Character Witnesses Of Faith. Abel: Faith That Speaks Louder Than Sacrifice

 Hebrews 11:4 – “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain…”

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Have you ever felt unnoticed or overlooked, even when you were doing the right thing? Abel did. In a world where appearances and outward gestures often get attention, Abel reminds us that God sees the heart—and faith matters more than recognition.

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Who Was Abel?

Abel was the second son of Adam and Eve, a shepherd living in the shadow of his older brother Cain, a farmer. Though his life was simple and his role seemingly minor, Abel’s story teaches us that faith elevates ordinary acts into extraordinary worship.

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Abel’s Act of Faith

Hebrews 11 highlights what made Abel’s offering special: he brought the firstborn of his flock with the right heart, seeking to honor God rather than impress men. His faith was active, obedient, and sincere—even when no one else could see it.

• Faith in action: Offering the best, not the leftover

• Faith in principle: Trusting God’s standard, not human approval

• Faith with risk: Standing rightly while his brother chose wrongly

This faith was so genuine that God accepted Abel’s offering, but Cain’s was rejected. Tragically, Abel’s commitment led to his death at the hands of jealousy—but Hebrews 11 reminds us: “Though he died, he still speaks.”

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Lesson from Abel

Abel shows us that faith isn’t measured by size, wealth, or recognition—it’s measured by the heart. True faith honors God, not people. It may not be applauded, and sometimes it may even bring opposition—but God remembers.

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Applying Abel’s Faith Today

1. Prioritize heart over show: In work, family, or service, seek God’s approval first.

2. Offer your best: Faithful actions, even small, count for God.

3. Stand firm quietly: Don’t compromise when others take shortcuts.

Your “Abel moments” may seem unnoticed, but your faith has eternal impact. Just as Hebrews 11 says, Abel “still speaks”—his faith echoes beyond the grave.

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Reflection Box: Abel’s Character Witness

• Faith Action: Offered a pleasing sacrifice to God.

• Faith Lesson: God values sincere faith above outward appearances.

In the Shadow of Empires: Psalm 44 and the Voices of Suffering

 Earlier we looked at how the fall of Egypt at Carchemish and the rise of Babylon shaped the prophetic world of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. But there is another voice, softer yet piercing, that captures the human side of living through these events: Psalm 44.

This psalm reads like a diary of a nation in crisis — a people who remember the victories of the past but now face daily humiliation and suffering. Its words echo the tension we see in Jeremiah as the Babylonian threat looms over Jerusalem and Judah.

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Psalm 44 and the Historical Context

Psalm 44 is not a chronological history, but when we line it up with the events Jeremiah witnessed, a pattern emerges:

Psalm 44 Theme	Corresponding Historical Event
Remembering past victories (vv.1–8)	Judah recalls the promises of God and the triumphs of earlier kings, yet contrasts them with current defeat.
National defeat and humiliation (vv.9–16)	Babylonian armies sweep through Judah, deporting nobles and craftsmen (597 BC), threatening Jerusalem and temple worship.
Scattering among nations (v.11)	Early deportations, captives taken to Babylon; Jeremiah sees the exiles leaving their homeland.
Daily suffering, oppression (vv.12–16)	Hunger, fear, and public shame under the shadow of foreign power.
Protest of innocence (vv.17–22)	Judah’s faithful remnant cries out: they have not abandoned God, yet judgment still comes — echoing Jeremiah’s lament for a people suffering despite covenant faithfulness.
Plea for God’s intervention (vv.23–26)	A cry for rescue and redemption, a hope that mirrors Jeremiah’s visions of restoration (Jeremiah 29:4–14; Jerimiah 32).

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What This Teaches Us

Psalm 44 is powerful because it captures the experience of God’s people under duress:

• Faithful suffering: They are not rebelling, yet feel crushed.

• Covenant awareness: They remember God’s promises and their identity as His people.

• Hope in crisis: Even in humiliation, the psalmist calls for God to act.

When read alongside Jeremiah, we see the human side of prophecy — the fear, the protest, the faithful persistence in hope.

