Last Chapter Of Acts

This blog looks at an edit in the last chapter of Acts. Along the way we look at Putin's annual press conference and problems with the USD expected in 2024. This blog ends with important app updates.

Paul's Arrival In Rome

The last chapter of acts is the story of Paul's arrival in Rome. It is the last bit of written historical narrative in the text. Understanding that chapter is not easy. Paul is recorded there as having an argument with Jews in Rome. He is also recorded as having set up a rented house where he entertained the Roman public for 2 years.

The text then seems to transition to known history of Christianity in Rome. That history is mostly silent for about 100 years. Probably because the victors at the end of that 100 year gap erased specific Church history that was displeasing to them.

Edits?

Has there been any Ananias tampering to that chapter? We only recently started answering that question, yes.

It has taken time because it is not easy to spot. We normally need either internal contradictions, or some sort of troubling context in order to spot edits by Ananias. That chapter does not exhibit the common problems.

It is a historical story, so there are no obvious markers of an Ananias era edit.

But, by using a much wider context, we can spot the problem.

The chapter itself quotes Isaiah, giving us historical context. We will return to Isaiah below. We can also look backwards at Rome itself given other studies. Finally we can think about the argument Paul has with the Jews upon his arrival in Rome.

The prophetic timeline of Rome slows way down after that chapter. The split of Rome into east and west is prophetic, but comes centuries later. The Christianization of Russia is also prophetic, at around 1000 AD. Then comes the seal dates, spreading from 1579 to 1974. Those dates identify all the lost tribes. They are found as mostly European countries, all are heirs of the Roman heritage in various ways.

The key tribe to consider for unpacking that last chapter of acts is the lost tribe of Judah, the modern nation of Russia.

Russia (bibletribes.org)

One of the problems with understanding the Jews in the Bible is to think that they are a lost tribe from the Bible. This was absolutely the hardest point to cut through as I was working on study that is now the Bible Tribes website.

The link above is to the index of the articles that explain how to identify modern Russia as the lost tribe of Judah. (That site is currently formatted for phones. It will get an update to the layout here soon.)

Identifying Russia using a date is part of a long series of dates that identify all the tribes. This was so outside of anything I'd ever heard in the church world that it took many weeks to work out that last tribe's modern identity.

Modern Russia formed around the founding of the House of Romanov in 1612. Itself on a prophetic date as explained in the articles linked above.

The tribal name, Judah, belongs to Russia alone. It has been taken by a different group, a group called Jews. Members of that group is whom Paul deals with in the last chapter of Acts. The first point is that they tend to take what does not belong to them, including the tribal name.

Benjamin (bibletribes.org)

Modern Israel is not out of the story. The same seal date strategy for finding the other tribes identifies Israel. A document signed outside of Cairo in early 1974 identifies Israel as the lost tribe of Benjamin.

An important memory peg for this is to think of the number of national leaders of modern Israel who have had the name Ben. Netanyahu is but the most recent example. When you hear of headlines out of Israel, think 'Ben.' With that you are a long way to understanding who is speaking.

Benjamin is currently at war in Gaza, for example. Also note that Benjamin's mother died in childbirth when he was born. Stated briefly, a son of trouble.

Who Are Jews?

So what, or who, are the Zionist Jews? Are they lost members of the tribe of Benjamin? Still not in their place? Or are they something else?

By religious practices Jews are formally the creation of Ezra. They were gathered from the Babylonian world of Ezra's time. Babylon was not a primary location of the lost tribes, though it may have been a layover place in route to Europe. The modern seal dates cluster in Europe, suggesting Europe was colonized at, or soon after, the time of the Assyrian Deportation.

But, if not an addition, Jews were also causing trouble for King Zedekiah in Jeremiah's day. See Jeremiah 38:19, where king Zedekiah is afraid of the Jews who are in his kingdom. By the grammar of that passage you can see the king, who is himself an heir of David, is NOT a Jew. Zedekiah is both afraid of Jews and afraid of Babylonians.

To King Zedekiah the Jews were some sort of faction that had influence over his office. That influence created the fear that Zedekiah had for doing what the prophet Jeremiah was advising.

