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
For sweet communion with God in holy ordinances, and the communications of his favor.
I have feasted on the abundance of your house, and you have given me drink from the river of your delights: for with you is the fountain of life; in your light do I see light. Psalm 36:8-9(ESV)
You have brought me to your holy mountain, and made me joyful in your house of prayer; Isaiah 56:7(ESV) and I have found for me it is good to be near God. Psalm 73:28(ESV)
I have reason to say that a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere, and that it is better to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness; for the LORD God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor, and no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly: O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you! Psalm 84:10-12(ESV)
I have sat down under your shadow with delight, and your fruit has been sweet to my taste; you have brought me to the banqueting house, and your banner over me has been love. Song of Solomon 2:3-4(ESV)
Luke 1:26-38 This week’s lessons help us to prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ by focusing on three miracles seen in the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary.
Theme
That God Should Become Man
The announcement that Jesus should be born to Mary has several parts, all of them important: that Jesus would be “great”; that He would be “the Son of the Most High”; that He would be “holy,” that is, without sin; and that He would “reign over the house of Jacob” on the throne of David forever. But of these various parts of the announcement the greatest, without any doubt, is that the one to be born should be the Son of God. It is the greatest part of the announcement because it means that by the incarnation and birth God would Himself become man.
This is an amazing miracle, of course. For it is contrary to anything we might expect and beyond anything we can fully understand. God created all things. A human being is part of that creation. How, we might ask, can it be possible for God to become part of that which He created? The answer defies philosophical explanation.
I am sure you know how great a problem this was for the citizens of the ancient world. It was a problem for the Jew, because the Jew regarded God as being so high above His creation that the doctrine of the incarnation debased Him and was therefore thought to be blasphemous, Besides, the incarnation seemed to teach that there were two gods, one in heaven and one on earth in the form of the alleged Messiah, and that offended Jewish monotheism.
The incarnation was also a problem for the Gentile because, in spite of the popular myths about gods consorting with humans, the ancients believed in an unbridgeable gulf between spirit, which is what God is, and flesh, which is at least part of what it means to be a human being. Spirit is not flesh, nor could it become flesh, according to ancient thinking. Therefore, for those whose minds were formed by such categories of thought, any literal incarnation of God was judged to be impossible.
These views were so strong in the ancient world that even in Christian circles some early heresies tried to explain the incarnation by saying that the spirit of Christ came on the man Jesus, rather loosely, at the time of His baptism and left Him just before His crucifixion.
But it is not only the ancient world that had trouble with the miracle of the incarnation. Our modern world has trouble with it too, largely because we disbelieve in nearly everything, especially the miraculous. Even some alleged Christians disbelieve it.
A few years ago a British scholar named John Hick edited a book with the title The Myth of God Incarnate, which attempted to dismiss the incarnation as simple but ignorant and profoundly mistaken mythology. The thesis of the book was not surprising, that the incarnation was a myth. Today few unregenerate people do literally affirm the incarnation of God. The only surprising thing about this book was that Hick and those who contributed to it thought they could maintain Christianity without the incarnation and that they could continue to call themselves Christians while rejecting it. Their underlying premise was that Christianity needs constantly to adapt itself into “something which can be believed,” and that in today’s world it has to become an incarnationless religion.1
Well, “that God and man should be joined in this child” is certainly a miracle, as Luther said. The acceptance of miracles requires faith. But that does not mean that the miracle itself is unreasonable or meaningless.
That God should become a man may seem strange to some forms of human philosophy, but it is not beyond the ability of God to accomplish. God can do anything He chooses consistent with His own nature. And as far as the reason for the incarnation is concerned, the remainder of the New Testament makes clear that it was necessary for Jesus to become man in order to die for us and thereby achieve our salvation. God must punish sin. We are sinners. The punishment for sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Therefore, we must die for our sin—unless another, who is innocent of all wrong doing Himself and who is of sufficient value in God’s eyes to make atonement for countless others, should bear the punishment due us in our place. That is exactly what Jesus has done, of course. It is what the incarnation is about. That God should join with man in this child is the first great miracle of Christmas.
1John Hick, ed., and others, The Myth of God Incarnate (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977), ix. The authors got the idea of constant adaptation from T. S. Eliot.
Study Questions
From the lesson, what is the greatest part of Gabriel’s announcement to Mary?
Why is it so important that God Himself would become a man?
What problems did the incarnation raise?
Application
Application: Pray for an opportunity this week to share the wonder of the incarnation with someone who needs to hear its saving message.
For Further Study: Download for free and listen to James Boice’s message, “Wise Men Come to Jesus.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)
Believing in Jesus goes hand in hand with loving Him. As soon as we know Him well enough to trust Him, we can’t help loving Him too. Yet some people who have heard of Jesus somehow don’t fall in love with Him. What can we possibly say to our friends and family members who haven’t yet embraced Jesus for themselves? Do we have any advice for the people who sporadically turn up at church for occasional services and are wondering whether there may be something in Christianity after all? Thomas Doolittle (1633?–1707) pastored several congregations in London for around 50 years right up until his death and wrote several popular works with a pastoral and evangelistic emphasis. He was deeply impressed by Paul’s words, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16:22). The following updated extract is from the urgent letter Doolittle wrote to anyone who doesn’t love the Lord Jesus Christ, highlighting the danger of this lovelessness and identifying the compelling reasons for loving the lovely Saviour.
Dear friend,
The glorious person who is both Lord, and Jesus, and Christ, has suffered and done and promised just the kind of things that might win the love of sinners to Himself. By these things He pleads with sinners to set their affections on Him.
Think of who competes for your love
In opposition to Him stand the world and sin, competing with Him for the love of our hearts. Christ calls, “Sinner, love me!” Sin and the world shout aloud, “Love us!” The Spirit, the Word, ministers, mercies, and a well-informed conscience press hard for us to love Christ. The devil and the flesh are rooting for us to love sin and the world.
Love we have, and one of these we will love. Both we cannot love at the same time, with a predominant love, for either we will hate the one and love the other, or else we will hold to the one, and despise the other. “Ye cannot (love and) serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). Predominant love to the one is incompatible with predominant love to the other. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
Who can avoid grieving, and who can abstain from floods of tears and bitter lamentation, when they see that the love of man — such a noble affection in itself — is set so much on sin, which is so bad in itself, and so bad to those who love it? and set on the world, which proves a vexation to those who are so fond of it? They love and are vexed. They are vexed by it, and yet still continue and increase their love to it. Their vexation by it does not abate their inordinate love to it. Meanwhile, Christ, who is the primary, principal, and most delightful object of love, is slighted by so many, even by the majority.
In this devotional, Doreen Virtue addresses a common form of spiritual warfare: sudden attacks of shame, fear, and discouragement about a believer’s past. Scripture teaches that Satan is the accuser who seeks to devour and discourage Christians, but believers are not left defenseless. Jesus Christ stands before the Father as our Advocate, interceding for us on the basis of His finished work.
We look at the contrast between the enemy’s accusations and Christ’s advocacy, the difference between godly sorrow and condemning shame, and how Christians can respond biblically by turning to prayer, the Word of God, and the promises of the gospel.
Spiritual warfare often includes sudden thoughts of shame, fear, and discouragement.
Godly sorrow leads to repentance, but satanic accusation aims to produce despair and pull believers away from Christ.
Jesus Christ is our Advocate with the Father, interceding for us as the Righteous One.
Satan is described as our adversary and the accuser of the brethren.
Believers are called to agree with Christ, not the accuser, and to run to Jesus in prayer and faith.
Our confidence is in Christ’s finished work, not our performance.
Key Scriptures
1 John 2:1 — “If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
Hebrews 7:25 — Jesus always lives to intercede for those who come to God through Him.
1 Peter 5:8 — The devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
Revelation 12:10 — Satan is the accuser who accuses believers day and night.
Romans 3:23 — All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Reflection Question
How does knowing that Jesus is your Advocate guard you from fearfully reacting to the devil’s accusations about sins you have repented of and been forgiven for?
Call to Action
When accusations and shame rise up, don’t run from God run to Christ. Open your Bible, pray honestly, and rest in the truth that Jesus intercedes for His people. If this episode encouraged you, please share it with a sister who needs gospel assurance today.
