There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
What is unique about Christianity? How does Christianity uniquely and accurately describe the world around us? In this interview with Alex McFarland, J. Warner describes the unique, evidential nature of the Christian worldview.
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And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.Isaiah 46:4
The year is very old, and here is a promise for our aged friends; yes, and for us all, as age creeps over us. Let us live long enough, and we shall all have hoar hairs; therefore we may as well enjoy this promise by the foresight of faith.
When we grow old our God will still be the I AM, abiding evermore the same. Hoar hairs tell of our decay, but He decayeth not. When we cannot carry a burden and can hardly carry ourselves, the Lord will carry us. Even as in our young days He carried us like lambs in His bosom, so will He in our years of infirmity.
He made us, and He will care for us. When we become a burden to our friends and a burden to ourselves, the Lord will not shake us off, but the rather He will take us up and carry and deliver us more fully than ever. In many cases the Lord give His servants a long and calm evening. They worked hard all day and wore themselves out in their Master’s service, and so He said to them, “Now rest in anticipation of that eternal Sabbath which I have prepared for you.” Let us not dread old age. Let us grow old graciously since the Lord Himself is with us in fullness of grace.
“Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”Colossians 1:9
Thought
When we hear of Christians in other places, especially where circumstances and times are difficult, or they are new in the Faith, let’s intentionally and purposefully pray this prayer for them!
Prayer
Loving Father please bless my brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world. Strengthen those under attack and facing oppression. Mature those new to your family. Enlighten those who are facing doubt and uncertainty. Please bless your people today with peace. In Jesus’ name I ask it. Amen.
A glow shone from her face; a happiness in her eyes from some inward or outward source—he couldn’t tell which.
He watched as she spoke under her breath, eyes glistening with tears that had shed but were now being wiped away.
He wondered if she’d been drinking.
“No. . . I have poured out my soul before the LORD,” she replied (1 Samuel 1:15).
Hannah’s peaceful glow of joy came from pouring out in prayer and leaving behind.
She learned that prayer is the great exchange—a placement of need and grief into hands of grace and power and going away burden-less and joyful.
“Every trial of our faith is but a trial of His faithfulness.” ~ Frances Ridley Havergal
So Hannah prayed and poured out and went away in peace.
She traded her trial for the peace of trust in His faithfulness.
Her faith might fail, but His faithfulness never would.
Prayer is the great exchange—need replaced by peace even when the need still exists. Prayer places the trial in Another’s hands and knows His faithfulness will stand the test.
“The woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.” ~ 1 Samuel 1:18
Hannah poured out her soul to the Lord and traded her trial for peace.
If our prayers don’t result in this great exchange, I wonder if we’ve really prayed.
“In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6,7)
Bibi’s Brother-in-Law: The 3 Sins that Led to October 7th In a brutally honest interview with the Israeli newspaper Olam Katan, Dr. Chagi Ben Artzi, Prime Minister Netanayahu’s brother-in-law, called on Israel’s leadership to repent and return to the Bible. The eminent historian is convinced that in order to end this war, the State of Israel must acknowledge three sins it has committed in the last thirty years. “We sinned greatly, and according to the greatness of the sin is our suffering.” According to Ben Artzi, Solomon’s words are very clear. When Israel suffers in war at the hands of its enemies, it is always the result of national sin.
A Trump-Tucker Ticket? Could it actual happen? The dream ticket is not as far-fetched as previously thought. A Trump Tucker (T2) presidential ticket is beginning to look like a real possibility. A T2 ticket would be putting the Make America Great Again movement and the America First alliance on steroids. As opposed to being a “balanced ticket,” it would be a “double down” on an American exceptionalism ticket.
Powerful gamma-ray burst induced disturbance in Earth’s ionosphere An exceptionally bright and powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) caused a disturbance in the Earth’s upper ionosphere at 500 kilometers. The ionosphere is a region of Earth’s atmosphere containing charged particles. Gamma-ray bursts are powerful and brief bursts of gamma-ray radiation often caused by volatile events in distant galaxies. Scientists at the University of L’Aquila in Italy suspect this intense burst created significant perturbations in the electric field within the ionosphere. scientists stated that GRB as bright as GRB 221009A is expected to occur only once per many thousands of years.
Suella Braverman accuses Rishi Sunak of ‘betraying the nation’ in scathing resignation letter The axed Home Secretary mauled the PM in an extraordinary resignation letter this evening, telling him that he “manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies.” She told Mr Sunak that he has broken a series of promises on migration, the Rwanda policy, gender laws, and Brexit – adding that he was simply “occupying” the office of prime minister.
Israel demands Red Cross immediately visits Hamas’ hostages in Gaza Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen, together with the families of the hostages held captive in Gaza, on Tuesday visited Geneva to meet representatives of the international organizations and movements amid Israel’s war against Hamas. Cohen spoke with the President of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Miriana Spulirik and demanded its workers in the Gaza Strip visit the Hamas hostages.
Ukraine’s Fate Will Be Decided In Coming Year, Top Zelensky Aide Admits In surprisingly blunt words, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the coming year will essentially decide the fate of Ukraine and its war with Russia. “A turning point in the war is approaching,” Andrii Yermak … said Monday. “The next year will be decisive in this regard.”
100 State Dept Officials Sign Dissent Memo Saying Biden “Complicit In Genocide” In Gaza The scathing memo goes after Biden directly, saying he is “spreading misinformation” and in his unreserved support for Israel the president is “complicit in war crimes”. As for the “misinformation” charge, the memo takes the White House to task for recently “questioning the number of deaths” issued from Gaza’s Health Ministry.
At Least 4 More Attacks On US Forces Since Latest US Airstrikes In Syria US troops based in Syria have come under attack at least four times since the latest US airstrikes in eastern Syria were launched on Sunday, Task & Purpose reported on Monday. The Pentagon announced Sunday that it launched strikes against facilities “used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups” in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province.
‘I suggest that Hezbollah not try the State of Israel; it will be the mistake of its life’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Northern Confrontation Line Council Heads: “I suggest that Hezbollah not challenge the State of Israel; it will be the mistake of its life. We are committed to restoring security to the citizens of Israel in both the south and the north. This is what we will do.”
Haaretz publisher urges Europe to bar entry to ‘Israeli settlers’ Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken defended one of his journalists Tuesday and even doubled down on her statements that Israeli “settlers” should not be allowed into Europe after this caused an uproar online. Well known for her extremist leftist views, Amira Hass had said in a U.S. forum that Israelis should not be allowed “to enter Europe freely anymore, because Israel does not abide by the international law that we are committed to, or to human rights.”
180,000 rally against antisemitism across France, Macron a no-show The parliament called the protest in response to a three-fold increase in antisemitic acts. Thousands marched in Paris on Sunday, including prominent lawmakers, to condemn a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in France since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, prompted by the massacre of more than 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7.
US Congress plans to screen footage of Hamas atrocities during Oct. 7 massacre The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee has greenlighted requests from many lawmakers to screen raw footage of the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit collected the footage to document the Hamas atrocities as part of an effort to reveal the horrific and brutal attack against the Jewish state.
Mecca floods November 2023 videos Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, has been hit by extreme weather conditions, causing floods, hail and chaos in several regions of the country. The heavy rainfall, which started on November 6, has affected pilgrims, schools and residents, and has prompted authorities to issue warnings and take precautionary measures.
Shallow M6.1 earthquake hits South Indian Ocean A strong and shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.1 hit the South Indian Ocean at 07:00 UTC on November 14, 2023. The agency is reporting a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). EMSC is reporting M6.1 at a depth of 13 km (8 miles).
Graben-like formation in Grindavik still forming and mechanically active, Iceland Over 700 earthquakes have been detected along the orientation of a magma intrusion in Iceland during the first 12 hours of November 14, 2023. The latest measurements show that the graben-like formation is still forming and is mechanically active.
Severe Tropical Cyclone “Mal” approaches Fiji, evacuation centers open on Viti Levu Tropical Cyclone “Mal” formed near the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean on November 10, 2023, as the second named storm of the 2023/24 South Pacific Ocean cyclone season. The system is moving SE toward Fiji and is expected to pass close the eastern coast of Viti Levu Island in the late afternoon (UTC) of November 14.
Will This Time Of War In Israel Pave The Way For A Time Of Counterfeit Peace? Last month, Prime Minister Netanyahu quoted the book of Ecclesiastes, declaring, “The Bible says there’s a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” He’s dead right about that. Israel’s most important priority right now is to defeat and displace Hamas. That is the predicate for any future lasting peace in the Middle East.
At 290,000-strong, ‘March for Israel’ is ‘largest pro-Israel gathering in history’ “We have indeed made history today with over 290,000 of us gathered here on the National Mall. This is the largest pro-Israel gathering in history,” William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told attendees of the “March for Israel” on the National Mall in Washington on Tuesday.
Amir Tsarfati: Ten Areas Where We Can See God’s Intervention Amid War In Israel Shalom from Israel, a land where God’s hand continues to move in marvelous ways! It has certainly been a dark time in my country, likely the darkest since its inception in 1948. I, and most of my fellow citizens, have been deeply immersed in all the reports of the horrors that took place on October 7, 2023, and in the ensuing chaos. When there is so much bad news, it is easy to lose the truth that there is good news, also. How do I know there is good news? Because I know that God is at work.
Nikki Haley Endorses Digital ID Enslavement Agenda In a Fox News appearance, Nikki Haley fully endorsed the globalist digital identification enslavement agenda. The push for digital IDs is among the greatest threats to individual liberty and freedom to Americans.
Gun Confiscation- Disarming Regular People Can Lead to Genocide Gun Confiscation Is Always a Prelude to Genocide. Those who understand the heinous nature of the United Nation as well as their failed nature as a so-called “peacekeeping” force, should understandably be concerned with the impending presence of UN soldiers on the streets of Chicago.
