[22] Thou shalt have this sign: Whatsoever that same prophet foretelleth in the name of the Lord, and it cometh not to pass: that thing the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath forged it by the pride of his mind: and therefore thou shalt not fear him.
Deuteronomy 18: 22
Algore may be a lying sack of schitt, but at least he’s been able to cash in on the climoscare hoax to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
King of the environmental grifters.
Somewhere, P.T. Barnum is smiling.
Funny isn’t it when Charles Ponzi screwed over so many people with his money making scheme the people who were taken in by this scam screamed bloody murder and demanded Ponzi’s blood yet let Al Gore do this same thing but to a much greater degree he is treated as the Golden Calf. The only way someone can scam you is if you let them.
Algore’s grift is about the only thing that’s green about the climoscare hoax.
Algore may be a lying sack of schitt, but at least he’s been able to cash in on the climoscare hoax to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Recall that Harry Truman was a loyal soldier of the Prendergast machine in Kansas City. Congressional pensions were enacted in 1958 because he was rather cash poor. Herbert Hoover didn’t need the money, but he took the pension to avoid embarrassing Truman who did need the money. The Truman’s were the very first two people in America to sign up for Medicare in 1965. The insurance wasn’t redundant in their case. Recall also that Richard Nixon (who had overdue legal bills) was derided and slammed for taking $600,000 for 29 hours of one-on-one interviews with David Frost (“Who else would have asked for a fee?”, quoth the pretentious James Fallows, who likely has never noticed the buckraking of the Clintons or Gore). A contextually similar sum today would be about $4,000,000, or about 20 hours worth of Billy Jeff boilerplate at his usual rate (not including the amenities on which the Clintons insist). That prominent politicians like Gore, Obama, the Clintons, and Rahm Emmanuel end up big rich without any discernible business skills is an indicator of the decadence of the age.
Art just explained why Biden (probably sincerely) believes neither he nor his son did anything wrong.
If the environmentalist really believed in anthropogenic climate change, then we would be going b@11$ to the wall nuclear, no holds barred, gas pedal to the metal, all ahead flank. Wind and solar at less than 30% capacity factor always require fossil spinning reserve for the 70% of the time that they generate zip point squat. But since these environmentalists (like Al Gore) oppose nuclear even MORE than they oppose fossil, it’s obvious they don’t believe in the nonsense they purport is happening.
PS, as I recall, Al Gore Sr. (Junior’s father) did support nuclear. “Senator Al Gore, Sr. was a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and once proposed legislation to allow the Atomic Energy Commission to build a number of nuclear power plants to feed its own facilities as a way to encourage the development of a commercial nuclear power industry. He saw the technology as one way for public power to help improve people’s lives. As a Senator from Tennessee he was also influential in getting approvals for the Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power projects.” We need TAC’s favorite historian to do an expose story on the history of US environmentalism, energy policy & nuclear. 😉
You can read more here:
https://atomicinsights.com/al-gore-and-nuclear-power/
There are times when I wish we could kill the False Prophets.
“There are times when I wish we could kill the False Prophets.”
Nah…why do that? You end up in hell because of people like ALGORE? Think about that for second….see? Makes no sense.
Laughing at false prophets is worse for them.
A great many of those are recognizable: Paul Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, and the collection of Carter-era White House aides who gave you the Global 2000 Report. The media hands a megaphone to characters in the scientific community who line up with its agenda and the rest of them are ‘collegial’ or just plain poltroonish in response. Julian Simon had the stones to challenge Ehrlich, and embarrass him. Academic economists have remained silent about Paul Krugman’s behavior in the public square, to their discredit.
Paul Howard: “There are times when I wish we could kill the False Prophets”
Donald McClarey: “Laughing at false prophets is worse for them.”
Perhaps Donald’s response is true. But I note with interest what Elijah did with them in 1st Kings 18:40.
PS, None of us here are Elijah; so do what Donald said instead. It’s safer. 😉
what amazes me is that history and basic science speak so strongly against AGW and the alarmists never respond to 1) the Medieval Warm Period (Greenland was green!) and 2) H2O, much more abundant in the atmosphere than CO2, is a greenhouse gas (absorbs and reradiates radiation in the Infrared–that’s why cloudy nights are warmer than clear, other factors being the same). (And arguments about “feedback” are spurious and empirically disproved.)
[…] Bailey at Catholic Stand The Monster Cardinal Egan – Rod Dreher at The American Conservative False Prophets – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American Catholic Hey Christian Doctor, Call The Bearded […]
“…alarmists never respond to…”
And they won’t respond because it’s a hoax and they know it’s a hoax and the ones leading the charge are in it for power and control. The UN. Follow the money. Yes you have the sheeple who blindly follow believing this stuff but their leaders? Not on your life.