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”” – Luke 2:13-14
Isaac, Samson and John the Baptist: what do they have in common? They all got heavenly birth announcements. They got heavenly birth announcements, even before they were conceived as men God chose to use in His plan of salvation.
Our Lord Jesus also got a heavenly birth announcement before He was conceived. However, He got far more. He got a heavenly birth announcement right after He was born. “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10b-11).
Above all, only Jesus gets the choir! Only when Jesus is born does the whole army chorus of heaven burst into praise following the good news of His birth. That is how it should be. The coming of God’s Son, who is also God the Son, is the high point of salvation history. The angels can’t contain themselves!
The army chorus shows up again in Revelation 5. Millions of heavenly beings shout in response to the realization that the risen and reigning Christ has taken His exalted place at the helm of redemptive history. In Revelation 5:13-14, all creation joins the chorus. That is the goal of history – that God’s chosen children, redeemed in Christ, along with all creation, take their place in the jubilation choir to glorify and enjoy Him forever. “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!” (Psalm 150:6).
Suggestions for prayer
Thank God for the reasons He has given us in Christ to sing and shout with the angels. Ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your heart anew to God’s glory and grace, so that you can praise Him more fully with your lips and life.
Rev. Richard Zekveld is the pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church (PCA) in South Holland, Illinois, a Chicagoland suburb. Rev. Zekveld, his wife Nancy, and their five children have lived in the community of South Holland for seventeen years. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. This devotional is made available by the Nearer To God Devotional team, who also make available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.
“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. (22:12)
The speaker is no longer the angel, but the Lord Jesus Christ, who repeats His declaration of verse 7, “Behold, I am coming quickly.” As noted in the introduction to this chapter, Jesus’ statement means that His coming is imminent. It teaches the same truth that He expressed in Mark 13:33–37:
Take heed, keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time will come. It is like a man away on a journey, who upon leaving his house and putting his slaves in charge, assigning to each one his task, also commanded the doorkeeper to stay on the alert. Therefore, be on the alert—for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—in case he should come suddenly and find you asleep. What I say to you I say to all, “Be on the alert!”
When He comes, Jesus will bring His reward … with Him, to render to every man according to what he has done. Believers’ eternal rewards will be based on their faithfulness in serving Christ in this life. Their works will be tested, and only those with eternal value will survive (1 Cor. 3:9–15; 2 Cor. 5:9–10). The rewards believers enjoy in heaven will be capacities for serving God; the greater their faithfulness in this life, the greater will be their opportunity to serve in heaven (cf. Matt. 25:14–30). Knowing that, John exhorted believers, “Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward” (2 John 8). The knowledge that Jesus could return at any moment should not lead Christians to a life of idle waiting for His coming (cf. 2 Thess. 3:10–12). Rather, it should produce diligent, obedient, worshipful service to God, and urgent proclamation of the gospel to unbelievers.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2000). Revelation 12–22 (pp. 298–299). Moody Press.
12 Once again (see v. 7) Christ announces that he is coming soon. This time, however, he replaces the beatitude with the promise of reward. He will bring with him a reward for each person based upon what each has done. The distribution of rewards on the basis of works is taught throughout Scripture. Jer 17:10 is representative: “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” Paul teaches that God “will give to each person according to what he has done” (Rom 2:6), and Peter declares that God “judges men by their actions” (1 Pet 1:17, Phillips).20 The reward will be spiritual blessedness to the righteous but judgment for those who are evil. It is the quality of a person’s life that provides the ultimate indication of what that person really believes.
Mounce, R. H. (1997). The Book of Revelation (pp. 406–407). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
The promise of a speedy return of Christ is repeated from verse 7 (cf. v. 20; 3:11). To it is added the thought of the exact requital he will give to everyone. The returning Christ will bring ‘wages’ (misthos, reward, means ‘what is due’). The verb give (apodounai) also signifies requital. Everyone is involved. There will be no escaping in that day. As we have seen elsewhere, judgment according to works is insisted upon throughout the New Testament.
Morris, L. (1987). Revelation: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, p. 247). InterVarsity Press.
22:12 Look, I am coming soon. This is identical to the phrase in 22:7 and is repeated once again at 22:20, without the word “look.” In all three instances the context is one of obedient discipleship. In 22:7, there is the blessing for those who obey the prophecy; here, Jesus brings his “reward … to repay all people according to their deeds”; and in 22:20, the saying closes another call to obedience in 22:18–19. The conclusion to the vision strongly reemphasizes the crucial significance of faithful discipleship (see note on 14:13).
Mulholland, M. R., Jr. (2011). Revelation. In P. W. Comfort (Ed.), Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: James, 1–2 Peter, Jude, Revelation (pp. 599–600). Tyndale House Publishers.
22:12 Though numerous other NT passages similarly speak about the faithful being rewarded, they never do so apart from grace and the work of the Holy Spirit. The unrighteous, on the other hand, will have no one to blame but themselves when they are condemned for their iniquity.
Engelbrecht, E. A. (2009). The Lutheran Study Bible (p. 2236). Concordia Publishing House.
22:12 I am coming quickly. See note on 3:11. Again, imminence is the issue (cf. Mk 13:33–37). according to what he has done. Only those works which survive God’s testing fire have eternal value and are worthy of reward (1Co 3:10–15; 4:1–5; 2Co 5:10).
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2006). The MacArthur study Bible: New American Standard Bible. (Re 22:12). Thomas Nelson Publishers.
I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Joshua 1:5)
This word to Joshua is often quoted; it is the basis of that New Testament word “He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
Beloved, a life of warfare is before us, but the Lord of Hosts is with us. Are we called to lead a great but fickle people? This promise guarantees us all the wisdom and prudence that we shall need. Have we to contend with cunning and powerful enemies? Here is strength and valor, prowess and victory. Have we a vast heritage to win? By this sign we shall achieve our purpose; the Lord Himself is with us.
It would be woe to us indeed if Jehovah could fail us; but, as this can never be, the winds of disquietude are laid to sleep in the caverns of divine faithfulness. On no one occasion will the Lord desert us. Happen what may, He will be at our side. Friends drop from us, their help is but an April shower; but God is faithful, Jesus is the same forever, and the Holy Spirit abideth in us.
Come, my heart, be calm and hopeful today. Clouds may gather, but the Lord can blow them away. Since God will not fail me, my faith shall not fail; and as He will not forsake me, neither will I forsake Him. Oh, for a restful faith!
When we call people to put their faith in Christ, we need to talk about what they’re saved from. It is very tempting to suggest that Jesus is here to save us from the sad, purposeless lives that we feel, or maybe save us from a lack of meaning in our lives. But the Bible is very clear that we’re not saved from purposelessness. We’re not saved from meaninglessness. We’re saved from God’s wrath.
The reality is that all of us are sinners and therefore deserve God’s judgment. We don’t need to be saved from ourselves. We don’t need to be saved from the lack of things in our lives. We need to be saved from God and the judgment that we deserve from him. And this is what Jesus came to do. He took God’s wrath for us on the cross. We have been saved from God’s wrath.
But we’re not just saved to then go on our merry way and do whatever we want. No, we are actually saved to follow Jesus. We’re saved to serve and love God with all of our lives, which means we’re actually saved to holiness. What it means to give our lives to God and what it means to say, Lord, I don’t belong to myself anymore; I belong to you, is to allow him to set the terms for my life. And that means a life of holy and sacrificial love.
We are saved from God’s wrath, and we are saved to God’s plan for our lives, which is a plan for holiness.
Michael Lawrence (PhD, Cambridge University; MDiv, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) serves as the lead pastor of Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church.
To be converted as a Christian is to have changed your thinking and your believing about Jesus Christ, and to be changed into a person who is no longer an enemy of God but a beloved child of God.
When we read that Jesus called the twelve his apostles, we imagine that he must have been inventing a brand-new word to describe a spiritual gift or an office that existed only in the church.
Isn’t it interesting how God saves people? And whom God saves? And how he changes them? It’s often the people we least expect and in a way we would never expect.
Worry won’t win when you’re filled with truth. Join Dr. Adam Tyson as he discusses the anxiety epidemic and how God offers a better way. Move forward in strength and peace as you let God’s truth guide you.
