#of course this is merely my own speculation and conjecture - and ultimately like I said it didn't actually matter

[wonder-worker]

"And where it hath pleased [God] to take out this transitory life the most victorious Christian prince of famous memory King Edward the iiijth our king, loving lord, and father, whose soul God of his infinite mercy pardon. The lamentable and most sorrowful tidings thereof was shown unto [us] the xiiijth day of this present month. [...] We intend...to be at our city of London in all convenient haste to be crowned at Westminster."

-Letter by EDWARD V from Ludlow to the burgesses of King's Lynn upon the news of his father Edward IV's death (16th April 1483)

[statusquoergo]

would really like to hear your thoughts on pja/mike coming back cause honestly, i’m not sure how i feel about it. it will be nice to have him back that’s for sure but with the turns this show’s took i’m slightly worried what they are gonna do with it. somehow i just can’t bring myself to be excited anymore.

Hm…Well, let me start off by saying I think it’ll be nice to see Mike again. I’mnot saying the episode will do him right, but I think the moment that heappears, assuming they don’t completely fuck it up, will have that sweetnostalgia factor that comes with favorite characters who’ve gone their own wayreturning for a guest spot. Remember when Jessica came back for Mike’scharacter and fitness hearing? She hadn’t even been gone long, but it was so coolto see her show up! “Hey, I know that person!”

Ofcourse, Mike will most certainly play a bigger role in this coming episode thanJessica did in “Character and Fitness” (s06e16)…although I don’t think it’smuch of a reach to say that whatever this case is that requires Mike, a lawyerwho is based in Seattle, to trek all the way to New York, which is on literallythe opposite side of the country and has plenty of locally practicingattorneys, will be at best a flimsy pretense. But based on the fact that Season8 went out of its way to demonstrate how far apart Harvey and Mike have grownand how much Harvey has adopted Mike’s values and habits as a means of dealingwith his absence (e.g., Harvey taking on Mike’s former client Max as he triedto prove his best friend and business partner hadn’t betrayed him [s08e02],helping Anna the cleaning woman whose mother needed an operation she couldn’tafford [s08e03], calling Mike’s voicemail after the Pavonotti case[s08e13]), two possible outcomes occur to me:

One,those adaptations will be dialed back or ignored outright and Harvey will fightlike hell to win the case no matter what, regardless of the fact that Mike isback, because he hasn’t spent the past year or whatever trying and failing tofill the hole Mike’s absence has created in his heart, what the hell are youtalking about, get out of here with your “evidence-based reasoning.” Two factorswhich might come into play here are Harvey treating Mike as his equal as a signof respect (the student has become the master), and the erasure of Harvey’sMike-related grief by way of his new relationship with Donna.

Two,those adaptations will be magnified, and Harvey and Mike, having become muchmore similar in terms of their values systems than they were at the start ofthe show, will ultimately work toward the same end of finding justice for themore morally upstanding party, regardless of which of them is defending him (orher, or them, or it; I have no idea what kind of case this is going to be).Based on Korsh’scomment that “They are on opposite sides but it doesn’t gettoo testy for the first chunk of it, and then as it ratchets up, things get alittle bit more heated,” this seems unlikely, but I suppose one never does knowwith this show.

One small caveat to the above: in light of the events of the Season 8 finale,Harvey might start the case off as his old hard-hearted self, defending hisclient regardless of moral and ethical shortcomings, only for Donna to pop inat the last moment to remind him to “do the right thing.” Maybe with a fivecents extra side helping of Guilt, if Mike’s abrupt return has somehow put himon the defensive. I hope this doesn’t happen, I really do, but it did cross mymind, so I feel like I have to put it out there.

Now, as I mentioned, I have no idea what the nature of this case willbe, nor what this episode will be about in full, but if you’ll permit me onemore moment of idealism, Korshalso said of the story: “There is more than meets the eye going on.”While I don’t trust Korsh as far as I can throw him, this does make me wonderif Mike and/or Harvey is lying about or otherwise hiding something, becausethat has the potential to be a very interesting narrative.

I would argue, based on his depiction in the first half of Season 8,that Harvey was essentially in mourning after Mike’s departure, and I’m beinggenerous when I call their farewells at the end of Season 7 unsatisfying, so ifHarvey and Mike suddenly meet up again, especially if it’s a surprise(it won’t be, Korsh said that Mike knows Harvey is involved when he signs on,but imagine the possibilities), an erosion of trust between them could play outin quite a captivating way. The foundation is already there; Mike didn’t tellHarvey about moving his and Rachel’s wedding date until the last possiblemoment, nor did he tell him that they were moving to Seattle, and as far as weknow, he didn’t return Harvey’s phone call about the Pavonotti case. He’s goingabout it terribly, but Mike is “outgrowing” Harvey, whereas for Harvey, Mike’sdeparture is death by a thousand cuts, some of them self-inflicted. They’ve gota lot to talk about.

Yeah, let’s be real, if this even sort of happens, it’ll take at leasta three-episode arc to play out properly. Nice to think about, though.

Puttingaside my wild conjecture, from a business perspective, Mike’s return does kindof make sense. I mean narratively it’s almost guaranteed to be a disaster—Korshasserts that they tried “to put some fun scenes and some emotionalscenes with Mike and the old gang,” as if they can all get right back to theirold dynamics and everyone will conveniently forget that Mike left withoutwarning and kind of really fucked them over—but speaking logistically, it hasall the hallmarks of a ratings grab.

For one thing, the show’s ratings are tanking,down from an average of 4.28M viewers in Season 1 to 1.02M in Season 8. For another, Season 8 is spent laying the foundation for the exactopposite of this happening. Harvey is shown to be, as I said, in a form ofmourning; Donna spends the first four episodes reminding Harvey that Mike isgone and not coming back; Mike goes from as many as 10 mentions per episode (episode3) to as few as zero (episode 5, 7, 10, 12). Harvey has moved on (ostensibly), theshow has moved on, and suddenly he’s coming back for…reasons? In its advertising, USAis trying to maximize the momentum of this being Suits’ final season,and publicizing now that Mike is coming back in episode 5 means thatthey can tease it until then to keep people invested until at least theseason’s halfway point.

Actually, there’s one more thing I want to bring up, speaking of Mikein Season 8. The first four episodes focus emphatically on the fact that Mikeis gone and Harvey misses him (e.g., “Is there a chance that you’reoverreacting to Mike having just left?” [s08e01]; “You meant a lot to Mike,which means you mean a lot to me” [s08e02]; “I just thought, ‘What would Mikedo?’” [s08e03]; “Donna, I might be missing Mike, but I’m not Mike” [s08e04]). Episode5 is a Mike dead zone, episode 6 gives us “Everyone leaves: Mike, Rachel,Jessica, my sister-in-law,” and then a funny thing starts to happen: Mike stopsbeing a person people miss, and starts being a point of reference. Aside fromthe phone call at the end of episode 13, most mentions of Mike in the secondhalf of the season are either about Mike’s prison sentence, and how hard it wason Harvey, or Mike’s secret, and how difficult it made life for everyone else.(Point of order, that was at least as much Harvey’s secret as it was Mike’s.)

