Conspiracy or Coincidence?

     Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive!

     This prose from Sir Walter Scott instantly came to mind when I came across a most interesting connect-the-dot analysis.  While scouring some of the more "fringe" websites for information that would benefit my readers, I found Michael Kaplan, of Forward Observer Magazine, who wrote that sometimes "the most ominous secrets are those hidden in “plain view”."
     Remember when I told you last month about The Grid Attack You Never Knew Happened?  If you will remember, my post pointed out that there was an attack carried out by a group of people on a power station in California last spring, yet we heard practically nothing about it at the time.  In fact, officials at Pacific Gas & Electric Company tried to write it off as "vandalism".
     But Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time of the attack, was not satisfied.  He resigned his post and undertook his own investigation.  Shortly thereafter he disclosed to the Wall Street Journal that it was a well-coordinated attack by unknown enemies of the United States.  (Read that post to see why he thinks so.) This has caused great concern among those who fear our grid system is extremely vulnerable.
     But now, thanks to the gutsy report by Michael Kaplan, I can reveal that this stealthy event has even more ramifications.  Are you aware that the attack on that power station in California happened only one day after the Boston Marathon Bombing?  That's right!  The bombing in Boston occurred on April 15, 2013, and the power grid attack slipped in under the radar just one day later.  So, what do you think?  Is it conspiracy --- or coincidence?

     What are the chances that it is coincidence when, as Mr. Kaplan points out: "While 9,000 law enforcement officers swarmed the city of Boston looking for two Russians from Dagestan, a commando team of terrorist snipers were attacking the US Power Grid in California. "  Do you think they just simultaneously occurred with no discernible connection?  Or are the puppet-masters keeping us focused on their right hand, while the left is maneuvering into position for a sneak attack?  And if they are connected, then can we believe anything we've been told (which is minimal) about the reasons behind the Boston Bombing?
     I have to take seriously the remarks by Jon Wellinghoff, when he told the Wall Street Journal, that the attack on the power grid in California was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred.”   That statement would explain the under-reporting by the Media of the execution of Grid-Ex II.  What is that, you ask?
     As Kaplan points out, Government and utility industry officials are so concerned about a potential attack on our grid system that they staged a massive emergency drill mid-November 2013 (Grid-Ex II), in which they practiced responding to a simulated failure of large parts of the electrical system across North America.  It seems they can at least conceive of a nightmare scenario in which terrorists or an enemy country stages a combination of cyber-attacks and physical attacks that destroy, or render inoperable, crucial power facilities and take down large sections of the grid.  One has to wonder if this drill would have materialized had Wellinghoff not "gone off the reservation" with his own investigation and then took his story to the WSJ.  Would Government and Utility officials have continued to be complacent and accepting of the "vandalism" excuse?
     We hear an awful lot about "cyber-attacks against our infrastructure."  But as Mr. Wellinghoff points out, it takes a lot of sophistication to shut down an entire grid while sitting at your laptop in some Eastern bloc country.  But the incident in California proved that a handful of individuals with AK-47s were able to strike quickly and effectively to shut down power.  If they were able to take down multiple transformers across different grids, we would easily be without power for six months or more.  Just think what that would do to hospitals, emergency units and law enforcement!
     So that brings me back to my initial hypothesis ... was the Boston Bombing intended to be a smokescreen to cover the actions in California?  Was it just random luck that Wellinghoff wasn't willing to accept the softball "vandalism" pretense?  Would we have even known of this test run against our grid if he hadn't persisted in his investigation?  And if the two events are connected --- who is running the show?  
     I think that is what scares me the most.  Because if they are connected, then we are dealing with a highly secret and sinister force that is willing to sacrifice the lives of innocent victims and force a false scenario upon an exploitable public.  And as the Apostle Paul warned us, we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies per se, but individuals who have been compromised by the mighty, dark powers of this world.
     We would do well to acknowledge this warning.  Throughout the Bible, the prophets of old were shown that these powers existed.  Why would we think that don't exist today?  In fact, Isaiah points out in Chapter 24, verse 15:  Ah, you who hide deep from the Lord your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark and who says, "Who sees us?  Who knows us?"  You turn things upside down.
     If things aren't upside down now, I don't know what is!  I just want you to keep your eyes and ears open; question everything!  Accept these tidbits of clues we are given as reasons to better prepare yourself physically and spiritually.  Discern for yourselves the significance of an event, or events.  If something doesn't meet the smell test, then in all likelihood, it's not the truth.
     But you can know this for a fact:  while forces may plot in darkness, and deceive us, they do not escape the attention of our God.  They can turn our world upside down, but they do not have control over our lives unless we surrender to them.  God is our Protector, our Provider, and our Comforter.  He  rules and reigns over the darkness and He is aware of everything!  There are no secrets in His kingdom and Evil will not win!