W. Philip Keller, on page 70 of his A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, talks about the “cast down sheep,” which is a sheep on its back that cannot get up again under its own strength. Such sheep may bleat a little for help, but usually they just lie there with their legs flailing about, and they die if they are not rescued. This was the state of Israel in exile and, indeed, is the state of all those who are unredeemed — stuck in their sin and unable to turn themselves right side up.
Spurgeon’s Devotional on Isaiah 40:11 Who is he of whom such gracious words are spoken? He is THE GOOD SHEPHERD. Why doth he carry the lambs in his bosom? Because He hath a tender heart, and any weakness at once melts his heart. The sighs, the ignorance, the feebleness of the little ones of his flock draw forth his compassion. It is his office, as a faithful High Priest, to consider the weak.
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Thirty Days of Jesus Series, Overview-
Introduction/Background
Prophecies:
Day 1: The Virgin shall conceive Day 2: A shoot from Jesse Day 3: God sent His Son in the fullness of time Day 4: Marry her, she will bear a Son
Birth & Early Life-
Day 5: The Babe has arrived! Day 6: The Glory of Jesus Day 7: Magi seek the Child Day 8: The Magi Offer gifts & worship Day 9: The Child Grew Day 10- the Boy Jesus at the Temple Day 11: He was Obedient Day 12: The Son! Day 13: God is pleased with His Son
The Second Person of the Trinity-
Day 14: Propitiation Day 15: The Gift of Eternal Life Day 16: Kingdom of Darkness to Light Day 17: Jesus’ Preeminence Day 18: The Highest King Day 19: He emptied Himself Day 20: Jesus as The Teacher
Christmas always comes with some drama. Ripped from the pages of Facebook, here’s the epic saga of my tree decorating of 2013…
Plugged in every strand of lights to make sure they were working before putting them on tree. Plugged in every individual strand of lights to make sure they were working after putting each on tree. Decorated tree. Plugged in tree. Everything fine for about 15 minutes.
Entire tree goes out.
Went searching for problem strand. Determined it was one of two strands at bottom of tree.
Figured out which one it was.
Carefully disentangled said strand from branches and ornaments. Discovered kids had hung ornaments on light strand. Discovered that 10 year old, despite a lifetime of instruction, is still hanging multiple ornaments on a single branch like so many bunches of ripe cherries. Discovered it is much easier to take lights off a tree when there are no ornaments on it. Discovered a 44 year old spinal column ain’t what it used to be.
Plugged new strand of lights into end of previous working strand. No worky.
Prayed.
Contemplated tree with no lights on bottom branches. Imagined offspring in years of therapy due to improperly lit tree.
Prayed again. Considered that this was probably the stupidest prayer God had ever heard.
Replugged a different way. Worky. Restrung working strand of lights. Yay. Tree is now completely lit.
Stepped back and discovered side of tree -heretofore unnoticed- looked like a giant had taken a bite out of it (disproportionately short branches). Decided to rotate tree so “bald spot” would be in back.
20 degrees- bald spot still visible.
45 degrees- bald spot still visible. Tree protests being moved by dropping two large jingle bells on my head.
90 degrees- bald spot in back, but now all front ornaments are in back and back ornaments are in front. Also, all breakable ornaments are now dangling precariously over bare tile floor in back instead of over padded tree skirt in front. Some appear ready to commit ornament suicide any moment.
Redecorate approximately 40% of tree. Discover angel topper now at right face instead of facing front. Climb on hearth to rotate angel. Tree drops more jingle bells.
Due to rotation, tree is now too close to couch. Perform origami on spinal column again and attempt to slide tree closer to fireplace. Foot of tree stand gets hung up on edge of a tile. Tree sways but stays in tact.
Operation “Outsmart Christmas Tree” complete. Merry Christmas to me :0)
2016 Update:
Tree shopping and decorating
My husband says the angel looks like it’s about to launch into orbit!
Oh no, not again!
Fixed!
2018 Update:
Still not the picture perfect tree, but we love it!
2020 Update
This year all the lights stayed on, but the tree ended up being a little shorter than we liked, so I wrapped up a milk crate like a present and the tree stand is sitting on top of it. Also, the angel topper that we’ve had since we got married gave up the ghost a couple of years ago, so we had to replace her with a new one whom we’ve affectionately dubbed “disco angel” due to her LED lighting. (Yes, I know real angels don’t look like that. Don’t @ me. :0)
2021 Update
We always grab a snack or dessert after tree shopping. This year it was Mexican ice cream!
The tree looks pretty much the same this year as it did last year, so I thought I’d show you some of my favorite decorations instead:
The first ornament that was “ours”. We bought it the Christmas before we got married.
There are 6 red, green, and purple balls in this “Names of Christ” set: Redeemer, Lord, Savior, Emmanuel, Jesus, and Christ.
All the Lesley stockings. I love the birdhouses my husband built. As we keep adding members to the family, we’re going to need a longer mantel!
2022 Update
This could, conceivably, be the last Christmas any of the kids will go with us to pick out the Christmas tree. The last two in the nest are 19 and 20 respectively, with full time jobs and their own activities to attend to.
Christmas ornaments from travels to various conferences this year.
2023 Update
The Lesley Way is for everybody to pick out and advocate for the tree he or she thinks is best. Then, Dad (who’s the one who actually has to trim it), makes the final decision. Mom has veto power, but, since Mom would be happy with almost any tree in the place, and since we all have similar taste in trees, it’s rarely exercised. This year, we picked Laura’s tree.
Probably one of my favorite Christmas tree pictures ever.
Bonus pic of my husband and me goofing off at our local Christmas parade. Every Southern girl needs a big, floppy Ouiser hat to keep the sun at bay!
2024 Update
This year was the very first time we have ever gone Christmas tree shopping without at least two of our children. It’s one of those things that most couples experience when they first get married, and here we are, after almost 32 years of marriage doing it for the first time! We have always loved picking out a tree together as a family, but this was a different kind of fun – a “date day”!
My dad passed away this past January, so after the funeral we spent some time helping my mom sort, donate, and downsize some things. She very kindly allowed my girls and me to go through all of her Christmas decorations and take the ones we wanted. I’m so glad we will all have these precious heirlooms and the memories that go with them. I have been waiting almost a year to hang them on my tree. Wanna see?
If you’re around my age, you might remember decorating glass balls like this. Elmer’s glue and glitter, baby! We all had one with our name on it. These are my mom’s and dad’s, which will henceforth hang on my tree. My husband’s and mine – new this year, and purchased on a trip to a retreat I spoke at – aren’t quite as elegant, but we like them.❤️💚❤️💚
Before there was “Elf on the Shelf,” there was elf on the tree. Circa the 1960’s, I’m pretty sure.
The three glass balls, the gold filigree Star of David, and the aqua/silver tinsel Koosh Ball-looking thingie, my parents bought in sets in Germany when my dad was stationed there before I was born, so they are all about 56-57 years old. My sister and I used to have great fun throwing those tinsel thingies at the tree, and I kept the tradition when I decorated this year! We got the straw stars when the Army moved us to New Mexico when I was a child, so those are probably 45-50 years old. We threw those too, but they didn’t stick as well as the tinsel ones. :0)
It looks like the middle section isn’t lit as well as the upper and lower sections, but that’s just because the branches are a lot thicker right there.
2025 Update
Our second year searching for our Christmas tree as empty nesters! We think this year’s tree is the best shape and size we’ve ever gotten!
I did have issues with the lights again this year. They were all working when I put them on the tree, and then a strand and a half went mysteriously dark. But here’s the wisdom of age for you – this year, I didn’t take the lights off the tree. I shoved the infernal quitter strands all the way back to the trunk where they’d be invisible and went out and bought a new 250 light string to replace them.
I was pretty happy until I reached for an ornament tote – which I had already gone through this year, mind you – and found four brand new boxes of lights that I’d bought at an after Christmas clearance sale sometime within the last few years.🤨
Oh well.
I thought you might enjoy this little video I made. It was for a Christmastime women’s meeting at my church (so I’ve clipped out the first few seconds for privacy reasons). We all brought something to demonstrate how we “keep Christ in Christmas” in our homes.