Koalas could be ‘euthanised’ with hammers to make way for Queensland wind farm …Disturbing stories are also emerging of wind farms killing animals – including an endangered species of eagle in Tasmania. A wind farm in Clark Creek, Queensland is also attracting criticism. Located in hundreds of acres of natural koala habitat, the project’s environment plan describes culling numbers of the iconic marsupial by administering ‘a sharp blow with a hammer to the back of the skull,’ National MP Keith Pitt told 2GB Sydney radio host Ben Fordham.
South Africa: White-Owned Farms No Longer Allowed to Export to EU, UK The Marxist South African government has found a new way to rob white farmers of their land: Now farms that are considered “too white” will no longer be allowed to export to Great Britain or the European Union, according to the South African government.
‘Shot Dead’: Stories of Children who’ve been Killed by Covid Injections We the Patriots USA say that “this is the movie we wish we didn’t have to make. But this is a movie everyone needs to see.” The new movie – ‘Shot Dead’ – released on 9 November documents the stories of children killed by the covid injections as told by their parents.
EU “Carbon Tax” on Chinese and Indian Imports could spark a Global Economic “Cold War” The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (“CBAM”), or simply “carbon tax”, is an attempt to force the rest of the world to follow the “garden’s” guidelines on “environmental issues”. The law has been heavily criticised by India and China, both of which are massive production economies. The two Asian giants believe this is effectively an act of economic warfare.
When New Zealand’s regulatory authority says deaths post-vaccination are “under investigation” – it is misinformation The case of a 31-year-old man who died suddenly three weeks after receiving a covid injection proves that when the New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority (“Medsafe”) says deaths post-vaccination are “under investigation,” the use of the word “investigation” is misinformation. New Zealand’s health system is collapsing, but health tsars are in complete denial, desperately trying to hide the deaths and distort the science, writes Dr. Guy Hatchard.
Tony Blair And The Rothschilds …The latest nauseating news is that the 70-year-old warmonger, once suggested as full-time “president of Europe” by the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, is now being “touted by Israel as peacekeeper in Middle East”, to quote The Daily Telegraph’s headline from November 13, 2023.
Why Is Volcanic Activity Starting To Go Crazy All Over The Planet? All of a sudden, the giant rock that we all live on is starting to go a bit nuts. Unusual volcanic activity is happening all over the globe, but the “experts” are assuring us that there is nothing to be concerned about. But could it be possible that they are wrong? After you have reviewed the information that I provide in this article, come to your own conclusion. To me, it definitely appears that what we are currently witnessing is not normal.
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson (1798)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1777, a little more than a year after declaring independence from Great Britain, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first governing charter of the newly formed United States. It was superseded by the Constitution in 1789. —Mark Alexander
An Israeli operation to root out Hamas from a hospital base coincided with other related news.
Nate Jackson
Four events yesterday all related to the war Israel is now waging against Hamas after jihadists slaughtered 1,400 innocent people on October 7. Those events tell us a lot about where things stand, including a significant military campaign on the ground in Gaza.
We’ll start with some good news. An estimated 300,000 people attended a pro-Israel rally in Washington, DC. Among them were scores of family members of Israelis who are still being held hostage by Hamas terrorists.
“We are all standing here in unity with you,” Republican Senator John Barrasso told them. “For the family members, you have seen the face of terror, the horrors, the brutality. We are heartbroken by that. We stand with the people of Israel and that is very heartfelt.”
The rally was bipartisan, too, showing that some Democrats actually get it. “When Hamas says ‘from the river to the sea,’ they mean all of present-day Israel should be a Jewish-free land,” explained Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a pointed rebuke of a few of his Democrat colleagues. “In fact, Hamas has said that what they did — the horror that they did on October 7 to the Jewish communities near the Gaza border — they should do to all Israelis. Just look at Hamas’s founding document. It says, ‘Is that a Jew behind the tree? Cut down the tree so you can shoot him.’ That is the evil of Hamas. Never, never, never will we forget the evil of Hamas.”
Unsurprisingly, the pro-Israel attendees felt no need to yell or display racist or genocidal slogans, or to tear down statues, or to get in fights. There were American and Israeli flags, not terrorist ones.
That doesn’t mean the event was free of such ugliness. “Heil Hitler!” yelled one anti-Israel protester among other vulgarity. A genocidal fascist dictator of the German Left is precisely the model for today’s Islamofascist killers.
Neither are U.S. government employees unanimous in supporting our ally Israel. The second event was that more than 400 staffers across 40 government agencies sent a letter to Joe Biden yesterday calling on him to “urgently demand a cease-fire,” seek “de-escalation of the current conflict by securing the immediate release of the Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians,” and to help restore basic utilities in Gaza.
The moral equivalence is appalling. Israel is retaliating to make sure Hamas cannot continue carrying out the very mission Schumer pointed out. Before commencing military operations, Israel told Palestinian civilians to flee Gaza and gave them many days to do so. Hamas and Egypt wouldn’t let them. As for utilities, maybe if Hamas used all that foreign humanitarian aid to serve the population instead of making missiles and allowing its billionaire leaders to live it up in Qatar, water and electricity wouldn’t be a problem.
As House Speaker Mike Johnson said to loud cheers at yesterday’s rally, “The calls for a cease-fire are outrageous.”
Speaking of Johnson and the House, event number three yesterday was the Senate blocking the House bill providing $14.3 billion in aid to Israel. Typical of Washington, many in Congress and the White House want to tie that aid to Israel with about four times as much for Ukraine. That $100 billion combo platter includes money for other national security priorities too.
There’s a lot to be said here and too little room to say it, but we’ll make two key points. First, Republican support for Biden’s seeming blank check to Ukraine has dwindled, so it’s predictable that the GOP-controlled House would want to separate the two. Second, however, combining them actually does make some sense given that Russia and Iran are increasingly collaborating with weapons, money, and resources against U.S. interests around the globe.
Finally, on the ground in Gaza, Israeli forces entered the Al Shifa hospital in a battle that illustrates a lot about the two sides in this conflict.
It’s unlike the lie about a hospital that the American Leftmedia helped Hamas tell last month. As our Douglas Andrews deftly put it: “It wasn’t an airstrike, it didn’t hit a hospital, it didn’t kill hundreds, and Israel didn’t do it. But other than that, the reporting was accurate.”
This time, Israeli troops actually did enter the hospital to fight Hamas, though the Leftmedia is still propagating fake news. “Israel says Hamas militants are using hospitals as shields for fighters but hasn’t provided evidence of that,” harrumphs the Associated Press, which oh by the way had photographers embedded with Hamas during the October 7 attack.
If anybody could provide evidence of Hamas’s use of human shields and hospital bases, you’d think it would be, oh, maybe AP photographers.
Perhaps the AP could consult with other outlets. PBS, The Washington Post, and Human Rights Watch each documented Hamas terrorists operating in that same hospital going as far back as 2006. Hamas attacked Palestinian rival Fatah from the hospital in 2007, hid there during war in 2008 and 2009, and used it as a headquarters in the war in 2014.
CNN reported just Monday that “Hamas has a command node under the Al-Shifa hospital, uses fuel intended for it and its fighters regularly cluster in and around Gaza’s largest hospital.”
Or maybe the AP could ask Team Biden. According to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, “We have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and support their military operations and to hold hostages.”
Yes, Hamas literally built a base below the hospital — which probably cost some of that aforementioned humanitarian aid money — specifically for the purpose of creating media headlines around the world about an “Israeli assault on a hospital.” It’s a sick game played by deranged Islamofascists with a religiously motivated death wish. And today’s media often falls for it because journalists are increasingly invested not in the story but in The Narrative™.
In any case, the war in Gaza is far from over. That’s also true of the war for hearts and minds in the West, though a rally of 300,000 people certainly provides some hope.
Stopgap spending bill, Secret Service stops Naomi Biden’s car theft, Big Sister controls NY, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
GOP passes stopgap spending bill: It was beginning to look like déjà vu all over again, with House Republicans scrambling to keep the federal government from shutting down due to lack of funding. This time, though, the results are different, as the House yesterday overwhelmingly passed a temporary bill to keep the government running through the beginning months of 2024. The vote was 336-95, with the entire Democrat caucus voting with 127 Republicans for passage. Any bill that gets more Democrat support than Republican support should be viewed suspiciously, and this one is no exception. Ninety-three Republicans voted against it, including the conservative House Freedom Caucus, mostly because the bill didn’t contain any spending cuts or funding for our southern border. Despite this — or because of it — the bill now heads toward almost certain passage in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Less than a month into his new gig, House Speaker Mike Johnson is already faced with the scenario that led to the ousting of his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. But as we noted yesterday, Johnson called this stopgap measure “a necessary step” while vowing that things will be different next year with individual appropriations bills. Let’s wait and see.
White House cocaine saga: The White House finally released photos of the infamous baggy of cocaine discovered in the White House this summer. The photos show a cubby locker open and entirely empty except for the small bag of cocaine. The story of the cocaine’s original discovery location changed multiple times, beginning in the library and then eventually ending up in a locker. The Secret Service conducted an investigation, dubiously concluding that it was unable to identify a suspect. So why is the White House now releasing these photos months after cocainegate has effectively blown over?
Secret Service stops Naomi Biden’s car theft: Crime is growing in Biden’s America, especially in the nation’s capital. Joe Biden’s own granddaughter Naomi was a recent victim, as several criminals attempted to break into her car in her Georgetown neighborhood. She was not on the scene at the time, but her Secret Service detail was and intervened, leading to a shootout as the suspects fled. The Democrats’ soft-on-crime polices are coming home to roost, but most Americans don’t have their own security detail to protect them from criminals. And to make matters worse, in Democrat enclaves like Washington, DC, citizens are not allowed to carry firearms to protect themselves.