So from that passage in Jeremiah, Jews represent people in opposition to the things of god, and able to prevent people from listening to real prophetic. We see this in the modern American Christian church even today.

Esther is another place where we see Jews fighting others in similar ways. The most notable enemy of the Jews of the time was evil Haman. This is the same pattern as in Jeremiah. In Esther's case, of course, Haman lost. Haman is the fundamental lesson about how it is not possible to use Jewish practices against Jews. This includes political power, law, or weapons, or anything like that. None of that works. It never will.

Finally, a careful read of the accounts of Passion week will show how the Jews of Joshua's day could and did exercise control over the local Roman governor. They threatened Rome against that governor, suggesting they had sway over Caesar himself in Rome.

It does not take long with nearly any alternative media to spot discussions about how the Neocons control the US Congress. Neocon is a polite term for Zionists, and thus Jews along with their friends.

So the modern practice of exercising power over those who occupy the seat of government is the same as seen in many places in the text.

Who Are They Again?

For more flavor on this, consider Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. There we can read about how there is a people who call themselves Jews, but are not. Importantly this idea is repeated 2 times.

In normal church circles, this is interpreted as some sort of faction within Jews. There certainly are such factions. Many Jews, to their credit, are very much against Israeli genocide against people living in Gaza.

But once you get that the tribe of Judah is Russia, then that passage in Revelation makes more sense. Everyone who calls themselves a Jew is not from Judah. They call themselves from Judah, but are not.

Jews are not heirs of the patriarch Judah, son of Jacob. The tribal name Judah belongs to Russia, and Russians, only.

Glimmers of this idea sometimes show up in the alternative media as other logically reasoning people come to the same or similar conclusion. Often the path they take to reach those conclusions is done not using the Bible at all.

Extinguish Supremacy (unz.com)

The link here is a recent article on unz.com that gives a politically incorrect assessment of Jewish influence in the west. In particular this article mentions recent headlines in Poland involving a Menorah as but 1 example.

This article frames the Jewish supremacy in the west as having been caused by events in World War II. As such, this is something that should come to a close along with the rest of the patterns of the post WWII era. We need to keep watching for that, but since this is much older it may or may not end soon.

That article also mentions polling data of young Americans. If that polling data is correct, the point made in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 is not lost on young Americans.

Roman Split

OK, so returning to Russia. Understanding Russia better helps solidify our general understanding of the Lost Tribes. 2 of the tribes, Judah and Joseph, are the leaders of the tribes.

London, so the English speaking world, is the traditional capital of Joseph. Constantinople, originally speaking Greek, was the traditional eastern capital of Judah. These were the survivors of Rome on the east, just as London was the survivor of Rome on the west.

In our day, the functioning capitals of these 2 tribes are Washington DC for Joseph on the west, and Moscow for Judah on the east. The same old split between north and south in the OT narrative exists in the East-West split of today.

Another important memory peg for understanding this split is to use gender. Joseph, with his erection on the mall in Washington DC, is the husband. Judah, with her breasts atop Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is the wife.

Like husband and wife they are different, and need to learn to understand each other. They each speak and think differently, they have different priorities.

The Russian language is also interesting. The Russian alphabet was stabilized only in the past 150 years. Because Russia was isolated on the eastern edge of Europe, the Russian language developed independently of the languages of western Europe.

Russian is thus hard to translate into English in real time. Many words have idiomatic meaning that do not exactly translate word-for-word.

Religiously, the people who are now Russians broke from Rome about 1500 years ago. From their perspective, the west broke from the Roman Christian tradition. From their perspective, Russia is the rightful heir to that tradition, not Catholics nor later Protestants.

Russians practice a form of Christianity that represents that of Rome about 1500 years ago. So nearly all changes between the Christianity of Western Europe and of Russia is drift on the Western European side. The driving forces of that are likely related to the edit in the last chapter of Acts.

So to be well educated in the inspired text of the Bible means you have some working understanding of Russia and her history. One immediate way to do this is by watching the annual press conferences of Russia's president Putin. He normally does this once a year, but has not done this since the start of war in Ukraine. He has finally returned to that practice.