The global warming hysteria is all a crock of cr… Check out Tony Heller of realclimatescience.com. He’s got it sorted – CO2 is just fine; Methane does not accumulate, it breaks down into its elements: the USA has been much hotter in the past 150 years than it has been recently. Check his blog – he lives in Arizona (I think) but his analyses and pronouncements are irrefutable.
Quite right Don. This is a cult like scam which the cynics use to seize more power for the State. This has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics.
Well, no research scientist ever got fat and happy suckling off of threat of government grant money by declaring there wasn’t a problem to be solved.
33 A.D. – Man tells a group of 12 men that he will return in the clouds for all of the world to see. He says that the sun will darken, the moon will not give off light. and the stars will fall from the sky. Also, he said that some of those he was speaking to would still be alive when this all happened.
This is not meant as a mockery, just a note that every group of people has predictions that do not come true.
Saint Augustine addressed this:
But the occasion for that time will certainly not occur before the gospel is preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. For we read the perfectly clear statement of the savior on this matter, when he says, And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come (Mt 24:14). What does then the end will come mean but “it will not come before that”? When it will come after that is uncertain for us. But we certainly ought to have no doubt that it will not come before that. If, then, the servants of God undertook this labor so that they roamed the world and gathered as best they could what remained of the nations where the gospel was not yet preached, we could from this observe to some extent how far the present time is from the end of the world. If because of some inaccessible and inhospitable places it does not seem possible for the servants of God to roam the whole world and to provide reliable reports about the many great nations that are still without the gospel of Christ, still less do I think that we can grasp from the scriptures how much time there will be before the end, since we read in them, No one can know the times that the Father has established by his own authority (Acts 1:7). Hence, if we already had absolutely certain reports that the gospel was being preached in all nations, we still could not say how much time remained before the end, but we would be correct to say that it is now coming closer and closer. Perhaps someone might reply that the Roman peoples and many barbarians came to hear the preaching of the gospel with such great speed and that some of them have been converted to the faith of Christ, not gradually but so suddenly, that it is not incredible that in a few years, even if not in the life of those of us who are already old, but surely in that of the young who will reach old age, all the remaining nations can have the gospel preached to them. But if it is to be so, it will be easier to prove it by experience after it has happened than to be able to show it from reading the scriptures before it happens.
Saint Augustine Letter 197
Donald, it’s interesting to me that Augustine has to pretend the words don’t say what they say in order to keep Jesus from being called a false prophet. Jesus specifically told his disciples that he would return in the clouds for all the world to see while some of them were still alive. In other passages he phrased it that some of them would not taste death until he returned in the clouds (again, for all to see). What you quoted from Augustine shows how utterly lacking in rigor apologetics is.
Bringing back around to the topic at hand, you mock the various predictions that were made because they did not come true. Each one had certain criteria that had to be met within a certain timeframe. A few have qualifications like the one that says famine in 10 years if we don’t give up fish and meat. Jesus repeatedly listed criteria that had to be met, a timeframe they were to occur, and added no qualifications. Augustine added qualifications and ignored the criteria to be met and the timeframe.
What good is a prophecy if we can ignore the aspects that make up the prophecy?
What good is a prophecy if we can create from whole cloth what the prophecy means and ignore the actual meaning of the words used?
What good is a prophecy when we can’t say when it has or has not been fulfilled?
Finally, Deuteronomy 18:22 says that if a prophet has even one false prophecy then he is not of God. By the Bible’s own reckoning we are to ignore Jesus.
Fr. Dr. George C. Haydock says regarding Matthew 16:28:
“Some expound this, as fulfilled at his transfiguration, which follows in the next chapter. Others understand it of the glory of Christ, and of his Church, after his resurrection and ascension, when he should be owned for Redeemer of the world: and this state of the Christian Church might be called the kingdom of Christ.”
The NABRE has a footnote that says:
Coming in his kingdom: since the kingdom of the Son of Man has been described as “the world” and Jesus’ sovereignty precedes his final coming in glory (Mt 13:38, 41), the coming in this verse is not the parousia as in the preceding but the manifestation of Jesus’ rule after his resurrection; see notes on Mt 13:38, 41.
The NABRE footnotes on Matthew 13:38 & 41 say:
[13:38] The field is the world: this presupposes the resurrection of Jesus and the granting to him of “all power in heaven and on earth” (Mt 28:18).
[13:41] His kingdom: the kingdom of the Son of Man is distinguished from that of the Father (Mt 13:43); see 1 Cor 15:24–25. The church is the place where Jesus’ kingdom is manifested, but his royal authority embraces the entire world; see note on Mt 13:38.
Therefore, the conflict apparent in the statement by Mike O’Leary does not exist – one must carefully understand what Jesus was talking about instead of taking a too literal view. The sun darkening, the moon not giving off light and the stars falling from the sky speak figuratively of the dissolution of the authority of the pagan Roman gods giving way to the authority of the Body of Christ, the Church. And that culminated in AD 313 with Constantine’s Edict of Milan. The old gods fell from the sky, as it were, and Apollo god of the sun and Artemis goddess of the moon were no more.