Jeremiah 16:17    "For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes."
     

The Mexican Cartels and the Rise of Exorcisms

     This story almost seems too preposterous to be real.  But the New York Daily News ran a story over the weekend that exorcisms are on the rise as a weapon against the ever-escalating violence of drug cartels.  Hard to believe?  The evidence is supposedly backed by priests who say the heightened frequency is fueled by the growing popularity of Santa Muerte (Saint Death), the favorite saint of narcotics syndicates and about 10 million followers around the world, an estimated 2 million of them in Mexico.

     You might be tempted to write this Saint Death off as sensational and exaggerated, but consider these cases:  a follower in New Orleans built a public shrine in her honor. An actor in Albuquerque credits her with helping him land a role on the TV show “Breaking Bad.” She turns up routinely along the U.S.-Mexico border at safe houses, and is sighted on dashboards of cars used to smuggle methamphetamine through the southwest desert.
     And although La Santa Muerte is quite popular in Mexio, don't think that she is worshipped primarily in the Latino culture.  The skeleton saint has found a robust and diverse following north of the border: immigrant small business owners, artists, gay activists and the poor, among others — many of them non-Latinos and not all involved with organized religion.
     Andrew Chesnut is the author of Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint, and is the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.  He said, “Because you can ask her for anything, she has mass appeal and is now gaining a diverse group of followers throughout the U.S. and her growth has been extraordinary. She’s the ultimate multi-tasker.”
     Law enforcement is well aware of the popularity of Saint Death.  U.S. Marshal Robert Almonte, whose jurisdiction is in West Texas, said he has testified about La Santa Muerte in at least five drug trafficking cases where her image aided prosecutors with convictions.  Since her popularity crosses cultures and borders, Altmonte has given workshops to law enforcement agencies on the cult of the saint.  “Criminals pray to La Santa Muerte to protect them from law enforcement,” he said. “But there are good people who pray to her who aren’t involved in any criminal activity so we have to be careful.”
     Devotees say La Santa Muerte has helped them find love, find better jobs and launch careers.  An owner of a curio shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico said, “Most people who buy the stuff are regular people who just recently found out about her.  Some probably have no idea about her connection to that other world.”
     "That other world" is the secret places of the drug cartels. Father Ernesto Caro knows first-hand how the patron Saint of Death has infiltrated the world of drugs.  One day, the person in the confessional was a killer for the Los Zetas cartel, Mexico's most heinous crime syndicate. His specialty was chopping people into pieces, while they were still alive.  "He said he smiled while he was doing it. He said he enjoyed it and that he was laughing," Caro, a priest and exorcist in Monterrey, told the Daily News. "He told me terrible things."  When Father Caro exorcised his first cartel member, three or four years ago at his parish in Monterrey, he looked into the man's eyes "and saw the devil," Caro said. Then the man "writhed on the floor like a snake," he said.