A different kind of flash mob: In Memphis, Tennessee, a mob looted a FedEx truck that was stopped in traffic. The mob of predominately black males descended on the truck and, using an unidentified tool, broke open the back of the 53-foot trailer and proceeded to grab boxes and flee. An estimated $10,000 in damages and stolen items was caused by the thieves. Thus far, law enforcement has arrested only three men involved. Such smash-and-grab operations are becoming a growing problem in Biden’s America.
Petgrave arrested in hockey death: This story has flown mostly under the radar, but it appears that justice may yet be served on hockey goon Matt Petgrave, who killed former NHLer Adam Johnson when his raised skate blade slashed Johnson’s throat during a collision in an Elite Ice Hockey League game in Sheffield, England, last month. Petgrave was arrested yesterday, although authorities didn’t name him. Weirdly, he’d received a standing ovation at the game just prior to his arrest. Two weeks ago, we asked whether this was manslaughter, and it appears that British law enforcement agrees. When one watches the video, it’s near impossible to view Petgrave’s raised leg as accidental, as a natural hockey movement. Petgrave is known as a dirty player, having led his league in penalty minutes last year. He’s also black, and one wonders whether his race has something to do with the lack of coverage. Hockey is a necessarily violent sport, but it’s exceedingly rare to see a player die on the ice at any level. That’s because hockey players know how dangerous their skate blades are, and because they never raise them intentionally — not even the game’s nastiest players. What Petgrave did was different and a radical departure from hockey norms. Petgrave isn’t a murderer, but he’s a vicious and reckless goon, and he’s rightly been arrested.
Eighth-grader banned for “blackface”: An eighth grade student in California received a two-day school suspension and is banned from all future school sporting events after he was accused of wearing blackface. Days after attending a high school football game where he wore eyeblack under his eyes on his cheeks and chin — like countless football players of every color across the country do every week — the student was called into the principal’s office, where he was told he was guilty of what was characterized as “offensive comment, intent to harm.” The only racist in this story appears to be the principal, who falsely assumed racial intentions. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has come to the student’s defense, sending a letter to the school to immediately rescind false and frivolous blackface disciplinary actions. Former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Hollywood entertainer Jimmy Kimmel, and a host of other prominent leftists can get away with real blackface. This young kid obviously can’t even just be a football fan.
Big Sister controls New York: She’s following your posts. That’s effectively the message that New York Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul sent when she announced her social media surveillance monitoring program. Hiding behind the convenient guise of combating “hate speech,” Hochul said that her administration would be collecting social media data in order to police people’s online speech. Clearly, the governor has little to no respect for the First Amendment. The government’s job is to protect speech, not to protect people from speech. Meanwhile, when it comes to actual hateful speech, Hochul equivocates, refusing to name those most guilty of spreading hate — namely the pro-Hamas crowds that have descended on New York calling for an end to Israel. According to recent data, hate crimes against Jews in New York City have risen by 214% since October of last year. Of the 101 recorded hate crimes last month in NYC, 69 were anti-Jewish compared to eight that were anti-Muslim.
GOP senator flexes on Teamsters boss: On Senator Markwayne Mullin’s X page, he calls himself a “Christian, proud husband, father to six, strong conservative” and says he brings “Oklahoma values to the U.S. Senate.” Those values were on bold display yesterday during a Senate hearing, at which he stood up and challenged Teamsters Union President Sean O’Brien to a fight, as the committee’s chairman, ancient Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders, tried to play peacemaker. “You want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults and we can finish it here,” said Mullin, who’d taken exception to O’Brien’s penchant for online bullying. Said O’Brien in response, “You stand your butt up, big guy,” to which Mullin happily obliged. Mullin is a former MMA fighter, so he brings a unique and refreshing toughness to The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. And O’Brien is no doubt lucky that things didn’t escalate from there. “Maybe you run your mouth in New Jersey,” said Mullin on Fox News. “I don’t know. I’m not from New Jersey. But this is some thug that’s a mob boss, so you’re supposed to be intimidated because he’s the boss of the Teamsters.” Clearly, Mullin wasn’t intimidated. And good on him.
Muslim-turned-atheist converts to Christianity: There was a remarkable moment over the weekend, as Aayan Hirsi Ali, a courageous and vociferous critic of radical Islam who had turned to atheism, announced her conversion to Christianity in an essay published Saturday on UnHerd. As The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson observes, “Ali, previously a Member of the Dutch Parliament, is human rights activist and writer known for her controversial views about the compatibility of Islam and Western culture.” Ali is a woman of the Left, so the sweep and degree of her conversion are yet be fully understood. But at the end of her essay, she seemed sufficiently humble: “Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognized, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.”
Headlines
Biden, Xi meet amid disputes over military and economic issues (Reuters)
Biden admin renews sanctions waiver giving Iran access to $10 billion from Iraq (New York Post)
Senate blocks $14.3 billion in aid for Israel (National Review)
Hundreds of pro-Israel demonstrators left stranded on tarmac after bus drivers coordinate anti-Semitic strike (National Review)
One hundred Harvard faculty members sign off on pro-genocide slogan “From the river to the sea” (Daily Wire)
Columbia student sues organization behind “doxxing truck” for defamation (National Review)
Senate tests new tactic to end Tuberville blockade of military promotions (Washington Examiner)
Trump to remain on Michigan ballot after judge rejects 14th Amendment challenge to eligibility (Fox News)
Tim Burchett accuses “bully” Kevin McCarthy of elbowing him as tempers erupt in Congress (Washington Examiner) | Ethics complaint filed against former speaker after hallway altercation (Roll Call)
Hunter Biden to teach class on “fake news” at Tulane University (The Federalist)
Finnish parliamentarian Paivi Rasanen acquitted over “hate speech” for sharing Bible verse (Washington Stand)
The bureau continues to retaliate against the reformers in its midst — especially those who hold the wrong political views.
Douglas Andrews
When J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was snooping on Martin Luther King Jr. back in the 1960s, they at least suspected him of being a communist and a sexual libertine, and perhaps even to have been an enthusiastic witness to a sexual assault.
It’s a sign of just how far the bureau has fallen, then, that these days it targets its own agents, especially those who they suspect aren’t communists at all but instead are merely supporters of the former and perhaps future president, Donald Trump. As The Washington Times reports:
More whistleblowers have stepped forward to tell Congress that high-ranking FBI officials are targeting agents, specifically former military members, for their political beliefs and trying to force them out of the bureau. A Marine and other military veterans at the FBI have been accused of disloyalty to the U.S. because they fit the profile of a supporter of former President Donald Trump, according to two disclosures sent to lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee.
The whistleblowers said Jeffrey Veltri, deputy assistant director of the bureau’s security division, and Dena Perkins, assistant section chief, specifically pursued employees who served in the Marine Corps or other military branches. They stripped the agents of security clearances, which sidelined them on the job and pushed them toward the exit, according to the disclosures.
“Whistleblowers play an essential part in identifying and rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, and corruption within government agencies,” said House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan in response. “All Americans owe them a debt of gratitude for their service and sacrifices. Our committee strongly supports their efforts to shine a light on abuses of power, and we will not tolerate retaliatory conduct against any whistleblower.”
Let’s hope so.
What does the FBI have to say for itself? Initially, not much of anything. And then it responded with a statement of righteous indignation:
It is wholly irresponsible of The Washington Times … to include outrageous and demonstrably false allegations that the FBI singled out former military employees. It is offensive that The Washington Times chose to publish, on Veteran’s [sic] Day, such baseless, unsubstantiated claims and include the names of FBI employees, one of which is a veteran. The FBI has not and will not retaliate against individuals who make protected whistleblower disclosures. We do not target or take adverse action against employees for exercising their First Amendment rights or for their political views. The FBI is proud to have many veterans in our workforce and we thank all veterans for their service.
Well. Normally, we might be sympathetic toward the bureau, especially given that the rot within it is understood to be on or near the J. Edgar Hoover Building’s 7th floor, where its leadership resides. And we might suspect that what we have here is a one-off, a disgruntled employee. But not this time. The FBI no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt because this sort of crackdown isn’t new. It’s part of a pattern. Some might say it’s even par for the course.
Indeed, we wrote about the FBI’s efforts to purge the conservatives from its ranks back in October of last year, especially its whistleblowers. Our Mark Alexander wrote at the time that one of these whistleblowers — Special Agent Steve Friend, an FBI SWAT member and an eight-year veteran agent — was one of the more than 20 agents who’d come forward to Congress with formal complaints about the bureau’s rot. In August 2022, Friend — who didn’t even vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 election — was tasked with a SWAT raid against a January 6 riot suspect, but he refused because of what he believed to be the “overzealous” politicization of the J6 investigations leading to an ever-wider target list. “I have an oath to uphold the Constitution,” he told his superior. “I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector.” For that, he was suspended, his credentials were seized, his security clearance was revoked, and he was escorted out of his Daytona Beach office building.
You’d think congressional Republicans would be incensed by this sort of retaliatory behavior, but you’d be wrong — or at least partly wrong. Instead of punishing the bureau with the power of the purse, the GOP is rewarding it. As one of those intrepid FBI whistleblowers, Steven Friend, recently posted on X: “Last year, I brought protected whistleblower disclosures about FBI weaponization to House GOP. They used it to go on TV and get elected. I lost my career and am under FBI investigation. Today the House GOP voted to give the FBI a $300 million HQ. Soulless demons. Go to hell.”