He who gives no quarter to the wicked in the day of judgment, is the defence and refuge of his saints in the day of trouble. There are many forms of oppression; both from man and from Satan oppression come to us; and for all its forms, a refuge is provided in the Lord Jehovah. There were cities of refuge under the law, God is our refuge-city under the gospel. As the ships when vexed with tempest make for harbour, so do the oppressed hasten to the wings of a just and gracious God. He is a high tower so impregnable, that the hosts of hell cannot carry it by storm, and from its lofty heights faith looks down with scorn upon her enemies.
Spurgeon, C. H. (n.d.). The treasury of David: Psalms 1-26 (Vol. 1, p. 98). Marshall Brothers.
9:9 God’s judgment involves vindicating the oppressed, the people of Israel seen as weak and needy. This psalm grew out of an occasion in which the Gentile rulers sought to oppress them.
Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (p. 950). Crossway Bibles.
9:9 a stronghold The psalmist describes Yahweh as a place of refuge for the oppressed. The Hebrew word used here, misgav, describes high walls or a rocky fortress (Isa 25:12; 33:16). When applied to Yahweh, it emphasizes the stable protection He provides for those in need (Psa 62:6–8).
Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., Whitehead, M. M., Grigoni, M. R., & Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (Ps 9:9). Lexham Press.
Earthquake swarm in San Ramon continues with multiple events on December 15, California An earthquake swarm that began near downtown San Ramon, California, in October remained active on December 15, with three earthquakes recorded within a few hours by the U.S. Geological Survey. The swarm is occurring in a structurally complex fault zone near the Calaveras Fault, where stress is released through repeated small ruptures rather than a single larger earthquake.
At least 21 killed as flash floods hit Safi following one hour of extreme rainfall, Morocco Severe flash floods struck the Atlantic coastal city of Safi, western Morocco, on Sunday, December 14, 2025, killing at least 21 people and injuring 32 others after an hour of intense rainfall inundated urban areas. Homes, shops, and roads were flooded, and multiple vehicles were swept away.
America’s Rapidly Growing Happiness Deficit We possess technology that would have been unimaginable to people living 100 years ago, we have access to more entertainment than any other generation in human history, and we have been enjoying an artificially-inflated standard of living that has been fueled by an unprecedented debt binge for decades. So why are so many of us so miserable? One out of every eight Americans is taking an antidepressant, more than 48 million Americans have a substance use disorder, the suicide rate has been trending in the wrong direction for years, and according to Gallup, the percentage of U.S. adults that are currently dealing with depression has nearly doubled since 2015.
Aussie PM Invokes ‘Right-Wing Extremism’ After Islamic Terrorist Attack, Vows Crackdown On Guns In the wake of a Sunday mass shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach that left 15 dead and more than two dozen injured, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has vowed to strengthen the country’s gun laws. The massacre, which occurred during a Hanukkah event, was reportedly carried out by a father-son pair, Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24 – with the older gunman having held a gun license for a decade while legally owning six guns.
Doubts grow over Gaza disarmament amid US phase 2 efforts Amid ongoing US efforts to advance to Phase 2 of the Gaza peace plan, skepticism is rising among member states about the feasibility of the next stages, particularly the prospect of disarming Hamas. President Trump’s envoy, Tom Barrack, visited Israel on Monday as part of the initiative, but officials involved in the plan say progress is limited.
President Trump signed an executive order Monday designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction amid the administration’s escalating conflict with Venezuela and “narcoterrorists.” “…there’s no doubt that America’s adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the United States, in part because they want to kill Americans.”
“Trans” Lobby Fumes About Name Change on Levine Portrait at HHS Once again, the Trump administration has triggered the “trans” lobby, and once again, the man-ladies — and lady-men — have turned purple with fury. “Quietly,” as the pro-trans media say, the Health and Human Services Department changed the nameplate on former assistant secretary “Rachel” Levine’s portrait. The nameplate now identifies Levine, a “trans woman,” by his birth name, Richard.
“The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.” —George Washington (1778)
FBI foils LA terror plot: Four members of the Order of the Black Lotus, an offshoot of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, have been arrested by the FBI on charges of conspiracy and possession of an explosive device. The FBI reports that the radical pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist group was a credible terroristic threat due to its plan to coordinate bombings in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. The group also planned to target ICE agents shortly after the new year. Audrey Carroll, Zachary Page, Dante Garfield, and Tina Lai had arrived in the Mojave Desert and begun assembly of explosive devices for testing when the FBI intervened and arrested them. In court on Monday, Page identified himself as a trans woman and requested to be sent to a women’s prison.
Trump EO on fentanyl: Yesterday, Donald Trump signed an executive order designating illicit fentanyl drugs as weapons of mass destruction (WMD). “Illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic,” Trump explained. “Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, constitutes a lethal dose.” Last year, fentanyl was responsible for 87,000 American deaths, accounting for the vast majority of drug overdose-related deaths in the country. The classification of fentanyl as a WMD follows Trump’s designation earlier this year of a number of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations over their trafficking of fentanyl. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem noted that Trump’s order will allow the U.S. to use “the full array of appropriate counter-fentanyl tools.”
Update on Owens and Kirk meeting: Following the private in-person meeting between Charlie Kirk’s widow and Candace Owens, Erika Kirk called it “a very productive conversation,” adding, “more to come from both of us.” The CEO of TPUSA concluded, “Time to get back to work.” Owens also weighed in on X, saying it was “an extremely productive 4 ½ hour meeting that I think we both feel should have taken place a lot earlier than it did.” She also noted that the two “agreed on much more than I had anticipated,” while she also observed they had disagreements as well. Owens added that she would give a full rundown of the meeting on Tuesday. Given that Owens has spun outlandish and factually vacuous conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it will be interesting to see if she pulls back from continuing to push them, particularly her claims of TPUSA’s involvement.
Judge continues to stymie efforts to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia: Judge Paula Xinis has shown how incredibly far she is willing to go to protect human traffickers from justice. Last week, she ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from custody and forbade his deportation, claiming that the 2019 deportation order omitted the specific words requiring his removal. The administration rushed to secure such an order, and upon obtaining it, Xinis stepped in again, casting doubt on it and blocking the criminal’s re-arrest. Xinis, who used quotation marks around the deportation order, declared that the ability of the executive branch to be held to account is now at stake — suggesting that the overturning of her order so quickly puts the public’s faith in the administration of justice at stake. If the administration wanted to expose Xinis, it has done so. It’s time to stop playacting and deport Garcia.
Chinese billionaires buy surrogate wombs in America: “Birth tourism” is on the rise in the U.S. as wealthy Chinese are using fertility services to have numerous children born in America. Some have had up to 100 babies via IVF and surrogacy without even setting foot in the country. The Wall Street Journal reports, “A thriving mini-industry of American surrogacy agencies, law firms, clinics, delivery agencies and nanny services — even to pick up the newborns from hospitals — has risen to accommodate the demand, permitting parents to ship their genetic material abroad and get a baby delivered back, at a cost of up to $200,000 per child.” Most U.S. states don’t bar international parents from working with American surrogates. Chinese law does prohibit domestic surrogacy, but it does not stop its citizens from acquiring surrogacy overseas. Not only are there serious ethical issues involved in IVF and renting out wombs, but the birthright citizenship abuse has also reached a whole new level.
Ford EVs found on road dead: Offering products that customers want is generally considered basic business sense. Indeed, a company will quickly find itself out of business if customers aren’t buying what it’s selling. This explains Ford’s recent decision to stop production of its electric vehicle, the F-150 Lighting, and instead invest in building hybrid trucks. This move represents a significant pivot away from Ford’s 2021 commitment to invest heavily in EVs. A Tennessee plant Ford had planned for EV manufacturing will now be repurposed for building gas-powered trucks, and a Kentucky plant Ford had proposed to build EV batteries will now be retooled to make batteries for stationary storage. Ford has reportedly lost $13 billion on its EVs since 2023. That is not a sustainable business model, hence the change. This is good news for customers.
