Hypnosis: Therapy, Trend, or Spiritual Danger? | Elizabeth Prata

Hypnosis: Therapy, Trend, or Spiritual Danger?

From Pagan Sleep Temples to Hypnobirthing: Nothing New Under the Sun

By Elizabeth Prata

Should a Christian undergo hypnosis to ingrain new behavior patterns and dispense with unwanted desires or actions? Isn’t hypnosis just a benign way to relax or reduce anxiety? Is it wrong to use hypnosis when giving birth? (hynobirthing). This essay explores hypnosis from a Christian point of view.

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Hypnosis is a popular activity in today’s cultures. We see it on the television show The Mentalist, in movies, and seen used nearly universally in most cultures throughout history at one time or another in therapies of one kind or another.

Hypnosis is used for everything to helping a patient cease an undesired behavior (like smoking), or for relaxation, or even entertainment (along the lines of comedians or magicians). But is hypnosis desirable for a Christian to use?

First, what IS hypnosis?

Hypnotherapy is a heightened state of concentration and focused attention. A trained, certified hypnotist or hypnotherapist will guide you. Hypnosis allows you to be more open to suggestions about making healthful changes in your perceptions, sensations, emotions, memories, thoughts or behaviors. Source Cleveland Clinic .

Yes, but it is also so much more.

At its root, hypnosis when used in medicine or therapy is a method in which the patient hopes to bring about a change. That is basically what hypnosis is, the patient needs a change, whether it is from a bad habit to a good, from an illness to being well, from depression to joy, they want and need a change in some way, so they employ hypnosis.

So, how does the desired change occur in using hypnosis?

According to the Cleveland Clinic, there are 4 stages to a hypnotherapy session:

1. Induction
2. Deepening
3. Suggestions
4. Emergence

It’s important to take note that hypnosis always begins with an induction. The person is induced to the altered mental state. The hypnotic state is not like a trance we go into when we’re at a red light traffic stop. It’s not when we look out the window of our work space and daydream about vacations. This is not accidental, it is not daydreaming, it is induced and once a person is ‘under,’ it has an intention. What does induced mean in medical terms? ” to cause or initiate by artificial means”. An external cause is applied to the mind to induce this suggestible state.

Thus, the 3rd step in a hypnosis session involves suggestions. The “hypnotherapist will use imagery and carefully chosen language. They’ll gently suggest that you change how you think, act or respond to something.” (Source).

Don’t be swayed by the use of the word ‘gently.’ The key is that hypnosis bypasses the conscious, critical mind. There is what hypnotherapists call the ‘judgmental filter‘ between the conscious and unconscious mind, and hypnosis lessens this barrier. When a patient is ‘under’, she can then access deeper thought patterns hiding in her subconscious, allowing for a “mindset reset” to eliminate ingrained behaviors or limiting beliefs.

I understand that a person may have tried to quit their alcoholism, their workaholic state of mind, their overeating, smoking, anger issues, whatever they seek to change. They want to overturn their ‘limiting belief’ underlying their behavior, beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I am a failure’, ‘I hate myself’, which may be the belief giving rise to the unwanted behavior they seek to change. Their subconscious limiting belief and their conscious behavior are connected, as the hypnotist teaches.

Firstly, according to Stanford University, “Only about 10 percent of the population is generally categorized as “highly hypnotizable,” while others are less able to enter the trancelike state of hypnosis.” The Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) uses the figure of 15%. So, there are very few people in which the hypnotic state can even be induced.

And, do you trust yourself enough, or trust the therapist enough, with your very mind? ACBC reported, “Dr. Amir Roz is a professor in the department of psychiatry at McGill University. He researched hypnosis and what is happening in the human brain with that procedure. He found that hypnosis actually turns off certain portions of the brain. There are portions of the brain that are lit up and active when a person is not in a hypnotic state, and those regions of the brain are put to sleep, so to speak, when a person is under a hypnotic state.” excerpt.

If you are a Christian, you know we seek to honor God with all we think, say, and do. How does the Bible address our desire to change? How does the Bible tell us how our minds change? What is in our subconscious, anyway?