It’s hard to blame Friend for being furious. And who could blame future whistleblowers if instead of coming forward they decide to keep mum, decide that it’d be best to keep quiet about the bureau’s corruption rather than risk the career-wrecking retaliation?
What Jim Jordan said last year in the wake of the initial purge holds true today: “The law is clear. You don’t retaliate against whistleblowers.”
Now the state’s enlightened residents are left picking up the pieces.
Emmy Griffin
Over the years, the morally relativistic point presented about illicit drugs was that part of the problem with them was that they were illegal in the first place. If drugs were legal, this reasoning went, fewer people would be tempted to use them because the lure of rebellion attached to them would be taken away.
The fallacy in that sort of thinking is writ large; and as a culture, we are paying for that sort of illogic with increasingly bad policies spearheaded by the Left. It spills out into other talking points as well, particularly regarding incarceration — i.e., arresting people for drug possession is apparently racist. Possession is a common charge against criminals, and sometimes it’s the only charge that can be brought even when there are bigger suspected crimes at play.
Enter the state of Oregon, which three years ago decriminalized all drugs. Proponents hoped to encourage drug addicts to take advantage of state-funded rehab programs and to get clean. They aimed for Oregon to be the example for other states to follow.
That meant no more arrests for possession. People could use meth and fentanyl without fear of being busted. The worst that can happen to addicts is they get a ticket and have to pay a $100 fine. But if they call the hotline given to them by the police officer who issued the citation and get help, they don’t even have to pay the fine.
It’s no surprise that Oregon’s social experiment is going badly. Just like in major cities rife with drug use, addicts sprawled on the sidewalks are disrupting business, feces litter walkways and streets, and people have been allowed to become zombies, which is devastating to families and communities.
According to The Wall Street Journal, “Some 6,000 tickets have been issued for drug possession since decriminalization went into effect in 2021, but just 92 people have called and completed assessments needed to connect them to services, according to the nonprofit that operates the helpline.” That’s a success rate of 1.5%. In other words, a complete and utter failure.
On the next ballot, Oregon residents are looking to re-criminalize hard drugs, but to have lasting success, they still need to address the incentive structure. Jail time wasn’t stopping users. Neither was free help. What’s left to try?
How do you help someone who doesn’t want help? Well, perhaps along with criminal consequences, involuntary rehab might be the next step. People who are strung out and reliant on drugs aren’t exactly free or able to make decisions that are in their best interest. Addicts are slaves to their drug of choice. Many do not have the willpower to take on the beast of withdrawal or to get clean and sober without a push or a strong support system. On the flip side, putting someone through involuntary rehab may not have the lasting effects of voluntary rehab because the person didn’t choose that path himself.
Another course of action is confiscating the drugs. This, however, is not a realistic solution either. As long as drugs are big business and are being allowed to flood over the southern border by our feckless leadership, there is no real way to stem the flow.
Criminalizing hard drugs is a good step in the right direction, but this is a battle that will need to be fought on many fronts with the understanding that many of the people under the influence of drugs aren’t in a position to help themselves. Oregon is learning this lesson the hard way.
Leftist indoctrination is teaching young people an old hatred — that of Jews and Israel.
Samantha Koch
In the 1930s and ‘40s, Jews were treated as less than human and shipped off to concentration camps to face incomprehensible torture and death. Those of us who have listened to and read about those accounts have often wondered how it would have been possible to unite so much of the German population on dehumanizing a group of people, while turning a blind eye to the savage pain and suffering inflicted on them solely based on their existence.
Yet the explosion of anti-Semitism across the Western world has put many of us in disbelief. The year 2023 is beginning to feel like a repeat of history, but with the added reach of social media fueling the rage and hatred against the Jewish community.
Jewish and pro-Israel college students have been barricaded in their campus libraries and openly threatened by their classmates. They have listened to their professors lift their voices in celebration of the heinous acts committed against unsuspecting Israeli citizens just weeks ago and openly call for the genocide of all Jewish people by reciting the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Apparently, joining in the resounding chants of slogans in the courtyard, park, street, or public square that call for the total eradication of Jewish people — not just in Israel, but across the globe — has become acceptable and worthy of commendation.
Jewish students at Cornell University recently gathered to speak at a public hearing to describe their personal experiences of anti-Semitic attacks. They sought additional safety measures for protection against pro-Hamas groups who now feel justified in targeting them simply because they exist.
One of the students who spoke was a young woman named Amanda Silberstein. She described having to walk through her campus every day while seeing numerous areas with spray-painted words such as “F*** Israel” and “Zionism = Genocide,” and regularly being confronted with pro-Hamas organizers who shout the Palestinian genocidal slogans in her face. It is unclear if these screeching banshees know that they’re calling for the death of her and others who are of the Jewish faith. Many seem to be under the delusion that these expressions are simply about demanding freedom for the people of Gaza. Silberstein articulated it perfectly for those who are clearly uneducated on the matter: These phrases “are not about Palestinian life, but about Jewish death.”
Silberstein also painted a picture that, apart from the reference to social media, could easily and eerily interchange 1940s Germany with the behavior currently taking place at today’s so-called public education institutions: “Imagine that you frequent Jewish events on campus. Imagine that you live in a Jewish sorority house. Then imagine that you’re scrolling on your phone one day, only to discover that a fellow student wants to shoot up the kosher dining hall, and quote ‘gang rape all Jewish pig-women on campus.’”
Even while she detailed the current horror confronting many young adults, protesters who had planted themselves throughout the listening audience — who could have taken the opportunity to consider the gravity of the words they are speaking — decided to cut off Silberstein and other speakers who were sharing their direct experiences of being threatened, harassed, and targeted by yelling: “Free Palestine! Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism!”
Kenneth Marcus, head of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, explained that prior to October 7, the rise of anti-Semitism had already been surging at an alarming rate. Reports of Jews being excluded from groups and sororities, or Jewish students feeling the need to hide their identity altogether for their own safety and well-being, were coming in at a higher rate every day.
After the events of October 7, the incidents of discrimination against Jewish students on college campuses have escalated beyond measure.
Marcus recounted a situation at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where two students were kicked out of a sexual assault survivors club because of their Jewish identities. He noted another incident at the University of Vermont, where a Jewish student faced exclusion from a book club for the same reason.
He went on to explain that these blatant discriminatory beliefs are now being taken on by student organizations, including law reviews, that “have adopted rules, including bylaws and changes to their Constitutions, that prevent anyone from speaking to their groups who is a Zionist or a supporter of the state of Israel.” Most importantly, he emphasized that this was not just a matter of not wanting to hear opposing political viewpoints; rather, based on your identity, these particular individuals would not be permitted to speak on any subject whatsoever.
This is unbelievable in the year 2023, in a country where our founding principles are based on individual liberty and justice for all, where we were founded on the idea of being able to worship freely and live side by side with people of all cultures and faiths. Even so, the Left’s agenda is to program the next generation into a society with no humanity whatsoever. Leftists have been very effective in pushing this.
These are our future doctors, lawyers, engineers, business owners, and government officials. If this is what they are doing as students, imagine the world they will create as our future builders and leaders.
The Supreme Court adopts a written code of ethics in an effort to dispel the Democrats’ vacuous criticism.
Thomas Gallatin
Politicians rarely engage in good faith arguments. Indeed, in Washington today, good faith might as well be equivalent to unicorns — in theory they may exist, but no one has ever actually seen one.
In recent months, congressional Democrats led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) have waged a smear campaign against the U.S. Supreme Court, and specifically against originalist, constitutionally faithful justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Whitehouse has dubiously charged the justices with unethical behavior due to the fact that they happen to have wealthy conservative friends. Based on this and several recent Court rulings leftists don’t like, Democrats and their cohorts in the Leftmedia have insinuated that the Court has effectively gone rogue and become political.
The Democrats’ claims are spurious, and they know it. But it’s all intended to build a narrative, no matter how erroneous, that supports their political objective, which is to discredit the current Court — and, better yet, get the Court to bend to their political desires or even set the stage for packing the Court with more leftist justices.
Unfortunately, the Democrats’ ruse has been working. So, in an effort to defend the Court’s constitutionally delineated authority and coequal position within the three distinct branches of the federal government, Chief Justice John Roberts has effectively fumbled the political ball.
For the first time in its history, the U.S. Supreme Court has adopted a written code of ethics. The 15-page code clarifies the expectations for the justices to the public. “The absence of a Code … has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules,” the justices state. “To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.”
Justice Roberts evidently believes Democrats, and more specifically Whitehouse, have been voicing good faith arguments. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If Roberts believed this first-ever published code of ethics would silence the Democrats’ criticism of the Court, then he was dead wrong. This decision played right into the Democrats’ scheme, as evidenced by Whitehouse’s response.
He gleefully pounced: “Well, step one is done: The Supreme Court has at last acknowledged that it needs to have a code of ethics.” With the ball now in his court, he shot back: “Is there a place where you can file a complaint against a Justice? Do we get a public report at the end?”
Of course, what Whitehouse is after is to get the Court to capitulate to his demands that Congress be empowered to hold the justices to account. This has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with adherence to law or the Constitution.
Democrats will now beat their political drum, alleging that the Court’s code of ethics is yet more evidence that the country is being held captive by rogue justices.
The question now is this: Will Roberts continue to fall for the Democrats’ charade, or will he ignore this for the obvious bad faith politicking that it is?
To defeat abortion at the ballot box, pro-lifers ought to begin by getting more Americans to go to church.
Daniel McCarthy
The fight over abortion in America is as much a religious contest as a political one.
Until the pro-life movement recognizes this, it will keep getting shocked by referendum results like those in Ohio last week, which planted a right to abortion in the state’s constitution.
Opponents of abortion are not theocrats; on the contrary, so devoted are they to the separation of faith and law that they think it would discredit the pro-life cause to tie it too closely to religion.
