter-family hatred, so I think either the real feelings are hidden, or the elders made that one up to add to their case.  What’s weird also is, everyone in that meeting was just talking like it was the day’s weather, despite this gross injustice staring them in the face.)

The police officer had an intelligent word: If she forgives, “a message is sent that this crime is no big deal. The laws should be the same for everyone.”  I would add, if you always end in forgiveness, and freedom for the criminal, why should a police officer bother chasing the criminal?  As a result, his job status, which should be important for the community to maintain, would eventually deteriorate. You would not have good men wanting to be police officers with this kind of action going on.   

Qaiser is against a settlement—but here’s another ugly truth about their system:  his older brother handles everything.  And of course, elder brother wants to acquit the attempted killers.   Forgiveness, he says, are the “laws of the community,” whatever that is.  He was worried “if this escalates.”  This hints at what the elders said about inter-family fights..   

As you might have guessed by now, Saba, through the men in her family, forgave.  (Actually, they didn’t ask her opinion).  And HBO got an award for this stunning documentary.  In fact, at the awards ceremony, the prime minister of Pakistan showed up and announced that the perpetrators of honor killings must not be allowed to be forgiven by family members.  He would do what he could to change that Sharia law. 

But wait a minute, who really has the power to change Sharia?  The religious leaders and the community.  Mufti Kifayatullah, a leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a religious party, accepted that some Islamic laws were being misused to protect killers. But he said any reform attempts would be resisted.  "Removing Islamic laws shall never be tolerated, as this country came in to being in the name of Islam,” he said. “The religious parties will not allow the government to solve the problem in this way.”

So the honor killings go on, and even grow.  Some killings have gotten pretty brazen, such as the 2014 killing of a woman by her family right outside Lahore’s high court, no less.

Now you the reader, consider how all the main players in this drama believed in and invoked the support of Allah, their God. Yet look how their compassion was absent and their mind corrupted. There were only two people who wanted peace and love.  Yet they were almost killed for that.  Please read my paper on the truth behind the Quran. Now tell me, dear reader, how “all religions lead to the same God.”  Contrast the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:43ff with the vengeful relatives:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

 Is this the same God as Muslims call on for defense of these horrific actions?  Or should we take a word of advice from Matthew 7:16:  You will know them by their fruits.

Acknowledgement:  HBO Documentary Films, "A Girl in the River"

The State of American Morality

Two incidents reveal  the state of American morality—or lack thereof.  Here  is the first:

When Your Daughter Defies Biology, The burden of mothers whose children suffer from ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria.’ By Abigail Shrier of the Wall Street Journal

A reader contacted me under a pseudonym a few months ago. She turned out to be a prominent Southern lawyer with a problem she hoped I’d write about. Her college-age daughter had always been a “girly girl” and intellectually precocious, but had struggled with anxiety and depression. She liked boys and had boyfriends in high school, but also faced social challenges and often found herself on the outs with cliques.

The young woman went off to college—which began, as it often does these days, with an invitation to state her name, sexual orientation and “pronouns.” When her anxiety flared during her first semester, she and several of her friends decided their angst had a fashionable cause: “gender dysphoria.” Within a year, the lawyer’s daughter had begun a course of testosterone. Her real drug—the one that hooked her—was the promise of a new identity. A shaved head, boys’ clothes and a new name formed the baptismal waters of a female-to-male rebirth.

This is the phenomenon Brown University public-health researcher Lisa Littman has identified as “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” ROGD differs from traditional gender dysphoria, a psychological affliction that begins in early childhood and is characterized by a severe and persistent feeling that one was born the wrong sex. ROGD is a social contagion that comes on suddenly in adolescence, afflicting teens who’d never exhibited any confusion about their sex.

Like other social contagions, such as cutting and bulimia, ROGD overwhelmingly afflicts girls. But unlike other conditions, this one—though not necessarily its sufferers—gets full support from the medical community. The standard for dealing with teens who assert they are transgender is “affirmative care”—immediately granting the patient’s stated identity. There are, to be sure, a few dissenters. “This idea that what we’re supposed to do as therapists is to ‘affirm’? That’s not my job,” said psychotherapist Lisa Marchiano. “If I work with someone who’s really suicidal because his wife left him, I don’t call his wife up and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to come back.’ . . . We don’t treat suicide by giving people exactly what they want.”

But giving in to patients’ demands is exactly what most medical professionals do when faced with ROGD. Like fashionable and tragic misdiagnoses of the past, this one comes with irreversible physical trauma. “Top surgery,” a euphemism for double mastectomies. Infertility. Permanent rounding of facial features or squaring of the jawline. Bodily and facial hair that never goes away.

Planned Parenthood furnishes testosterone to young women on an “informed consent” basis, without requiring any psychological evaluation. Student health plans at 86 colleges—including those of nearly every Ivy League school—cover not only cross-sex hormones but surgery as well.

ROGD-afflicted adolescents typically suffer anxiety and depression at a difficult stage of life, when confusion is at least as pervasive as fun, and there is everywhere the sense that they ought to be having the times of their lives. I spoke with 18 parents, 14 of them mothers—all articulate, intellectual, educated and feminist. They burst with pride in daughters who, until the ROGD spell hit, were highly accomplished, usually bound for top universities. Except for two mothers whose daughters have desisted, all insisted on anonymity. They are terrified their daughters will discover the depth of their dissent and cut them off. They are determined to use whatever influence they have left to halt their daughters’ next voluntary disfigurement.

Nearly every force in society is aligned against these parents: Churches scramble to rewrite their liturgies for greater “inclusiveness.” Therapists and psychiatrists undermine parental authority with immediate affirmation of teens’ self-diagnoses. Campus counselors happily refer students to clinics that dispense hormones on the first visit. Laws against “conversion therapy,” which tries to cure homosexuality, are on the books in 14 states and the District of Columbia. These statutes also prohibit “efforts to change a patient’s . . . gender identity,” in the words of the New Jersey law—effectively threatening counselors who might otherwise dissuade teens from proceeding with hormone treatment or surgery.

Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram and YouTube host an endless supply of mentors, who cheerfully document their own physical transitions, omitting mention of dangerous side effects and offering tips on how to pass as a man and how to break away from unsupportive parents. For anxious teens who tend toward obsession, these videos can be mesmerizing. Though the stars are typically pictured alone in a bedroom, they project exuberance and social élan. As one female-to-male YouTube guru who goes by “Alex Bertie” puts it: “Taking testosterone is the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m so happy within myself. It did not solve all of my problems, but it’s given me the strength to make the most out of life and to battle my other demons like my social issues.”

Brie Jontry, a spokeswoman for Fourth Wave Now, an international support network for these families, is one of the two mothers who spoke on the record. She tells me ROGD teens often come from politically progressive families. Many of the mothers I spoke with say they enthusiastically supported same-sex marriage long before it was legal anywhere. Some of them describe welcoming the news when their daughters came out as lesbians. But when their daughters suddenly decided that they were actually men and started clamoring for hormones and surgery, the mothers begged them to reconsider, or at least slow down.

“If your kid went off and joined the Moonies, people would feel sorry for you, and they would understand that this is a bad thing and that your kid shouldn’t be in the Moonies,” one mother, a former leader of the pro-gay organization Pflag, said. “With this, I can’t even tell anybody. I talk to my husband, that’s it.” The couple have faithfully covered their daughter’s tuition, health-care and cellphone bills—even though she refuses to speak to them.

Under the influence of testosterone and the spell of transgression, ROGD daughters grow churlish and aggressive. Under the banner of civil rights, they assume the moral high ground. Their mothers take cover behind pseudonyms. As ROGD daughters rage against the biology they hope to defy, their mothers bear its burden, evincing its maternal instinct—the stubborn refusal to abandon their young.

And, the second. Are Christians being targeted here?  It looks so.

The Shaming of Karen Pence by William McGurn, WSJournal
A mob of secular Puritans targets her for teaching at a Christian school.

Will no one speak up for Karen Pence other than her husband?
In scarcely a week, the vice president's wife has become a public face of hate. CNN's John King suggests that what Mrs. Pence has done is so grievous maybe taxpayers shouldn't fund her Secret Service security protection. The American Civil Liberties Union says she's sending "a terrible message to students."

The Guardian sees in Mrs. Pence a reminder of "the vice-president's dangerous bigotry." During a Saturday night performance in Las Vegas, Lady Gaga told her fans that what Mrs. Pence has done confirms she and her husband are "the worst representation of what it means to be Christian." A former Washington Post editor and senior writer for Politico tweets: "How can this happen in America?"
So what is this terrible thing Mrs. Pence has done? She plans to teach art part-time at Immanuel Christian School in Northern Virginia. This is a small private K-8 academy where Mrs. Pence has taught before. It adheres to a biblically rooted view of human sexuality.
Thanks to the crack reporters at the Washington Post, what this means is no mystery. The Post reports the following provision in the school's employment contract: "I understand that the term 'marriage' has only one meaning; the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive covenant union as delineated in Scripture."
Hmmm. Though presented as dangerous stuff, we've heard this before. For example, this is how Senate candidate Barack Obama put it in a 2004 radio interview: "I'm a Christian, and so although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."

So why are so many eager to cast the first stone against Mrs. Pence and not Mr. Obama? Because everyone knew when Mr. Obama spoke he didn't really mean it; his position was taken out of political calculation. Mrs. Pence's sin is that she really believes what she says.
In the narrow sense, the vilification of Mrs. Pence makes prophetic Justice Samuel Alito's prediction in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision throwing out all state laws against same-sex marriage. Justice Alito saw a perilous future for those who still embraced the view Mr. Obama once claimed to hold. "I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes," he wrote, "but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools."
In the larger sense the faith-shaming of Mrs. Pence exposes an inversion of tropes. In history and literature, typically it has been the religious side that can't tolerate the slightest disagreement from its dogma and behaves like outraged 17th-century Salemites when they think they have uncovered a witch.
Now look at the Immanuel Christian School. Those who run it know they and those who think like them are the big losers in America's culture war. All they ask is to be allowed, within the confines of their community, to uphold 2,000 years of Christian teaching on marriage, sexuality and the human person.
When Obergefell was decided, it was sold as live-and-let-live. But as Justice Alito foresaw, today some sweet mysteries of the universe are more equal than others. In other words, it isn't enough for the victors to win; the new sense of justice requires that those who still don't agree must be compelled to violate their deepest beliefs, whether this means forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraception or dragging a baker in Colorado through the courts until he agrees to make a cake celebrating "gender transition."
Today's militant secularists ironically resemble the worst caricatures of religious intolerance of early America. Where the Puritans humiliated sinners with the stocks, the modern intolerant have Twitter . Where the Amish shunned those who lived contrary to their beliefs, today's violators find themselves driven off the public square. And whereas in Hawthorne's novel Hester Prynne was forced to wear a scarlet "A"for adulterer, today we have folks such as Jimmy Kimmel using their popular platforms to paint the scarlet "H" for hater  on people such as Mrs. Pence.
Vice President Mike Pence defended both his wife and Christian education during an appearance last Thursday on EWTN, a Catholic television network. But it says something that so few on the commanding heights of our culture have been willing to join him there.
It would be a shame if Mrs. Pence were to allow the mob to keep her from teaching art to those children at Immanuel Christian School. But however it turns out, her experience surely tells us which orthodoxies today are truly sacred and beyond question.