rmriss

Effective Violin Practice

Richard M. Riss

  • Set yourself up to have a good, productive efficient time of practice; do not be in a rush.
  • Practice efficiently.  Set time limits.  Do not practice more than four to five hours a day.
  • Know exactly what you want to accomplish.  Plan everything to the smallest possible detail, then practice putting it all together.  
  • Practice extremely slowly, and for difficult passages, do this seven or eight times.  Practice in small sections.
  • Practice with your head, and not mindlessly.  Do not play anything without listening carefully with a discerning ear.
  • After completing a number of months of extremely slow muscle-memory practice, do trial runs in front of an audience, such as a retirement community.  If possible, do this thirty or forty times before an important concert.  Be familiar with what happens to you when you get nervous playing in public, so that you can compensate.
  • Do not imitate others.  Be yourself.  What suits others may not really fit you.
  • Talent is just a mood. Expect yourself to succeed.  Have patience; don’t give up.  If you think you can eventually play a particular work or passage the way that you would like to play it, then you will; if you think that you would never be able to play it the way you would like to play it, then you never will.
rmriss

Why the Christian Bible Cannot Be Legend

All historical events are interrelated.  They have observable consequences in the real world.  Whenever it is asserted that something has happened in the past, we can always test the assertion by determining whether or not subsequent events are best explained by it.  For example, if it is claimed that God, through Moses, visited Egypt with ten plagues, we should ask ourselves, “what would be the results of such an event?”  What evidence do we have in our own day that would corroborate such a claim?  What if it had not taken place?  What would we expect should be true in our own day if it had not happened?  How do we best explain the existence of the Jewish nation?  Do we, in fact, know of any better possible explanation for the release of the Jews from slavery to Egypt?  What other factors could have induced Pharaoh to give up the free slave labor that the Egyptians had in the Jewish people?  What other explanations can be offered for all of the facts?  How did hundreds of thousands of people survive in the desert for so long without dying of thirst if God did not miraculously provide water for them?  Or, if we hypothesize that they were not in the wilderness, can we still adequately explain what is known to be true on other historical grounds?

When something happens, its effects are inescapable.  This will be true whether or not the event can be classified as a miracle.  If a given event takes place, it will have certain effects.  If the effects are not there, then the hypothesized cause cannot be there.

Thus, if Jesus Christ has really risen from the dead, there will be certain consequences which cannot adequately be explained apart from the resurrection.  Such consequences include the changed lives of the early Christians, the change of Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and the courage of the Christian martyrs, not to mention the very existence of the Christian Church.

The marks of God’s intervention in the affairs of men cannot be erased; they have had effects that have resounded down through the corridors of time, and having taken place, will continue to have effects.  Everything that happens brings certain results which cannot be explained without the causes.

Consider another example.  The book of Genesis claims that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh.   If we do not accept the historicity of the creation story and of the giving of the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, we are forced to try to find plausible alternative explanations as to why in our own day we have seven days in the week and why the Jewish people celebrate a Sabbath on the seventh day.  Will any explanation be fully adequate to explain these facts other than that the Biblical accounts are trustworthy?

Every historical event is unique, and causes a unique set of results which cannot arise under any other set of circumstances.  This makes history verifiable, and enables us to investigate any historical claim.  Moreover, the events of history are inextricably interwoven.  Every event that actually takes place is interconnected with all others that occur at the same time and place.  To deny the historicity of a single event requires a re-explanation of all of the circumstances surrounding its occurrence.  Biblical history and secular history are completely interrelated.  They interpenetrate each other to such a degree that it is impossible to divorce them.  A denial of Biblical history would entail a denial of what is known about secular history, because both are interwoven into the same fabric.  The facts recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the supernatural events, are integral to the secular history of Israel and the nations that surrounded her before the time of Christ.  In the same way, the facts recorded in the New Testament are integral to the history of the Roman Empire.  If we did not take the Christian Bible at face value, it would be difficult to explain the rise of Christian faith in the midst of persecution in the Roman Empire until it eventually became the preferred religion almost three hundred years later.

Any historical narrative purporting to have occurred at a particular time and place is going to have countless effects upon both other events of that time and upon later events.  Because of the many intricacies of detail in history, it would be impossible to invent alternate accounts of events that have already transpired which do not have serious deficiencies in their effectiveness in accounting for various attending circumstances.  These characteristics of history are of tremendous relevance to the study of the Christian Bible, which, after all, is a historical book.  It is filled with information directly relevant to the study of ancient political entities, governments, geography, biography, customs, languages, and history.  Had the Bible, or portions within it, been forgeries, these constant allusions to historical data would contain countless inaccuracies and anachronisms.  The absence of such signs of forgery forces us to come to grips with the genuineness of the Bible.  It must be a record of events that actually happened to real people at specific times and places.  There has been too much corroboration of the Biblical details, both through archaeological findings and through other ancient documents, for us to conclude otherwise.

Many people attempt to say that archaeology does not prove the Bible to be true.  Yet, any forgery containing enough specific historical details will quickly betray its own speciousness when compared with other evidence bearing upon the times, places, and events that it describes.  If you study the archaeological evidence in confirmation of the Biblical accounts, you find such a correspondence between the events described and the artifacts, inscriptions, and monuments bearing upon them as to leave very little room for doubt about the historical trustworthiness of the Bible.  If you bear in mind the vastness of the possibilities for historical error for any ostensibly accurate historical account, and add to it the realization that all historical events are inextricably intertwined, it strains one’s credulity to be told that the archaeological evidence in corroboration of the Bible is not conclusive.