     It is not surprising, then, that the Vatican has condemned Santa Muerte’s followers as a Satanic cult. Though the act of exorcism remains a church-sanctioned ritual, it is not often publicly discussed by the Holy See.  In Mexico, priests blame her cartel worshippers for bringing unprecedented acts of evil on ordinary citizens.  Exorcisms are particularly popular in outlying villages, where priests often celebrate weekly Mass to drive demons from tormented souls, experts say.
     Regardless of whether or not you think this phenomenon is worthy of mention, you cannot ignore the very real influence this folk saint is having upon both the good and the wicked.  And neither do I think we should dismiss its popularity or practice.  Since 2006, cartel violence has spun out of control in Mexico, with as many as 80,000 people killed by warring drug gangs. The savagery has escalated to such an extent that in some areas decapitated, dismembered and disemboweled bodies are an everyday sight.  You might not think exorcism is the answer, but you can't ignore the words of Father Caro … "Evil is growing."

Deuteronomy 32:17   "They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded."

Your Life Will Soon Look Like A Science Fiction Novel!

     I have introduced you to Ray Kurzweil in past posts, and you will remember him as an acclaimed inventor, futurist, and current Director of Engineering at Google.  (Just that title sends shivers down my spine for all its implications!)  Anyway, Mr. Kurzweil has recently published an article on CNN.com in which he predicts 5 ways our lives will be dramatically effected in the very near future.  Let's take a look at his scary predictions:

1.   By the early 2020s, we will have the means to program our biology away from disease and aging.  According to Kurzweil, medicine will no longer be a hit-or-miss affair, with newly invented drugs that cure you, yet have a range of side-effects that are sometime worse than the disease.  It seems that scientists now have "the genome code" (there's the first scary proposition!) and can actually reprogram our body's processes, much like a computer is re-programmed.
     This is a direct quote from the man that Forbes Magazine calls "the ultimate thinking machine": RNA interference, for example, can turn genes off that promote disease and aging. New forms of gene therapy, especially in vitro models that do not trigger the immune system, have the ability to add new genes.
     OK, does anybody else think this sounds creepy?  And isn't this, in essence, playing God?  Our Maker gave us our immune system (that Kurzweil is trying to hinder) for a specific reason... to fight off foreign agents trying to alter His creation! Turning genes off?  Adding new genes?  And just what kind of "therapy" are they planning to do to our genes?  And the ultimate question: Who do these mad scientists think they are?  Unfortunately, I don't think they will be satisfied with "playing" God.
     And here is his frightening conjecture:  Technology is already here to reprogram "the software" of human biology, and he proclaims that Clinical applications are now at the cutting edge and will be routine in the early 2020s.
2.  By 2030, solar energy will be able to meet all our needs, revolutionizing the production of food and water.  Some of Kurzweil's forecasts for this area of science include converting the vast amount of dirty and salinated water we have on the planet to usable water, along with hydroponic plants for fruits and vegetables, and in vitro cloning of muscle tissue for meat.  You read that correctly -- he is talking about producing meat without animals, thereby ending what he calls "animal suffering."
     But the most disturbing element of these technological advances is this statement by Mr. Kurzweil:  "We are also headed towards another agriculture revolution, from horizontal agriculture to vertical agriculture, where we grow very high quality food in Artificial Intelligence controlled buildings [my emphasis, not his].
3.  By the early 2020s we will print out a significant fraction of the products we use including clothing as well as replacement organs.  Kurzweil refers to the early 2020s as "the golden era" of 3D printing.  He predicts that you will have a choice of "many thousands of cool clothing designs" that are an open source and that can be printed out for pennies a pound.  It's not that the fashion industry will disappear. It will simply be "transformed"; much like other industries that have already been morphed from physical products to digital ones, such as books, movies and music.  OK, I can buy that.  But Kurzweil can never resist going for the shock value.  He almost gleefully reports the following:  "We can already experimentally print out organs by printing a biodegradable scaffolding and then populating it with a patient's own stem cells, all with a 3D printer."  Tell me that's not macabre!
4.  Within five years, search engines will be based on an understanding of natural language.  What that means is that computers will attempt to think and reason like humans, thereby considering themselves human ... or better.  If you need a concrete example, Kurzweil provides one.  He asks us to consider IBM's "Watson", an artificially intelligent computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language.  Did you know that Watson got a higher score on the TV game show Jeopardy than the best two human players combined?
     Could you have answered this question correctly, in the rhyme category: "A long tiresome speech delivered by a frothy pie topping?"  Well, Watson did.  It correctly responded "What is a meringue harangue."
     How did Watson do it?  Watson got its knowledge by reading Wikipedia and several other encyclopedias, a total of 200 million pages of natural language documents, and then combining all that knowledge to come up with the correct answer.  But here is the scary part ... it does not read a page as well as you or I.  It might read one page and conclude that there is a 56% chance that Barack Obama is President of the United States.  You could read that same page, and if you didn't happen to know that ahead of time, conclude that there is a 98% chance.  So you did a better job than Watson at reading that page. But Watson makes up for this relatively weak reading by reading more pages, a lot more, and it can combine its inferences across everything it has read and conclude that there is a 99.9% chance that Obama is president.
     But what happens when Watson has a glitch in his system?  What's to keep it from becoming HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey?  Kurzweil says he is part of a group of inventors that are creating a system that will engage you in dialogue to clarify questions and discuss answers that are ambiguous or complex.  I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to trust any system that wants me to "clarify" matters with a computer!