Hunter Biden disbarred in CT: As part of a deal connected to his gun and tax cases, Hunter Biden’s attorneys struck a deal last year, and a judge on Monday disbarred Biden in Connecticut. Judge Patrick L. Carroll III ruled that Biden had violated Connecticut’s lawyer ethics rules by his “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.” Carroll also noted Biden’s disbarment in DC. While disbarred, Biden avoids admitting any criminal wrongdoing through the deal. Joe Biden pardoned Hunter — an action he promised he would not do following his criminal conviction tied to a 2018 illegal firearm purchase — less than two weeks before he was to be sentenced.
Chicago’s dumb budget: It’s a surprising move from an organization that usually carries water for Democrats, but the new Chicago budget proposal earned even The Washington Post’s disapproval. The city’s operating budget has increased 40% in the last six years, in large part due to programs and personnel added with COVID funding. One of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposals to fill the gap left by expired COVID funding is to reinstate a “head tax” on large companies, effectively raising the cost of employing Chicago residents by $21 a month. The City Council rejected Johnson’s first proposal, so he doubled down, proposing a new $33-a-month head tax on every company with over 100 employees. Johnson also suggested a 50¢ tax on social media companies for every Chicago user after the first 100,000. If Johnson wants to kill commerce in his city, he’s got the budget proposals to do it.
Chile elects first conservative in decades: Chilean President-elect José Antonio Kast ran on a platform of being tough on crime, restoring law and order, and making Chile great again, so, naturally, the Leftmedia rushed to label him far-right. The 59-year-old Catholic family man will be the first conservative leader in Chile in decades thanks to his defeat of Communist Jeanette Jara on Sunday. Kast is good friends with Javier Milei, the leader of Chile’s close neighboring country, Argentina. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quick to congratulate Kast on X, expressing his desire to partner with Chile to “strengthen regional security and revitalize our trade relationship.” Suddenly, South America has a solid bloc of center-right leaders stretching from Ecuador on the Pacific to Argentina on the Atlantic.
Headlines
Trump says he is “considering” marijuana reclassification (The Hill)
Bondi Beach terrorists had homemade bombs and ISIS flags in their car (NY Post)
Pentagon “escalating” review of “serious allegations” against Mark Kelly (RedState)
U.S. hits three more drug boats in Pacific, killing eight (CBS News)
After throwing billions at the Metaverse, Zuckerberg is finally cutting its funding (Not the Bee)
Pro-democracy Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai found guilty in national security trial (National Review)
To read The Free Press in the UK, you need to submit ID to “protect children” (Hot Air)
Satire: Democrats warn that ban on Islamic immigration may delay global intifada (Babylon Bee)
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‘Tis the season for leftist church pastors to pull out their favorite brand of spiritual abuse. By this, I mean cheapening the Nativity story to forward a political agenda through emotional and spiritual manipulation.
This heresy, unfortunately, is practiced worldwide.
In Massachusetts, a Catholic church, St. Susanna, removed baby Jesus from His rightful place at the center of the Nativity display, replacing Him with a sign stating, “ICE was here.” Another sign added, “The Holy Family is safe in The Sanctuary of our Church.”
Outside of Chicago, Lake Street Church of Evanston’s Nativity display showed baby Jesus cuffed with zip ties and wrapped in an emergency blanket, while Mary and Joseph were clad in gas masks as if they were protesters anticipating getting tear-gassed during an anti-deportation protest.
In the UK, Christian protestors staged a Nativity in which the Holy Family was floating in an inflatable dinghy, which is often used to smuggle illegal aliens onto the shores of Great Britain.
These are three examples of a false narrative of a false gospel.
First, refugees aren’t illegal migrants. Second, Jesus and His parents weren’t refugees. Refugees are defined as persons who have to flee their countries because of war, violent social unrest, or persecution. They usually cannot ever return to their homes. Those who claim that Jesus and His family qualify for the title of “refugee” are either over-applying the term, are ignorant of the world map during biblical times, or are banking on the fact that many people are ignorant of the Nativity story. They are, in essence, taking a grain of truth from the Nativity story and then twisting it for emotional and spiritual blackmail to forward political agendas — like protesting immigration officers attempting to uphold the Rule of Law.
Let’s crack open the Bible to dissect the false narratives of these grifters.
Matthew 2 documents the entire affair. Mary and Joseph indeed had to travel to Bethlehem, the town of Joseph’s birth, to comply with a census. They were legal citizens complying with the law — therefore, not refugees.
After Jesus was born, King Herod of Judea — the puppet king over the southern province of Israel — found out about Jesus’s birth from the three wise men and tried to trick them into betraying Jesus’s location so he could kill the baby. Herod was very worried about losing what little power the Romans allowed him to have.
The wise men found Jesus and gave Him their gifts, but they didn’t go back to King Herod because they were warned not to in a dream. Joseph was also warned to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt in a dream, which he promptly did, leaving secretly at night. They weren’t exactly fleeing violence, war, or persecution, but obeying God’s warning. Therefore, the Holy Family still wouldn’t be considered refugees. Their flight was immediately justified because King Herod sent soldiers to kill all the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem after he realized that the wise men weren’t coming back.
When King Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to take Mary and Jesus back to the land of Israel, which he did. They went back to Judea at first, but Joseph was again warned not to linger there, so the Holy Family settled in Galilee. Galilee was a part of Israel, though it was technically a different province and ruled by a different leader. Judeans considered Galileeans to be lesser Jews and kind of like the country cousins. Even though the Holy Family didn’t settle back in Judea, they still weren’t refugees.
All of the places in which Joseph, Mary, and Jesus lived were a part of the Roman Empire. It’s comparable today to fleeing California for Texas. State borders were crossed, but technically, they never left territory controlled by the larger Roman Empire.
The Left’s distortion and manipulation of the Nativity story isn’t new. The group He Gets Us posted this ad in 2022.
In a well-written piece for The Conservative Woman discussing the UK desecration, Gavin Ashenden writes:
One of the strangest perversions of contemporary Christianity is the assumption that it is primarily about inclusion, and only secondarily (if at all) about truth, judgement, repentance or salvation.
Almost every diocesan press release – from London to Southwark to Manchester – and a great deal of Anglican commentary repeats this incantation: Christianity equals inclusion. Exclusion, we are told, is the supreme sin.
This is not merely odd: it is ignorant.
The Jesus of the New Testament bears little resemblance to the Jesus with whom much of the Church of England now appears to be in relationship.
The Nativity story is not a parable that justifies modern-day illegal immigration. Jesus wasn’t a refugee by any definition of the word, and He didn’t come to be used as a political cudgel to justify the whims of leftists.
Jesus came to be a light in the darkness. God the Son came to Earth in the form of a tiny, helpless infant to save us all. His loving sacrifice started in the cradle and was made perfect through the cross. He did not come as a king riding on a great white steed. He came quietly on that silent night in a lowly stable — not to change the temporal politics of that time, but to change the course of history and live out God’s plan.
The false narratives established by modern-day churches are distractions. Thankfully, the real story of the miracle of Christ’s birth will outshine all of those who seek to distort it.
Nate Jackson: An Orwellian Retelling of Animal Farm — In George Orwell’s classic novel, the pigs represent the tyrannical Soviets. In Hollywood’s new movie, the real villain is a billionaire capitalist.
Douglas Andrews: Trump Sues BBC for $10 Billion — In a much-anticipated lawsuit over a deceptively edited documentary, Donald Trump is holding yet another Leftmedia organization accountable.
Jack DeVine: Violence — ‘Gun’ and Other — Some people are finding ever more creative ways to harm one another. It’s time to confront the underlying problem.
Gregory Lyakhov: The Minneapolis Public Schools Race Hustle — When school districts abandon merit, ignore federal law, and fail to deliver academic growth, families deserve a way out.
Days of National Recognition: Boston Tea Party — On Dec. 16, 1773, “radicals” from Boston threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.
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Ukraine Makes a Massive Concession to Moscow — President Zelensky signals that Kyiv is prepared to give up its long-standing push for NATO membership in exchange for binding security guarantees.
The Real History of Islam — Raymond Ibrahim is an American author, historian, and Middle East specialist known for his works on Islam and the West.