Another aspect to consider is geography.  The Bible is replete with extremely precise geographical details which correspond exactly with what is presently known about the geography of Palestine and of the other regions which form the setting of the Biblical narratives.  The Biblical accounts would be reduced to nonsense if they alluded to various incidental geographical factors in any way differently than they actually do.  In Joshua 10:10,11, for example, there is a description of the retreat of the Canaanites from before Joshua and his armies.  The geographical details provided in this passage are very precise.  Those who are well versed in historical geography recognize that this narrative could not possibly have been fabricated, but that it is rooted in reality.  Many of these geographical factors are actually an essential part of the story, such that without them, the events could not have taken place the way in which they are described.  The military importance of the Central Benjamin Plateau has not changed for millennia, and its strategic value was as clear to twentieth century Israelis as it was to Joshua and his enemies more than three thousand years ago.  The Gibeonites had surrendered to Joshua knowing that they lived in the territory that he would have to conquer next in order to gain control over Palestine.  Its strategic importance lay in its position as the major approach to Jerusalem, and is underscored by the fact that in the six-day war of 1966, when the Central Benjamin Plateau was taken, it was announced that Israel had taken the West Bank, although most of the West Bank had not yet actually been taken.  It was recognized on all hands, however, that what remained was a mere matter of mop-up operations once the Central Benjamin Plateau was in Israeli hands.  In just the same way, when the Gibeonites formed an alliance with Joshua, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon would have known immediately that they were very seriously threatened.  The sneak attack of the kings of these cities with their armies against the Gibeonites would have been the logical consequence of such an alliance.  After the defeat of these kings, their retreat along the road from Beth-Horon to Azekah would have been their only live option.  It is at this point that the sun stood still upon Gibeon and the moon in the Aijalon valley, enabling Joshua and his men to pursue them.  On March 19, 1985, a leading historical geographer of Palestine, James M. Monson, said with respect to the geographical factors of this narrative in Joshua that, “this is a very, very precise description, and it’s not something sort of manufactured.  And today people are saying, ‘but Joshua really didn’t exist.’ .  .  . But the geographic factors are correct, you know, because they are so exact.  We cannot deny those.  So I think it’s rather hard to have some guy making up a story . . . .  It takes more faith for me to believe some guy fabricated this and it all fits nicely than to say that this really happened.”  The Biblical stories are precise in all of their details, and it is very exciting to see how well they fit into their geographical context.

The interconnectedness of historical circumstances is as evident in the relationship of the Bible to classical writings as it is in its correspondence with archaeological and geographical data.  If the Bible is historically trustworthy, it should come as no surprise that Herodotus, for example, in Book II, section 141 of his History, gives an account of Sennacherib’s invasion of II Kings 19:35.  Nor should we be surprised that Megasthenes stated that one of the Assyrian kings, when on his deathbed, said that his empire was to be overturned by the Medes and the Persians.  While Megasthenes was astonished at this, the Bible indicates that the king had been informed of this fact by the prophet Daniel (Daniel 2:38-39).

There are many passing references to names, places and events in the New Testament made by various classical writers, many of whom were pagans, Jews, infidels, or Greeks who had no interest in maintaining the credibility of the Christian faith.  Among them were Josephus, Philo, Cicero, Tacitus, Ulpian, Hermogenian, Marcian, Celsus, Petronius, Dio, and Suetonius.  These writers referred to many of the same people to whom the New Testament refers, and many of the same facts about them are mentioned in both places.  If the Bible had been legendary, all statements made, even with casual references to accidents of circumstance, would nevertheless have had to agree with an entire spectrum of first-century sources bearing upon Palestine, with all of its intricacies of geography, politics, government, culture, and religion, a monumental task at best.

That the documents within the Bible are genuine is evident, not only from the wealth of instances of correspondence on incidental matters between the Bible and extra-biblical sources, but also from innumerable cases in which there is a similar correspondence in incidental historical matters between two or more documents within the Bible itself.  The very nature of history is such that if a given document is authentic, it will dovetail very easily with its historical setting.  The historical context of many documents of the Bible consists, in part, of other Biblical documents that also bear upon the period in question.  While obvious agreement on major matters of fact can always be the result of fabrication, if there is agreement on a multitude of minor details, many of which bear only a very incidental relationship to matters of major concern to the authors, there can be very little room for doubt with respect to the authenticity of the documents in question.

In a court of law, the purpose of the cross-examination of a witness is to determine, among other things, whether the testimony of that witness is consistent with itself, and whether it is consistent with the circumstances concurrent with the events about which he or she is testifying.  A false witness will not knowingly provide any information that might be open to contradiction.  When he testifies, he will attempt to express himself in very general terms, with as few specifics as possible.  Cross-examination forces a witness to be specific, and if the witness is not telling the truth, the necessity of supplying specific details often results in contradictions which expose his testimony as false.  The Bible freely supplies details of every kind, whether or not they are central to the topic under discussion.  Such details are supplied in abundance, a strong indication of the trustworthiness of the testimony of the Biblical writers.

The supernatural elements in the Bible interact with the natural; there is an imperceptible trailing off of the natural into the supernatural and a merging of the miraculous into the non-miraculous.  There is no real possibility of separating the miraculous from the non-miraculous elements of the Bible, as some people have attempted to do.

People who are familiar with a wide range of literary genres have often concluded that the Bible has an entirely different flavor to it than accounts of mythology or legend.  The miracles of the Bible are more natural; they do not jolt the reader with a sense of inappropriateness or incongruity.  They do not seem arbitrary, contrived, or artificial.  Their effects upon other events and upon people who witness them are believable and realistic.  The accounts in the Bible are too true to life to have been the product of fabrication.  This fact has been established very convincingly by John. J. Blunt in his Undesigned Coincidences.

Remember, also, that the Biblical narratives carry with them the claim of authenticity for the very events they describe.  As Erich Auerbach wrote in Mimesis, “The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us.”  Rather, they carry with them the claim to be describing events that have really happened.  The Biblical authors believed that whatever had previously been recorded in Scripture had actually taken place.  The book of Joshua, for example, presupposes that the events recorded in the Pentateuch had actually happened.  After Joshua sent two spies to Jericho, Rahab the harlot hid them from the king of Jericho because, as she said, “we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you, when you came out of Egypt.” (Joshua 2:10).  This is not an isolated example; the Bible consistently builds upon the historicity of previously recorded events and is intelligible only if these prior events really happened.