Thereason this makes me nervous for Mike’s return in s09e05 is that, while we theaudience became invested in Mike as a character during his tenure on the show, he’sonly going to be back for a single episode (as far as we know), and not onlythat but one in which “there is more than meets the eye going on.” If this showhas any tact left at all, the conflict will be a multifaceted one, but it wouldbe jarring, to say the least, to see much of the narrative from Mike’s perspective—he’sa guest star, after all, a mere interloper in someone else’s territory—which meanswe’re probably going to see the majority of the action play out from Harvey’spoint of view. My fear is thus that Mike will be little more than an object, aconvenient shiny thing to throw our way to keep us engaged; we’ll be investedin him because we used to be, because we remember him as he was, even though henow deserves more criticism for his actions (or lack thereof) than support forwhat he might be thinking.

Of course, this is pure speculation on mypart; who knows, maybe Mike will come back and tie up all the loose ends heleft behind and we’ll all have a great time! (Well, we can hope…)

[artistjojo1228]

Rock and Roll Storytime #8: Motherf***ing Altamont (Otherwise Known as the Worst Mistake the Rolling Stones Ever Made)

Let’s face it, 1969 was a pretty crazy year no matter where you stand. On one hand, there were the moon landings, Woodstock, and general protesting against the Vietnam War (much to the chagrin of the Establishment), but on the other hand, there was the Chappaquiddick incident, the death of Brian Jones, and the Beatles starting to head full-steam down the path that led to their breakup in April 1970. 

And then, there was Altamont, what has otherwise been labeled as the darkest day in Rock and Roll History. 

This one’s going to be frustrating (and as an aside, I’m actually quite glad that Brian Jones missed out on this one, and likely would have even if he hadn’t drowned, by virtue of getting fired from the Rolling Stones in June 1969).

Let me start off by positing one simple question: WHICH DUMBASS CAME UP WITH THE BRIGHT IDEA OF HIRING THE HELL’S ANGELS AS SECURITY?!

Okay, I guess I’d better start earlier than that, even, with some of the lead-in. The Rolling Stones had last performed in the concert circuit in 1967, and by June 1969, they wanted to get back on the road. One problem: their guitarist, Brian Jones, was unable to get a work visa due to having racked up two drug convictions in the meantime (at least one of which was definitely based on planted evidence). Even then, Brian, for reasons known mostly to him and only speculated upon by me, had stopped contributing to the Stones’ music, if he even showed up to recording sessions at all. Mick Jagger, himself, said that Brian’s last major contribution to a Rolling Stones song was the hauntingly beautiful slide guitar on the melancholic “No Expectations”. 

It was apparently their road manager, Ian Stewart, who brought up the idea of letting Brain go from the band. Bill and Charlie had absolutely no say in the decision, but ultimately, on June 8, 1969, Mick and Keith went to Brian’s residence, Cotchford Farm, to tell him he was being fired, with Charlie tagging along to make sure a fight didn’t break out. However, by most accounts, Brian had been expecting this would happen, and agreed to leave the band. Mick and Keith left the press statement up to Brian, and possibly to save face, he decided to make it look like he’d left the band on his own accord. 

The statement read: “I no longer see eye to eye with the others over the discs we are cutting. We no longer communicate musically. The Stones’ music is not to my taste any more. The work of Mick and Keith has progressed at a tangent, at least to my way of thinking. I have a desire to play my own brand of music rather than that of others, no matter how much I appreciate their musical concepts. We had a friendly meeting and agreed that an amicable termination, temporary or permanent, was the only answer. The only solution was to go our separate ways, but we shall still remain friends. I love those fellows.”

How much of this statement was true is up to personal conjecture. In either case, Brian was replaced by 20-year-old Mick Taylor, who’d previously played with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. In a press conference on June 13, the band announced Taylor’s arrival (having two Micks in the band gets so confusing), as well a free concert in Hyde Park on July 5 to introduce the youngest member of the band. 

Then, just two days before the concert, Brian drowned in his backyard swimming pool at the age of twenty-seven. His death was ruled as misadventure (which personal research seems to back up), but theories persist to this day that he was, instead, murdered. 

In the blink of an eye, the Hyde Park gig went from being an introduction to Mick Taylor to being a tribute to Brian Jones. In honor of Brian, the concert began with Mick reading two verses from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais,” and as the band began playing “I’m Yours and I’m Hers” (one of Brian’s favorite songs), 2,500 cabbage white butterflies were released (against stipulation), though, by this point, many had died in the July heat, due to the boxes not being properly ventilated. Even if, on a technical level, it wasn’t one of the Stones’ best shows, it still showed the world at large that the Stones were back (baby). 

So, what does all this have to do with Altamont? Well, providing security that day was the London chapter of the Hell’s Angels. Apparently, it was Rock Scully’s idea, after he’d hired the Angels as security on multiple occasions while managing the Grateful Dead. 

Thing is, the London chapter was a lot calmer when compared with the infamous Californian branch of the Hell’s Angels. 

So yeah, there’s problem #2...

That summer, a little concert called Woodstock took place, which ended up epitomizing the peace and love movement. But if that was the high, then Altamont was what brought that idealism to a screeching halt. 

Problem #3: the concert was based entirely on the notion that the Stones could hold a free concert as a sort of West Coast Woodstock. 

After all, even journalists throughout that tour had been complaining about high ticket prices (even though $3-$8 seems to me a steal considering they’re going in the triple digits nowadays...). What could go wrong?

Those of you familiar with Murphy’s Law may be able to see where I’m going with all this. 

Problem #4: their tour manager, Sam Cutler, just couldn’t get a venue. 

He tried to score them a gig in San Fransisco, but there was a football game taking place, San Jose wouldn’t have another concert so soon after the last one, and Sears Point Raceway asked for a $100,000 fee as well as distribution rights to the concert footage (the entire tour had been filmed by a crew including the Maysles brothers and future Star Wars director George Lucas). So, a mere forty-eight hours before the concert began, the Stones finally settled on Altamont Speedway. 

Needless to say, anyone who’s ever been to a concert or organized any large scale events would be able to tell you that choosing the venue at the last minute is NEVER a good idea. This is also evidenced by the fact that the venue was covered in trash and lacked basic amenities such as water and toilets, but hey, the owner offered it for free, so why not?

I swear, the level of incompetence shown by multiple parties throughout these proceedings is on another level (and I read the Darwin Awards...)

Also, as a result of the ASTRONOMICALLY poor planning, the stage was only an inch off the ground, and since there were only two days before the concert, there was no time to make the stage safe, so already, anyone playing at Altamont the day of December 6 were putting themselves at risk (I don’t know if waivers were signed either). Not to mention the fact that there would be absolutely no barriers between the performers and the reported 300,000 attendees. 

So, that should cover problems #6 and #7, but in my personal opinion, the coup de grace of all these fuck-ups was the decision to hire the Californian Hell’s Angels as security. 

Again, as I said, the Stones did have the London branch of the Hell’s Angels at the Stones in the Park concert, but anyone who knows anything worth a damn about the Californian Hell’s Angels would know that it’s a whole different ballpark dealing with them. From what I’ve heard, the hippies had an unrealistically idealized version of them in their heads, and Cutler apparently even tried warning the Stones about the “real” Hell’s Angels. Even then, the Hell’s Angels were offered $500 worth of beer to basically just sit on the side of the stage and make sure no one got too close. 

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go call the organizers fucking idiots in a minimum of seven languages. ... Okay, I’m good. Still pissed, but I’m fine. 

In either case, also not helping matters was that at least 95% of the audience were high on one substance or another, because, let’s face it, this was the hippie movement. And according to Rolling Stone magazine, the organizers also didn’t warn neighboring landowners of the hippies descending on the scene, set the whole thing in a desolate, treeless, wasteland (and still there was no clear barrier between the performers and the audience), the sound system was shit, and in general, the stage was completely surrounded by people and their cars. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m already smelling a disaster waiting to happen. 