“I don’t know anyone who justified his death.” —Don Lemon on Charlie Kirk
“The person that I heard that justified his death was him.” —podcaster Jennifer Welch on Charlie Kirk
Shot/Chaser
“I’ve never been for a shutdown in terms of just getting our way.” —Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA)
“Let’s be clear: You voted to keep the government shut down.” —Fox News host Maria Bartiromo
Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
“Donald Trump has been engaged in a deliberate and dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country.” —Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) blaming Trump for the Brown University shooting
Tone-Deaf
“Of course, I’m going to say a few words about the terrible shooting in Sydney, Australia. Okay? So — and first, of course, as I always say, no matter what, go Bills! They beat the Patriots today. It’s a big deal.” —Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
“The director general of ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation] has warned about a range of threats, be it … the rise of right-wing extremist groups…” —Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after innocent Jewish civilians were attacked by Islamists
Never Forget?
“The [Bondi Beach] victims include … a Holocaust survivor who died protecting his wife. He survived the German fascists of the last century but not the Islamofascists of this one.” —Nate Jackson
Credit Where It’s Due
“Absolute horror. … It’s beyond belief what happened to him, and that should never happen to anybody. I don’t care what your political beliefs are. That’s not acceptable. That’s not a solution to solving problems. And I felt like what his wife [Erika] said at the service at the memorial they had was exactly right. … I’m Jewish, but I believe in the teachings of Jesus, and I believe in ‘do unto others,’ and I believe in forgiveness, and what she said, to me, was beautiful. … She forgave his assassin. And I think that is admirable.” —filmmaker Rob Reiner in a final interview responding to a question by Piers Morgan about the murder of Charlie Kirk
If You Can’t Say Something Nice…
“A Trump-supporting relative last night told me he was getting tired of the President and wished he’d just disappear a bit. This is the sort of stuff that exhausts people who like the man.” —Erick Erickson after Trump suggested that Rob and Michele Reiner were killed due to their Trump Derangement Syndrome
For the Record
“The uglier our public vocabulary becomes, the more normal the ugliness seems; the more normal it seems, the more it crowds out non-ugly alternatives. What once felt like a wrenching breach of decorum now reads simply as the price of admission to modern discourse.” —Jeff Jacoby
“Conservatives have uniformly condemned Candace Owens for her delusional conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but Owens’s psychological disconnect with reality started long before Charlie’s murder. It seems Owens is manifesting organic mental illness, decompensation pathology.” —Mark Alexander
And Last…
“Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.” —War Secretary Pete Hegseth after the murder of three Americans in Syria
ON THIS DAY in 1773, “radicals” from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships and threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This iconic event, in protest of oppressive British taxation and tyrannical rule, became known as the Boston Tea Party.
Days after the Hannukah massacre Jewish communities around the world and their supporters are gathering to show their support for the victims of the worst terror attack in more than 30 years in Australia. The I.D.F killed a Hamas former Deputy commander over the weekend. Now President Donald Trump says Israel may have violated the ceasefire due to the killing. Four people are in custody for allegedly plotting to set off bombs at 5 companies in southern California on New Year’s Eve. European Christmas markets have opened this year under very tight security. They have become a favorite target of Muslim terrorists. Now to the latest on the search for the killer in the Brown University shooting. Investigators are asking for help to identify the man involved in the killing of 2 students and injury of 9 others. For some, church is a place of safety and belonging – but for others, it can be a source of pain. ‘Church Hurt’ has become a familiar term, describing the impact caused by spiritual abuse or toxic environments.
Igor Kolomoysky built up Ukraine’s largest bank, then plundered it for billions in a scheme so elaborate it looks like a state intelligence operation. During the 2014 Maidan revolution, he ended up caught in a whirlwind of far-right militants, rising Western scrutiny, and a dramatic denouement with his bank – and fled abroad. Not one to give up, though, Kolomoysky had a plan for revenge and its name was Vladimir Zelensky. Zelensky, however, soon ran amok. He “tricked Putin” in Paris, ruining hopes for peace in the Donbass, and setting the stage for the fateful events of 2022. Caught between Western pressure and his benefactor’s menacing presence, Zelensky tried to play both sides until events forced his hand. Yet Kolomoysky’s downfall merely left an open niche for a new shadowy figure to stride in.
Below is the first part of RT’s investigation, based on hundreds of pages of court documents, dealing with Kolomoysky’s rise, his turning PrivatBank into an empire of fraud, the events of Maidan, and his involvement in the post-Maidan world.
“He did play as Napoleon, right, Zelensky?… This Napoleon will soon be no more,” said a man with curly grey hair and a scraggly grey beard from the defendant’s cage in a Kiev courtroom. It was the middle of November, and Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoysky was speaking at a hearing in the longstanding fraud charges he faces related to his plundering of PrivatBank. Looking relaxed in a track suit and speaking in Russian, Kolomoysky predicted that Vladimir Zelensky would come crashing down with him due to his own intimate involvement in the corruption scandal currently roiling Ukraine.
Events in Ukraine have taken on the feel of a Shakespearean tragedy as one after another in Zelensky’s inner circle has fallen or fled under the taint of corruption. Perhaps it would be fitting if Kolomoysky ends up with the last word in this sordid affair, for it was his efforts that gained Zelensky the presidency in the first place. When the oligarch himself finally met his comeuppance, into the breech stepped another Kolomoysky-made man, Timur Mindich, who would reconstruct much of his former benefactor’s patronage network for equally corrupt aims.
It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that all crooked roads in Ukraine lead to Kolomoysky – if only because corruption there is too pervasive to trace to one man. Yet, Kolomoysky seems to stand upstream from the entire intertwined morass of militant nationalism, cronyism, and corrupt patronage networks that have defined modern Ukraine.
So who is Igor Kolomoysky and why does his name still echo in the halls of power in Kiev? This is the man who orchestrated one of the largest and most elaborate embezzlement schemes in modern history that cost the Ukrainian state 6% of GDP to remedy. This is the man who built up massive private security forces and financed far-right militias at an estimated cost of $10 million per month in the fraught post-Maidan months. And it is a man whose machinations Zelensky was loathe to confront until Western pressure forced his hand.
When banking fraud comes to resemble an alternate reality
Hailing from the gritty industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk, Igor Kolomoysky cut his teeth on the rough-and-tumble post-Soviet privatizations of the 1990s, scooping up valuable metal and mining assets with the help of hostile takeovers and corporate raids – in some cases quite literally. Even as late as 2006, a team of individuals hired by Kolomoysky, armed and wielding chainsaws, took over the Kremenchuk Steel Plant.
Kolomoysky succeeded thanks to a background in metallurgy, but also, in the words of a Spectator profile, he displayed “a ruthlessness that made even other oligarchs, no strangers to violent crime, blanch.” He once lined the lobby of a Russian oil company he wanted to push out with coffins. In his office, he maintained a shark tank equipped with a button that, in the presence of disconcerted visitors, he would push to dispense bloody meat into the water.
PrivatBank was established in the same city in 1992. Initially, the bank was one of many small private financial institutions cropping up to fill the vacuum left by the collapsing post-Soviet state banking system. Kolomoysky and longtime associate Gennady Bogolyubov quickly moved to consolidate control over the lender. Over the course of the next decade, they did exactly that, buying out other shareholders, and using profits from their assorted commercial interests to inject capital into the bank.
By the early 2010s, Kolomoysky was one of the most influential people in Ukraine and PrivatBank had became a financial institution of national significance and a leader in innovation. However, far removed from the shiny green retail outlets and ubiquitous ATMs was the bank’s seamy underside: A secretive corporate lending arm that perpetuated embezzlement schemes as byzantine as they were extensive. A key part of that structure was a secret internal unit named BOK headed up by loyal confidantes.
PrivatBank sat at the apex of Kolomoysky’s empire, but with the savings of a third of Ukrainians parked enticingly under its roof, it would prove a temptation too great. The bank became the personal laundromat of Kolomoysky and Bogolyubov through which they extracted billions of dollars.
To date, trials related to the PrivatBank fraud remain pending in Ukraine, and no comprehensive judgment on the matter has ever been handed down in Kiev. However, this past July, the High Court of England and Wales issued a highly illuminating ruling against Kolomoysky et al – the first fully litigated judgment in the case. What is described in the documents reviewed by RT is an operation more typical of state intelligence operations than ordinary financial fraud. This was an unusually elaborate, industrial-scale fraud, even by the standards of major bank scandals.