People often raise an objection to Biblical infallibility based upon the observation that there are many cases in which it appears that the Biblical writers contradicted one another.  This is an interesting objection, because it would be much easier to dismiss the Biblical accounts if there were no apparent inconsistencies.  One of the characteristics of false testimony is that, while it cannot remain consistent during effective cross examination, it is studiously consistent with that which is asserted by any other collaborating false witnesses.  The fact that there are apparent contradictions in the Bible is one of the strongest arguments in favor of its historicity.  If the Bible were false, those who wrote it would have been very anxious to cover up any inconsistencies.  The fact that the writers of the Gospels did not see a need to appear uniformly consistent with one another in relating historical facts is a strong indication that they were eyewitnesses of the events about which they were writing.

It is often the case that archaeological discoveries will clear up apparent inconsistencies.  For example, if two accounts in the Bible refer to separate kings reigning at the same time and place, an inscription might be uncovered indicating that there was a co-reign of the two kings at the time in question.

The world view of western civilization has been changing rapidly in the past few hundred years such that there has been a marked departure from the Biblical world view.  Yet the Bible claims to be reporting events that actually took place.  It asserts more than that its principles are true.  It insists upon its own world view; any who disagree with it are considered to be in rebellion.  In its exclusion of all counterclaims, it becomes irreconcilable with the anti-supernaturalism presupposed by modern man.

Some people suggest that there are great differences between contemporary scientific language and the “highly symbolic” language of the Bible.  It is inescapable, however, that the world view of Western culture has changed quite drastically since the late nineteenth century.  Prior to that time, the Bible was accepted as normative in all of its statements, whether they were “religious” principles or propositions about the material world.  Prior to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, almost all scientists believed, for example, that all people were descended from Adam and Eve, and that physical death and suffering were a result of the fall of man.

Before the recent shift in world view, science and the Bible were in agreement.  This is evident in the works of Cotton Mather, Sir Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and the general scientific literature of the early nineteenth century.  In fact, it was the Christian faith that spawned the development of science, which assumed that there is a God who orders the universe, and that this order can be studied in a systematic fashion.  However, until the time of Hume, it was usually assumed by all but the Deists that God could and sometimes would suspend this order when He so chose.

There has been a tendency in modern historiography to treat the prevalence of works in early nineteenth century America assuming the harmony of Christianity and Science as an innovative approach spawned by Francis Bacon.  This view is based upon the false assumption that scientific truth and religious truth are two different genres of truth, and ignores the writings of late Puritanism in America which also assume basic agreement between science and Christianity.

The attempt to differentiate between religious and scientific truth is incommensurate with the Biblical approach.  The Bible treats its propositional statements as more than mere examples from which to learn life principles.  One cannot examine the Biblical documents without being continually reminded that the Biblical writers not only believed that the events described in the Scriptures actually took place, but also that all other opinions must be subordinated to the Biblical world view.

Many theologians suggest that whatever truth may be found in the Bible is relative to the world view of the culture in which it was written.  According to this view, the Bible was written with the assumption that the world is flat and that the earth is stationary while the sun travels above it from east to west.  They suggest that while the Bible reflects the understanding prevalent at certain points of time in ancient history, the Bible is still the word of God in that the principles about which the authors were writing are no less valid.  In such statements there is often an anti-supernaturalistic undercurrent of thought, and implicit in some of such statements is the idea that while the Bible is expressed in categories that allow for miracles to occur, we now know such things to be mere superstition.

It is important to recognize that such thinking often either stems from a strong presuppositional bias against the miraculous, or makes too many concessions to such a bias.  There is no conclusive evidence that the Bible presupposes either a flat earth, or an earth that is stationary relative to the sun, or, for that matter, a three-storied universe, as has been maintained by some people.

Also, our own understanding of the universe is undoubtedly just as culture-bound as that of our predecessors.  Is it not likely that people living one thousand years hence would find our own world view as strange as we find that of earlier ancient cultures?  What if our own criticisms of the Biblical world view were to become as ridiculous to later generations as we now think the ideas of the ancients to be?  It would be rather haughty of us to think that we have the last word in our understanding of the universe.

The idea that the Biblical documents reflect an outmoded world view is, of course, irreconcilable with the Bible’s treatment of itself.  It treats itself, not only as a special reservoir of principles by which we may conduct our lives, but, far more than that, it insists upon subordinating to itself all other theories of truth.  Moreover, the Biblical writings span about as great a period of time as has passed since its most recent portions have been written, yet there is no indication that the book of Revelation disdains the world view of the book of Genesis.  On the contrary, this last book of the Bible assumes the divine authority of all of the other books of the Judaeo-Christian canon, and this is especially evident in its allusions to the book of Genesis.

If we reject the claims of the Bible for itself, then we are beset with an imposing set of difficulties arising from the interpenetration of Biblical history with secular history, both in the past and in the present.  History does not take place in a vacuum.  The Bible claims that its accounts are not legend.  If this claim is rejected, then one must find some way of explaining the existence of a body of literature which, although falsified, corresponds, down to its minutest details, to all that is known about the history with which it claims to be contemporaneous, and which, if it had not taken place, leaves unexplained the myriad of effects that have ostensibly occurred as a result of the events that it describes.

rmriss

Some Notes on the Secularization of the West

During the twentieth century, a few perceptive writers, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Francis A. Schaeffer, observed that it was the “Enlightenment” of the 1700s that had a decisive influence upon the secularization of the world view of Western civilization.  How, why and when did this happen?  What was it about that period that made it so decisive, and why?