The concert was to feature Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, The Grateful Dead, and of course, the Rolling Stones. 

Things started out smoothly with Santana’s set, but only deteriorated from there, as the Hell’s Angels got increasingly drunk. Throughout the day, the Angels would attack anyone who was being problematic (sometimes with sawed-off pool cues and motorcycle chains), although their victims include a guy running around naked and another who was trying to take pictures of the stage. Things only got worse after someone (possibly accidentally) knocked over one of the Angels’ motorcycles. During Jefferson Airplane’s set, Marty Balin jumped into the crowd to stop a fight and was knocked unconscious, and when Paul Kantner sarcastically thanked the Angels, one, Bill Fritsch, took up a microphone and argued with him about it. One woman called a radio show the next day to say that she saw several fistfights break out, and every single one of them involved the Hell’s Angels. When she tried to speak up about it, other people around her told her to keep quiet out of fear of provoking them. Denise Jewkes, lead singer of Ace of Cups and who was SIX MONTHS PREGNANT, got hit in the head by a beer bottle, causing a skull fracture (the Stones later paid for her medical expenses). Stephen Stills was reportedly stabbed in the leg several times by a “stoned-out” Hell’s Angel. When the Rolling Stones flew in, Mick was punched in the face almost the second he got off the helicopter. Things got so bad, that the Grateful Dead basically just said “Fuck it” and got the hell out of dodge. 

Apparently, the only time the crowds calmed down, even a little, was when the Flying Burrito Brothers took the stage. 

It was dark when the Rolling Stones finally took the stage (partly because Bill Wyman missed the first helicopter), and by then, things were only deteriorating further (if such a thing is even possible). Fighting between audience member and Hell’s Angel alike kept breaking out, to the point where Mick stopped the show in a vain attempt to get the crowd to calm down. 

All I can say is, “Too little, too late.”

And still, as the Stones tried to keep performing, the situation only got worse. While Mick was singing “Under My Thumb”, yet another melee broke out, and in the chaos, 18-year-old Meredith Hunter, who had come with his girlfriend Patti Bredehoft and who happened to be high on meth at this very moment, was stabbed to death by 21-year-old Alan Passaro, after apparently brandishing a .22 caliber revolver in the direction of the stage. Passaro was later acquitted of all charges, which I think was a horrible mistake. It’s impossible to know for certain whether Hunter had been trying to defend himself or if he actually intended to shoot Mick Jagger, but what is known is that Hunter’s murder was captured on camera. You can watch the footage, but I must say, it makes for grisly viewing: 

People who were at the scene have since reported that Hunter was in urgent need of medical attention. However, the helicopter pilots who were there refused to take off for any one but the Rolling Stones. EVEN THOUGH THIS WAS CLEARLY A LIFE OR DEATH SITUATION. 

Excuse me, I need to take another break to scream to the heavens about why this was allowed....

Needless to say, Hunter died while waiting for an ambulance to come. In addition, two other people were killed in a hit-and-run accident, whilst another drowned under the influence of LSD. Also, four babies were born. 

The next day, the Stones were on a plane back to London. 

In the years since Hunter’s death, no one in either the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, or the Hell’s Angels have taken responsibility for what happened. The Hell’s Angels, the organizers, and the crowds blamed each other for what happened, and the Stones have never really spoken up about it. They’ve never even had the decency of apologizing to Meredith Hunter’s family. 

If you ask me though, I’d say that the fault lies entirely with everyone who organized this whole mess. Somehow, everyone involved was naive and/or stupid enough to try and organize an entire concert in just a few weeks as opposed to months, and the decision to hire the Hell’s Angels as security only exacerbated the ineptitude of everyone involved. 

Let’s face it, none of the organizers were innocent, and no one in the crowd escaped without losing their collective innocence. There’s a damn good reason that this is considered the death knell for the hippie movement, and it’s all in the footage taken that night. 

Sources/Further Reading: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/remembering-meredith-hunter-the-fan-killed-at-altamont-630260/ https://www.ranker.com/list/altamont-free-concert-facts/jen-jeffers https://allthatsinteresting.com/altamont-speedway-free-concert https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-chaos-of-altamont-and-the-murder-of-meredith-hunter Up and Down with the Rolling Stones by Tony Sanchez Life by Keith Richards Altamont by Joel Selvin https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-altamont-festival-brings-the-1960s-to-a-violent-end https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/02/01/altamont-free-concert-in-1969/ https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/21/altamont-festival/ https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/07/23/altamont-the-rolling-stones-and-the-death-of-the-sixties-dream/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Meredith_Hunter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones_American_Tour_1969 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stones_in_the_Park https://web.archive.org/web/20161116164203/https://theravenreport.com/2016/10/31/rock-and-rolls-worst-day-this-1969-concert-ended-in-death/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-rolling-stones-disaster-at-altamont-let-it-bleed-71299/ http://timeisonourside.com/chron1969.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUlyVSfhgaM

[paragon-yoshi]

Lamenting Societal Sanity

Title is based on this cutscene from Metal Gear Solid 2:

And here is kind of a review-version of it:

You know, if aliens were to come to you and ask you to describe the human species... What would you tell them? My answer to their question would be something like this: "Humans are animals living in small packs, defined by emotions, ideals and world views. We grow up, forced to learn a certain ideals and world views. Questioning these values is highly discouraged, as the mere thought of other values and viewpoints being 'not what it seems' is likely to be considered 'unacceptable' by the pack you're in. We are also a very arrogant and oblivious species. Arrogant, because we always think we know everything, when in actuality we know nothing at all. We constantly make up 'truths', based on speculation and baseless conjecture, while ignoring the real truth. Actual truths are only accepted, if they are convenient to us. The instant the truth starts being harsh to us, we block it out. And oblivious, because we are unable to see our own ignorance and imperfection. We always pride ourselves in being dominant and above all else on this world, even members of our own species. In the end, we are still animals, that seek prey. Only that our definition of 'prey' has changed with our modern lifestyle." Yes, that's pretty much what I'd tell them. Why am I saying this about our own species? Because I was on the receiving end of hate, slander and misinterpretations, over different ideals and world views, more times than I want to admit... My ideals are, that I give every single person a chance to speak their mind. As long as they are not hostile and out to harm me! Regardless of ideals, world views and whatever else. I will give everyone a chance. And I do mean EVERYONE! No matter who they are, what they did or what they think and feel. I can disagree with something. But I will still respect it! I don't trust news or any third-party. I always have to see things for myself. And more importantly, I want to hear from the other side directly. Hear what they have to say, with my own ears! Hear their side of a story, before passing judgment. If I just hear from a person or an event on the news or any third-party and am asked about my thoughts... Then my answer will always be this: "I don't know that person/I haven't been there. So I can't judge!" And right now, you may think of it as a noble mindset. But the instant I apply this to a group or an individual, that is hated by everyone on this planet, I am suddenly seen as a "Monster". Like I said, I will give everyone a chance, who isn't hostile to me or out to harm me... "INCLUDING Trump, Nazis or Islams..." Now what do you think, if I add that half-sentence? Do you still think my mindset is noble? Or do you suddenly see me as something else entirely, just because I'd give even the most hated individuals a chance to speak their mind? Have I changed from a "noble, understanding person", into an "irredeemable monster of a man" for you, because I added that?! Even though it doesn't change anything from what I originally said? I live by the mantra: Live and let be! I respect any person, that isn't hostile to me, even if I disagree with their feelings, ideals or world views. To me, that is no reason to reject one another. We are all human! Flawed and imperfect beings. And we should thrive together and not oppose each other, just because we think and feel differently. Unfortunately, it appears that this is just not possible. Relationships between people are like a walk through a minefield. And if you happen to set a mine off, even the strongest friendship is blown to pieces! The instant a subject is reached, where one side doesn't accept any difference in views from anyone, people will start to hate each other. There is that one subject... One theme that anyone is obstinate and prejudice about. We condemn people who think differently about that subject. We are prejudice. Assume the worst of the other side, thinking of them as an enemy! All without giving anyone from that side even the chance to speak up. Turning a deaf ear on whatever they have to say to the contrary. And when our friends turn out to have a mindset like these "enemies", we start to hate them, shun them away. Being together with a "person like that" is completely unacceptable to us, rendering years of strong friendship completely void. And I find it sad and petty, that people are like this... And that is the problem I have with society, everyone growing up with a set world view and ideals. And as a result, never willing to accept anything or anyone with different values. Sometimes even resorting to violence, thinking people with these values shouldn't exist... We are nice and understanding, but only towards people that suit our values. The instant we meet a person, that is having thoughts and feelings considered "unacceptable" to us, we become obstinate, hostile, violent, driving that "monster" out. Not even trying to understand their feelings and thoughts. Never willing to step out of our "comfort zone", trying to take a step outside and exploring the unknown... If more people were to do the latter, then I am sure people could get along with each other much better. But alas, our ignorance, arrogance and obstination, largely prevents this from happening. We have a set view on people and the world. And we are obstinate about it, never willing to accept any dissenting views. Of course, there are subjects like "Trump" or "Nazis". These are undoubtly questionable. I can understand why people are prejudice towards these people. But I would still give them a chance to let them tell their side of the story, before I pass judgment. But people are like this, over even more petty reasons. I like video games. So I am part of the video game community. And the things people argue and fight about here, are outright petty and meaningless. For example "Canon vs Non-Canon (and Fanon)". People constantly argue about this. But what's the point? By the end of the day: It's all fictional media! Or "Competitive vs Casual". Also a meaningless topic the argue about. IMO video games should never be taken so seriously, as if your life depends on them. But that's what people do. And as a result competitive players tend to completely think of casuals as worthless trash. Heck, I had a competitive person raging at me, because I asked her if she wanted to join a casual group. Now she hates me... Seriously, people start hating each other and being prejudice about one another, over the most petty reasons these days. Another thing I hate about society, is them "crafting truths" based on assumptions. What do I mean by that? People always think. And if there are any unknown factors, they try and make their own explanations, to fill the holes. And very often, I could see people believing their own thoughts like they were the truth. For example: One day during my apprenticeship, my dickhead of a boss, assumed I was on the toilet for half an hour and threatened to fire me. While in actuality, I was cleaning a machine the whole time. But I was at a blind spot for most of the time, so he couldn't see me. But when I tried to explain that, he immediately shut me up, not even wanting to hear what I have to say to this matter, believing what he thinks is what actually happened. He was wrong, but he believed in the "truth" he made up for himself there. And this is what I always see people doing. People assuming and then these assumptions mutate, making people think they are actually "the truth". Even though they can't know for sure, but they believe they do. Take "religion" as an example: There are people that believe god existing is the "truth" to such an extent, that they murder and commit crimes "in gods name". Even though they can't possibly know for sure that he exists, let alone that this is truly his will... (Which I doubt...) I think it ultimately comes down to one "drug": Dominace! Feeling dominant over a hated adversary. The enemy being under your foot... It feels good! Very good! As for me: I accepted that I am an imperfect being, full of rough edges. I am fallible and very prone to mistakes. I embrace my imperfection and make the most out of it. I don't know a lot. And I don't claim our race is above all else in the universe. And I always consider that everything I know could turn out to be a lie, at any point. Heck, I think Dolphins are more intelligent than we are. At least they live in unity with their own kind, from what I have seen. And don't let petty rivalries and differences shatter that unity. I see everyone being just an imperfect as I am. But at the same time, I also see everyone as an individual. Everyone is different and it's fine to be different from everyone else. As long as we respect one another and let others have their believes and world views, then we can live together in peace. Or like Big Boss said in Metal Gear Solid 4: "It's about respecting the will of others... And believing in your own!" It's just sad how impossible that is. People will always find reasons to demonize others and tear relationships apart. Making up truths to live convenient lives, often at the expense of "unwanted" people's lives and feelings. And living in arrogance, thinking they know everything, when they can't. Living lies and not accepting truths that are inconvenient for them. Fortunately, there still are people who at least somewhat realize this and accept what other people think and feel, even if they disagree. Respecting their will and feelings and still willing to accept them as friends, despite their differences in ideals and feelings. It's sad to see that there are not many of these to be found. At least on the internet. They are more common in real life for me. But still few and far between. And that's all I can say. I have to let this one out. Sorry to waste your time. See you around!        

[gus-the-icreamman]

What's So Trendy About SEO 2019 That Everyone Went Crazy Over It?