The movement’s leaders prefer to argue from neutral premises acceptable even to secular liberals: objective science, they insist, proves a fetus is a human life.
Progressives often point to science as a moral authority, on questions ranging from climate change to gender and various disparate impacts and outcomes correlated with race.
But this is philosophically naive whether pro-lifers or progressives do it.
Even if science accurately describes a thing, it cannot say whether the phenomenon is good or bad; those judgments rely on prior moral commitments.
This is where the pro-life movement meets defeat.
The moral assumptions of most pro-lifers are more religious than those of other Americans.
That’s not a bad thing, but it suggests that to defeat abortion at the ballot box, pro-lifers ought to begin by getting more Americans to go to church.
Gallup’s 2023 survey of who identifies as pro-life or pro-choice tells the tale.
“Pro-choice” self-identification leads in most categories: among all adults (52-44), among women (55-41), among whites (51-46), and people of color (54-40).
Men are narrowly divided; Gallup has them favoring the pro-life label 48-47.
But in the category of “religious service attendance,” pro-lifers predominate.
Those who attend church weekly identify as pro-life 66-28.
Even those who attend less regularly, between weekly and monthly, favor the pro-life designation 56-41.
Among those who seldom or never attend, however, the balance is reversed: they identify as pro-choice 64-31.
The difference is not down to mere physical presence in a church building — the point is that attending services regularly is a sign of strong religious convictions.
The Catholic Church authoritatively teaches that abortion is a sin, and the more conservative Protestant denominations and Orthodox Jews broadly concur.
Of course, many people who belong to a religion don’t believe what it teaches, but these members tend not to be the ones filling the pews every Sunday.
If more voters were like those who attend church regularly, referendums in red states like Ohio would be winnable for abortion opponents, and they would have a better chance in less Republican-leaning states, too.
But with an electorate composed of voters whose moral outlook is not shaped by religion, defeat is almost certain.
Better communications strategies won’t help sell abortion bans to people who don’t already agree that abortion is wrong: it’s like trying to sell sirloin to vegans.
Pro-lifers are not the only ones who have this problem, of course.
Libertarian conservatives are constantly disappointed to discover how persistent public demand for government services is.
Progressives have their own frustrations with voters — especially those who continue to vote Republican, even for Donald Trump, despite being told that it’s immoral, deplorable and undemocratic to do so.
Liberals have all the communications firepower of the mainstream media at their disposal, and plenty of billionaire backing, too, but they still can’t talk voters out of what millions of them already want.
Efforts at persuasion aren’t futile, but they have to take account of the difference between what people already believe and what they would have to believe — what their core moral convictions would have to be — in order to embrace a pro-life, libertarian or fully progressive agenda.
Family, church, school and college are the institutions that form moral commitments; we have a culture war because these institutions are on different sides.
Families are disintegrating and schools are failing; the strongest religious institutions are generally conservative, while higher education is run by progressives.
So highly educated social liberals do battle with highly religious conservatives, as moral anarchy or mere utilitarianism prevails among the less educated and non-religious — which happens to be the kind of voter that makes Ohio a Trump state.
Neither cold scientific reason nor beautiful natural-law syllogisms made today’s pro-lifers pro-life: their churches did that.
If the movement needs more voters, the obvious way to make them is the same way existing opponents of abortion were made.
A political party can’t do that, and expensive ad campaigns won’t.
All a party can do is work with the material on hand: meeting voters where they are and getting the most pro-life (or libertarian, progressive or otherwise) results possible within an existing moral framework.
That’s not enough for those who want to save souls now — but the place where that happens is in the pews and the pulpit.
Officer Friendly Kills Himself — Four LA County sheriff’s deputies die within a 24-hour period … and each of them by his own hand.
Hockey Player Arrested for Manslaughter — UK police have arrested Matt Petgrave on charges of manslaughter over the death of fellow hockey player Adam Johnson after a horrific incident that took place two weeks ago.
A Woman’s Lie Ends NFL Player’s Career — An NFL kicker was cut from the team following rape allegations. He was never charged, as evidence shows he was not present when the crime occurred.
Leftmedia Hypocrisy: Porn and Mike Johnson — Leftmedia outlets make themselves sound compassionate while spewing vice and hate. Peter Heck has examples of their hypocrisy from this week to show you why the Left doesn’t care about “democracy,” decency, or civil liberties.
Scholastic Books Are Coming for Your Kids — Kirk Cameron talks about his new book, The Fox, the Fair, and the Invention Scare, as well as the rise of inappropriate books for children in schools and why it matters to fight back.
Reverse Market Crash: The Worst Possible Economic Outcome — While traditional market crashes are characterized by rapid declines in asset values, a reverse market crash involves an excessively rapid rise in market values, leading to potentially dangerous economic consequences.
“There are people who seem to be upset that there are rabbis and other people of faith out here asking for ceasefire. And it’s bizarre because you would assume that if you are a religious leader, if you are a faith leader, that your number one priority would be to look into your faith, into the teachings of your faith, and to say, ‘I oppose violence.’” —Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
“By me calling for a ceasefire with my colleagues and centering humanity, I am uplifting deeply what it actually means to be Jewish.” —Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)
“They label us anti-Israel, they label us anti-Semitic, and they label us terrorists. They lie about us and they smear us. But we know the truth and the truth stands. … We are bound by our faith to demand a ceasefire now.” —Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO)
“Ceasefire means there is no military solution, only a diplomatic and cultural solution.” —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
Dezinformatsiya
“Israel says Hamas militants are using hospitals as shields for fighters but hasn’t provided evidence of that.” —Associated Press
Credit Where It’s Due
“October 7 made clear that this bloody cycle must end and that Hamas cannot be allowed to once again retrench, re-arm, and launch new attacks — while continuing to use people in Gaza as expendable human shields. … They have proved again and again that they will not abide by cease-fires, will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.” —former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
“I’m really struck by something in the last 30 or so days, especially as the White House … confirmed that one of the estimated 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas … is a three-year-old American child. There are people in the United States, loud voices, who, shown this crisis in which there are Americans and innocent people, innocent Israelis, taken hostage, are actually rooting for the hostage takers. And we see these images seemingly every day of Americans ripping down posters of kidnapped kids. Kidnapped children. … I’ve never seen anything like this.” —CNN’s Jake Tapper
For the Record
“The war going on in Israel today is not just war between Israel and Hamas. It is a war between Judeo-Christian civilization and radical Islamic barbarism. Israel is on the frontline of that war, and all of Western Civilization, especially the United States, stands in the crosshairs.” —Gary Bauer
The BIG Lie
“We’ve been very serious on dealing with the crime that we have seen just across the country.” —White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
Hot Air
“I don’t believe any politician can stop what is happening now. This [energy] transition is much bigger than any one party in the country … it’s not gonna happen. People are moving because the science is telling us we have to move in this direction. It’s not political. It’s not ideological.” —climate czar John Kerry
“Climate change … is the ultimate threat to humanity.” —Joe Biden
Belly Laugh of the Day
“Someone 45 years of age couldn’t do what [Biden] does every day, but he does it.” —MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle
Non Compos Mentis
“Look, there’s lots of anti-Semitism. I happen … to be married to a rabbi, and I happen to really believe in my faith. And there’s a lot of homophobia. And I happen to be the first out lesbian as a labor leader in the country ever. And so this kind of attack of identity — that’s all rolled into it too.” —American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten
Observations
“Having first rejected the Christian faith … our secular elites are now rejecting all those other good things that sprang from it, and positing a very different sort of society. Instead of a society that embraces rationality and freedom and human rights, they offer something from the pagan past: a society that embraces power and violence and domination.” —John Daniel Davidson
“Even if science accurately describes a thing, it cannot say whether the phenomenon is good or bad; those judgments rely on prior moral commitments. This is where the pro-life movement meets defeat. The moral assumptions of most pro-lifers are more religious than those of other Americans. That’s not a bad thing, but it suggests that to defeat abortion at the ballot box, pro-lifers ought to begin by getting more Americans to go to church. … Better communications strategies won’t help sell abortion bans to people who don’t already agree that abortion is wrong: it’s like trying to sell sirloin to vegans.” —Daniel McCarthy
And Last…
“It’s become really confusing dealing with the left lately because when they call someone Hitler you’re not sure if they mean it in a good way or a bad way.” —Frank J. Fleming
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — On the freshly scented avenues of San Francisco, a summit was held today between one of the most feared communist dictators in the world and President Xi.
“Glorious, Most Excellent Chairman, meet President Xi,” said aides as Gavin Newsom shook hands with President Xi. “Please allow us to escort you through the streets our communist utopia, freshly cleaned of poo and poors.”
The iron-fisted tyrant showed Mr. Xi around San Francisco, pointing out all the private property he had seized or destroyed. “The truly satisfying part is when you openly show how the rules crushing their lives do not apply to you,” explained Newsom. “Yes, Mr. Xi – you are far too soft psychologically on your subjects, trying to sell them on the idea that you are all serving a common cause in union. You must force them to serve your cause, while openly flaunting that you don’t even believe in the cause and will do whatever you wish. That, my friend, is how you truly break their spirit.”
An aide welcomed the dictator and Mr. Xi to the mansion where the summit would be held. “All of the poors have been thrown into Alcatraz, as you wished, oh Glorious and Wise Chairman,” reported an aide to Mr. Newsom. “The entire staff of the French Laundry awaits you, flown in by chopper over the smoldering ruins of I-10.”
At publishing time, President Xi had reportedly declined to play basketball with the dictator, having seen what happened to the last Chinese person who tried that.
Their culture is not your costume. DO NOT appropriate ghost, zombie, or vampire culture this Halloween.