First of all, what was the “Enlightenment,” also known as the “Age of Reason”?  In Europe prior to the eighteenth century, all areas of thought were saturated with God.  Whenever anyone thought about or wrote about anything, it was almost always with reference to God, regardless of the topic, whether it happened to be the weather, the seasons, the structure of the earth, the constitution of the heavens, the nature of political society, social morality, ethics, or anything else.  Almost by definition, if someone wrote about these things, he or she was writing about God.   For most people, the world was God’s creation, and could only be explained within a Christian frame of reference.

With the “Age of Reason,” all of this changed.  The “Enlightenment” was the first major shift in Western thought that had taken place in more than thirteen centuries.  With respect to world view, the Reformation was merely a fight between cousins, Protestants and Catholics.  However, with the advent of the “Enlightenment,” there came an entirely different family of thought altogether.

The “Enlightenment” has provided the thought framework for the vast majority of Western intellectuals from the time of the late seventeenth century until the opening of the twenty-first.  Among the intelligentsia, Christianity has scarcely affected the world of thought at all since that time; rather, it is the principles of the “Enlightenment” that have been dominant.  Some of its adherents have boasted that it could be considered a religion or a philosophy, or perhaps even a prophetic movement explaining all of life, rather than a mere method of describing some segment of it.

On the other hand, the people of the “Enlightenment” were not totally severed from their Christian roots.  Most of them believed in a God of some kind, and in some kind of creation.  Most held tenaciously to the idea of immortality.  And all of them believed in the basic logical consistency of reality.  Nevertheless, the “Enlightenment” altered the intellectual topography of the Western world in such a way as to render it unrecognizable to its predecessors.

People sometimes trace the beginnings of the “Enlightenment” to the work of the great seventeenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes, who settled upon man as the central reference point for his entire philosophy.  Man then came to be understood as self-determining, and the individual soon came to be considered autonomous.  For Descartes, the rational proof, or reason, was the way to discover reality.

In England at the close of the seventeenth century, the work of Isaac Newton in contributing scientific methodology and of John Lock in his philosophical writings are thought to have been important for the development of the “Enlightenment,” followed by the English Deists.  Then, the movement became centered in eighteenth-century France through the work of Pierre Bayle, Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Diderot, and Rousseau, and of course, the philosophes, especially Voltaire, the great popularizer of the ideas of the “Enlightenment.”  All of this provided the basis for much of later German thought, especially in the nineteenth century, when Germany came to be considered the cultured nation of the world.

The “Enlightenment” entailed the denial of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin.  In particular, it involved the assumption that human reason is not fallen and that the intellectual was able to think in correspondence with reality.  Accordingly, the grace or help of God was no longer considered essential for attaining proper human thought, or for the process of determining reality.  The great problem of the world, therefore, was not sin, but ignorance.  The great remedy for social ills became education, rather than redemption through Jesus Christ.  The transformation of society was therefore to be effected by banishing ignorance.

For the “Enlightenment,” divine revelation was inconsequential for the attainment of true knowledge.  There was no need for any special knowledge given by God, since human beings, through the use of reason, could discover whatever God might have revealed.  While God was important as creator of nature and of nature’s laws, any revelation from Him was of no consequence.  Human reason was autonomous, and was to be applied to all fields of endeavor in order to secure infallible knowledge.  Then, in place of superstitions like Christianity, one would have true knowledge.

The scientific method became very important as a means of determining reality.  One of its assumptions was that there was a uniformity of natural causes, with no exceptions.  The world was expected to operate like a machine, without interference either from God or from demons.  John Locke made use of these scientific assumptions and applied them to areas of thought beyond science.  Man came to be understood simply as a part of nature, and not as unique in the ways that Christians had previously affirmed.  Thus, all that would apply to nature should apply equally to humanity.  All knowledge could be derived from the use of the senses.  There were no innate ideas.  One’s sensations, reflected upon by reason, would yield knowledge, according to Locke.

For the “Enlightenment,” the starting place was knowledge of oneself.  This idea was in marked contrast to that of the first chapter of Romans or the opening chapters of Calvin’s Institutes, where God was the starting point.  It was becoming a very different world.  In moral matters, the sensation of pain was to be avoided, and pleasure accepted.  For the first time, moral codes came to be considered empirical and fallible.  Moreover, the things of this world came to be considered paramount.  There was a concern with humans and humanness.  Happiness was the goal of life, and it was to be fostered through the context of liberty.  A concern for the practical and the utilitarian spawned movements for social change, improvement, and reform during the “Enlightenment.”

The “Enlightenment” was also characterized by optimism, a positive attitude toward innovation, and a belief in the possibility of long range and permanent improvement in man’s lot.  There was thus an orientation towards the future.  The past was considered disastrous, but the people looked to the future with great buoyancy.  There was also a stress on freedom–individual freedom of choice.  Associated with this was the idea that each person, expressing his or her own self-interest, would by that means contribute to the basic harmony of society.

The “Enlightenment” criticized the truth content of the Bible.  There was a stress upon what were perceived as moral difficulties and historical problems in the Bible.  Biblical inspiration was ascribed to the remarkable natural powers of the writers, rather than any special divine activity of the Holy Spirit.  According to the “Enlightenment,” all religions had a common core of morality.  “Natural religion,” was based upon moral principles common to all religions.  Miracles and divine intervention were not important; they were mere accretions obscuring the central moral core of Christianity and other religions.

The “Enlightenment” tended to secularize all of life.  This was equally true in science, jurisprudence, education, politics, history, economics, the social science, and all other fields of endeavor.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that much good came out of the “Enlightenment.”  Advances in science and technology were very helpful to humanity.  Closely related to its idea of natural laws was a belief in natural rights, thought to be inalienable privileges that ought not to be withheld from anyone.  These included equality before the law, freedom of religious worship, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of assembly, the right to hold property, and the pursuit of happiness.  It was felt that rulers should allow religious toleration, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to hold private property.  They were to foster the arts, sciences, and education.  They were also not to be arbitrary in their rule, obey the laws and enforce them fairly for all subjects.

Because of the good things that came out of the “Enlightenment,” people assumed that all of its principles must be good, and that mankind had made progress by embracing all of them.