Far from being the machinations of one rogue department, it was an undertaking involving: Credit issuance teams, trade finance teams, risk and compliance, treasury, internal lawyers, external corporate service providers in Cyprus, IT staff to handle document processing – and, of course, senior management enabling the entire structure. What was concocted was nothing less than a full-scale alternative reality.
Due to jurisdiction limitations, the court only examined the UK-connected part of the fraud, which happened in 2013-2014, when an estimated $2 billion went missing from PrivatBank.
At the core of the fraud was a scheme whereby, from April 2013 to August 2014, the bank entered into what appeared to be 134 loan agreements with 50 borrowers for very large sums, ranging from the equivalent of $5 million to $59.5 million. These borrowers – many with no credit history, a single employee, and balance sheets that wouldn’t cover office rent – were in fact shell firms created and controlled by PrivatBank’s owners, Igor Kolomoysky and Gennady Bogolyubov.
The pattern was always the same. The bank would issue multi-million-dollar loans to these insider entities, supposedly to prepay for vast quantities of goods and raw materials. The money was then routed to offshore companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, also ultimately tied to the same owners.
The numbers were surreal. One firm, Esmola LLC, was granted the equivalent of $16.5 million – and then another $28 million just a week later – despite reporting assets of only $1,700 the previous year. Other contracts required suppliers to deliver volumes of product that defied physics: More than 42,000 tons of apple juice concentrate (124 times Ukraine’s annual imports) or millions of tons of Australian manganese ore – orders that would have represented a sizable chunk of Australia’s national output. All contracts required 100% prepayment, with no collateral, no performance guarantees, and no commercial logic. And that was the point.
No goods ever arrived. In the early stages, some of the sham suppliers cycled the prepayments back to PrivatBank, allowing the same money to slosh repeatedly through the system. By late summer 2014, the returns stopped. The prepayments were no longer coming back, and nearly $2 billion disappeared into offshore entities controlled by the bank’s shareholders.
Incidentally, much of the money ultimately ended up in the US. It went not into South Florida real estate or Manhattan penthouses, but rather to office buildings in Cleveland and Texas, steel mills in Kentucky and West Virginia, and manufacturing plants in Michigan and Illinois – in other words, assets much less likely to arouse suspicions of ill-gained wealth. Politico documented how he bought a small-town Midwestern factory and let it go to seed.
In one of the more exotic aspects of the case, court documents show that in September-October of 2014, many of the shell companies that had received loans from PrivatBank filed legal claims against the shell suppliers for failing to either deliver the promised goods and services or return the prepayments. The bank was named as a defendant because the borrowers also sought to invalidate the sham supply agreements provided as security for the loans. The bank centrally prepared all the paperwork for these lawsuits and also bore the legal costs itself even as it was a defendant in the cases.
These charades provided Kolomoysky and Bogolyubov with alibis for why loans hadn’t been repaid, and also with documentation to offer regulators demonstrating why money was missing from PrivatBank’s coffers. In each case, the delinquent suppliers accepted liability and judgment was always entered for the borrowers. But none of the judgments were ever enforced. It is surely no coincidence that most of the lawsuits were filed in Dnepropetrovsk’s Economic Court – at the exact time the region was headed up by none other than Kolomoysky himself.
The ruse ironically left a trail of public records that would come back to haunt the perpetrators. Ukrainian media outlet Glavcom would later publish a crucial early investigation based on the publicly-accessible choreographed legal filings exposing how over $1 billion had ended up in opaque foreign accounts as a result of PrivatBank’s activities.
What came to light in the UK court ruling was, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. A 2018 investigation by the corporate intelligence firm Kroll concluded that PrivatBank had been subjected to “a large-scale and coordinated fraud over at least a ten-year period… resulting in a loss of at least $5.5 billion.”
Maidan and the rise of far-right militarism
While Kolomoysky’s team in Dnepropetrovsk was busy siphoning millions out of PrivatBank’s back door, dramatic events were unfolding in the nation’s capital.
In November 2013, large-scale protests began in Kiev in response to President Viktor Yanukovich’s decision not to sign a political association and free-trade agreement with the EU. The events that unfolded over the next three months, resulting in the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected president, would come to be known simply as ‘Maidan’.
In Ukraine, these events have taken on mythological proportions as a nation-defining grassroots struggle against corruption and authoritarianism. Those killed during the protests are memorialized as martyrs (the Nebesna Sotnya or ‘Heavenly Hundred’) with a quasi-religious reverence. Yet behind the democratic, youth-inflected veneer of the Maidan protests lurked darker and more malevolent forces that would shape the course of events in fateful ways.
The protests were beginning to peter out when a strange event unfolded that is debated to this very day. Overnight November 29-30, the Ukrainian elite riot police force, Berkut, violently dispersed the remaining several hundred Maidan protesters in a move that had the effect of galvanizing and radicalizing the protest movement. The following day, hundreds of thousands descended on Maidan.
Ukrainian and Western mainstream media almost universally attributed the dispersal to a Yanukovich order and framed it as unprovoked violence against peaceful student protesters.
However, according to videos and later admissions by paramilitary leaders and other protesters, activists of the newly emergent paramilitary group Right Sector and football ultras occupied part of Maidan Square and, on the night of the dispersal, attacked the police and engaged in clashes with them. Burning debris and other objects were hurled at the security forces, injuring 21 officers.
Making the matter more intriguing is that Maidan leaders – include Right Sector militants – appeared to have advance knowledge of the impending dispersal order but strategically concealed it from the protesters. Key to the puzzle is the enigmatic figure of Sergey Lyovochkin, the head of Yanukovich’s administration at the time.
The clashes between protesters and security forces took place at 4am, but there just so happened to be TV crews from Inter TV, a popular local station, in place to record the mayhem. Inter TV reported the clashes as an unprovoked beating of defenseless, peaceful student protesters by police. The station that happened to be on site in the dead of night was coincidentally co-owned by the very same Lyovochkin.
Many Yanukovich officials fled Ukraine after the Maidan coup. Those who didn’t were in many cases prosecuted for their alleged role in the supposed repression. Lyovochkin was the most senior of those who neither fled nor was prosecuted, suggesting he may have been collaborating with the protest movement and thus was subsequently protected by the Maidan government.
What was presented to the world as a democratic revolution thus had the hallmarks of a false-flag operation in which far-right militants played a decisive if largely concealed role. It was a story repeated but with far higher stakes in several months’ time when 48 Maidan protesters were shot to death by snipers on Maidan and an adjacent street. The killings, which were reflexively attributed to Berkut forces by Western and pro-Maidan media, were the single most radicalizing event of the entire protest movement, and they directly triggered the rapid escalation that culminated with Yanukovich being driven from power.
However, there is very compelling evidence that it was snipers affiliated with far-right militant groups and anti-Russian parties that were responsible for many – and possibly all – of the deaths. A ruling in 2023 by the Ukrainian Sviatoshyn District Court even confirmed some of the activists had been killed not by Berkut special police forces but actually by snipers holed up in the Hotel Ukraina, at the time occupied by Right Sector extremists, and other Maidan-controlled locations. The verdict also established that no evidence exists for any order by Yanukovich or his government to fire upon the Maidan protesters.
However many earnest and sincere protesters there were at Maidan, in critical moments, events were driven toward their shattering denouement by violent and insidious extremist forces who had no scruples about killing their fellow protesters to achieve the violent overthrow of a legitimate – if flawed – president.
The loosely organized Right Sector, which coalesced and came of age during Maidan, would soon find itself an extravagant sponsor in the name of Igor Kolomoysky. The oligarch, who had supported the Maidan events and referred to himself as a “die-hard European,” would soon become the largest sponsor of far-right militias in the country.
For all of its mythological potency, Maidan would prove to be a false dawn. Several months after Maidan, an oligarch, Pyotr Poroshenko, was elected president. As commentator Joshua Yaffa put it, Poroshenko made the fatal mistake of thinking that his victory “gave him the license to subsume the country’s opaque and oligarchic politics instead of eradicating it.”