Colorado SEO Pros CEO Bob Rodgers talks search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, artificial intelligence (AI), and why link building will be dangerous for companies. An SEO on the web marketing strategy is a extensive plan to get more individuals to your website through lookup engines. A few search optimizers try to tip Google by using aggressive strategies that go beyond the fundamental SEO techniques. Subscribe to the particular Single Grain blog now regarding the latest content on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, PPC, paid social, and the particular future of internet marketing. SEO can furthermore stand for search engine optimizer. Like the rest of the particular digital landscape, SEO marketing is usually continuously evolving. Search Engine Book — Read information right after Moz's guide to solidify knowing regarding it of the basic parts of SEO. 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Erase all duplicated content material; it will increase your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking. Long-term: as discussed over, you'll ultimately get more research traffic from better usability, actually though you don't squeeze each last drop from the SEO-trick lemon. However, to accomplish all this particular, web-developers use SEO custom providers, that have long-lasting SEO Search engines rank. That being said, companies usually have little or simply no time for you to maintain up with the latest advancements in SEO techniques. Social search motor optimization is largely built on user-generated content. Keywords are at the coronary heart of SEO, but they're really not your first step in order to an organic growth play any more. Obviously, reviews are a powerful type of customer content that has massive implications for SEO and enhancing organic traffic. With right seo and with the help associated with an SEO expert however, your own website can give you a good increasing number of visitors plus exposure. Just keep in mind to pay attention to strong content creation and copywriting principles, engage your viewers deeply, plus stay abreast of technical styles such as backlinks, SEO health, site velocity, and schema. SEOmonitor pricing is based on the particular number of websites and key phrases you track. So, I actually would say that 2018 is definitely a challenge for Google, simply because much as it may be for SEOs. The SEO Guide Keyword Suggestion Tool aggregates research data and provides volumes, associated terms, and more. This free marketing device is really a long-term technique and can be time rigorous but it will worth this. A good user experience is usually the key to satisfaction plus a powerful SEO. 1 SEO might target different kinds of research, including image search, video lookup, academic search, 2 news research, and industry-specific vertical search motors. All of us are in the fourth one fourth of 2018, it is typically the right time start thinking with regards to the year ahead and brand-new changes SEO realm might count on. We've long known that consumer opinions, input, and sentiment regarding a brand deeply impact SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION rankings, but we wanted the particular information to prove it. Off-page SEO means getting action to build trust, expert, social signals and inbound hyperlinks. How video affects SEO actually depends on your goals whenever using video in your marketing and advertising campaign and which video system you use. LSI is just not what most SEO professionals claim it to be. This is certainly not a idea that can be used simply by the average web designer or even webmaster to improve their research engine listings, and it will be not what many people, which includes myself, has written it in order to be. Nevertheless, first some history. This particular video walks you through the particular specific steps you have to get increased rankings in 2018, including launching speed, technical SEO, content, hyperlinks, and more. Considering that it is, all across this year agencies specializing in SEO were hectic improving and finding new procedures to optimize the search motor even better than what their own competitors were doing. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of this most important marketing considerations upon your studio website. SEO might generate a sufficient return upon investment However, search engines are usually not taken care of organic search visitors, their algorithms change, and right now there are no guarantees of carried on referrals. A great starting point whenever using keywords for SEO is definitely to identify existing pages that will may use some optimization. These are called keywords, plus as you will see, these people are an important part associated with SEO. In fact, this particular will actually hurt your cyberspace SEO because search engines such as google will recognize it since keyword stuffing - or the particular act of including keywords particularly to rank for that key word Blog9T, rather than to answer the person's question. Prior to we get going, one thing a person want to keep in thoughts when using some of the following SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION elements is not to overdo it. You might be enticed to shove a lot associated with keywords onto your pages, yet that is not the objective. In situation you create links to additional websites and reverse, it may improve your SEO ranking. In fact Cisco predicts that globally, on-line video traffic will be eighty percent of all consumer Web traffic by 2019 (a quantity that is up from sixty four percent in 2014). I've bookmarked therefore many SEO websites and assets that it's overwhelming to also look at. Link authority is the major component of SEO, yet purchasing links is forbidden simply by Google, Bing, and other research engines. Search engines regard metadata plus meta keywords as less essential than they used to, thanks a lot to many years of dark hat misuse, however the name of your page and the relevancy towards the content can always be a highly essential factor in SEO. SEO is important because this helps you get found simply by improving your ranking online research results. Inorganic SEO is definitely good for populating links intended for your website, even on some other websites which signed up regarding online ads to be demonstrated on their web pages. Of course, finding the period for you to write your own SEO articles every single day can become difficult in light of the particular fact that you still possess a company to run. Social media offers its perks aside from SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION value. So in the event that you think about it, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is really just a procedure of proving to look engines that will you are the best web site, probably the most authoritative, the most reliable, the most unique and fascinating site that they can provide to their customer - the particular searcher. SEO professionals employ the variety of different ways associated with make websites appear higher inside your list of results and create it much more likely that will you'll click on them in order to find what you're looking with regard to. SEO more usually talk regarding domain trust and domain expert in line with the quantity, type and quality of inbound links to a site. SEO entails attaining a higher ranking within search engines via changes in order to your site content and program code to make it more appropriate and therefore more search motor compatible. Something which usually was troubling about 2017, plus as we head into 2018, could be the new wave of agencies merely bolting on SEO because a service without any genuine appreciation of structuring site architectures and content for both human beings and search engine understanding. A huge part of SEO is within creating content which is focused towards the keywords that lookup engines users are searching regarding. Building links could be the big part of your work as an SEO because this plays such a big component in the algorithms used simply by search engines to look with regard to the order of their outcomes. Search engines like google through the King Google to supplementary ones like Bing and Bing rank the websites on the particular basis of its SEO. It's due to the fact creating content and ranking this in Google is what SEOs do! SEO solutions look at their links, through where their links are arriving, and what keywords they possess made a decision to optimize for their web sites. Hobo UK SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION - A Beginner's Guide (2018) is really a free pdf file ebook you can DOWNLOAD TOTALLY FREE from here (2mb) that will contains my notes about traveling increased organic traffic to the site within Google's guidelines. My conjecture is that the biggest SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trend in 2019 is heading to be Amazon search. TYPES OF SEO Generally there are two major types associated with seo, white hat search motor optimization (the ‘good' kind), plus black hat (the 'not therefore good' kind). Google's always tweaking its research algorithms, so there's no assurance that SEO practices that proved helpful in the past will maintain working in the future. A few search engines have also supplied to the SEO industry, plus are frequent sponsors and visitors at SEO conferences, webchats, plus seminars. If a person have a website that a person want to become easily discovered by a search engine, you need to increase your site rank by means of SEO as well. Some SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION companies focus on link building” and increasing the authority associated with their clients' websites. Through an SEO perspective, we had been introduced to RankBrain nearly 2 years ago, a machine-learning synthetic intelligence that Google's been making use of to process an extremely huge proportion of search results. Specifically, you'll observe exactly how to make use of advanced on-page SEO strategies (like Bucket Brigades”) to get higher Google search positions and more organic traffic. Search engines has introduced (at least) the ‘percieved' risk to publishing a lot of lower-quality pages on your own site to in order in order to curb production of old-style SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION friendly content based on manipulating early search engine algorithms. Grey hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is entirely centered on enhancing search engine rankings. There are numerous aspects to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, from the words on your own page to the way additional sites link to you upon the web. So, rather than viewing SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING as an umbrella term covering SEO, it's more accurate in order to view SEM (paid search) plus SEO (organic search) as individual entities to use as a part of your Search Marketing arsenal. Also companies considering about getting Search engine search engine optimization services should go through these types of magazines to familiarize themselves making use of the latest trends within the particular SEO and web-based marketing market to allow them to determine the assistance offered for all of them from the selected SEO companies. Mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018 will be all regarding Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). The term SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION also describes the making internet pages easier for internet lookup engine indexing software, known because "crawlers, " to find, check, and index your web site. I feel that technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION mistakes that affect crawl spending budget - and also pollute Search engines with non-SEO-friendly content such since social landing pages, WordPress mass media archives, offer pages and cloned e-commerce product pages - may have an even more detrimental effect upon sites moving forward. Effective SEO lets you enhance your web​site to exhibit up within search engines. Many of us will get into how in order to pick the best keywords regarding your business later in this kind of SEO guide, but it excellent you to know how in order to use them, as they will be referenced throughout this section. Although meta descriptions are not some sort of ranking factor for search motors, they do hold value regarding your website and are component of your SEO presence. Let us speak a bit as to exactly what SEO is before we enter the SEO article writing recommendations for people who may end up being new or do not very understand it. SEO stands with regard to Seo. Siteimprove SEO incorporates sixty six unique SEO checks, including tests for missing meta descriptions, transliteration mistakes, broken links, outdated documents, poor readability, and links in order to unsafe domains. But when we're looking for a larger trend it's that SEO plus what we call real marketing” will continue to blur the particular lines between them as the particular job of the SEO will become that of a traditional internet marketer - having to understand the particular user, the competitors, the market place and also the implementation part. Thanks for going to the world of Search Motor Optimization (SEO). For example, we regularly make content on the topic associated with "SEO, " but it's nevertheless very hard to rank properly on Google for such the popular topic on this acronym alone. What can modern-day industry shifts show about the particular future of SEO and content material marketing? Search engine search engine optimization (SEO) is on a move. Whether a person are an SEO Professional, Electronic Marketing Agency, SMB or Brand name, looking to increase your visitors or to monitor your web site's evolution, this SEO software can provide you with best within class digital marketing strategy evaluation and insights for your company. Their expertise will be incredibly valuable because there is usually plenty of science to SEO, plus it is constantly changing because search engines like Google keep on to update their algorithms. From a content viewpoint, I'd say one of the particular best ways to get SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION value out of video will be to focus your efforts upon addressing your customer's pain factors. Off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION targets increasing the authority associated with your domain through the act associated with getting links from all some other websites. Regarding: Search Engine Journal's flagship meeting, SEJ Summit, is dedicated to offering SEO pros the actual require, with an agenda of authentic, first-run presentations covering the newest SEO and PPC tactics through renowned experts, plus excellent social networking opportunities. SEO combines official research engine guidelines, empirical knowledge, plus theoretical knowledge from science documents or patents. This will be a half-day workshop at LeadsCon that will be designed to be able to give attendees an end-to-end look at of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), how it works, and concrete things they can do right now to improve their SEO functionality. After the Search engines Panda algorithm appeared, SEO professionals realized just how much key word frequency and density matters. SEO means optimizing your posts so it shows up a great deal more often in search results. 33. With social media systems like Facebook diminishing visibility associated with companies and brands, SEO (as well as paid promotion) will be becoming critically important for traveling traffic to your social stations. 2019 dates TBD. ). Why go to: One-track conference full of forward-thinking, tactical sessions in SEO, development marketing, the mobile landscape, analytics, content marketing and more. ” Don't miss the LeadsCon Meeting in Vegas, March 4-6, 2019. Still, even for the particular best websites, maintaining a best organic SEO ranking requires constant keyword monitoring and content re-doing. Writer and consultant Peter Kent provides helped businesses including Amazon plus Zillow with SEO and on the web marketing. Very first, understand that schema markup will be one of the most effective, least used parts of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION today Schema are basically short snippets of data that may give extra information to find customers and search engines. SEO will be a marketing discipline focused upon growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. Simply no matter how many times Search engines tweaks or evolves The Formula, from Panda to Penguin in order to Polar Bear, these logical plus intuitive core SEO tips need to remain timeless. Certainly, all those searching for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION agencies will have to create their selection by passing SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION companies through careful and careful scrutiny, to ensure that all of them to get the best within search engine optimization for their particular business website. The article provides you 12 techniques for E-commerce plus establishing an SEO optimized internet site which will help you raise your business exposure and visibility upon search engines. Making use of keywords in your article name, article body and resource is definitely a great SEO article composing strategy that may make your own articles more effective in appealing to attention from search engines. Use SEO strategies like as transcripts and tags in order to help your videos appear increased in search results and appeal to more viewers over time. Since it turns out, there's more in order to on-page SEO than optimizing regarding keywords. Search engines motor optimization (organic SEO) describes the particular methods used to obtain the high placement (or ranking) upon a search engine results web page in unpaid, algorithm-driven results upon the given search engine. Also, videos have got a lot of untapped probable - great for SEO and even make for good user wedding. The quite best SEO expert 2019 can tell you for High-End mobile devices, we're seeing more format changes to focus, provide the better experience, search results. Social SEO is especially helpful for online reputation administration. It isn't just the approach that Google ranks optimized articles, but the way that they will rank poorly constructed or taboo content that will push the ranking to where it really should to be in 2019. Ray Cheselka, SEO & Ppc Manager at SEO and style agency, webFEAT Complete, predicts that will sites with over a 2 second load time will end up being penalized, and search intent will be going to still grow within importance. SEO consists of ordering the site's architecture and hyperlinks to make pages inside the particular website easier to find plus navigate. In contrast, articles that no one is humming about have minimal effect upon social SEO. They are usually generally knowledgeable within the are usually of both SEO and content material marketing. When it arrives to reviews, customers work as a good army of link builders plus keyword writers so your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION structure is shaped without a person having to lift a hand. A great SEO service includes a great deal of research and lots associated with smart keywords application which will certainly period website at a increased notch and provide it the higher ranking in Google web search engine. Professional SEO content authors work on creating articles just after understanding the nature associated with your business, your industry, competition and what kind of posts your business might most want for maximum benefits; in the particular short-term and the long-term. Linking to other web pages within your site, as well because linking to other sites plus getting other sites to connect to yours, is a great method to improve your SEO. 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An SEO Content Writer is usually someone that writes content for the particular purpose of having it display up on search engines plus gain website visitors. Internet marketing perfect for the platform of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or Seo. With voice search arrives two areas of interest in order to SEO folks wishing to link with consumers: intent and circumstance. SocialSEO is proud to help future experts in the planet of business and marketing along with the annual SocialSEO Digital Advertising and SEO Scholarship. Finally SEO Wise links enables you to fixed nofollow attribute and open hyperlinks in new window. All of us wished to look at a massive group that included businesses of almost all sizes and in all sectors so we could really observe how SEO traffic increased whenever the only common denominator was incorporating reviews to their site. In truth, this is portion of the SEO technique we have used to continuously grow our organic traffic throughout the last 12 months right here at SnapApp: #3. Mobile will certainly account for 72% of ALL OF US digital ad spend by 2019. This workshop will be designed to help business proprietors implement Digital Marketing techniques with regard to their business including social mass media, organic SEO as well because paid channels. The Beginner's Guide in order to SEO continues to be go through over 3 million times plus offers comprehensive information you require to get on the road to professional quality Search Motor Optimization, or SEO. Whether it's using web analytics for carrying out research or even conversion tools that monitor plus report the usage of essential keywords, SEO agencies know just How SEO 2019 Is Going To Change Your Business Strategies how and where you can obtain the information they need in order to save time furthermore decrease your in-house price. Presently there is probably no more fundamental strategy for SEO than the particular integration of internal links straight into your site - it will be an easy way to increase traffic to individual pages, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Consult says. SEO SERVICES Right now there are a number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services which can help enhance the organic search engine ratings of a website.