The United States obtained its independence at just the right time to benefit from the rampant popular sentiment for so many of the liberties which the Enlightenment championed.  The “enlightened despots” of that era, while progressive in their thinking, were hamstrung by the vested interests of the nobles and upper classes, and, for the most part, were therefore unable to put very much into practice by way of liberty and justice.  However, the situation in America was ideal for the establishment of a nation based upon some of the better principles of the Enlightenment.  Did God design it so that the people in America, most of whom were committed Christians, would benefit?  If so, he was using unbelievers (the philosophes) for the benefit of His saints, since they spread some of the ideas that would help to bring about an end to tyrannical government for people living in the thirteen colonies in America.

 

rmriss

Are We Entering a New Dark Age?

There are parallels that may be drawn between the 9/11/01 attacks and the sack of Rome in the year 410.  For hundreds of years, Rome was safe and secure, but that changed after the initial sack of Rome, which signaled the beginning of the end of “civilization” (i.e., the highly developed culture of the Greeks and Romans).  While Greco-Roman civilization ended gradually through many events, it did so inexorably.  Rome was not built in a day, nor did its civilization end with a single event.  It took many, many decades.  The ultimate outcome was that the West entered into an era that has often been called the “Dark Ages,” an era during which illiteracy increased dramatically within only a couple of generations.

The sack of Rome in 410 by the Goths under Alaric was only the beginning.  The pagans blamed that event on Christianity and its forsaking of Roman Gods, just as some militant Islamists of our own day have blamed America’s 9/11 tragedy on its non-allegiance to Islam and its acceptance of Trinitarian Christianity, which they consider to be the worship of three Gods and therefore blasphemous.  In answer to the charges of the ancient pagans, Augustine wrote City of God.

Everyone in the ancient world remembered where they were and what they were doing when they received word of the sack of Rome.  Jerome, for example, was sitting in his cave in Bethlehem writing his Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel.  While the sack of Rome was the beginning of the end of ancient civilization in the West, it was not the end of Christianity; just the opposite.  Rome progressively fell, but the Church carried on, and ended up having to govern the collapsing civilization.

The fall of Rome was a gradual process.  Rome was able to survive after 410, but it became very vulnerable when it was realized for the first time that Rome was not invincible.  For a time, it was the Christians who were able to prevent further attacks upon Rome.  In 452, Leo I persuaded Attila the Hun to spare the city of Rome and in 455 he induced Genseric the Vandal to spare Rome.   The empire as a political entity was gradually falling to the barbarians, but the Church remained.  Even after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Western Christianity was able to thrive and bring order out of the chaos.

Until that time, Rome had been the bastion of power throughout the world.  In just the same way, it could be said that the Pentagon has been a citadel of power in today’s world.  It would seem to me that the United States, formerly considered invincible, could become a tempting target to its enemies if it is perceived that even the Pentagon itself cannot defend itself from enemy attacks.

rmriss

Counterparty Derivatives Risk as a Potential Pitfall for the World Economy

Counterparty risk is the risk to each party in a contract that the counterparty might not live up to its contractual obligations.  Could derivatives ever pose a potential counterparty risk for the world economy?  Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan indicated in 1999 that “overall, derivatives are mainly a zero sum game.”  In other words, for the most part, one party’s market loss would be the counterparty’s market gain.  If so, then one would expect that there could be little risk that the entire world could suddenly find itself bankrupt, since the total amount of world wealth would remain intact.

But is this really so?  How far is the world economy truly insulated from counterparty derivatives risk?  In these March 19, 1999 comments before the Futures Industry Association, Mr. Greenspan immediately made an exception for counterparty credit exposures in OTC derivatives, and this was an important caveat.  He said that “counterparty credit exposures on OTC derivatives are a different issue and the source of much of the systemic concerns.”  He was speaking only a few months after the hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, had collapsed with a loss of $4.6 billion, triggering fears of a global financial meltdown.  At about the same time, due to a precipitous fall in oil prices, Russia had defaulted on its debt, and there was a global liquidity need.  In the United States, the Federal Reserve, chaired by Alan Greenspan, responded with monetary easing.

With respect to the 1990s, Mr. Greenspan noted in his speech that, “through the past decades’ phenomenal growth of the derivative market, there has not been a significant downturn in the economy overall that has tested the resilience of derivative markets.”  This was prior to the financial crisis of 2008, which finally did severely test the resilience of derivative markets, and they did not pass the test, bringing the world economy to the precipice of collapse and resulting in the necessity of bailing out several major financial institutions.

As Mr. Greenspan suggested in his speech, Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives are a potential problem.  These are contracts that are privately negotiated and traded directly between two parties without going through an exchange.  Most derivatives such as swaps, forward rate agreements, exotic options, and other exotic derivative products, are now traded in this way.  They are not traded on any exchange, with the result that nobody really knows for certain whether they are offset by an opposing trade, or even whether there actually is an opposing trade.  It means that there is no machinery in place to calculate exposure or to guarantee offsetting trades.  It also means that there are no margin requirements.  Because they are usually customized, OTC derivatives come with their own fine print, which is so extensive that few people are able to take the time to read it, which means that it is difficult to determine the true value of an OTC derivative trade.

For these reasons, counterparty risk actually has the potential to become a very serious matter.  To make matters worse, a case may be made that even fully regulated derivatives trading on major exchanges could introduce systemic risk.  All it would take would be one major default.  If there were one major losing party who could not pay the winners, then those “winners” could actually also become losers because of counterparty default.  There are certain major banks in the world, each of which currently potentially has tens of trillions of dollars in derivatives exposure.  If there were any major counterparty default, then the result could be that a lot of winners would not get paid, creating a domino effect leading to the total collapse of the entire world economy.