We are told in the Bible that yes, there exists a person who introduces suggested behaviors and our responses to external stimuli- the Holy Spirit. He transforms the mind. The method He uses is not an altered state of consciousness, but God’s word. Romans 12:2 says not to be conformed to this world, which by the way IS our subconscious, and it is our conscious mind, too, but be renewed by the transformation of it. We do this by replacing negative, worldly thoughts with biblical truth, which transforms the mind and enhances our choice to engage in resulting actions that are aligned with God’s will.

What is in our subconscious? More depravity. We definitely do not want to unearth the depravity that is in our worldly mind and lessen the critical, analytical links we possess in order to succumb to suggestibility. We need something external to us to change our mind, heart, will, and actions. And that external person is not the hypnotist.

The hypnobirth craze

“A branded version of hypnosis during the birthing process is referred to as HypnoBirthing.” (Healthline).

Hypnosis is being used in labor. Midwives are teaching hypnobirth techniques and this trend is massively on the rise. CBS says that enrollments in hypnobirthing courses have doubled recently. Lamaze classes are spoken of in the past tense.

Hypnosis in obstetrics is not new. “Russian medicine has had extensive experience with obstetric hypnosis. Platanov, in the 1920s, became well known for his hypnoobstetric successes. Impressed by this approach, Stalin later set up a nationwide program headed by Velvoski, who originally combined hypnosis with Pavlovian techniques but eventually used the later almost exclusively. Ferdinand Lamaze, having visited Russia, brought back to France “childbirth without pain through the psychological method,” (A primer of clinical hypnosis, 1985, also here) 

The craze in today’s time that has seduced women is ‘hypnobirthing’. This is a trend which involves hypnosis, performed either by a midwife, hypnotherapist, or the woman in labor herself, to achieve what is touted as a “pain-free childbirth.” If you believe that you can achieve a childbirth that is free from pain through your own efforts, you are deluded. Why? God promised women pain in childbirth.

To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall deliver children;” (Genesis 3:16a).

Modern woman: ‘I can hypnotize myself into having no pain during the birth of my baby. God’s promise of pain during childbirth has no hold on me. My personal will and effort overcomes God’s words.’

This writer is speaking positively of hypnobirth, which is hypnosis used during childbirth says the following: “In its most basic form, hypnosis is positive affirmations paired with deep relaxation.”

IS it? Yes. But it is so much more, too, including things that the Christian woman should consider very seriously if she is mulling a hypnobirth method. As mentioned above, we are altering our brain by forcing parts of it to become inactive, we are trusting an external person to suggest alternate behaviors to us, a person not the Holy Spirit and suggestions not from the Bible.

I’ve read on several credible sites the claim that “the Bible predates hypnotism”. The claim is that hypnotism is relatively new, starting with Franz Mesmer in the 1700s. No. It’s not new. Neither is hypnobirth.

Though Franz Mesmer popularized it in the late 1700s, hypnotism actually emerged in ancient Egypt during the time of Imhotep in around 3000 BC. It was used then as it is now as a therapy for healing, using utilizing guided imagery, suggestion, and rituals to induce trance-like states for the patient seeking relief. It’s nearly impossible to find a culture that didn’t use hypnosis or induced trances in one form or another. From Egypt in 3000 BC or earlier to ancient Greece to Shamans in Siberia, Native American, or African cultures, to fakirs of India and so on, induced trances to aid in physical ailments, pain, or illness. This method has been as common as humans have been on earth. Shamans, Fakirs, Magi, Priests, have all used it throughout history.

Sleep Temples, AKA Asclepion

As I read about hypnobirth and the ancient Asclepion, I noticed similarities in the approaches to wellness, the rituals, and the care of the patients.

The ancient world sure loved their gods. Ephesus had Artemis and the temple, Corinth had Poseidon, Athens had Athena, and Pergamos had Asclepius.

Asclepius was the god of healing. He was often depicted as a man with a rod with a snake entwined around it. Our modern medicine symbol stems from this depiction of Asclepius. He was absolutely a rock star in the ancient world and his ‘hospital’ or healing center in Pergamos was the largest in the known world.

In the hospital/wellness center AKA Asclepion, ‘medical, herbal, paramedical treatment and rarely, surgical, treatments intertwined through suggestion and belief.’ (Source).

The asclepion (healing center) at Kos, Greece. Source Wikipedia

Rod of Asclepius, as shown in its use by Blue Cross Blue Shield in the US, & many others

Between Greece and Turkey about three hundred and twenty Asclepion were built.