[frederickwiddowson]

Who is God - sermon notes revised

Genesis 1:1 ¶  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The testimony of the Bible is abundantly clear that the universe did not come into being by itself and there is no evidence that there are alternate universes. The universe is also not eternally preexistent as a time is given here, in the beginning, and an action by God as in God created.

It is impossible to believe the Bible and, at the same time, believe in the Big Bang theory where all matter and energy comes from the primordial explosion of the singularity, the size of a period in a sentence. Nor is it possible to believe in its antecedent belief, the medieval Kabbalah’s mustard seed that explodes into the universe, or the Hindu’s or any number of other pagan mythologies’ cosmic egg from which the universe comes and believe in the God of the Bible. The physical universe is a production of God as all matter, energy, and time can be attributed directly to Him. He has no beginning and no end and is beyond our ability to finitely reason.

Modern man, since Isaac Newton, has come to believe in reductionism where, for instance, in biology the whole is defined by its parts. It is a bottom-up belief. However, the Bible teaches a top-down structure of the universe. The parts are determined by the context. As an example, the words rite/right are defined by their context in a sentence in phrases such as, “a religious rite or ritual,” or, “turn right,” or, “your legal right.” So, genes and their expression are determined by the organism they are in. I share the same genes with a fruit fly but we are vastly different creatures because there is a design, a mold, an idea that makes me different from them. Many different buildings are made partly with bricks; the London Parliament building, my house, and the local school. However, they are all different buildings because of their design plans. Drawing conclusions about what the building is by examining one brick will not edify.

So, biology and all reality, to be understood properly, should be understood by the fact that it is all based on a design formed in the mind of the Creator. Then, the smaller parts and their place in the scheme of thing come more into focus.

