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Click image for the Iggy version audio on YouTube:

You wrote: "but if you listen carefully Bowie is admonishing her not to mess with him; he’ll ruin everything she is culturally."

Bowie is merely singing words that Iggy Pop created 6 years earlier.

And it is quite clear that Iggy was the author of the lyrics on this song - as his (the original) version includes line "Oh, Jimmy just you shut your mouth". It's on the idiot, from 1977.

Bowie merely rerecorded the song (which he wrote the music to) for Let's Dance, in part he has said because Iggy was down and out and he wanted to help him out (which the royalties undoubtably did).

See my post above for more gory details. (#110)

Bowie’s China Doll-80’s. sucked too. He went commercial. They all do.

"China Girl", the song David Bowie had a hit with in 1983, was off his album "Let's Dance". It was indeed 80's Bowie music, which some people dislike or think sucked.

But the song itself was originally released as an Iggy Pop song on his album "The Idiot", which were part of the famous Iggy Pop/David Bowie collaboration in Berlin in 1977. Like all of the songs on "The Idiot" Bowie and Pop are credited as co-authors. In practice Bowie wrote the music, and Iggy composed the words.

It's really interesting to listen to the Iggy Pop version, and realize that the Bowie version wasn't a major reworking, it was really a pretty faithful cover.

Of course the penultimate line of the song says "Oh, Jimmy just you shut your mouth." (Iggy's given name is James Ostenberg) - so Bowie changed that to "baby".

China Girl - by Iggy Pop and David Bowie

I couldn't escape this feeling
With my China girl
I'm just a wreck without
My little China girl

I'd hear her heart beating
Loud as thunder
Saw the stars crashing

I'm a mess without
My China girl
Wake up mornings
There's no China girl

I'd hear hearts beating
Loud as thunder
And I'd see stars crashing down

I'd feel tragic
Like I was Marlon Brando
When I'd look at my China girl
I could pretend that nothing
Really meant too much
When I'd look at my China girl
I'd stumble into town
Just like a sacred cow
Visions of swastikas in my head
And plans for everyone

It's in the white of my eyes
My little China girl
You shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you television
I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you men Who want to rule the world
And when I get excited
My little China girl says
"Oh, Jimmy, just you shut your mouth"
She says, "Shh"

Iggy has said the song is about a Vietnamese girl he had a brief affair with. But there is another meaning I've always read into it. Bowie and Iggy went to Berlin to get away from their respective scenes and get clean, both were heavily strung out when they went there. They hoped the strange foreign city would help them get straight and get a new perspective on things. (Which seemed to work).

At the time the most popular heroin in New York was known as "China Rock". The Dee Dee Ramone wrote the song "Chinese Rock" about it ("I'm livin' on Chinese rock, all my best things are in hock").

And so when read with this perspective, it also makes a lot of sense.

That makes sense. I hadn't thought of that. But I too appreciate the postings. It's weird that a posting about some random YouTube video will get 150 replies, but these often get almost none.

People don't like to talk about religion, even on FR I guess.

Thanks.

Revelation is interesting. Going back in time to the period when it was written circa AD 80. Babylon was already an ancient city which had arguably fallen many times (Like Troy and many other ancient cities) only to rise again.

Babylon, the capital of the Neo-Babylonian empire had fallen to the Persians 500 years earlier, in 539 BC. They had held on to rule it for a couple hundred years until Alexander the Great conquered them, in 331 BC.

The Persians eventually reconquered it, and it was part of the Parthian Empire sometime after 247 BC. It remained a part of the Persian empires for hundreds of years, until the Muslim conquests in the 7the century.

So, Babylon was a real place at the time this was written, and would have been well known to the author. Was the actual city what he was writing about?

Or, was it a bit of a code for Rome, which was persecuting Christians at the time the book was written? |

This was the interpretation of Revelation that was the one most people accepted for many years. For one thing Rome did eventually fall. Western Rome's fall is usually dated at 476 AD, but there are other popular dates.

Wikiepdia:

In 476, the Germanic barbarian king Odoacer deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in Italy, Romulus Augustulus, and the Senate sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno.

There are all sorts of differnt interpretations of whether the events described have already come to pass, or are still in the future. These different views are summarized in the Wikipedia article about Revelation:

Most Christian interpretations fall into one or more of the following categories:

• Historicism, which sees in Revelation a broad view of history;
• Preterism, in which Revelation mostly refers to the events of the apostolic era (1st century) or, at the latest, the fall of Jerusalem or the Roman Empire;
• Futurism, which believes that Revelation describes future events (modern believers in this interpretation are often called "millennialists"); and
• Idealism/Allegoricalism, which holds that Revelation does not refer to actual people or events, but is an allegory of the spiritual path and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.