Egyptian Dream Temples: Healing Through Dreams– “This practice wasn’t just spiritual—it was deeply therapeutic. These temples served as early wellness centers where emotional and physical ailments were addressed holistically.”

In Greek mythology, god Hypnos was regarded as healing and relieving people from pain and as a way to connect with the gods. Source Sleep Medicine Volume 130, June 2025

The Pergamos Asclepion was a medical school for the training of famous physicians of the period, notably, Galen. It was the world’s first psychiatric hospital. This asclepion appears to be the first place of application of physical therapy and rehabilitation and psychiatry departments in the history of medicine, with the application of hot water springs, physical therapy practices and suggestion treatment methods (aka hypnosis).

The methods used in the ancient Asclepion are remarkably similar to those used in hypnobirthing today.

In Asclepion, priests used hypnosis, or induced sleep therapies in treatments for many different general illnesses. In hypnobirth, hypnosis is used specifically for childbirth.

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Conclusion

What has been, it is what will be,
And what has been done, it is what will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9

Roy Gingrich has a comment on that verse:

” The labor that is going on in the human creation today is the same labor that was going on in the human creation in Cain’s day. Men today pursue the same things (wealth, fame, power, pleasure, education, etc.) that men pursued in times past and the same things that men will pursue in times future.”
” If men say “here is a new pursuit, one that has never been tried before, one that will lead to contentment and rest,” they have carelessly forgotten that men of former generations followed that pursuit and failed to find satisfaction and rest. The men of future generations will be just as careless in forgetting the pursuits and failures of those who have gone before them.” Gingrich, R. E. (1995). The Book of Ecclesiastes (p. 11). Riverside Printing.

If you are contemplating using hypnotism for a physical, behavioral, or mental ailment, please understand what you are getting into. We are called to be sober minded and have sound judgment. (1 Peter 4:7).

What does the Bible say about accepting any other spiritual concept? Many of the rituals and activities joined with hypnosis or from hypnosis are from other religions.

If you say that you’re wise enough to sift through the foo-foo stuff in your quest to use hypnosis, as in ‘I can eat the meat and spit out the bones’, be aware that we are called to pursue pure spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:2), not meat infested with bones.

We forget how childlike we are, foolish, finite, and immature. We cannot accept an iota, a jot, or a tittle of any other spirituality, because we cannot handle it. Most people forget or reject this fact. They think, Oh, not me, I can handle it! WE CAN’T. Read Judges.

Hypnosis may or may not be successful for you. That is not the point.

“This is about God loving His people and us trusting His care to do what He says we need to do when we know we need to change, and not trusting the suggestions of an outside person who wants us to place our minds in a passive state.” Hypnosis and the Bible

Are you honoring God in your pursuit of transformation? Are you drinking pure spiritual milk, or are you allowing a mixture of New Age or other religious streams of thought into your mind? Are you willing to allow your brain to stop functioning in certain areas of it in order to bypass the hard work of renewal?

When we come to the Bible, we come to a book, we come to God’s Word to us that has serious concerns about the practice of hypnotism. (ACBC Hypnosis and the Bible).

Think about these things.

Further Reading

The Ministry of Christ to His Church, sermon

Should a Christian ever get involved with hypnosis/hypnotism?, GotQuestions

Hypnosis and the Bible, Association of Certified Biblical Counselors

The Dangers Of Digging Pits — The Power of His Presence

A daily devotion for February 23rd

Whoever digs a pit may fall into it; whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake. Whoever quarries stones may be injured by them; whoever splits logs may be endangered by them.

Ecclesiastes 10:8-9

In the next section, the Searcher returns to wisdom to describe the kinds of insights that wisdom will embrace. First, there is a section on avoiding dangers, understanding that certain situations have inherent dangers.

Few of us are ever going to be involved extensively in digging pits, breaking down walls, quarrying stones, or splitting logs. But Solomon is not talking only about actual physical situations; these are also descriptive, symbolic of the things we do to each other. Did you ever dig a pit for somebody, laying a trap to embarrass, injure, or make that person look bad in some way, only to find that you yourself were trapped by the situation you had designed? Wisdom understands that when you dig a pit, you too are in danger; you may fall into it yourself.

Wisdom understands that when you try to break down some wall of obstruction that keeps you from getting at someone or something, you are in danger, for hidden in that wall is a serpent that will bite you. Many have discovered that in heavy-handedly trying to break down somebody’s resistance, they have triggered a serpent within themselves that flashes up in anger and leads to hurtful, dangerous things. They themselves have been bitten.

