What about the Pygmies?

 What about the Pygmies?

By Richard P. Joseph

6/8/2025

Just search the internet or engage in social media and there is a prophet on every corner (or page).  Ever since I was a kid I listened to preachers documenting the “End Times” in fake time.  Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan, Anwar Satat and just about every other world leader was named as the antiChrist and every war in Europe, or the Middle East was a sure harbinger of the second advent of Christ. 

And most of this comes from the Western Christianized countries.  Everything is interpreted from our point of view.  Whether it is famines, earthquakes, wars, treaties, military movements, presidents or kings, they are all interpreted from the Western point of view.  But what about the Pygmies?

There are a few different tribes of Pygmies in Africa and Asia but I never hear their interpretation of scripture.  Is their view less valid than ours?  Why is our perspective more important than theirs?  Or, I remember when I got my first Air Force assignment and was sent to Anchorage, Alaska.  The first night we got there we were sleeping and got rocked out of bed by an earthquake.  This was something new to a guy from Michigan.  I suppose I could have ran out in the streets and cried “the Lord is coming”.  That would have been just as valid as the preacher proclaiming it from the pulpit.  In fact there was a volcano during our stay in Alaska.  The eruption spewed tons of ash into the atmosphere blocking the sun for days.  This also could have been interpreted as a sign of the second coming.  Why not?  Which perspective is correct, or are all of them correct?  That is why my article called “Who, what, when, where, why” is probably my most useful article.  It is an article that explains the basics of biblical hermeneutics.  

Hermeneutics is very important.  Back in 1983 I got on one knee and proposed to my girlfriend.  She must have been crazy cuz she said yes.  Then we did nothing for several thousand years and other people found out that we were engaged and they started predicting that someday we would be married to other people on the other side of the earth!  That might sound a little ludicrous but that is exactly what our pastors have been preaching.  The truth was, we got married a few months later and lived happily ever after (except when I get her mad).  We proceeded to have six kids and now have multiple grandchildren.  When I proposed it was me proposing to her (who), in 1983 (when), in Temperance, Michigan (where), on my knee (how), because I loved her (why), to be married (what).  I never proposed to anyone thousands of years later but in a thousand years my offspring will be a testimony of what happened way back in 1983.  My most fervent prayer is that the Holy Spirit move through all of my future generations to bring them into the marvelous light of Jesus Christ.  They won’t have to keep waiting for me to marry their great great great great grandmother.  That marriage was consummated and fulfilled.   They are the very proof of that.  Our earthly mission was complete and they are part of it.  My vows of marriage were complete and it has produced fruit that many generations will enjoy.  

When Jesus and the apostles spoke of the Parousia (the visitation  of Christ) it was always in imminent language.  It always had time stamps to it.  The only valid point of view is that of those living at that time.  When they began observing those wars, earthquakes, and other social convulsions they would have been correct to interpret them as End Times events.  Those events are not ambiguous or amorphous.  They were well defined and history bears out those events in real time.  All was completed by AD 70 and we are the offspring.  We are the testimony.  We are the proof.  Jesus did not leave us orphans.  Jesus did not leave us confused.  He said what he said and did what he said.  

In other words, how did modern Western society become the spokesperson for ancient Hebrew scripture?  How come the West is more important than the Pygmies, or the Chinese, or the Eskimos or the apostles?  The only correct interpretation is from those apostles that were there at that time.  All others are frauds.