As Nicholas’s third birthday approached, and with nothing provoking us to sense anything outside the ordinary, my wife, Jana, happened to notice a small number of brown splotches on his skin. Their emergence had been subtle; vaguely circular or oval in shape, and not especially large, they had surfaced at seemingly random spots on his body. She showed them to our pediatrician who, to our surprise, told us to get him checked out by an ophthalmologist. Her counsel was driven by a concern that the splotches could be indicative of a disease called neurofibromatosis, its most common form referred to as “type 1” (NF1, for short). 

It was January 2008 when, to the sheer delight of his new big brother, we brought Nicholas home from the adoption agency. He was all of eleven days old. Despite the lack of any prenatal care whatsoever, all signs pointed to a perfectly healthy baby.
But as Nicholas’s third birthday approached, and with nothing provoking us to sense anything outside the ordinary, my wife, Jana, happened to notice a small number of brown splotches on his skin. Their emergence had been subtle; vaguely circular or oval in shape, and not especially large, they had surfaced at seemingly random spots on his body. She showed them to our pediatrician who, to our surprise, told us to get him checked out by an ophthalmologist.
Her counsel was driven by a concern that the splotches could be indicative of a disease called neurofibromatosis, its most common form referred to as “type 1” (NF1, for short). When the condition is present, tiny bumps – imperceptible to unaided examination, and typically benign in and of themselves – eventually form on the irises of the patient’s eyes.
The visit to the eye doctor was uneventful; much to our relief, she found nothing, but she told us to come back in a year. At that second visit – Nicholas was four years old – she found them. In medical terminology, they are called Lisch nodules, named after the ophthalmologist who discovered their connection with NF1.
There is no formal test for NF1; rather, there is an established checklist of symptoms, with two or more positives taken as an indicator of its presence. Lisch nodules and the brown splotches are both on the list. One of the doctors gave us a brochure and links to a few websites. Collectively, these resources laid out for us a well-populated continuum – a range that runs from inconsequential to life threatening – of potential outcomes for NF1 patients. There are some who, over the course of a full lifespan, never knowingly experience a single symptom; they go to their graves happily unaware that the disease had ever taken up residence in their bodies. There’s another cohort that’s far less fortunate: the roughly five percent of patients for whom the condition results in cancerous tumors.
The extensive array of possibilities between those extremes was disquieting. By the time Nicholas was categorized as an NF1 patient, the bone deformities and enlarged skull that sometimes occur would have already been apparent, so we were able to cross those off the list. As he headed off to school, we would need to watch for learning disabilities – if they were going to happen, they would likely surface no later than the third grade. Blindness or loss of hearing could emerge before or after that point, and during adolescence he might develop scoliosis. When full grown, NF1 patients are sometimes small in stature.
There are no predictors for any of this. Specific manifestations, or the severity of those manifestations, might bear no similarity whatsoever between identical twins who inherit the condition from a parent. As a general rule, however, NF1 typically results in an indeterminate number of benign tumors which can form virtually anywhere in the body. That “anywhere” can mean inside the body where, although inconspicuous to the eyes, they might exert pressure on a vital organ. More frequently, they surface in plain sight, sometimes to the point of disfigurement.
Once the Lisch nodules surfaced and the doctors classified Nicholas as an NF1 patient, my wife and I coped in different ways. Jana, imbued with all the dispositions, sensibilities, and impulses that naturally accompany motherhood, found that the doctors’ conclusions filled her with a deep, abiding sadness and provoked a measure of angst that sat lurking in the background of her day-to-day existence. But she kept these things to herself. I did my best to push the matter off to the side. At a practical level, things changed very little for us on a day-to-day basis. There was little to do. Except pray.
Jana was not yet Catholic, and while I knew she had an active prayer life, it was largely hidden from me. But as Nicholas’s doctor’s appointments approached, she would quietly settle into a fasting routine, a subtle but sure sign that she was ramping things up. Not knowing exactly how this miracle business works, my own prayers progressed through a fairly comprehensive checklist. If God, in his divine wisdom, would not completely heal Nicholas, perhaps he might restrict things a bit, keep the really bad stuff like cancer and blindness off the table. I prayed my way down this path many times, usually making allusions to those instances in scripture where Jesus had healed a child. I’m not sure if I was reminding myself or God that he had done this before.
I think that if my silent prayers had somehow been audible to disinterested bystanders, they would have sensed a genuine belief on my part that God could heal Nicholas, as well as a conviction that sending up such a request wasn’t an entirely unreasonable thing to do. But if one of those imaginary bystanders had asked me what I expected would eventually happen, I don’t have any idea how I might have answered that question.
On March 8, 2016, I took Nicholas – now eight years old – in for his annual appointment with the ophthalmologist. These visits were never quick: there was a protocol that always entailed a few rounds of preliminaries with technicians and interns. But one look at the waiting area told me that we were in for a long afternoon.
When our name was finally called, we were escorted to an examination room where Nicholas climbed into the patient’s chair. I sat off to the side. Eventually, a woman walked in – maybe a technician, maybe an intern.
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The 47-year-old author and speaker is about as bad as it gets when it comes to his pronouncements about who we are, where we should be heading, and how we should get there. Simply offering a number of quotes from him will give us a real good heads-up as to where he is coming from, and just how very toxic his thinking can be.