Poroshenko’s tenure would prove a failure. Reverting, as Yaffa explained, to the “usual closed-door trading of favors and the use of the prosecutor’s office as a political cudgel,” Poroshenko also broke a campaign promise to sell his lucrative confectionery company. Even more ominously, he undermined the work of the newly created, Western-run anti-corruption agency, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU. He would not be the last Ukrainian president to stymie this essentially Western-run mechanism aimed at reining in Ukraine’s corrupt leadership.
Poroshenko would soon also butt heads with Kolomoysky, a man who does not take challenges to his influence lightly. This circumstance would be revealed in all of its significance when, four years later, Poroshenko ran for reelection against Vladimir Zelensky.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul: How Kolomoysky ‘defended’ the country he was looting
On February 22, 2014, Yanukovich, who had fled to Russia two days earlier, was officially removed as president by a vote in the Rada. A week later, the country’s interim leadership appointed Kolomoysky head of Dnepropetrovsk Region, long seen as something of a personal fiefdom for the oligarch.
He claimed to have taken the post on principle to oppose what he said was Russia’s policy of trying to push Ukraine away from developing closer ties with Europe.
Nevertheless, it was a fraught time for Kolomoysky. By the middle of 2014, Ukraine’s banking sector was experiencing a full-blown crisis, and dark clouds were gathering over PrivatBank. Amid large customer withdrawals and weakening capital liquidity, Bogolyubov and the lender’s CEO, Alexander Dubilet, wrote to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) in July requesting a stabilization loan worth about $200 million. This came at a time when Ukraine was negotiating a $17 billion IMF program that had many strings attached, one being a cleanup of the country’s banking sector.
Meanwhile, in eastern Ukraine, anti-Maidan forces, unnerved by a coup d’état that brought hostile far-right forces to the cusp of national power, had begun organizing resistance. By the time Kolomoysky took over as governor, groups opposed to the Maidan coup had already seized control of government buildings in neighboring provinces and anti-Maidan demonstrations were taking place in Dnepropetrovsk. The oligarch-cum-governor moved quickly to quash this sentiment.
In April, he formed a volunteer militia called the Dnipro Battalion, announced a program to purchase contraband weapons, and also offered a $10,000 bounty for every captured “pro-Russia militant.” Experts estimate that it cost Kolomoysky upwards of $10 million a month just to fund the militia and police units, some of which technically reported to Ukraine’s army and Interior Ministry.
Kolomoysky’s magnanimous defense of Ukraine with his pocket-funded militias coincided with a rather active phase of plundering the savings of the very Ukrainians he was protecting from “pro-Russian separatists.” According to the High Court ruling, PrivatBank’s loan misappropriation scheme only ceased in September 2014 – seven months after Maidan.
According to Tablet Magazine, Kolomoysky also “lavishly funded” Right Sector, flirted with the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party, and was even “rumored to be involved with the neo-Nazi Azov battalion.” Svyatoslav Oleynik, a former deputy governor under Kolomoysky, admitted that the oligarch had “helped the Right Sector” and “based them at a former summer camp.” Several of the post-Maidan far-right paramilitary units became notorious for heinous crimes in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
Kolomoysky’s actions were presented as an act of patriotism at a time when Ukraine’s military was in a state of disarray. Indeed, Dnepropetrovsk became a bulwark of the pro-Ukrainian movement. However, his efforts were widely seen in another light. “Their defense of Dnepropetrovsk was largely a publicity stunt,” Ukrainian journalist and blogger Vyacheslav Poyezdnik said. “Why did they start defending Dnepropetrovsk? They were protecting their business.”
Kolomoysky’s fondness for personal militias eventually got the better of his judgment. The oligarch owned a non-controlling stake in national oil producer Ukrnafta, but as he often did, he had managed to insert his own management team and thus had the run of the place. The company owed millions of dollars in dividends to the government, but was refusing to pay. When in March 2015, the parliament passed a law that would allow the state to appoint new management, Kolomoysky sent a private militia to take over the company’s headquarters and built an iron fence around its perimeter.
Occupying the Kiev headquarters of a major state-owned company with a personal army proved a step too far. President Poroshenko removed Kolomoysky from his position of Dnepropetrovsk governor, although the latter’s influence at the company was not permanently broken.
The oligarch did not take well to being cut down to size by the president.
A midnight flight and a silent vow to return
In 2015, PrivatBank was ordered to undergo a stress test. It failed catastrophically. Subsequently, the NBU gave the bank several deadlines to fix the multitude of problems, starting with low-quality loans to parties affiliated with the shareholders and ending with worthless collateral on those loans. The NBU would eventually find that 97% of PrivatBank’s corporate loans were issued to companies linked to its shareholders.
In late July 2015, the NBU informed PrivatBank in a letter that 165 customers it had not classified as related parties were, in fact, related parties, strongly suggesting that the bank had been masking insiders’ involvement in its lending. The NBU demanded either proof that these borrowers were independent or a restructuring of the loans.
Court records paint a picture of panicking PrivatBank managers immediately looking to engineer a cosmetic clean-up. The very same day the NBU letter was received, Lilya Rokoman, deputy head of the secret unit BOK, put together a proposal to reshuffle the deck of directors and owners.
Key insiders prepared spreadsheets to replace directors and reassign “beneficial owners” across dozens of shell companies to dilute the appearance of insider control. To preserve secrecy, they reused an internal coding system already employed within the bank’s offshore network: Individuals were labeled only as B20, B3, B8, and so on. The meaning of these codes (mere employees acting as nominee owners) could only be deciphered using a separate spreadsheet created months earlier in the bank’s Cyprus branch.
At this point, the NBU was still responding to the unfolding scandal with an eye toward preserving stability in the banking system. Kolomoysky seemed to want to help rescue the bank. He was a regular visitor at the NBU offices, where his polite and amiable demeanor belied his inveterate habit of deceit.
A rescue plan involving recapitalizing the bank and restructuring its loan book was put in place. Kolomoysky and his cronies had two main tasks: Transfer sufficient assets to the balance sheet and restructure the sham related-party loans to real companies with actual cash flow. They failed miserably on both counts.
Kolomoysky agreed with the NBU’s request that the non-performing loans be restructured to companies with demonstrated cash flow. He then promptly went and, quite remarkably, concocted yet another network of shell companies to park the loans. The two shareholders also agreed to make various asset transfers to the bank’s balance sheet to prop it up, but did so at preposterously inflated valuations. Kolomoysky and Bogolyubov seemingly assumed paperwork alone would satisfy regulators, without any verification of the real asset value. It was an assumption that had worked for years.
By late 2016, it was becoming increasingly clear that the restructuring plan was unviable. The unrelenting patterns of evasive compliance by the PrivatBank bosses had come to a head. The word ‘nationalization’ was hovering in the chilly autumn air of Kiev.
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, December 18, 2016, the hammer was dropped. Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers issued a statement on its website saying that the Finance Ministry now owned 100% of PrivatBank’s shares. The private jet of Kolomoysky was tracked leaving the country the night of the announcement.
Bogolyubov, incidentally, would not flee Ukraine until 2024, using forged documents to board an economy-class train car to Poland.
PrivatBank’s nationalization brought to a close one of the most sordid episodes of fraud in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history. Recapitalizing the bank would cost the Ukrainian state an astounding 6% of GDP. An independent corporate investigator concluded that at least $5.5 billion was stolen from the bank over the course of a decade.
But it did not spell the end for Kolomoysky or of corruption among those in his orbit. Kolomoysky would be back to seek revenge. His return ticket would be stamped with the name: Vladimir Zelensky.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of RT’s investigation into Kolomoysky, which details his return to Ukraine, his role in Vladimir Zelensky’s rise, and how the corruption outlived the oligarch himself.
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From banning masks for law enforcement officers and requiring gender-neutral restrooms in schools, to enhancing artificial intelligence regulations and completely banning plastic bags in stores, here is an overview of some major laws Californians can expect next year or late this year.
Law Enforcement Masks
Senate Bill 627will ban law enforcement officers at the local and federal levels from wearing a face mask when operating in the Golden State.
It also requires agencies to create policies limiting the use of facial coverings. According to the bill, face coverings excluded from this ban include clear face shields that don’t obscure the person’s facial identity, medical masks, motorcycle helmets, or masks necessary for underwater use.