Today, we’re talking about worldviews. The New Age Movement is full of error – from its promotion of reincarnation to its idea that man can become a god. What does the New Age Movement say about Jesus Christ?
Well, it’s … pretty weird!
First, it teaches that Jesus and Christ are different. Jesus was an “Ascended Master,” just one great teacher among many. The “Cosmic Christ” – a universal presence that can lead one to a higher state of consciousness – came on Jesus, taking Him to a higher spiritual level. Supposedly, this spiritual Jesus continues to give special instruction to New Agers through “channelers.”
But the Bible says that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal Son of God Who came to earth, lived a sinless life, and died as a sacrifice for our sins before rising again from the dead and ascending to Heaven.
WHAT A CONTRAST!
A related worldview is deconstruction, but we’ll need to discuss that worldview at another time. Until then, for more information, go to http://www.hopetools.net. Stay bold!
Carl Kerby is the founder of Reasons for Hope and co-creator of the DeBunked apologetic video series. His radio feature, Fast Facts, is heard weekly on VCY America, Saturdays at 9:25 AM Central.
Antisemitism is on the rise in nearly every country. Who would have expected to hear “Gas the Jews” in Sydney, Australia? Jewish students in Germany are being warned by their parents not to wear the Star of David in public. Justin Cohen in a BBC story warns, “The Jewish community at the moment is full of dread, full of fear, like I’ve never seen before.”
Those are just a few examples cited by Michael Brown in his commentary, “Wake Up World Before Jewish Blood is Shed in Your Country.” He is pleading with the public to take the recent antisemitic events seriously. He says we need to stand up, speak out, and push back.
The problem of antisemitism has become so severe that the European Union issued a statement about antisemitic incidents in Europe. “The spike of antisemitic incidents across Europe has reached extraordinary levels in the last few days, reminiscent of some of the darkest times in history. European Jews today are again living in fear.”
Alan Dershowitz concludes that “the Democratic Party now faces a choice.” He sees a fracture in the party between centrist and liberal Jews and the woke, anti-Israel progressives. He understands that left-leaning young people often inject vitality and enthusiasm into progressive causes. But now they seem to be embracing bloodlust. And he also points to faculty on elite college campuses that have signed open letters supporting the Hamas attacks.
He first voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and has voted for democrats ever since. But if the woke-hard-left succeeds in taking over the party, he predicts that millions of American Jews like him will turn from blue to red. This has implications for our next election.
I’m a proud evangelical Protestant who thought very highly of Pope Benedict. But I don’t like Pope Francis at all. In this post, I will link to two recent stories that explain two of my reasons, although I have many more beside these.
Conservative Catholics have launched a barrage of challenges to Pope Francis before a big Vatican meeting, with five cardinals demanding clarifications on same-sex couples and other issues, and a women’s group saying only men should vote at the event.
The cardinals from Asia, Europe, Africa, the United States and Latin America said on Monday they had sent the pope a set of formal questions, known as “dubia” (“doubts” in Latin), about the gathering.
In an open letter to Catholics, they said they had announced their challenges “so that you may not be subject to confusion, error, and discouragement but rather may pray for the universal Church.”
The action was the latest latest clash between the pope and minority conservatives, who have accused him of undermining a number of traditional precepts.
And I thought this was very interesting:
Church leaders have been preparing for this week’s closed-door meeting – known as a bishops synod – for the past two years, asking Catholics around the world to share their vision for the future of the Church.
Topics will include the role of women, greater acceptance of LGBT Catholics, social justice and the effects of climate change on the poor.
Conservative Catholics are definitely unhappy:
Last week, the conservative U.S.-based Catholic women’s group Restore Tradition decried the fact that women were given a vote at the meeting equal to that of a cardinal or bishop, saying some of the women had advocated “heretical doctrines” against tradition.
“We wish to be represented only by bishops,” the group said, citing “divine law” that only men could receive sacramental ordination.
The international conservative group, “Tradition, Family and Property,” sent participants a 100-page booklet calling the gathering a dangerous “Pandora’s Box.” In the forward, Burke says he fears the synod will sow “confusion and error and division.”
As a Protestant, I know that when denominations move away from the text of the Bible, and cater to the feelings of the “don’t judge” compassion crowd, then doctrine gets watered down. That’s the way it is in mainline Protestant denominations, and that’s why their numbers are declining, while conservative evangelical Protestant churches are thriving.
While the Pope is very friendly to the secular left on social issues, conservative leaders in the Catholic church are getting punished.
Pope Francis has removed a Texas bishop from his office, a move shocking many in the Church.
[…]Known by some as “America’s bishop,” Strickland is one of the few U.S. Catholic bishops to be vocal in his support for the Church.
He was the only U.S. bishop to attend the June 16 protest against the Los Angeles Dodgers for the team’s support of the blasphemous Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. It created something of an embarrassment for L.A. Abp. Jose Gómez and his auxiliary bishops.
Strickland was also outspoken against COVID mandates, which were promoted by Catholic leaders. (Where is that in the Bible?)
Strickland is not the only one:
Pope Francis does have a record of removing bishops who claim to be merely following the Catholic faith.
In March 2022, Pope Francis ousted Daniel Fernández Torres as bishop of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, because he allegedly “had not been obedient to the pope, nor had [he] had sufficient communion with [his] brother bishops of Puerto Rico.”
Torres refused to sign a joint statement urging the moral obligation of COVID-19 vaccinations, a stance he defended as a conscientious objection recognized by the Church. The bishop noted, “I have opposed what I consider to be using episcopal ministry to advance political agendas.”
He was disobedient to the Pope, so he had to go!
I have some friends who are conservative Catholics, and I’m so curious to know how they see their commitment to that organization shaping up in light of these changes. As a Protestant, I pick the denomination that adheres most closely to the teachings of the Bible. But conservative Catholics seem to be stuck with this Pope. What will they do now?
Drug companies and administrators should now answer for their unlawful actions in court. Constitutional expert, lawyer, author, pastor, and founder of Liberty Counsel Mat Staver highlights in 60 seconds the important topics of the day that impact life, liberty, and family. To stay informed and get involved, visit LC.org.
Talking with an old friend, the topic of ‘communication’ came up, and the question of what is truth? What is the role of the media? How do we distribute, consume and process information?
He said something like this:
Ever since the explosion of social media, conspiracy theories flourish and that’s why communication is now such a contested, fraught space.
So, if this is true, will we ever find truth?
Thirteen years ago, we were told algorithms were taking over the world!
Simply put, algorithms take input and produce output… Algorithms have now evolved. We are no longer shaping algorithms, they are shaping us, they shape our culture, they shape what we see, what we hear, they shape how we live. (Christopher Steiner)
Do they? Are we taken over? Is this why we now find it so hard to communicate? Is this why debate and honest analysis of opposing views is almost an extinct species?
Let’s unpack the story so far.
No one would argue that social media has exploded in recent times. How many of us have noticed that social media has a bad rep in many quarters? Is this because we know that algorithms are now watching every move we make? Is this because we are honest enough to admit that everything, we post on social media is biased to make us look good?
Consequently, social media can’t be trusted, and everything an algorithm generates from our social media is also going to be untrustworthy.
Further, I contend that those who savage social media also heap ridicule on the prevalence of conspiracy theories, arguing that the oxygen supplied by social media has fanned the flames of conspiracy theories to fill our appetite for the sensational.
If this is all true, where do we find truth?
Mainstream media (MSM), sometimes called legacy media
In 2022, at 34%, Americans’ trust in the mass media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” is essentially unchanged from 2021 and just two points higher than the lowest that Gallup has recorded, in 2016 during the presidential campaign.
Just 7% of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media, and 27% have “a fair amount.” Meanwhile, 28% of U.S. adults say they do not have very much confidence and 38% have none at all in newspapers, TV and radio. (Megan Brenan, 2022)
Nearly 40% of Americans had no trust in legacy media in 2022, but look at the partisan divide of the 60% who do:
Americans’ trust in the media remains sharply polarized along partisan lines, with 70% of Democrats, 14% of Republicans and 27% of independents saying they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence. (Megan Brenan, 2022)
Sourcing data on trust in media was a challenge. Many studies focused on the revenue stream from advertising, others on the time spent watching, and others on the number of online views. All valid statistics, but I found this from Gallup the most helpful, as they made the questions in their survey crystal-clear.
Look at the trust divide between Left and Right, 70% to 14%! If this is true, it suggests that the Left generally trust MSM and the Right almost exclusively don’t! How much of this can be levelled at Trump’s frequent lament about fake news?
How then can we effectively communicate, considering our source of ‘truth’?
If we are Left leaning and tend to trust the MSM, or we are Right leaning and tend to trust alternative media (social media), we all need to be extremely cautious who we trust. Everyone has an agenda!
If our online reading, studying and viewing habits feed into algorithms then, yes, we will have our proclivities reinforced. Then would it be fair to say that this positive feedback has the effect of entrenching our attitudes and even our thinking?
Then, the result will be that we are much more confined, typecast and less inclined to consider alternatives. All this makes it harder for us to communicate outside our own echo chamber:
Social media sites foster confirmation bias because of their basic function. Regardless of the specific algorithm, social media sites like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and even YouTube, serve the same basic function: to connect groups of like-minded users together based on shared content preferences. (University of Texas, Austin).
So, if the media is driving us further and further into our tribal groups of like minds, how then are we to break free and communicate beyond our comfortable territory?
There are many models that help us intentionally build our relationships with others; I love this one:
Trust — for relationships, whether personal or professional, this means building a solid foundation of trust.
Communication — good communication, like trust, is learned. And, just as everyone is different, the way you communicate with everyone must be different as well.
Problem solving — we must be open to alternative ideas to effectively problem solve.