One does not need to be a “conspiracy theorist” to know that there are some pretty evil people out there, some pretty evil groups out there, and some pretty evil ideologies out there. Many of us know about the Great Reset, the World Economic Forum, and Klaus Schwab. They would have to be high up on the list of those promoting evil.
One very influential and famous adviser to them is the Israeli philosopher, historian, transhumanist, homosexual and atheist Yuval Noah Harari. The 47-year-old author and speaker is about as bad as it gets when it comes to his pronouncements about who we are, where we should be heading, and how we should get there.
Simply offering a number of quotes from him will give us a real good heads-up as to where he is coming from, and just how very toxic his thinking can be. Some months ago he had said this:
If you go back to the middle of the 20th century … and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them. You don’t have any kind of future without them. Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population, because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people. https://francesleader.substack.com/p/yuval-harari-interview
And in his 2016 book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow he even speaks of a “useless class” of people: “In the twenty-first century we might witness the creation of a massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society. This ‘useless class’ will not be merely unemployed – it will be unemployable.”
Is he being merely descriptive or prescriptive here? Often in the name of saving humanity these folks will show their true colours as those who hate humans. And folks like this never seem to bother following their own advice. They want a massive cull in the human population, but for some reason they refuse to lead by example here.
And consider this video of him speaking that just recently came to light:
Many, maybe most legal systems are based on this ideal, this belief in human rights. But human rights are just like heaven, and like God–it’s just a fictional story that we’ve invented and spread around. It may be a very nice story. It may be a very attractive story. We want to believe it, but it’s just a story. It’s not reality. It’s not a biological reality. Just as jellyfish and woodpeckers and ostriches have no rights, homo sapiens have no rights also.” Take a human, cut him open, look inside. You find the blood and you find the heart and lungs and kidneys but you don’t find there any rights. The only place you find rights is in fictional stories humans have invented and spread around. And the same thing is also true in the political field. States and nations are also, like human rights, and like God, and like heaven, they too are just stories. A mountain is a reality. You can see it. You can touch it. You can even smell it. But Israel, or the United States, they are just stories. Very powerful stories. Stories we might want to believe very much. But still they are just stories. You can’t really see the United States. You cannot touch it. You cannot smell it. https://slaynews.com/news/wef-mastermind-human-rights-fiction-just-like-god/
He has been saying things like this for some time now. In his 2011 book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, he wrote:
According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created.’ They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be “equal.” The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a directly created soul, and that all people are equal before God. However if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation, souls, what does it mean that all people are created “equal”?
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One aspect of Scripture that has repeatedly born witness to its reliability, unity, and even its divine authorship is typology—namely, the way that types and shadows, patterns and persons (in their public actions and offices) are repeated and fulfilled throughout the Bible.

In a few weeks, I will be teaching a class on Scripture at my church, followed by teaching Systematic Theology at Indianapolis Theological Seminary. In preparation for those classes, I have begun thinking through many of the facets related to the doctrine of Scripture, especially as it pertains to Scripture’s trustworthiness.
For those who question Scripture and its veracity, they often make claims regarding errors in the manuscripts, discrepancies in the text, or immoral teachings in the Law or Paul. Each of these must be and can be answered by a careful reading of the text. But one aspect of Scripture that has repeatedly born witness to its reliability, unity, and even its divine authorship is typology—namely, the way that types and shadows, patterns and persons (in their public actions and offices) are repeated and fulfilled throughout the Bible.
Most recently, I encountered this in the book of 1–2 Kings, where Solomon is presented as a new Joshua. Previously, I had seen Solomon as a new Adam, but in reading again from Peter Leithart’s commentary on 1 and 2 Kings, I found his observations compelling, in that the author of 1–2 Kings presents Solomon as a new Joshua. Here’s what Leithart observes from 1 Kings 2,
David’s charge to Solomon is one of several key farewell speeches in Scripture (e.g., John 13-17), but the closest analogy is Moses’s speeches to Joshua, Moses encouraged Israel, Joshua especially, to be “strong and courageous” as it entered the land (Deut. 31:1-8), and Yahweh repeated this exhortation (Josh. 1:7-8). David says the same to Solomon. Hence: Moses is to Joshua as David is to Solomon. Solomon is a “new Joshua,” who spends the early part of his reign wiping out the “Canaanites” that remain in David’s kingdom, bringing rest” to the land, and building a sanctuary for Yahweh, recapitulating the sequence of events in Joshua (which climax in Josh. 18:1). Because building the temple completes the conquest, replacing the Canaanite shrines with the house of Yahweh, that project in particular demands a Joshua-like strength, and determination. (p. 36)
So, if Leithart is correct, we should see Solomon as a better David, just as Joshua was a better Moses. Indeed, Joshua fulfilled what Moses began (leading Israel into the Promised Land), and so too Solomon fulfilled what David longed to begin (the building of God’s house). Similarly, 1 Kings 4 shows in Solomon other Joshua-type attributes.
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