In the Shadow of Empires: Studying Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel

 If you want to understand the prophetic books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, it helps to step back and look at the world they were living in.

These men were not writing in quiet times. They were prophesying in the middle of collapsing governments and rising world powers.

In 605 BC, at the decisive Battle of Carchemish, Egypt fell and Babylon rose. What looked like political news was, in reality, the turning of a page in God’s redemptive timeline.

That single transfer of power shaped:

• The warnings of Jeremiah

• The visions of Ezekiel

• The captivity and court scenes of Daniel

Jeremiah prophesied as Jerusalem trembled.
Ezekiel saw visions from exile.
Daniel stood inside the very empire God had raised up.

None of this was random.

Daniel would later say that God “removes kings and sets up kings.” That wasn’t theology in a classroom — it was history unfolding before his eyes.

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Why Background Matters

When we study these books without their historical setting, they can feel disconnected — a collection of warnings, visions, and symbols.

But when we understand that they were written during the rise and fall of empires, something becomes clearer:

God governs the transfer of world power.

Empires appear permanent.
They are not.
They rise.
They fall.
And the Word of God continues.

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A Brief Thought Toward Revelation

Without trying to settle every prophetic detail, it is worth noting something.

When Revelation 17 speaks of successive kings and an eighth that rises (Rev. 17:11), this could be seen not as an isolated mystery, but as the continuation of a biblical pattern already present in the prophets.

Jeremiah saw one empire fall and another rise.
Ezekiel prophesied under foreign rule.
Daniel was shown a sequence of kingdoms that would come and go.

Revelation does not introduce the idea that God governs empires — it brings that theme to completion.

That observation is not meant to force a system, but to encourage study. Scripture often builds forward. Later revelation assumes earlier foundations.

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An Invitation

If you want to study prophecy well, start here:

• Read Jeremiah with Babylon in view.

• Read Ezekiel knowing he is speaking from exile.

• Read Daniel remembering he lived inside the empire he described.

Then, when you come to Revelation, you are not stepping into unfamiliar territory. You are seeing a pattern reach its climax.

The kingdoms of men rise and fall.

The kingdom of God does not.

And that is a thread worth tracing from beginning to end.

Dead Men Who's Influences Are Still With Us Today Episode 10

 

1️⃣ Kierkegaard as the Father of Existential Emphasis

Breese presents Kierkegaard as a major influence behind modern existentialism — the shift toward:

• Subjective experience

• Personal inwardness

• Individual decision

• The “leap” of faith

Kierkegaard reacted strongly against:

• Dead orthodoxy

• Cultural Christianity

• State-church complacency

Breese recognizes that critique had force.

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2️⃣ Where Breese Raises Concern

The issue, in Breese’s view, is what happened after Kierkegaard.

When faith becomes heavily centered on:

Individual inward experience

It can drift toward:

• Relativism

• Anti-rationalism

• “Truth for me” thinking

• Emotionalism detached from objective revelation

Breese suggests that while Kierkegaard intended to defend authentic Christianity, later thinkers used existential categories to detach truth from fixed authority.

In other words:

Kierkegaard aimed at awakening faith.
Later movements sometimes weakened doctrinal certainty.

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3️⃣ Tone Toward Kierkegaard

Breese’s tone here is more respectful and complex.

He tends to portray Kierkegaard as:

• Intellectually serious

• Spiritually earnest

• Reacting to real spiritual decay

But he views the existential turn as opening the door to modern subjectivism.

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4️⃣ The Broader Pattern Breese Sees

Across the three:

• Wellhausen → Scripture becomes historical development

• Keynes → Economics becomes managed engineering

• Kierkegaard (as received later) → Truth becomes internalized experience

Different disciplines.

Similar underlying move:
From objective external authority
To Me centered interpretation or management.

Breese’s concern is not conspiracy — it’s philosophical drift.

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5️⃣ And Here’s the Careful Balance

It’s worth noting:

• Kierkegaard himself defended core Christian doctrines.

• He was not a liberal theologian in the modern sense.

• Many conservative Christians still value his insights.

Breese critiques the trajectory more than the man’s heart.