Collaboration — sharing the expertise and being able to leverage the experience of many people gives you diversity, and different views. It sums up to more than if you do it on your own.
Execution — you must have a plan that everyone understands, a plan that everyone agrees upon, a plan that everyone can support, and a plan that outlines ways to achieve your organization’s goals.
Now, more than ever, I think that our communication needs so much more intentional, and it demands great effort to make it effective. We should be prepared to challenge ourselves to get out of our comfort zone and seek to trust strangers again!
What is Truth?
I have sought to demonstrate that MSM and alternative media cannot be taken at face value; they both push their narrative.
Consider the nightly TV news. It is commercially driven to sell products and manipulate our thinking. During the Covid era, it was blatantly the instrument of government, operating the tools of the nudge units.
Take alternative media news. The boundary between commentary and news is blurred. Take the Israel–Hamas War; some are pro-Israel and some pro-Palestinian (Hamas).
So, if all we read, hear and see is tainted, biased, and consciously or subconsciously pushing a narrative, it is not the truth. At best, it is a reflection of some truth.
So, what is truth? I think we need to hold back more than we might like to. Be content to live in the theory realm for a long time. Take conspiracy theories for example; see them as someone’s conjecture, commentary, and perspective. Don’t necessarily dismiss them; they may prove true one day!
Take science for example. There is little in science that can be declared the truth, most is theory. I do accept the truth about gravity. I do accept the truth about life and death. But as soon as someone says that the science is settled, I immediately say, on principle, no it’s not!
Wisdom declares we should learn from history. Unless we learn the lessons from our mistakes, we are destined to repeat them. But what if history is being rewritten? Holocaust denial is well known. Today, there are countless voices seeking to change the past, and tragically many of the young are believing the new reality. George Orwell’s 1984 is centre-stage.
I think that all of us need to know and understand our absolutes, our own non-negotiables. For example, the truth about the sanctity of life, the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross, God’s plan and purpose for His creation. As long as I hold to my non-negotiables, I believe I can communicate more effectively with others.
Confidence and Purpose
Low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence are a built-in negative feedback loop that constricts and diminishes effective communication.
These days when it is so hard to know what is true, what is false and what is propaganda, I believe it is an important first step to fight back with our own confidence.
All around us are uncertainty and insecurity. We can’t find much hope out there. Only in Jesus can we find hope and a future.
I am not advocating arrogance — rather, a conscious building of ourselves up in our faith (Jude 1:20-25). Let what God sees in us take root and flourish. Recognise that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6: 19). If this is true, we will be responsible with what we eat and drink, what exercise we take, and what sleep we get.
Feeling more confident about ourselves is bound to stimulate more positive communication, and before we know it, we have a positive feedback loop happening!
Finally, this leads me to purpose. I believe that we are all created with a God-given purpose. We are not created to merely exist, to be entrained, and for pleasure. Surely that’s a definition of narcissism. No, we are all called to reach out to others in some way.
I think that low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence short-circuits our ability to communicate with and think of others — that’s why it is so important to build ourselves up intentionally.
Then, from a position of strength, set out to discover our calling, our purpose. I find that many get the first step sorted, but trip up on the second. I confess it is hard.
Let me conclude with a story from my teacher training days. Early on in the course, I was always keen to have the students closely examine their calling to teach. I would ask them, in tutorial groups, to express how they knew they should be a teacher.
Some struggled to put this into words and, sometimes, these students were the ones who did not complete the course. Others would often say that someone else, a family member, a spouse, a church leader, had approached them and made the initial suggestion. That’s right, very often the teacher could not see that teaching was their calling! These students often turned out to be the best teachers! They ended up with the necessary resilience and, above all, the heart for teaching.
So, find a trusted other, and challenge them to help you find your purpose, or to confirm your purpose, if you believe you are on the right track.
From the position of confidence and purpose, I think we will have the necessary security to seek out the best for others while letting God take care of our own needs. Communication will be exciting, fulfilling and a joy, even in our mad world!
Israeli forces launch raid on a Hamas command center they say is located in Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, trying to avoid civilian casualties and delivering medical supplies, and Israel releases more footage of weapons from under the Rantisi hospital- and the US backs up Israel’s statements about how Hamas is using hospitals for their military operations, and members of Congress view raw footage of the murderous October 7th attacks, leaving many shaken and in tears; CBN Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Mitchell talks about the potential dangers in the Israeli troop raid, how Israel has Hamas on the run out of parts of Gaza, the talk of a potential hostage deal, the Biden administration’s controversial new sanctions waiver that could give Iran access to $10 billion, and the Israeli government’s response to the growing threat of a war with Hezbollah; some 290,000 attend the March for Israel in Washington DC, showing their support for the Jewish state and opposition to antisemitism; how Iran is increasing its global power, reaching even into the backyard of the US, in South America; and as President Biden meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping today, a new report shows that China’s nuclear arsenal is growing far more quickly than projected.
In 2 Timothy 4:14–15, Paul warns Timothy of an enemy of the gospel, someone who had caused him much pain. “Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message.” Who was Alexander the coppersmith? It is difficult to identify this man precisely. Alexander was a common name in the first century Greco-Roman world, and there are several possibilities concerning his identity. He may have been a man in Troas of whom Paul wanted Timothy to beware. Given that Timothy would be stopping in Troas to pick up Paul’s coat and books, he should be careful to avoid him (2 Tim. 4:13). Another possibility is that this was a coppersmith in Rome, where Paul was then imprisoned, or this may have been the Alexander in Ephesus who was involved in the infamous riot (Acts 19:33). It seems most likely, though, that this was the same Alexander whom Paul mentions in his first letter to Timothy, the man in Ephesus whom Paul “handed over to Satan,” along with Hymenaeus, so that they would learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim. 1:20).
Whomever this Alexander was, he had done serious injury to Paul. Paul does not specify the nature of this “great harm,” but it seems to have been linked to his arrest and trial. He says in the next verse that “at my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me” (2 Tim. 4:16). Alexander may have brought false testimony against Paul during the first stage of his trial (what Paul refers to as his “first defense”). Paul says this man “strongly opposed our message.” This was nota fellow Christian with whom Paul had a disagreement. Paul is not expressing an unforgiving heart toward a man with whom he needed to reconcile. Rather, he identifies Alexander as a fierce opponent and bitter foe of the gospel. That is why he warns Timothy to beware of him.
It would have been easy for Paul to complain about what Alexander had done to him. We could probably sympathize with the Apostle if he had written a few lines describing what a horrible person Alexander was and how he would like to pay him back. Instead, we see the grace of God at work in Paul, and Paul’s good example to Timothy. Instead of expressing his anger toward Alexander, Paul took comfort in the fact that vengeance belongs to the Lord, and that the Lord will have his justice in the end. “The Lord will repay him according to his deeds” (2 Tim. 4:14b).
Do you trust God to execute His vengeance, or do want to rob God of what rightfully belongs to Him by taking matters into your own hands?
There is no worse punishment than being repaid by the Lord according to our works. There is nothing more severe than the holy God’s satisfying His justice by paying us back for all the sins we have committed against Him. That is the reality of hell, and it is exactly what will happen to every human being who is not clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Hell is the final destination of every unforgiven sinner and the place where God will have His justice.
Paul was not saying that he wanted this judgment to befall Alexander, only that it would if Alexander did not repent. Paul knew perfectly well that he was just as deserving of hell as Alexander, and that it was only by God’s grace in Christ that he had been spared judgment. But he took comfort in the fact that God will have His vengeance, and no one will escape His justice. He was not breathing curses against Alexander. He was simply pointing out the fact that all the wrong done against the gospel, for which he was suffering at the time, will be made right in the end.
Perhaps you have been attacked by enemies of the gospel. Maybe someone has caused you great harm. Are you seeking revenge, or do you take comfort in the fact that the Lord will have His justice in the end? Do you trust God to execute His vengeance, or do want to rob God of what rightfully belongs to Him by taking matters into your own hands? We would do well to meditate frequently on Paul’s words in Romans:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. . . . Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. . . . Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:14, 17, 19–21)
When enemies harm us, instead of retaliating, let us remember that, unless that person repents, the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes said at the very end of his book, “For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl. 12:14). It is only because of the certainty of God’s justice at the end of history that now, in this life, we can respond with grace and mercy toward those who hurt us.
You may not know it, but the source of unbelievably rich spiritual power is available to you.
This spiritual power is not the result of being more religious, acquiring more knowledge about God, moving to a monastery, being more obedient, or praying more often. I suppose there is nothing wrong with those things, but they don’t yield spiritual power. The source of spiritual power is repentance (the very opposite of self-righteousness).
Wait, wait. Repentance isn’t what you think it is. It’s so very different from what most people think that I tried to find another word for it. When the word repentance comes up, most of us think of a weird little man holding a sign that reads, “Repent! The end is near!” or some kind of other “turn or burn” message directed at horrible sinners to scare the hell out of them.
That’s not what repentance is at all. In fact, it’s a wonderful word.
Repentance is from a Greek word meaning “to change one’s mind.” When it is applied in a biblical sense, it doesn’t mean changing your ways (or else!). It means that you recognize God is God and you aren’t. It means that you don’t get a vote on what is right and what is wrong. It means that when you recognize God’s authority, you go to God and tell him so. In short, repentance is knowing who you are, who God is, what you’ve done or haven’t done, and then going to God in agreement with him and his assessment.
Repentance isn’t changing; it’s God’s way of changing us if that is what he wants. Changing, though, isn’t even the issue. If the Bible is right in that all our sins are covered by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and Christ gives his righteousness in place of our sinfulness, change may happen, but it isn’t what this whole thing is about.