Obviously if you subscribe to one of the "still in the future" interpretations then "Babylon" isn't ancient Rome, it's something else. But what exactly? Which city?

Rastafarians believe the entire Western world is "Babylon" and have incorporated these verses of Revelation deeply into their theology.

What's your view, FPO?

(The last time you posted about Revelation I opened a discussion into Martin Luther's views of it, and the changing interpretation (and even content) of the Bible over the centuries, which seemed to upset one Freeper. Which was unfortunate.)

I assume in posting these articles you are interested in discussing them? (Else why post them, I'm pretty sure ever Freeper has more direct and simple access to the Bible either in printed form or online.)

"globohomo" is short for "globalist homogenization"; NOT "globalist homosexual" as you mistakenly claim.

Definition of homogenization:
The act of making something homogenous, or the same throughout;

globohomo is the system promoted by Soros and his meddling NGOs, by the Deep State, by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum - where country must follow the same patterns, agree to the Globalist beliefs on every issue from gun control, to global warming, to abortion, to fighting "dis, mis and mal information"

These globalist policies are all pushed hard by the Obama-Biden regime. Obama-Biden is all in on globohomo. The Ukraine war is sponsored by globohomo, whose original goal was to crush Russia and force regime change so that there is no longer a superpower lying totally outside and resisting their various programs.

Zelenskyy isn't a Slav, broker. He's an Ashkanazi Jews.

Now the Askanazi have contributed a great deal to the Slavic nations, and suffered horrible wrongs, but they aren't Slavic people.

Maybe they picked up some bad habits in the last 200 years. I don't know for sure.

Yes. Which will show up in the Presidential election this year.

Also, there are a lot of "American" Jews in Israel, who have been mailing in their Dem votes for years. That's really going the way of the dinosaur.

Alex Jones has been talking about this for a decade. All the time too.

I think they aren't going to be successful. Look at the recent election results in Europe. The politicians suporting the WEF agenda are losing power all across the continent.

As for the "end is near stuff" Hal Lindsey -the author of "The Late Great Planet Earth" has been predicting the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ since 1970.

I happened to live in the same small town as him at the time it was published. He sent a copy to every post office box in town. My Mom wasn't interested, believing the whole pre-trib rapture crowd were mis-reading mis- understanding the Bible so she said I could have it if I wanted it.

That was 54 years ago!

You know what: he sold a lot of books. It was the best selling non- fiction book of the 1970s.

Sure thing.

Just make sure not to do that cheesy little trick where you talk about me in a thread using the third person as you did in this thread, above.

That's duplicitous.

The "66 Books" is the a later Protestant revision of the Bible, which has it's origins in Luther's beliefs.

The Catholic Bible has 73 books. Luther didn't agree that some of them belonged there. He put his judgement above the Synod of Hippo in 393, and the many other Early Christian conclaves that ratified the contents of the Bible. Exorcising and reordering the Bible was one of his worst acts, along with promoting vile anti-Semitism.

Thank be to God that he was restrained, in the end, from removing Revelation, as he at one point intended.

The Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Bible contains 79 books.

The Oriental Orthodox Bible contains 81 books.

So, obviously Luther is not unique in editing the books of the Bible.

Yes. I agree with you, he was a deeply flawed person.

Now the obvious rejoinder to that is "aren't we all?", and yes, certainly we all have our failings. But most of us are not trying to reform our religion. There is a degree of hubris in saying: everyone else got this wrong for at least 1,300 years, but I have the correct understanding, and will now fix it.

It is odd, to me, that the most visible artifact of his life is a new religious group that bears his name: "Lutherans". I can't help but noticing how egoistic that is.

Had I been born into the Lutheran church I'm quite sure I would have left it. Unwilling to have my beliefs encased in the name of the man (or really any man).

Most all Protestant sects trace their origin to a schism led by a particular person. But very few take their name from that person, correctly understanding that the interpreter is not the author. Seventh Day Adventists aren't "White-ists" after Edith White. Anglicans not "Henryists".

Being an egoist and a virulant anti-Semite still doesn't mean he was wrong about everything, but it causes me to look very carefully at his teachings, and to do so with a degree of heightened scepticism.

In the case of his alterations of the Bible I reject them.

It's disheartening to see that so many Bibles produced by Protestant organizations take this even further than he did (once you get to improving through editing it becomes addicting I guess) and completely drop the books that Luther dismissively termed "the Apocrapha", itself a term of diminishment.

As you please.

It is a bit odd that you commented about my post, but also say you didn't read it.

I guess that is sort of a standard practice on Free Republic among some people.