It was in the mid-1990s that Blythe Masters of J.P. Morgan set up the credit default swap market in which banks began to take risk off their books by writing credit default swaps.  However, the problem since that time has increasingly been that every credit default swap has added a little more risk to the system.  Far from minimizing the risk for the banking system as was assumed, this practice may actually have brought about increased systemic risk, since every single derivative contract that has been written has necessarily increased the overall systemic risk to the financial system of any particular underlying asset.  Thus, one big default by a counterparty could destroy the entire system, because all of a sudden all the wash contracts on these derivatives would not be a wash any more.  If you are a big bank, but a counterparty defaults, then you’re still on the hook; you have made a bad bet on a counterparty which is unable to pay you, yet you’re still on the hook for the other side of the deal.

In 2008, banks such as Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale bought $62.1 billion in credit-default swaps from AIG, in effect buying protection on securities which fell sharply in value.  Goldman Sachs itself had about $20 billion in trades with AIG, and believed that this constituted $10 billion of risk to AIG, thinking that these assets could be worth as little as 50%.  Against this $10 billion of AIG risk, Goldman Sachs had $7.5 billion in collateral from AIG. The rest of the risk, $2.5 billion, was hedged with credit default swaps, in which Goldman Sachs bought protection on AIG from a variety of highly rated banks. Goldman Sachs therefore considered itself to be well-hedged, and for this reason believed that it was not at risk if AIG were to default.  But the result of this was that any crisis at AIG would become a crisis at whatever banks Goldman Sachs had used to hedge its AIG exposure. Through its purchase of protection on toxic assets from AIG and subsequent purchase of protection on AIG, Goldman Sachs created a situation in which its risk exposure to AIG became systemic risk.  At about the same time, Lehman Brothers was called to make good on some of the derivatives for which it was under water, and it couldn’t do so.   Goldman Sachs, in turn, was owed money not only by AIG, but it was also owed money by Lehman Brothers.  Goldman Sachs ended up getting bailed out with government money because AIG and Lehman couldn’t deliver on their promises.  Now, nearly a decade later, there are banks that are much, much bigger and much more problematic than Lehman Brothers ever was.  Because we have so much more debt and so many more derivatives in the system today than we did back in 2008, the world economy is far more fragile now than it was at that time.

In our own day, the problem is magnified because there are tens of trillions, if not hundreds of trillions of dollars of these derivative products in existence, used as a form of insurance.  But if something goes wrong, an institution may well discover that a counterparty is not good for the money, though it may not have expected anything to go wrong.  If an institution has written too many of these agreements, as AIG did in 2008, then all of a sudden, it would not be able to meet its obligations to other institutions which were counting on this.  Soon, in turn, such institutions would have other entities breathing down their own necks because they owe a huge amount of money to those entities, creating a chain reaction.  Derivatives therefore have the potential to create a world financial disaster because so many people mistakenly presume that their risks are insured, while they have not really adequately prepared for the type of big event during which counterparties would have no ability to pay off money when they are supposed to do so, creating a ripple effect which could topple the entire world economy.

 

rmriss

Christianity vis à vis Extraterrestrial Life: Winston Churchill was Wrong

On August 5, 2010, both BBC News and the Telegraph reported that during World War II, Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of an encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public panic and “loss of faith in religion,” according to files released from the British National Archives

Some people think that the very existence of UFOs or extraterrestrials would demonstrate that Christianity could not be true. But nobody has ever demonstrated why or how the existence of aliens would mean that Christianity is false.  In December of 1960, there was a report from the Brookings Institute on the potential effects of the disclosure of the existence of extraterrestrial life (Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs, submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics of the US House of Representatives in the 87th US Congress on April 18, 1961).  Contrary to popular belief, this report made no statements to the effect that the existence of extraterrestrial life would be incompatible with Christianity, nor did it indicate that such a disclosure could undermine Christian faith.  Rather, the Brookings Report made speculative comments regarding general public reaction to any discovery of extraterrestrial intelligent life, without specifically mentioning faith or Christianity.

But—what if it really did become evident at some point that aliens actually do exist?  Well, how in that case could it ever be proven definitively that such aliens were not demons?  And even if not, if these entities were to say that Christianity is false, on what basis other than pure trust could they be believed?  Such claims or “revelations” could never constitute infallible evidence overturning Christ’s claims about Himself as recorded in the New Testament.

In any case, Winston Churchill was wrong.  Christians recognize that God is completely sovereign over all circumstances.  Therefore they do not fear threats, whether from rogue governments, aliens, time-travelers, inter-dimensional travelers, some future dictatorial anti-Christian new world order, supposed changes in the space-time continuum, demons, Satan, Satanists, or anyone or anything else.  Christians are well aware that through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, they have complete authority over all of these things and more, no matter who or what they are, and they know full well that regardless of anything else, their lives are totally in God’s hands.  The lives and deaths of all of the Christian martyrs throughout the centuries have proved this beyond the shadow of any doubt.

rmriss

Obituary for Walter Riss

Walter Riss was born on January 1, 1925 in New Britain, Connecticut, the seventh child of Gerasim (George Herman) Riss (b. 1888) and his wife Nadezda (Nellie) Telegina Riss (b. 1895), who emigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire in 1912 and 1913 respectively. Walter spent his childhood with his family in New Britain, Plainville, and Meriden. In 1942, during World War II, he joined the Army and served until 1946. He met Barbara in 1946 and married her in 1951. Prior to their marriage, both of them attended the University of Connecticut, and he continued on to complete a Ph.D. degree at the University of Rochester in 1953. They then journeyed with their one-year-old son to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, where Walter did postgraduate work in neuroscience. In 1954, after Walter accepted a teaching position at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, they moved to Woodhaven, Queens, and a year later to Mineola, Long Island. Walter had a long and distinguished career at Downstate, during which time he founded the scientific journal, Brain, Behavior and Evolution and initiated Downstate’s graduate program in biological psychology. He and Barbara had three more children, moving to Greenvale about a year prior to the birth of the youngest. Walter was an ordained Presbyterian elder and active member of the session of First Presbyterian Church of Mineola and of Glenwood Presbyterian Church in Glenwood Landing. In 1974, he and two of his children witnessed a miracle which brought about a renewed impetus to his devotion to God and to his reading and study of the Scriptures. After retiring from Downstate in 1985, Walter became part of the faculty of Touro College on Long Island.

rmriss

Bachelor’s Degrees for $10,000.00 in New Jersey?