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Now here’s something I think you’ll appreciate.

The earlier comment about an “invisible hand” guiding intellectual development — Breese’s argument is actually subtler:

He would say ideas share common soil.
When culture shifts its starting point (authority, revelation, transcendence), thinkers in different fields reflect that shift independently.

Not coordinated.
But connected by presupposition.

That’s less mystical — and more philosophical.

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Dead Men Who's Influences Are Still With Us Today Episode 9

 In Seven Men Who Rule the World from the Grave, Breese treats John Maynard Keynes not primarily as an economist, but as a shaper of modern assumptions about money, government, and man's responsibility.

Here’s the pattern of how he presents him:

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1️⃣ Keynes as a Shift in Economic Philosophy

Breese argues that Keynes represents a turning point from:

• Economic restraint → managed stimulus

• Balanced budgets → deficit spending

• Market correction → government intervention

• Moral economics → technocratic economics

In Breese’s view, Keynes normalized the idea that governments could:

• Spend beyond their means

• Use debt strategically

• Manage economies through centralized policy

Breese sees that as more than economics — he sees it as a philosophical shift about authority and accountability.

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2️⃣ Tone Toward Keynes

Like with Wellhausen, Breese does not portray Keynes as evil or foolish.
He portrays him as:

• Brilliant

• Influential

• Culturally catalytic

But also as someone whose ideas carried unintended moral consequences.

Breese tends to emphasize:

• Keynes’ confidence in elite management

• His dismissal of long-term consequences (“In the long run we are all dead”)

• His belief that economic structures could be engineered

Breese interprets that famous line as symptomatic of a mindset that prioritizes immediate relief over enduring moral order.

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3️⃣ The Larger Concern

Breese connects Keynes to a broader 20th-century move:

From:

Self-discipline and providence

To:

System-management and state dependency

He suggests that once economic order becomes detached from moral law, it becomes subject to political manipulation.

In Breese’s framework, Keynes becomes emblematic of:

• The technocratic confidence of modernity

• Faith in systems over character

• Management over stewardship

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4️⃣ Important Context

To keep balance:

• Keynes was responding to the Great Depression — a real crisis.

• Many mainstream economists still credit him with stabilizing economies.

• Debate continues between Keynesian and free-market schools.

Breese writes from a clear Christian worldview lens, so his evaluation is moral-theological, not purely economic.

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5️⃣ It's almost as if an  “invisible hand” 

 not in a conspiratorial sense, but in an uncanny philosophical continuity.

Breese’s point across these men Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Julius Wellhausen, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, and Soren Kierkegaard. is not that they collaborated.

It’s that:

• They shared modern assumptions.

• Those assumptions weakened transcendence.

• Those ideas filtered into institutions.

Wellhausen reshaped how people read Scripture.
Keynes reshaped how people view money and authority.

Different fields. Similar philosophical confidence in people's management thinking.

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Get the book HERE 7 Men Who Role The World From The Grave

Dead Men Who's Influences Are Still With Us Today Episode 8

In David Breese's book "7 Men Who Rule The World From The Grave" portrays Wellhausen as a key architect of modern higher criticism, especially through the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP theory).

According to Breese:

• Moses did not write the Pentateuch.

• The Torah developed gradually from competing religious traditions.

• Israel’s religion evolved from primitive to advanced forms.

Breese frames this as a major shift from:

Revelation → to religious evolution
Divine authorship → to man's compilation

In his view, that shift had enormous downstream consequences.

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2️⃣ Tone Toward Wellhausen

The book is not biographical or sympathetic in tone — he’s analytical and critical.

He sees Wellhausen as:

• Intellectually influential

• Historically consequential

• Theologically damaging

But not as malicious. More as a scholar whose presuppositions shaped his conclusions.

Breese’s argument is that once the Bible is treated primarily as a man made religious document rather than revelation, the foundation shifts.

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3️⃣ The Larger Point Breese Makes

Wellhausen isn’t treated in isolation.