Whoever quarries stones, who attempts to remove something of value, to dig out something that will be of great personal use and profit, has to remember that he or she can be hurt by that. Those who quarry may get what they want, but it will be the worst thing that could happen to them. Psalm 106 says of the Israelites in the wilderness, He gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease upon them (Psalm 106:15). Whoever splits logs may be endangered by them. Here is the same principle. The idea is that care must be exercised in all these attempts to do things that may endanger you as well.

Then there are two verses on how wisdom enlists help in time: If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success (Ecclesiastes 10:10). If you do not think through what you are going to do and sharpen the edge of your approaches, considering carefully how you are going to go about something, you will only expend a lot of effort and find yourself worn out in the process. But wise people, understanding the need for sharpness and clarity, will whet the edge of their thought before they attempt something, and thus succeed.

How many times, Father, have I tried to do something in my own strength and been injured in the process? In all my endeavors, may I rely on Your wisdom.

Life Application

Without thinking we follow the secular wisdom around us, wisdom that looks good and feels right, but nevertheless is foolishness. What about the wisdom of the Word?

Daily Devotion © 2006, 2026 by Ray Stedman Ministries. For permission to use this content, please review RayStedman.org/permissions. Subject to permission policy, all rights reserved.

This Daily Devotion was Inspired by one of Ray’s Messages

The Only Way to Go

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Listen to Ray

Ecclesiastes 10:1-15

¹ As dead flies give perfume a bad smell,
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.

² The heart of the wise inclines to the right,
but the heart of the fool to the left.

³ Even as he walks along the road,
the fool lacks sense
and shows everyone how stupid he is.

⁴ If a ruler’s anger rises against you,
do not leave your post;
calmness can lay great errors to rest.

⁵ There is an evil I have seen under the sun,
the sort of error that arises from a ruler:

⁶ Fools are put in many high positions,
while the rich occupy the low ones.

⁷ I have seen slaves on horseback,
while princes go on foot like slaves.

⁸ Whoever digs a pit may fall into it;
whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake.

⁹ Whoever quarries stones may be injured by them;
whoever splits logs may be endangered by them.

¹⁰ If the ax is dull
and its edge unsharpened,
more strength is needed
but skill will bring success.

¹¹ If a snake bites before it is charmed,
there is no profit for the charmer.

¹² Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious,
but a fool is consumed by his own lips.

¹³ At the beginning his words are folly;
at the end they are wicked madness-

¹⁴ and the fool multiplies words.
No one knows what is coming—
who can tell him what will happen after him?

¹⁵ A fool’s work wearies him;
he does not know the way to town.

New International Version

https://www.raystedman.org/daily-devotions/ecclesiastes/the-dangers-of-digging-pits

Consider your Evil Sins in Light of the Corrections you have Received and the Vows you have Made

Matthew Henry’s “Method For Prayer”

Confession 2.17 | ESV

The greater afflictions we have been under for sin, the greater is the sin if we go on in it.

You have struck me down, but I have felt no anguish; I have refused to take correction and have made my face harder than rock, Jeremiah 5:3(ESV) and the rod has not driven the folly out of my heart. Proverbs 22:15(ESV)

You have disciplined me with the rod of men and with the stripes of the sons of men, 2 Samuel 7:14(ESV) yet I have not turned to him who struck me, nor have I inquired of the LORD of hosts. Isaiah 9:13(ESV)

When some have been overthrown as Sodom and Gomorrah were, I have been as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet I have not returned to you, O LORD. Amos 4:11(ESV) And when your hand has been lifted up, I have not seen it. Isaiah 26:11(ESV)

The more vows and promises we have made of better obedience, the greater has been our sin.

I have not kept the terms of the covenant that I have made before you; Jeremiah 34:18(ESV) but as a traitor, I have betrayed. Isaiah 24:16(ESV)

Did I not say, “I would not transgress, Jeremiah 2:20(KJV) I would not offend anymore?” Job 34:31(ESV) I did, and yet I have returned with the dog to its own vomit; 2 Peter 2:22(ESV) I have returned to folly after God has spoken peace. Psalm 85:8(ESV)

Consider your Evil Sins in Light of the Corrections you have Received and the Vows you have Made

Devotional for February 23, 2026 | Monday: The Resurrection and Jesus’ Enemies

Matthew 28:11-15 In this week’s studies, we note the contrast between Jesus’ enemies and friends concerning the resurrection, and the price worth paying to be a witness to Christ.