Putin's 2023 Press Conference (youtube.com)

These annual events demonstrate Putin has personal intellectual coverage of a myriad list of problems in Russia. Americans have no political equivalent.

The last American leader to match Putin in this way was probably US President Reagan, before dementia took over his body. Vivek and RFK Jr are similar, but they are both unlikely to ever reach high office.

These press conferences are translated in real time. Putin is speaking extemporaneously so there is no script. As you listen to it you can learn about the problems of translation, not just the cultural differences between Russia and the USA. Translators are swapped out frequently. The Aramaic/Greek translation process appears to have been similarly sloppy.

The other piece that you see Putin practicing in Russia is a great deal of respect for the proper functioning of the Russian Parliament and for his deep respect of the law. These are things unseen from anyone in power in Washington DC, which makes watching Putin at work so very strange to western audiences.

Times to Note

The press conference itself was held on Thursday, December 14, 2023. The video runs 4 hrs and 16 minutes. Most of it covers domestic issues, so interesting if you are unfamiliar with Russia as a unique culture. I have only had time to watch the first 2 hours.

0:32:30+ is when Putin takes a question and begins to explain the Russian side of the war in Ukraine. This is a 'special military operation' and not formal war in some legal sense in Russia. You can tell from earlier answers that Ukraine is not front-and-center to daily life in Russia. This is very different to the central nature of that war in Washington DC. In the USA the Ukraine war is fundamentally a war of aggression to solve a banking/currency problem.

In any case you can hear Putin's exasperation over the west's unfaithfulness when dealing with Ukraine and Russia. You can hear him explain how the Europeans have essentially lost sovereignty. He talks about the American 'elite' who are Jones' globalists or our Zionist, Neocons, or more precisely Paul's Jews in the last chapter of Acts.

Conquering the world is not a respectful goal. Putin hopes something happens domestically to cause change in America to make America a better partner in the world.

0:50:30+ Putin answers questions on Gaza. You can see how he is mostly ignoring the issues there. I suspect that outside of the battle lines in Ukraine he is simply waiting for the west to collapse. More on that below.

End of the Plagues

As a reminder, at the end of the plagues on Egypt, those departing, lead by Moses, plunder the Egyptians of their gold and silver. This is undated and did not replay in an obvious way during the 2008 financial crisis.

Joseph, so these days the US/UK and conquered vassals of Europe, represent Egypt. This because Joseph the man became Prime Minister of Egypt when he went there 430+ years ahead of the Exodus.

So the name Joseph is always in some sense synonymous with Egypt. Joseph becomes the Northern Kingdom later on, never really able to subdue the tribe of Judah in the south. Joseph's brother is Benjamin, so the modern Jews as a nation are most closely associated with Joseph, not Judah.

Russia, of course, being the modern heirs of Judah, is outside of Joseph. So Putin is currently the best candidate for being prophetic Moses on the world stage. So Putin should be successful in plundering Joseph of his gold. The modern expression of this must involve currencies and their values in some way.

The BRICS nations have been working on an alternative financial system. This became acute at the start of the war in Ukraine when the west sanctioned Russia and confiscated Russian assets under control of western bankers. Another point, central banking as an industry has been controlled by Jewish interests for a very long time. The Rothschilds, translated as Red Shield, are but the best example.

Russia's response was obvious to predict. Russia simply shifted away from using USD in international trade. So western bankers could not tax through interest nor otherwise control that trade.

Putin in the news conference linked above gives their national statistics on this. Russia has seriously reduced the use of the USD in international trade. Remember, for every product crossing an international border, there must be an equal and opposite movement of money.

Simply put, sanctioning Russia backfired in the faces of the western bankers.

So how does this map to plundering Egypt of gold and silver? Let me sketch out what might happen by turning to the same problem from the American side.

2024 Financial Disaster (kingworldnews.com)

The big financial news since the start of the war in Ukraine has been the US Federal Reserve's raising of interest rates. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, has repeatedly said he has been raising rates to reduce domestic inflation. That is nonsense. Powell is a politician, and lies just like all the other Neocons.