According to NJN TV news (March 25), the state of New Jersey is contemplating encouraging all of its institutions of higher education, public and private, to find a way to offer a Bachelor’s degree for a total cost of no more than $10,000.00. I am convinced, based upon what I know of what is required in running a college or university, that if such a tuition program were actually ever to be required, only Princeton could survive, though for them also, it would be a losing proposition which could never be sustainable for any length of time.

Although this pending legislation seems to me to be totally unrealistic (and, in fact, ludicrous), the news program left me with the impression that the state legislature as a whole has no idea that the proposal is unrealistic, and feels that because the general public is outraged at the high cost of a college education, drastic action is required. The proposal currently seems to have the status of a legislative bill, and seems to have quite a bit of public support. The reporter on NJN TV who interviewed Kathleen Waldron, president of William Paterson University, certainly did not consider the proposal to be unrealistic, and President Waldron herself said that she had not run the numbers so she did not know whether it might be possible to offer a bachelor’s degree for $10,000.00 or less. In my opinion, this could have left the public with unrealistic assumptions which could easily cause higher education to cease in New Jersey.

So does anyone happen to know—is all of this merely a publicity stunt in which colleges and universities will only be asked to study the matter with no expectation of results, or are all of the colleges and universities in New Jersey truly in jeopardy? Has the state department of education offered any opinions on this bill to help the legislature and the people of the state of New Jersey to realize that the bill is totally unrealistic? If not, should New Jersey’s Commissioner of Education David C. Hepse be asked whether he intends to make a statement on this question in order to bring the legislature to its senses? I really don’t think New Jersey wants to do anything to shut down most or all of its colleges and universities, but I see a real danger of that happening if nothing is done to help people to understand the true costs involved in running a college or a university.

rmriss

Portions of a Message Given by Gerald Derstine in 1970 at Christian Centre, Surrey, BC, Canada:

Portions of a Message Given by Gerald Derstine in 1970 at Christian Centre, Surrey, BC, Canada:

“. . . the church itself, who we claim to be a part of, we’re going to feel first the greatest effects of this coming of the glory of God. The presence of God coming upon this earth is going to affect us, through other people. As the presence of God comes, other people are going to try to disturb us. By that I mean, they don’t know God. They don’t know that God is coming. They don’t know that God’s kingdom is coming. They don’t want to believe it if we tell them. They say, ‘you’re crazy, impossible.’ We know it’s true. God’s word said so. Jesus Christ is returning. And when He returns He’s going to have a church without spot or wrinkle, a church that’s being perfected by the powers of evil that are upon the earth as these tests and trials come upon us, and it’s going to get much worse. It’s going to get much worse than what it is. I mean the tribulations are going to increase, as God’s presence comes closer upon the earth. . . . The presence of God as been changing me, been perfecting me, been testing me. And he’s changing you. He’s changing many of us. We’re living in the end of time where His presence shall come, and it’s going to move upon this earth. In 1961, let me tell you this. In ’61, in Sarasota, we had an unusual experience. . . . ‘had a vision of the wrath of God coming upon our American cities and this North American continent. Put your hands upon me and ask God to remove it from me, I can’t stand what I am seeing and what I’ve been seeing,’ and he was really disturbed. I could tell by the way he was talking and crying that he really did have a genuine vision. Of course, I didn’t know that had happened until daylight, when I was out of bed, and I then was only out for a short while when I met these other two brothers and they began to tell me what happened. They said, ‘Brother Derstine, when brother Bob left your house and came back, we were still in the room. We knew that God moved in him in a tremendous way. In fact, he was crying and groaning.’ When he left, that was the condition he was in. He figured he had to see me. Come over to my house. ‘But when he came back from our house, Brother Derstine, you won’t believe it, but when he came into our room, the glory of God was so great and so tremendous. It was so strong. As he was walking in the door, it seemed like a great, great glory, a brightness. It caused us to tremble. We were on our beds, but our bodies began to tremble so violently we couldn’t stay on the bed, we were so frightened, and we cried out to God, we literally screamed out to God, “Don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer,”‘ and he said, ‘we fell off our beds, and were laying on the floor, just trembling,’ and then this Bob, his voice began to speak [in] the most unusual way–if you can imagine somebody speaking while they’re spewing, bringing up everything inside, and here are the words that came out of his mouth and they both heard it clearly: ‘The vileness and wickedness of man has come up before me as a stink in my nostrils. And I cannot stay my hand any longer. The mockery of my word in the religious systems of America is an abomination to me.’ As they were coming out of his mouth, supernaturally, these words. That was in 1961. And during that day, that morning, as we were assembled together, the Holy Spirit was still moving through this Bob, and one of the things that he said to us under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, said that what had happened here that morning, had also happened in other parts of the world–that same message and vision was given to others of God’s people. And I was glad to hear that. . . . We had the first evidence of it the next day. The next day God sent a man from Orlando, Florida, to our service. He said, ‘What this young man is telling you about this morning, that identical vision I saw. For several hours I cried and I wept.’ He said, ‘I couldn’t stand it. I asked the Lord to remove it from me. I saw cities, I saw people crying in a terrible state of desperation at the wrath of God coming upon the cities.’ Well, this really shook me, you know. I thought, ‘Goodness, the next day already I hear one that had nothing to do with it in our own town but in another city 160 miles away.’ Three days later I received an air mail letter from the country of Haiti, describing a vision and it was the same night, the same time. And they told us about the vision that came upon them. Several of them had it the same night. One of the missionaries couldn’t sleep all night long. The Holy Spirit was just speaking to him and telling him what’s coming to pass. And the other one had [a] vision of the judgments coming upon the earth. In fact, one of them saw unusual things. They saw people that were being destroyed, and they saw another people with those people that were not being harmed. They saw a people that were seemingly hid away. But they were amongst the tribulation, but they were hid away–they were not being affected by it. Then they saw still a third party of people that were right in amongst those that were being in this state of terrible sorrow and tribulation, and crying for help. And they heard a voice cry out and say, ‘how come *you* are not affected by this?’ Because they saw they weren’t being hurt at all. They said, ‘because we are the children of God and have already overcome the world and the powers of the world.’ Now this was written in this letter that came from Haiti to us. I still have a copy of that letter; I think I have it written in this particular leaflet entitled, ‘God Spoke,’ which hundreds of thousands of these have been printed already and distributed all over the U.S. and Canada and many countries of the world (this little story I’m telling you now). But anyway, then I received a third confirmation of this . . . He was weeping and crying. And he said, ‘what brother Derstine is telling you about, the same thing happened to me that same day–that same morning.’ So in just seven days’ time I had the confirmation of at least three other people beside our own experience that happened, and I was satisfied. I knew that God spoke. . . . I believe that we are going to see a manifestation of the presence of God and God’s presence. It’s going to produce either of the two reactions. The presence of God is going to produce His wrath, His fire, consuming fire of judgment is going to burn and bring to pass the condition that will cause man to want to receive Him. However, there’s going to be many a man that’s going to reject Him and this fire is going to consume them, and they’ll never be saved, but it’s other people that are going to be ready to receive Him. The greatest revival is going to come at that last day. God’s not dealing today with the masses as yet. He’s only dealing with a people known as the ecclesia, the Church. He’s going to have a people from every kindred, nation, tongue, and tribe, from all over the world that are going to be those that are going to rule and reign with Him in His kingdom. Always remember, in a kingdom there’s a king, and there’s the ruling class, then there’s the subjects that are going to be ruled over. And God speaks of His kingdom being set up on this earth. Now I know that some people are looking for a better day. They say, ‘Well, don’t you believe that we’re not going to have to go through any of these tribulations?’ Well, there was a day I used to believe that very strongly, because I was taught that way. But since I have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, God has been showing us, and revealing to us that the object of tests and trials, and tribulation (and another word for tribulation is pressures), the object of pressures is to perfect us, to refine us and purify us. If a thing [is] purified, that part of us that’s being hurt and affected, will be removed. Which means only the pure is remaining. And so why do we have to go away to some other location to escape the troubles if we’ll accept the tests and trials now for the real purpose they’re given to us? I can’t help but feel that if any man had a real rapture, it was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. When they were thrown in the fiery furnace, I would say that if anybody experienced a rapture, they sure did. Why do you say that? Because when they were thrown into that hot, fiery furnace, they were thrown right into the lap of Jesus. That was on this earth. Because of their faith in God, and they refused to bow to the idols of this world. They refused to bow, and therefore when they were thrown into the fiery furnace (they were already purified you see), they were already thrown into the arms of Jesus and they were in heavenly places. . . . Could it be that maybe this is why God is perfecting a people from every kindred, nation, tribe, and tongue, that when the great holocaust comes, and the troubles come, there will be a people in every nation, tribe and tongue that are going to know their God as a consuming fire that has already dealt with them and the love him and as a result of their loving Him, these other people will see the Christ, will see the true living God, and will want that God in the end. As far as I am concerned, I know that God is able to keep us in the midst, and I call that a rapture, when you’re able to be kept in the midst of trouble. Religious people, Christian people are not knowing it, because they have been taught by teachers it’s going to be this way, and they are still waiting for it to come to pass according to the way their eyes can see it.”

rmriss

Prophecy From The Papal Altar, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome, May 1975, Conference Replacing the Notre Dame Conference:

Prophecy From The Papal Altar, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome, May 1975, Conference Replacing the Notre Dame Conference:

“Because I love you, I want to show you what I am doing in the world today. I want to prepare you for what is to come. Days of darkness are coming on the world, days of tribulation. Buildings that are now standing will not be standing. Supports that are there for My people now will not be there. I want you to be prepared, My people, to know only Me, and to cleave to Me, and to have Me in a way deeper than ever before. I will lead you into the desert. I will strip you of everything that you are depending on now, so you’ll depend just on Me. A time of darkness is coming on the world, but a time of glory is coming for My people. I will pour out on you all the gifts of My Spirit. I will prepare you for spiritual combat. I will prepare you for a time of evangelism that the world has never seen. And when you have nothing but Me, you will have everything–lands, fields, homes and brothers and sisters and love, joy and peace more than ever before. Be ready, My people, I want to prepare you.

“I speak to you of the dawn of a new age for My church. I speak to you of a day that has not been seen before. Prepare yourselves for the action that I begin now, because things that you see around you will change. The combat that you must enter now is different, it is new. You need wisdom from Me that you do not yet have. You need the power of My Holy Spirit in a way that you have not possessed. You need an understanding of My will and of the ways that I work that you do not yet have. Open your eyes. Open your hearts to prepare yourselves for Me and for the day that I have now begun. My church will be different. My people will be different. Difficulties and trials will come upon you. The comfort that you know now will be far from you, but the comfort that you will have is the comfort of My Holy Spirit. They will send for you to take your life, but I will support you. Come to me. Band yourselves together around Me. Prepare–for I proclaim a new day–a day of victory and of triumph for your God. Behold–it is begun.

“I will renew My Church. I will renew My people. I will make My people one. I am calling you to turn away from the pleasures of the world. I am calling you to turn away from the desires of the world. I am calling you to turn away from seeking the approval of the world in your lives. I want to transform your lives. I have a word for My Church. I am sounding My call–I am forming a mighty army. My power is upon them. They will follow My chosen shepherds. Be the shepherds I have called you to be. I am renewing My people; I will renew My church; I will free the world.”