God is not the subject of science because He cannot be experimented on or called into an equation. Science can only study what they can see or measure and all unseen theoretical entities like quarks, leptons, and Higgs-Boson and the like are simply modern myths even if a scientist defines seeing in a different way than a non-scientist does. Saying that they have faith that one day they will prove something they cannot prove merely moves that scientist’s faith into the realm of religion. Faith is not science and science is not faith. Science has limits. Faith is only limited by God’s will for that person having the faith. One can study the mechanism by which a thing is done but no one can study God unless He chooses to reveal Himself as He has done in the Bible. Of course, if your faith is in atheism you will hit a wall as you have to twist reality like taffy to get the meaning you want to appear. No one’s there to open anything up to you but your own imagination which makes an atheist scientist his own god, at least in his mind.

God’s creation of the universe is not only confirmed by Moses, writing Genesis under the inspiration of God, but also Isaiah.

Isaiah 42:5  Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

Isaiah 45:18  For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

King David;

Psalm 33:6  By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

And the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

Mark 13:19  For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.

Science requires that if you put forth a proposition, a statement of presumed fact, that you should be able to make certain predictions from it. This verse, Genesis 1:1, says that God created. So, one could logically assume that since an intelligent entity created everything that a certain degree of design and order must be present in it as in our experience order does not come from disorder without intelligent guidance. This is, indeed, the case. Physicists are looking for a unifying “theory of everything.” Well, it is right here in front of us. He is the God of the Bible. His existence explains everything from how the universe is held together to the moral sense of human beings.

Who is God? He is the uncreated person and entity who created all that is. He simply is, as He said Himself, I AM THAT I AM.

Exodus 3:13  And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? 14  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

It is a nonsensical question to ask who created God. Such a question is a philosophical absurdity. It is like asking; could God create a rock so heavy He could not lift it? Such questions are the pure gibberish of the skeptic whose mind is blinded by the god of this world, Satan.

God is the source of all reality; seen and unseen. In Job God states that everything from dust forming into a clod of dirt in a farmer’s field to lions catching their prey, with the movements of distant galaxies to rain happening in places on earth where there is no man are all direct results of His direct actions. Read Job, chapter 38. God is not a watchmaker winding up the clock and walking away or standing to admire His work. He makes the hands move and the tick-tock sound is part of His second-by-second control of all events. So, scientific thought, even with Christians since Isaac Newton, by reducing God to the ultimate first cause without an active role in every moment of our existence, is just simply one of the things that is in error about modern thinking. Nothing happens by itself without direction, meaningless and pointless, a result of blind chance. Absolutely nothing.

Life itself and, indeed, all reality is a continuous miracle, a production of God. If there were no God there would be no reality. There is no reason, no possible cause, if God did not exist for there to be something rather than nothing. A universe empty of everything, cold and vacant, would always remain so. To say that the universe that we know always existed with no beginning is to make a cold, dead thing a god.

What passes for theoretical science, not the science that makes medicine or rockets that journey to the Moon, but the science of unproveable conjecture and assumptions, is often the religion of atheistic determinism. In this philosophy a militant atheist like evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins will say that life looks as if it was designed but that is an illusion which you cannot believe. A more thoughtful atheist like Fred Hoyle, the astronomer, wrote in a 1970s era textbook which I have that all evidence shows that we are in the center of the universe but, of course, that cannot be believed so they come up with some other explanation that suggests that everywhere must appear to be the center of the universe. These people would have you believe that evidence is only true when it supports their atheism and anti-Biblical worldview.

Scientists performed an experiment called the Michelson-Morley experiment in the 1800s which showed unintentionally that the earth is not moving. Albert Einstein came up with his  Theory of Relativity working on a problem in the theory of electrical waves and twenty years after the failed experiment was able to show, through his theory, that although the earth didn’t look like it was moving that too was an illusion and could be explained by his fantasy.

A scientist named Eddington then went on to perform experiments whose results were contradictory and based on flawed assumptions, admitted even by philosophers of science, which I will be happy to discuss with anyone. And yet, he confirmed falsely in 1919 that he had proven Einstein’s theory.

If this is hard to understand why such esteemed theoretical scientists would do such a thing let us not forget that a recent Aeon magazine, not a Christian magazine by any stretch of the imagination, published an article pointing out how theoretical Physics in the late 1800s was heavily influenced by the occult.

Then, we come to the highly vaunted Big Bang Theory for the origin of the universe without God. This rehash of the Kabbalah was created in the early 1920s by a Jesuit trained Roman Catholic priest named Georges Lemaitre. The name Big Bang was given to it by Fred Hoyle in a 1949 radio interview when he was still opposed to the theory.

In fact, Fred Hoyle also wrote in his textbook that I mentioned a way to explain away the idea that the earth is not moving and is in the center of the universe. He wrote that what revolves around what is a matter of relative motion anyway and has no physical significance. Nice dodge but ultimately saying that you are not wrong if you believe what the Bible and our common-sense seems to indicate we are fixed at the center of the universe and the entire thing is designed so that the right proportions of all elements are put in the right place in the universe so that life can exist here.

I think the new pagan mythology of much of speculative, theoretical Physics and Biology is as hard to believe as Thor making thunder by striking a cloud with his hammer.

But, back to God who is composed of three parts which are still one God.

Deuteronomy 6:4  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

But composed of three parts.

Matthew 28:19  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

2Corinthians 13:14  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.

1John 5:7  For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

One of the differences between man and God is that God’s three parts can act separately from each other while if one of our three parts; body, soul, or spirit, is separated from the others we physically die. Yet, God is one.

John 10:30  I and my Father are one.

John 14:9  Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?

Man is composed of a body, a soul, and a spirit.

1Thessalonians 5:23  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So is God. God the Father is the soul of God, the seat of will and self-identity, invisible to us. Many times in the New Testament when the name God is used it is a reference to God the Father.

John 1:13  Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God….18  No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

1Corinthians 15:24  Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.

The Holy Ghost is sent to teach and abide with God’s people.

John 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

The Son of God, the Word by which all things were made and are held together, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the only time God ever walked in human flesh, or the only-begotten Son of God, with a king’s son coming in the king’s authority as the very image of the king in power and authority, his heir of all that he owns.

Hebrews 1:3  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

Colossians 1:15a  Who is the image of the invisible God,

God lives in a state not bound by time, He having no beginning or ending Himself.

Isaiah 57:15  For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

As the Babylonian emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, was forced to acknowledge;

Daniel 4:34 ¶  And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: 35  And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?

 God’s center of authority is in Heaven itself, beyond the stars.

 1Kings 22:19  And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left.

 Psalm 11:4a  The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven:

 He directs all reality and controls every event, no matter how small or large. In God’s confrontation with Job in chapter 38 of that book He makes that very clear. In that argument it becomes clear that even seemingly routine, random, and meaningless events from thunder and lightning to the fresh water fountains in the ocean.

Regarding verse 16 in that chapter, fresh water springs coming up from the bottom of the world’s oceans and seas have been observed at least since the time of the ancient Phoenicians. There are now thought to be massive fresh water aquifers under the world’s oceans in the depths where no man of Job’s time had gone.

In God’s rhetorical interrogation of Job He asks several questions which may seem perplexing to us. In verse 25 a connection is made between lightning and thunder, which we know now that one causes the other. Aristotle, as late as the third century BC, attributed thunder to a collision between clouds.  The disturbing, again, implication in verse 25 is that even when there is flooding, God disperses overflowing water as He sees fit. This is a frightening prospect if we consider what the Bible is telling us that even in a seemingly random process God is in control. Did you ever imagine that?