Let me tell you something that might shock you. Your disobedience, your failure, your rebellion, your struggle to be better—in short, your sin—is the greatest gift God has given you if you know it. Not only that. Your obedience, your faithfulness, your success, and your getting better is the most dangerous place you can be when you know it.
The anger of Jesus was never directed at those who were great sinners, but at those who seemed not to be. In fact, he said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees [the most patently righteous people Christ’s hearers knew], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). And just a cursory reading of Matthew 23 should make the most religious, obedient, and righteous among us wince. There Jesus pronounces seven woes on religious people. It’s not pretty.
Free sins are a gift—but only if you know you need them. Repentance is a source of great power, but only if you know you need to repent.
Angels figure very, very prominently in the NT. People don’t really know this, or they overlook angels in the created order. At the other end of the scale, some are so preoccupied with angels they nearly fall into angel worship.
Once you start studying angels, you realize how frequently they are mentioned in the New Testament. And as for the nativity story, they figure prominently, making many appearances! So let’s get to know these incredible beings better.
I first looked at angels the other day with scriptures, gave some links to credible essays and links to proper discussions of angels (there is so much bad out there regarding these creatures) and spent a short amount of time discussing the unholy angels.
There is so much more that could be said about angels both holy and unholy. Certainly these two short blogs and some others I’ve written are not a comprehensive look at these amazing creatures. In fact, there is an entire section of theology called Angelology that focuses on studying them.
Angels appear throughout the Bible. They first appear in the Bible chronologically in Genesis 3:24, where God sent a Cherubim with flaming sword to guard the way back in to the Garden of Eden.
The word ‘angels’ comes from a word meaning messenger, and could be applied to any messenger such as human pastors or even events such as pestilences, says the Easton Bible Dictionary.
“But its distinctive application is to certain heavenly intelligences whom God employs in carrying on his government of the world. The name does not denote their nature but their office as messengers.” Source Easton, M. G. (1893). In Illustrated Bible Dictionary and Treasury of Biblical History, Biography, Geography, Doctrine, and Literature.”
‘Heavenly intelligences’ is a good way to describe them. They are not human, but they are living, God-created creatures with intelligence, personal will, and power. Angels are a class of beings that are not human and not part of the Trinity. They have superior power and abilities than humans, but are not human. When humans die, they do not turn into angels. We should stop saying things like “Heaven gained another angel with the death of…”
Angels are spirit beings (Hebrews 1:14) but sometimes when they appear to humans they appear as flesh and blood men (the Bible always refers to angels as men, it never describes a female angel). We don’t know how they change to flesh-and-blood looking men when they appear on earth but suffice it to say that part of it is a mystery. Angels have personal will (otherwise Lucifer & Co. would not have fallen). They also have emotions.
But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him an abusive judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” (Jude 1:9).
There seem to be hierarchies of angels, or, at least, different classes. They are referred to as “hosts” which is a way of organizing them militarily. Ephesians 6:12 says,
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
If you notice in Revelation, it is the angels who perform the judgments at God’s command. They carry it out. All through the Bible you begin to notice angels performing the commands of judgment God wants: slaying Israel in a plague and about to render wrath on Jerusalem (2 Samuel 24:16), and the Passover angel, destroying Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim and so on. They were also present at the creation, (Job 38:7), at the giving of the Law (Deuteronomy 33:2; Galatians 3:19).
There are so many of them!
These superior beings are very numerous. “Thousand thousands,” etc. (Dan. 7:10; Matt. 26:53; Luke 2:13; Heb. 12:22, 23). They are also spoken of as of different ranks in dignity and power (Zech. 1:9, 11; Dan. 10:13; 12:1; 1 Thess. 4:16; Jude 1:9; Eph. 1:21; Col. 1:16). (2.) As to their nature, they are spirits (Heb. 1:14), like the soul of man, but not incorporeal. Such expressions as “like the angels” (Luke 20:36), and the fact that whenever angels appeared to man it was always in a human form (Gen. 18:2; 19:1, 10; Luke 24:4; Acts 1:10). Source: In Illustrated Bible Dictionary and Treasury of Biblical History, Biography, Geography, Doctrine, and Literature.
The holy angels praise God, perform His will, minister to humans (remember the angel helping Elijah in 1 Kings 19:5-7), render His judgments, learn (“angels long to look into these things” 1 Peter 1:12), and so much more!
When you read your Bible, pay close attention to the activities of Angels. What’s incredible to me is that even though they are powerful enough to hold back the wind (Revelation 7:1), stand on the sun, (Revelation 19:17), and reap the entire earth in but a moment, (Revelation 14:16), we believers will judge them! (1 Corinthians 6:3 says, but probably only the unholy angels, and probably only to the extent we align with God on HIS pronouncement upon them).
A word of caution: Hebrews 13:2 says we entertain angels unaware. If as Revelation 12:3–4 seems to suggest that a third of the angels fell, and are now demons, isn’t there a 1 in 3 chance that when we entertain an angel it might be an unholy one, masquerading as righteous? (2 Corinthians 11:15). Seems so.
Angels are powerful and majestic. Far from being little flying babies, remember that the first words of an angel appearance to a human is usually, ‘Fear not!’ Angels are terrifying. (Matthew 28:4, Matthew 28:5, Daniel 10:7). But the believer can take comfort in the fact that God sends the holy angels to help and comfort us, even when we are not aware. His sovereign care of His people, His Son’s Bride, is magnificent and perpetual. Angels are an interesting part of His creation, and we will see them one day! What a day that will be.
How would you react if you were suddenly face-to-face with God? While many Christians today think of the Lord in friendly, passive terms, the truth is that none of us would be leaping into the arms of our Father. The testimony of Scripture is clear: All sinners—even strong believers with mature faith—are right to cower in the light of God’s holiness.
Nearly three hundred thousand people rallied in Washington, DC, yesterday to support Israel in its war with Hamas, constituting the largest pro-Israel event in US history. Later in the day, the House passed a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown.
That’s the good news. But, as always, bad news is not hard to find.
Thousands of residents in Iceland have been urged to evacuate as authorities anticipate the imminent eruption of a volcano on its southwestern peninsula. Roads have already been damaged as a result of around nine hundred earthquakes in the area; toxic fumes are a threat as well.
Meanwhile, the United Nations now estimates that the global drug problem affects approximately 275 million people. Here’s one frightening dimension: the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning of a rapidly growing practice it calls “polysubstance use.” Over the last three years, studies of people addicted to opioids have consistently shown that 70 to 80 percent also take other illicit substances. “It’s no longer an opioid epidemic,” according to one health expert. “This is an addiction crisis.”
Then there’s Ukraine, whose counteroffensive against Russia is going so poorly that authorities are considering dismissing three commanders of the armed forces. And China: Xi Jinping is meeting with President Biden today amidst rising tensions between the world’s two superpowers over Iran, Israel, Taiwan, export controls, and economic challenges.
A recent study concluded that the number, intensity, and length of conflicts worldwide is at its highest level since before the end of the Cold War. Remembering Jesus’ reference to “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6), it’s not hard to wonder how much longer the world can continue like this.
One of the most frequent questions our ministry has received since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7 is whether this is the beginning of the “end times,” i.e, are we living in the last days? We have published articles and podcasts on this question; I have written a book on Revelation and discussed the larger subject in numerous articles as well.
Today, I’d like to consider the question from a perspective I’ve never considered before.
“God does not want us to understand”
When I have grappled theologically with unanswered questions, I have known that the problem was not that our Father is being unkind or arbitrary, since “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and can want only what is best for us. Rather, I have identified these logical options:
He has answered our question, but we have not been willing to hear his voice or submit to his Spirit (cf. Jeremiah 6:10).
He cannot answer our question because unconfessed sin is blocking our ability to pray effectively (Psalm 66:18).
He cannot answer our question because our finite minds cannot comprehend his infinite purposes (cf. Isaiah 55:9).
He has not yet answered our question, but he might in the future (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12).
This week, I found a different approach, one that relates directly to our topic today.
Jonathan Sacks was a philosopher, theologian, and author who served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth in the UK for many years. I followed his career with great appreciation. When I complimented his book on morality in one of my articles, he tweeted me with a personal note of gratitude.
I was working this week with some articles by Rabbi Sacks for a book I am writing on the Israel–Hamas war and found an anecdote I had not seen. Just a few weeks before his death from cancer, the rabbi was asked the age-old question, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” He responded:
God does not want us to understand. Because if we ever understood, we would be forced to accept that bad things happen to good people, and God does not want us to accept those bad things. He wants us not to understand, so that we will fight against the bad and the injustices of this world, and that is why there is no answer to that question. God has arranged that we shall never have an answer to it.
Praying the Bible’s last prayer
Regarding the timing of his return, Jesus was blunt: “Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). He added that he would come “at an hour you do not expect” (Matthew 24:44).
Let’s apply Rabbi Sacks’ thinking to our Lord’s assertions. If we knew when Jesus would come back, wouldn’t that knowledge impact every dimension of our lives? If his return is not in our lifetime, would we presume on a future that is actually guaranteed to none of us? (Even if Jesus doesn’t come back for a thousand years, you and I could die tomorrow.) Alternately, if it is imminent, would we fall into idleness while awaiting his return, which was apparently a problem for some in the early church (2 Thessalonians 3:6–12)?
As with explanations for suffering, God does not want us to know when Christ will return so we will prepare every day for his coming. Why? Because the best way to live every day is to live as if it were that day.
If you knew Jesus would return tomorrow, whom would you forgive today? Whose forgiveness would you seek? What would you stop doing? What would you start doing?
Doing these things is the best way to live even if you were guaranteed several more decades of life on this earth. When we live in this way, we’ll stop asking when Jesus is coming because we are ready to meet him whenever that moment comes. And we’ll be able to pray the Bible’s last prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).
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