5.  By the early 2020s we will be routinely working and playing with each other in full immersion visual-auditory virtual environments. By the 2030s, we will add the tactile sense to full immersion virtual reality.  Much like the telephone is virtual reality, in the auditory sense, in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, Kurzweil predicts that we will soon be able to add visual, tactile and what he calls "full immersion" virtual reality to our existence.  There's only one small hitch ... the full package will require tapping directly into the nervous system.  But it's no big deal, he insists.  "We'll be able to do that in the 2030s with nanobots traveling noninvasively into the brain through the capillaries and augmenting the signals coming from our real senses."
     Oh, yeah, sign me up!  How about you?  Are you ready for this new future?  Nanobots in your brain?  Printed organs?  Computers that will think they know better than you?  Fake meat?  How far away can Jesus be when this is on our radar?  The only full immersion, visual-auditory-tactile environment I'm interested in is the one that finds me in the presence of my Lord and Savior!  May that day come before I have to endure this nightmare.

Isaiah 1:2     Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: "Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me."

Are We Building The Tower of Babel Again?

     At first glance, the headlines seem outlandish; even imaginary or phony:  Harvard Professor Seeks Mother for Cloned Cave Baby .... Human Intelligence Will Be Overtaken By Technological Evolution.  You might think you were reading something out of the latest sci-fi Magazine of the Month.  Why would we want to even pay attention to these bizarre notions?
     Follow along with my thought process and see if it doesn't make some modicum of sense.  As you know, the Bible is my source for Truth.  I'm one of those who believes that it still has relevance in today's world; in fact, if you dig deep enough you will find parallels to many of our modern situations.

     First, let's look at what the crazy headlines above are really telling us.  According to The Daily Mail, Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago.  The obvious comparisons to Jurassic Park notwithstanding, this is really creepy because in order to complete his experiment, Professor Church needs to artificially create Neanderthal DNA based on genetic code found in fossil remains. He would then put this DNA into stem cells.   And here's the creepy part .... these would be injected into cells from a human embryo in the early stages of life, which would steer the development of the hybrid embryo along Neanderthal lines, rather than human ones.  The ‘neo-Neanderthal’ embryo would then need to be implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother.   Does anyone else think that this is messing with God's creation?
     Next, let's take a look at the Human Intelligence vs. Technological Advancements scenario.  Inventor and Futurist Ray Kurzweil has come up with a theory he calls "The Singularity".  What this means is that he predicts -- in the very near future -- that there will be a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability.  Translated into language we can all understand, he predicts that we are very close to creating a nonbiological (read "artificial") intelligence that will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.  Mr. Kurzweil was recently interviewed for a Time Magazine article, and the writer, Lew Grossman, summed up the Futurist's theory in this manner:  Once hyper-intelligent artificial intelligences arise, armed with advanced nanotechnology, they’ll really be able to wrestle with the vastly complex, systemic problems associated with aging in humans. Alternatively, by then we’ll be able to transfer our minds to sturdier vessels such as computers and robots. He and many other Singularitarians take seriously the proposition that many people who are alive today will wind up being functionally immortal.