If you remember the old Zen koan, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The true answer is yes, of course. Here, God speaks about how He causes all things, even where man is nowhere around to witness the things. It rains in places where man is not to soak the parched ground and cause plants to grow that man will never see. Think about this. From the dense forests of Borneo to the jungles of Brazil there is life and there are events happening that we will never know about experientially. There are things happening a million light-years from us that we have no knowledge of now or at any time in our lives. Man is not the measure of all things as the Greek philosopher insisted or the traditional Zen koan implies. The universe God built for Himself. We are a part of His plan. But, we are not the only part.

Verse 28 places God squarely as the author of every drop of dew. Think of that. Imagine it, if you will. Every snowflake, the ice on a pond, the frost on the ground, all of it, every microscopic piece of it created by God, not just the result of a random process, an, “accident of nature,” but a direct execution of divine will. It staggers the modern mind.

The anthropologist, Susan Friend Harding, wrote, “The membrane between disbelief and belief is thinner than we think.”  Most Christians in America seem to believe in a caretaker God, like a gardener, watching over life processes and natural events that He can only affect in a minimal way by exerting Himself from outside of the process, by interrupting the process, like a landlord we call on to fix the plumbing in our apartment when it leaks. American Christians, even fundamentalists, can’t wrap their minds around the God presented in the Bible. They can wrap their minds around the God presented in their culture. That God is a sort of manager, or at times a warrior-king, or at times a big brother, and at times even a benefactor, but He is most certainly not the God presented in the Bible who controls every moment everywhere in His universe. He is neither surprised nor at a disadvantage when a thing happens. He either made it happen or permitted it to happen. Period. And that is just and right and as it should be, your fear, your grief, your pain, your discomfort notwithstanding.

God, in Job, then moves masterfully in His speech to the farthest reaches of outer space, to the nearby atmosphere of earth, and into the human heart, the spiritual heart of understanding, emotion, and reason, to underscore His sovereign reign over the sum total of reality. He even speaks of causing clods of dirt to form and providing food for wild animals and birds. He does this, Himself. He is the author of it.

This is a different earth, a different universe, than what we are used to imagining. Be honest with yourself, when the snow piled deep in your yard you didn’t think of it being a direct act of God any more than when you started your car did you think that.  

We have lived for several hundred years in a universe we thought was governed by blind forces or running on auto-pilot. The only difference between many Christians and atheists have been that Christians thought there was a benevolent and powerful entity who wound up those forces and who would intervene occasionally to interrupt those blind forces on the Christian’s behalf. Both are wrong. Dead wrong.

What does this unsearchable, complex and unimaginably powerful, sovereign God want from a human being?

There is something special about us. After all, we were made to look like Him, like the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word by which all things were created, the Son of God as in God in the flesh walking the earth.

Genesis 1:26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

He told the Israelites what He wanted from them.

Deuteronomy 10:12 ¶  And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, 13  To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?

 Micah 6:8  He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

 And, two thousand years ago He walked on this earth in the bodily form of a carpenter’s son in an Israel under the control of the Roman Empire. He offered Himself up to pay the price for our transgressions, our sins, against Him. He was the propitiation to satisfy His own wrath, paid the ransom to His own self for us, and rose from the dead to legally justify us before Himself. Just like when He made the covenant with Abram, making sure Abram was in a deep sleep and could do nothing, He made the agreement with Himself to deliver what He promised to Abram.

 There is only one thing you can do to be saved from an eternity of suffering, one work.

 John 6:28  Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? 29  Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

 This can only be accomplished by belief and faith which He gives you in your own heart based on His foreknowledge of your willingness to receive it.

 Ephesians 2:8  For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

 Romans 3:21  But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22  Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23  For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25  Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

 2Timothy 1:9  Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,

 Why isn’t our salvation from an eternity of agony not based on our merit, our goodness as people?

 So that we will know throughout eternity that it was God alone who saved us and not we ourselves. Here is the context of Ephesians 2:8.

 Ephesians 2:4 ¶  But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5  Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6  And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7  That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. 8  For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast. 10  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

 God wants us to walk humbly with Him, to experience Him on a personal level, as Adam and Eve experienced the preincarnate Christ in the Garden of Eden. He doesn’t just want us to be in awe of His might and majesty.

Psalm 19:1  The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

So, how do His people know Him by experience every day? We already know and are taught to speak to Him in prayer. We are told to be constantly and in all times in a prayerful state, speaking to God.

1Thessalonians 5:17  Pray without ceasing.

By this we acknowledge His control over all things, seemingly good or bad, and that we trust His judgments.

Isaiah 26:3  Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

We know that God speaks to us through His word when we read or hear it even verses in our own heads, that changes are made in us and in our circumstances by God as we acknowledge the power of His written word. In giving instructions for a future king over Israel;

Deuteronomy 17:18  And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:

19  And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them:

20  That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

 And to the people;

 Joshua 1:8  This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

 Isaiah 59:21  As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.

Psalm 119:11  Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

New Testament letters were read in the congregations of the various churches.

Colossians 4:16  And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.

As Paul told Timothy;

1Timothy 4:13a  Till I come, give attendance to reading...

If you accept the Bible’s clear statements that God is in absolute control over all reality as it has happened, is happening, and will happen you can experience God’s power and presence in the simplest everyday functions of life. It is not just a flower bursting forth in the spring, a bird warming itself on a tree limb in the morning sun, the laughter of a baby in its mother’s arms, but the terrifying power of a raging sea, a volcano exploding in a distant land, or even the passing of a loved one for none of these things happen or can happen without God’s will being involved.

If you learn to be thankful for the moments of your life, whatever trials or struggles you yourself, personally, have been given you can begin to see God’s hand in every event and to give Him the credit for your good fortune and not just that but to plead with Him for mercy and to ask what He wants your response to be when you suffer yourself or encounter it in others.

If you seek God’s perfect will in your life; His good, and acceptable, and perfect will rather than just what you think you can get away with you can learn what God has planned for you, what your assignment on this earth is, what burden you are called to bear.

By prayer, letting the Bible change you, meeting with other believers regularly for encouragement and group worship and action as the body of Christ, acknowledging God’s sovereignty, being grateful and thankful for every moment of your life no matter how difficult or how joyous, and seeking His will over your own, accepting it meekly, you can know God in a real and personal way.

The God who creates a star in the furthest galaxy in outer space. The God who controls every cell function in your body. The God who determines when history began and when it will end. This God did an amazing thing considering how mankind is so in love with himself and his little accomplishments.

John 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17  For God sent not his Son into

the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18  He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19  And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

 God’s presence is everywhere in creation but He is not the creation. God’s power is present in every action of reality, even in the bad stuff, but His intent is for you to join Him in eternity. What we will be doing then will be the subject of a different time. God loved all mankind at the Cross but His resurrection from the dead only has a positive effect on those who trust in His righteousness and not their own. There is nothing that happens that God does not cause to happen or permit to happen and there is nothing that God does not know. So, those who think that God did not understand our suffering, or know our suffering until He walked on the earth in the form of Christ are wrong. He experienced our suffering then but as He sees and knows all time as already having happened this knowledge was available to Him before the world began.

 Isaiah 46:10  Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

 Isaiah 48:3  I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.

  Who is God? God simply IS. He is the ultimate reality. All creation was made for Him, by Him, and is sustained by Him. In the end we must always remember;

 Psalm 100:3  Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

 Revelation 4:11  Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.