Breese connects him to a broader intellectual movement that:

• Replaced supernatural explanation with natural development

• Reframed Scripture as literature rather than revelation

• Influenced seminaries and theological institutions

In other words, Wellhausen becomes symbolic of a larger trend:

The move from “Thus saith the Lord”
to “Thus evolved the tradition.”

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4️⃣ Where It Intersects With My Interest

Given my concern about:

• Bible-doubting footnotes

• Source-critical frameworks

• The invisible intellectual thread

Breese would argue that Wellhausen represents a key node in that network — not because he worked with the others directly, but because ideas travel beyond their originators.

That’s part of what feels “uncanny” to you:
Different men Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Julius Wellhausen, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, and Soren Kierkegaard, different countries — but similar philosophical soil.

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5️⃣ Important Balance

It’s worth noting:
Modern scholarship has revised, nuanced, and in some cases moved beyond classic Wellhausen-style JEDP. Even secular scholars debate it.

So Breese presents a clear theological critique, but it’s also helpful to remember that academic discussion has continued to evolve.

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Get the book HERE 7 Men Who Role The World From The Grave

Dead Men Who's Influences Are Still With Us Today Episode 5

 

Karl Marx: Putting the Engine to Work

"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." — 1 Timothy 6:10

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Introduction: From Philosophy to Practice

In the previous post, we looked at how Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel redefined truth as a process driven by conflict. His ideas were abstract, philosophical, and easy for many to dismiss as impractical.

Karl Marx proved otherwise.

Marx took Hegel’s method and applied it to everyday life. If Hegel built the engine, Marx put it on the ground and taught the masses how to use it. What had been philosophy became economic ideology, and what had been theory became revolution.

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Marx in Plain Terms

Marx taught that all of human history is driven by class struggle. Society, he argued, is divided between those who own the means of production and those who do not. Every institution—family, religion, government—exists primarily to protect the interests of the ruling class.

In Marx’s worldview:

• Man is defined by labor

• Morality is shaped by economics

• Religion is a tool of control

Truth, like in Hegel’s system, is not fixed. It advances through conflict—this time between classes.

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The Biblical Collision

Scripture does not deny injustice or oppression. But it locates the root problem not in economics, but in the human heart.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." — Jeremiah 17:9
"From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" — James 4:1

Marx externalized the problem. The Bible internalizes it.

Where Marx says systems corrupt man, Scripture says sinful man corrupts systems.

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Why Marx Had to Reject God

Marx did not merely criticize religion; he had to remove it.

If God exists:

• Moral law is fixed

• Human value is inherent

• Justice transcends class

Marxism cannot tolerate those truths. To make conflict the engine of history, there can be no higher authority to appeal to—only power.

This is why Marx famously dismissed religion as an illusion. Not because it was ineffective, but because it stood in the way.

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How Marx Rules from the Grave Today

Marx’s influence is no longer confined to overt communism. His ideas operate quietly beneath the surface.

Culture

• People reduced to oppressor and oppressed categories

• Moral guilt assigned by group identity

Politics

• Redistribution framed as moral righteousness

• Power struggles presented as justice movements

Education

• History taught primarily as economic exploitation

• Critical theories built on class-based analysis

Many who reject Marx’s name still use his lens.

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A Human Pause

At this point, someone usually says, “But Marx cared about the poor.”

So does the Bible.

The difference is how and why.

Scripture calls for generosity, compassion, and justice—but never at the cost of truth, responsibility, or worship of God.

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Scripture’s Answer to Marx

"If any would not work, neither should he eat." — 2 Thessalonians 3:10
"Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give." — Ephesians 4:28

The biblical model produces charity without envy, justice without coercion, and compassion without resentment.

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Conclusion

Karl Marx has been dead for over a century, yet his ideas continue to shape how people understand justice, power, and inequality. He rules not by revolution alone, but by categories—by teaching people how to interpret the world.

When economic conflict becomes the primary lens for understanding life, the gospel is inevitably reduced—or replaced.

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Coming Next

Marx explained the struggle. Charles Darwin explained it away.

In the next post, we will look at how evolution redefined life itself—and why that shift was essential for the worldview Marx helped unleash.

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Get the book HERE 7 Men Who Role The World From The Grave