Interest rates are always raised during times of war in order to stop the domestic economy from building capital assets. Vehicles and real property like houses, factories and machinery are the best examples. Stopping the public from buying imports is another purpose of raising rates. Raising rates draws investors and thus foreign currency into the war time economy. Ultimately raising rates frees up resources to conduct war.

So Powell has been the face of war time raising of rates. His most recent rate increase was in December, 2023. But, and most important, he also said that he would be REDUCING rates next year. Read the above linked article for specifics.

This is very big news. Either Powell is hinting that the war is ending, or else we are reaching the end of USD as the world's reserve currency. Perhaps both. When the USD is no longer used in international trade, prophetic Egypt will have been plundered of her gold and her silver.

Without debt provided financing, the dream of greater Israel, so rebuilding Benjamin, also becomes much harder to attain. Funding an extensive war in the Middle East will also be harder to do.

What This Means

When the USD looses its reserve currency status the public might not immediately notice. Everything within a country is priced in that currency. All labor, all products made in the USA are still priced in USD.

When foreigners flee any currency, the exchange rates start to shift in favor of other currencies. Products imported from other economies will then become increasingly more expensive.

Egyptians give up their gold, to those who are departing, to use the prophetic expression.

Will this happen in 2024? As the linked article above suggests? We will see. It might make a real difference in 2025 when we start reaching the end of the prophetic intervals from World War II.

OK, so the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, the occupation of Europe by the Americans through NATO, and interest rates are all expressions of the same thing. The lost tribes are having a family spat, and the Jews are fighting everywhere to control the levers of government.

These are the same people we are reading about in the last chapter of Acts. I have reviewed enough that we can look again at that chapter.

Last Chapter of Acts (BRB)

Ryan and I reread this chapter recently. We asked ourselves, Has there been any tampering of this chapter? If so, What would it be?

Asked differently, did Ananias have some motive for making a change? Is there something that would advance his nefarious interests in his NT rewrite?

To answer these questions we looked for the strongest parts of a passage, and then work out from there.

The heart of this chapter appears to be a quote in Acts 28:26-27 which is taken from Isaiah 6:9-10. Paul writes that Isaiah spoke against "your fathers" in that passage.

Who are the fathers that Isaiah was addressing in Isaiah's time?

Isaiah was the prophet of record at the time of the Assyrian deportation. All the tribes of the northern kingdom were hauled away. All the tribes of the southern kingdom, except a few refugees behind the wall of Jerusalem, were also hauled away. So all the tribes were hauled away in Isaiah's day.

Isaiah is recording the miracle that few survived inside the wall. He was also writing about why everyone else was hauled away.

The miracle of surviving the Assyrians rests in the fact that only a remnant was saved in Isaiah's day. The threats by the Assyrian commander against Jerusalem were real and serious. Everyone else was gone. Only a handful remained. It made no sense that even a remnant might survive.

Isaiah is writing so that future readers would know that the people under covenant at the Exodus had broken their side of the covenant and so lost their historical lands.

Calendar Support

Note well, the calendar of Rome, the 'AUC' calendar, clocks from the arrival of those refugees at the mouth of the Po river in what would become the city of Rome. Rome began in year 1 on that calendar, about 753 BC. There were calendar corrections that were settled by the year 5 AD. The Russians still use that calendar for religious observations. The link above goes through all the specifics of the Roman calendar.

Those ancient refugees from the Assyrians started measuring time from their landing after that deportation.

Paul Was Where?

Isaiah was writing about the people who would become the Rome where Paul arrived as written in the last chapter of Acts.

Paul knows this.

This is the highest level literary purpose of that chapter. He has finally arrived at the capital of all of the Lost Tribes. He is using the words of Isaiah again. He is using them against the same people of Isaiah's day.

With this insight, it is pretty easy to spot Ananias' big edit. Ananias must hide the tribal identity of Rome. He must again usurp that identity to advance the cause of his Jews.

How is this done in that chapter? By giving Paul interactions with the Jews of Rome ahead of that Isaiah quote.