Donald, it’s interesting to me that Augustine has to pretend the words don’t say what they say in order to keep Jesus from being called a false prophet.
Not at all. The words of Christ have to be read in pari materia. As quoted by Saint Augustine, Christ clearly said that the Second Coming would only come after the Gospel was preached throughout the entire world. Christians have understood this passage to mean precisely that, and hence the strong missionary effort of the Church throughout the ages.
Lucius, we’re talking about Matthew 24. In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus gave a series of signs that would occur just before Jesus appeared in the clouds when ALL would mourn. The generation would not pass away until that occurred. Since that generation passed away and those events did not occur it is a false prophecy.
Now you tried to explain away some of the signs by going straight into poetic language, but that brings us back to the questions I asked at the end of my reply to Donald: What good is a prophecy if we can create from whole cloth what the prophecy means and ignore the actual meaning of the words used? What good is a prophecy when we can’t say when it has or has not been fulfilled?
Imagine if we applied that same standard to other prophecies. Someone predicts that the prime minister of Canada will die in 2020. At the end of 2020 he’s still very much alive. By allowing for the most tenuous of symbolism the predictor can claim he was accurate in his position. If he resigned then it can be claimed that “die” was referring to his political career. If he gets divorced then “die” could mean his heart died. If no ill effects are linked to the prime minister, then the predictor can point to some beloved figure from Canada and say he didn’t mean the literal prime minister, but someone considered an embodiment of the people. The only limit to what can be claimed isn’t in the actual prophecy but in the chutzpah of the predictor after the fact.
We can also bring this around to the predictions listed in the header image of this post. “Oil” doesn’t mean actual oil but a purveying darkness in society. “Famine” doesn’t mean actual famine but an fulfilled craving for clarity and truth. The more one undercuts the language used in a prophecy the more the worth of the prophecy itself is undercut.
Donald, yes it says that the faith would be preached throughout the world; but he also distinctly said in the very same speech that the generation he was speaking to would not pass away before his return in the clouds for all to say would occur. Did Jesus not know that the generation he was speaking to would pass away well before the Gospel was preached to the world? Depending on how you define a generation it’s reasonable to say there have been over 100 generations since then — and still no Jesus in the sky for all to see and mourn. Yes, apologists will find various interpretations to the passages; but not based on evidence but based on having to since the words themselves describe a completely failed prophecy. What’s interesting is that there’s not an agreement as to how to interpret the passage, how to manipulate the words themselves within an inch of their lives to jam the squarest of pegs into the roundest of holes.
Have you ever seen Plan 9 From Outer Space? It’s a hoot. Anyway, it’s bookended by actual psychic The Amazing Criswell (by actual I mean he appeared on talk shows like “The Tonight Show” making predictions). Even a hack like him managed to get a few predictions right. He said on a Jack Paar special that JFK wouldn’t be running for re-election because “something” would happen to him in November 1963. He said on the New Year’s Eve 1965 Tonight Show that Ronald Reagan would be governor of California. He also said Denver would be destroyed in 1989. He also said there would be an outbreak of cannibalism in various Pennsylvania cities in 1980. The point is we treat prophecies literally so as to state definitively whether they were successful or not. Ambiguous anything-goes language does not a prophecy make.
Donald, yes it says that the faith would be preached throughout the world; but he also distinctly said in the very same speech that the generation he was speaking to would not pass away before his return in the clouds for all to say would occur.
Two separate events. Some of the people of the generation that Jesus was talking to did live to see the destruction of the Third Temple by the Romans in 70AD. Indeed, according to Josephus the Zealots began the revolt in Messianic expectations:
But their chief inducement to go to war was a equivocal oracle also found in their sacred writings, announcing that at that time a man from their country would become the ruler of the world.
–Bellum Judaicum 6.312-313
As to the Second Coming Christ explicitly stated that no man knows the date and the hour and that He would come like a thief in the night.
A good recent examination of the Olivet Discourse from a Catholic perspective is Brant Pitre’s
Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement (2006)
The point is we treat prophecies literally so as to state definitively whether they were successful or not. Ambiguous anything-goes language does not a prophecy make.
Agreed. The predictions Christ made were not in that category.
Jesus Christ crucified is before all ages, omnipresent, in the clouds after the Ascension into heaven. Christ crucified appeared to Saul of Tarsus who became St. Paul.
Jesus Christ appears again and again, to St. Faustina, to every person who accepts and believes in the Real Presence before all ages. People pray “Thy kingdom come”.
Einstein said that timelines are malleable , especially outside of time, in eternity. The infinite God is a Trinity of the Persons, The Supreme Sovereign Being, the sovereign person of the Father, the sovereign person of the Son and the sovereign person of the Holy Spirit and the gates of hell shall not prevail.