Actually it was about Revelation. Luther is arguably the most important theologian in history, at least for Protestsnt Christians.

Read what he said about Revelations, which is the core of my post.

Do you disagree? If you don't admire Luther, and think he was wrong about Revelation, then maybe reconsider his other alterations to b the Book that had been unchsnged for 1,200 years before him.

The father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, who kicked off the creation of the Protestant branch of Christianity, thought very highly of himself, and no so much of the early Christians.

Luther determined that the Christian Bible, as first formalized by the Early Church at the Synod of Hippo in 393 A.D., contained many mistakes. Along with translating it to German he did some editing, too.

Luther's canon

Luther's canon is the biblical canon attributed to Martin Luther, which has influenced Protestants since the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. While the Lutheran Confessions specifically did not define a biblical canon, it is widely regarded as the canon of the Lutheran Church. It differs from the 1546 Roman Catholic canon of the Council of Trent in that it rejects the deuterocanonical books and questions the seven New Testament books, called "Luther's Antilegomena", four of which are still ordered last in German-language Luther Bibles to this day.

This article goes into more detail on why Luther didn't feel that the Revelation was inspired scripture.

Why Didn’t Martin Luther Believe In The Book Of Revelation

Luther's views on the Book of Revelation diverged from the widespread acceptance of its divine inspiration and authority. ...

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Luther approached this apocalyptic text with a degree of skepticism, questioning its canonical status and divine inspiration.

Luther's skepticism towards the Book of Revelation stemmed from several key considerations. He expressed doubts about its apostolic authorship, raising questions about whether the text truly emanated from the Apostle John. This skepticism was rooted in Luther's meticulous approach to biblical interpretation, as he sought to discern the authenticity and divine inspiration of each book included in the New Testament.

Furthermore, Luther grappled with the symbolic and allegorical nature of the Book of Revelation. Its vivid imagery, prophetic visions, and complex symbolism presented interpretative challenges that led Luther to question its doctrinal coherence and relevance for Christian faith and practice. He emphasized the need for clarity and doctrinal soundness in biblical texts, and the enigmatic nature of the Book of Revelation raised concerns for Luther regarding its potential to lead to speculative and divisive interpretations.

Additionally, Luther's theological framework and emphasis on the primacy of certain biblical books, particularly the Pauline epistles, influenced his approach to the Book of Revelation. His commitment to justification by faith and the centrality of Christ's redemptive work led him to prioritize certain biblical themes and teachings, which in turn shaped his discernment of the Book of Revelation's significance within the broader canon.

It's ironic that the Book that Luther disfavored is now so central to many Protestant denominations, whereas the Catholics, who rose to defend its place in the Bible at the council of Trent; in response to Luther's criticisms.

Luther's views and editing inform most Protestant editions of the Bible.

A couple questions:

• Why do you always misspell "doing" as "doink"? Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? Or are you just autistic?

• Is it hard to maintain enthusiasm for your narrative, of Ukraine victory, when you are reduced to talking points that suggest that Russia isn't capturing all of Ukraine as quickly as you previously thought they might?

• When the inevitable peace treaty is signed, how much of pre-War Ukraine will still belong to Ukraine? If it's only 80% or so will you still brag about winning the war?

It occurs to me that we might have different definitions of winning.

Usually when a country is attacked, loses territory, and the war eventually ends and they are in a much smaller country with a massively smaller population, much more poverty, a broken electrical system, no economy, and a huge demographic gap where the fighting age men used to be that's considered "losing".

Are you prepared to admit that's what happened when it inevitably does?

Reuters: Russia appears to make1 headway in key Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar

By Ronald Popeski June 9, 2024
2:58 PM CDT
Updated 21 hours ago

June 9 (Reuters) - Russian forces appear to be making headway towards their longstanding goal of capturing the strategic Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, according to reports on Sunday from both sides of the more than two-year-old conflict.

Chasiv Yar stands on high ground about 20 km (12 miles) to the west of Bakhmut, a town Russian forces seized a year ago after months of battles that flattened nearly all its buildings. It is seen by both sides as a potential staging point for Russia to advance on the key cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda quoted a military source and a blogger as saying that Russian forces had begun occupying a district of the town alongside a canal.

"Over the past week, there have been more than 1,500 instances of shelling of the outskirts of Chasiv Yar from the north to the south," it quoted its source as saying. The source said Russian troops were using guided aerial bombs to clear areas along a major road "and with the support of multiple long-range missiles and...drones they have begun to move forward and build up their forces".

Are you delusional?

Look at a map lately?

Russian Annexed Uktraine territory

Welcome back. I think even people who criticize you miss you when you are away. I know I do!

Hope your personal stuff has resolved in a good way for you!

FReegards!