You can look how we currently have the text grayed out. It looks like Paul was going to Rome to interact with Romans, not Jews. It explains how he was given a house of his own with a guard. Then he interacted with Romans. In that interaction he found out what trouble the Romans were. He found out for himself why they were deported to Rome.

Paul then quotes Isaiah as expressing what he'd found in that Roman culture.

Paul then goes on to rent a public house for 2 years where he can conduct public meetings with Romans in that city. In those 2 years he plants the seeds that would grow into Christianity. Of course with Jewish edits to the text.

First Chapter of Acts (BRB)

As a footnote to this story, back up to Acts chapter 1. Verses 6 through 9 are in green, so Joshua's voice. As I write this they are grayed out because of other problems in that passage.

But the passage hangs around a question about the restoration of the ancient kingdom. By the time that question is asked, the ancient kingdom had been restored. It was called Rome.

In the answer given in that passage there is a progression about how Joshua's disciples would spread out around the world.

That story gives a specific order. 1) In Jerusalem. 2) In Judah. 3) In the House of Samaria. 4) To the end of the land.

Jerusalem is obvious. The same city we know now. Judah is the territory around Jerusalem by geography. The ancient tribe had given the land a name. Then that tribe had departed. The land retained that name. This is not a tribal statement but a geographical statement.

The 'house of Samaria' reference in that first chapter now becomes a reference to Joseph. Joseph's ancient capital was in Samaria, but it became the city of Rome when the text of Acts was written.

So this first chapter of Acts reference would thus be a reference to Rome. Finally, at the end of Acts 1:9 it says the testimony would be to the ends of the earth. This is what we've seen in the past 500 years. Of course without the right book. But, that Joshua exists has been testified to in every place.

Paul's arrival in Rome at the end of Acts would be the logical book-end to what was started in Acts 1.

App Deploys This Week

Ryan has continued with adding poetry related formatting to the text used in the BRB. See the minor prophets, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. This change is dramatically better than unformatted poetry.

The clock app, (clock.paleo.in) and the calendar app, (cal.paleo.in) have both been deployed this week. Both have a new 'Theme' option instead of the old lighting option. On install or update they will follow the device theme unless told otherwise using the theme popup.

Both apps have new progress bar related code. You will see that code run in future updates. The bar begins moving as soon as downloads of new files begin. The bar reaches the right edge at download complete. At that point the app restarts.

These 2 apps are very small. Downloads are very fast. Updates happen even faster. So in these 2 apps, the progress bar is usually just a flash, if that.

This once worked perfectly in the old app-cache days. In our current apps the progress bar generally runs late, something I have long considered a design bug, now fixed. As updates happen in the future, progress bars will once again perfectly mark real progress.

By a quirk of the design, when apps restart after a download, they must check again against the server to make sure the server wasn't updated during the download. This causes a slight pause during restarts.

New Build

These are built and deployed on the new build system. They have an updated runtime library. They use a newly written service-worker. The service-worker is what makes them able to run offline. The web server is configured differently for the new service-worker. Install related art is now never included in the service-worker itself, this to save download size by skipping unneeded artwork.

By not including all possible install related art, it becomes possible to provide many more extreme versions of install related artwork. As far as I can tell, all Apple related hardware is now provided with specific artwork. Future scripture apps will do the same.

Laptop, Android and iPad installs seem to work and update correctly. On Macs the normal Safari browser runs our apps OK. But, it is missing the ability to install web apps to the desktop. Use the Brave browser instead if you want to install web apps to the Mac desktop. We don't know anyone with an iPhone to test there.

I will be monitoring both of these apps for any bugs we may have missed in test. If you see anything strange please let me know. The scripture apps will be moved to this new system soon.

I need to make sure these first 2 apps work OK before releasing the other apps. Some service worker related bugs can theoretically require manual uninstalling and reinstalling. I am trying very carefully to avoid this class of problem.

I am now turning my attention to the big websites. These do not need service worker code, so they are less trouble to test. More on that work soon.

Merry Christmas, More Later,

Phil