     You read that correctly!  Technology is advancing so rapidly, that one day, robots will not only interpret our thoughts for us, but become part of us, thereby securing our immortality!  In addition, Kurzweil feels confident in his theory to make the following predictions:  (See this article on The Blaze for in-depth reporting on Singularity).

•  Our brains will extend to the cloud, which will allow us to learn new things at any age.
•  We will be able to selectively erase pieces of our memory.
•  We’ll be in augmented reality at all times.
•  By 2029, machines will be able to match the intelligence of humans, and they’ll be able to make us laugh and cry.
•  Around the 2030s, tiny “nanobots” able to repair and preserve our organs will keep us healthier and smarter.
•  3D printing will be even more common than it is today, with public 3D printing stations for people to print out clothes, toys, and anything else.
•  Within 25 years, computers will be the size of a blood cell and we’ll be able to connect it to the brain without the need for surgery.
•  Society will reach a state of “technological singularity” in 2045 where technology enables superhuman machine intelligences to emerge and people and machines become deeply integrated.
     I could write volumes on all that just these two headlines portend.  But I want you to consider that in one way, these events are not new.  We've been here before in the history of man.  Let me point you to Genesis 10:8-9:  Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth.  He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.”

     If you are familiar with the story of Nimrod, you know that he is largely held responsible for being the instigator behind the Tower of Babel.   Now you might think that Nimrod is a good guy, based on these couple of verses.  But every commentary I have ever read states that the Greek to English translation of this Scripture is weak.  You have to go to the Jerusalem Targum (a Hebrew translation into the Aramaic language, which was used in Christ’s day), to grasp the full appreciation of these verses.  The Targum states, “He [Nimrod] was powerful in hunting and wickedness before the LORD, for he was a hunter of the sons of men, and he said unto them, ‘Depart from the judgment of the Lord, and adhere to the judgment of Nimrod!’ therefore it is said: ‘As Nimrod [is] the strong one, strong in hunting, and in wickedness before the Lord.’”
     The word “before” in verse 9 actually should be translated “in defiance of.” Even his name—Nimrod—means “one who rebels” or “let us rebel.” Nimrod was a Rebel!  He also was a hunter, “a mighty one in the earth,” a hero of the people. With his skills of hunting and war, he protected the people against wild animals, thus causing people to turn to him for protection instead of God.
     And we all know the rest of the story.  The ancient historian Josephus says this about Nimrod:  Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God.... He persuaded them not to ascribe anything to God, as if it were through His means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness.... He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! 
     And what did God do?  Genesis 11:6-8 tell us,  The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.  
     It seems to me that when man begins to think that he is bigger than God, or smarter than God, then he begins to think he can BE God.  God knew that Nimrod planned to replace Him among the people on the earth, so He confounded their plans and the Tower of Babel was destroyed.  Do you see the similarities with our modern-day hypotheses?   Monkeying with DNA .... messing with the human mind and trying to create immortal beings?  It looks to me like the created are trying to replace the Creator!   Furthermore, it appears as though we are getting dangerously close to assuming the arrogance of Nimrod; and we saw how that turned out for him, don't we?
     The arrogance of it all!  It astounds me that man, who was created in the image of God, would have the audacity to think they could improve on His work.  What God has created is sovereign and supreme!  But if these men knew who God was, they would not dare to challenge Him!  I shudder to think how He will destroy this rebellion against His authority.

Romans 1:20-21      " For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."