Monday 4 May 2015

Must Scams be Detected by Content?

I got a mail in the spam box, I wanted to look if it was misplaced there or some kind of scam. The latter was the case.

“I am S.P., currently undergoing medical treatment for cancer Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML). I was married to Late Dr. C. P. who worked with Woodside Petroleum Limited (Australia) for 23years before he died in the year 2013.” …


So far the content could theoretically be licit. It could be the one time in a thousand or in a million that such an offer with such a story was by the person named and serious.

However, we can look at other details:

Under signature we get a mail adress ending in:

… @yahoo.com.hk [HK = Hong Kong]

I click to see the full heading:

Return-Path: < myynti@finnparttia.fi > [FI = Finland]

OK, HK and FI are not exactly same place, are they?

Received: from apolo.email4business.info ([79.143.181.232])

I looked this up so I got:

person:   Michael Herpich
address:   Contabo GmbH
address:   Aschauer Str. 32a
address:   81549 Muenchen
phone:   +49 89 21268372
fax-no:   +49 89 21665862


Now, am I not exposing a possibly innocent Michael Herpich here?

Well, if it was someone who did it behind his back, I hope he won't be putting some poor teenager into some kind of unpleasant custody for that. Besides, it is much likelier that he was acting himself (or giving orders to a juvenile) to see if I would fall for the scam, because all these opponents from Jewry I have, have decided behind my back, that if I can "fall for" Christ being Messiah, if I can "fall for" Christ having done miracles, then I can fall for (!) anything.

Well no.

Some guys think I ought to have eliminated Gospel story because of some Talmudist resuming Old Testament prophecy in such a way as to find discrepancies between the prophecy and what we rightly accept as its (or their) fulfilment, in Christ.

Such discrepancies I think I can safely dismiss as spurious. I have done work on Isaiah 11, which they bring up. Verse after verse matches what I know from Acts and other Church History about His post-resurrection reconciliation of "Judah and Ephraim" (Jerusalem and Samaria in same Church from Acts 8 on), conquest of Edom, Moab and Ammon (at 70 AD Church fleeing from Jerusalem and coming to Pella in Jordan - the three tribes of non-Israelite Hebrews have the territory of Jordan plus Sinai peninsula - did not just sit down and do nothing there, they conquered as missionaries), and the ending of Sumerian and Egyptian paganism by Christianising the lands.

Those verses follow the verse "and his sepulchre shall be glorious", which refer to His resurrection. Another match.

Another reason some guys, not quite necessarily same ones, but possibly still overlapping, say I should reject it due to content is : miracles. "We know miracles can't happen, so this can't have happened."

And some guys know miracles can't have happened because there is no evidence for them.

And some guys say (inter alia) Gospel is no evidence because it's fake. While some don't know of all post-Gospel miracles recorded by the Church and others in this category call them fake.

And some say Gospels are fake, either because Talmudists tell them Jesus can't have been the Messiah, or, because "miracles don't happen".

Whether or not any one of them is making the vicious circle all the way round, certainly some who are not making it are assuming one of the assumptions because they have been taught it as something "everyone" or "everyone who counts" or "every intelligent person" agrees on - i e as sth which they should accept without questioning.

But taken together as a team, they constitute a vicious circle in logic.

So, no, I am not rejecting Gospels due to content. What about return path?

Well, if I were a Protestant, I would have to make assumptions about the verifiable return path such that either these assumptions would invalidate the message, if Catholicism were an Imperial cult hashed together on Constantine's initiative, divorced from all Christianity before it (for instance), or I would have to do what I did when confrnted with Catholic Church as return path for Gospels, namely question the assumptions. Fortunately for me, I didn't have many such. therefore, I did reject the last lingering Protestant assumptions and convert.

It pays not to pay attention to content only, one should check the return path.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL (UB)
St Monica
4-V-2015

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