Theme

The Resurrection and Jesus’ Enemies

Each year at Easter time, when I turn to these stories of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I find myself wondering what I’m going to find new to preach on. When you’ve been doing this as many years as I have now, you begin to have the feeling that you have preached just about everything you can, given the rather limited corpus of material. And yet, each year as I turn to these stories, I find that there’s something there I never saw before.

Now what’s impressed me this year as I’ve reread these accounts is that the enemies of Jesus Christ learned about the resurrection before His friends did. That’s really striking. We would expect it to be the other way around. However, when we read these accounts carefully, particularly the twenty-eighth chapter of Matthew, we discover the following order of events.

We find that the resurrection had taken place before dawn on what we call Easter Sunday morning. We know that because the women were the first ones to the tomb. When they arrived, they found to their surprise that the stone had already been rolled away and that the body of Jesus was gone. This means that sometime before dawn, the resurrection took place. And those who were present at the tomb were the guards, and they were the first ones to know about it.

We’re told that the angel appeared, and for fear of the angel, the guards began to shake and, as Matthew puts it, “they became like dead men.” And then, not only were these soldiers the first to know about it, but they immediately did what they had to do: they left the tomb. There wasn’t any point guarding it anymore. They made their way into the city to tell those who had hired them and commissioned them to that job, namely the high priest and the other religious leaders of the people. At the very time this was happening, the women were arriving at the tomb and were about to hear the angel tell them that Jesus was not there, but had risen as He said, and that they were to go and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead.

I wonder how the religious leaders had been sleeping that night. I suppose they could have been sleeping well because they had succeeded in the thing that they had most tried to accomplish. They had gotten rid of Jesus. They knew that He was dead and buried. And yet I wonder if they were really sleeping peacefully. You see, they knew what He had said. Jesus had said that He was going to rise again on the third day. In fact, they had posted their guards because they were afraid that something would happen. “Oh,” they said, “yes, maybe the disciples will come and steal Him away.” But what they were really afraid of was the resurrection. And if that was the case, I suspect they were having nightmares about it. Then, suddenly, very early in the morning, their worst nightmares are confirmed as they hear the account from the soldiers about what had happened at the tomb.

These soldiers must have been afraid. They were terrified by the angels, first of all. Furthermore, now they faced the wrath and retribution of the priests for failing to guard the tomb. See, it was a very serious matter in those times for a soldier to fail in his duty or to leave his post. In the Roman army, if a sentry left his post or if he fell asleep at his post, he would be killed for that. Moreover, these soldiers had been hired by people who hated Jesus and who had impressed upon these soldiers the necessity of guarding that tomb at all costs. The religious leaders knew that Jesus had said He would rise from the dead, and they wanted to make sure that none of Jesus’ disciples came to steal the body, and then claim afterward that Jesus had risen.

Study Questions

1. What notable point is made at the beginning of this study about who discovers the resurrection first?
2. For what reasons must the soldiers have been afraid?
3. After the crucifixion, what did the religious leaders still need to be concerned about?

Application

For Further Study: Download for free and listen to James Boice’s message from Ephesians 2, “Risen with Christ.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)

https://www.thinkandactbiblically.org/monday-the-resurrection-and-jesus-enemies-2/

1 John: Love Your Family | Today in the Word

Monday, February 23 | 1 John 2:1–11 On the Go? Listen Now!

As a young man I went on a caving expedition in the Adirondack mountains of New York. Along with my co-campers, I squeezed myself through narrow passages and down cracks in the rock until we came to a large room underground. At that point we all agreed to turn our lights off. I was not prepared for the depth of darkness that enveloped us. Without light, we were completely lost. If we tried to leave the cave without light, we would never have made it out.In his first letter, John uses light and darkness to motivate Christians to love one another (v. 10). He argues that anyone who hates a fellow Christian is like someone who walks around in the dark, they are lost because they have been blinded by darkness (v. 12).Why use such a powerful illustration? Because hating a fellow Christian is unbecoming of a person who claims to believe in Jesus Christ. Consider the incongruity of a person who claims to love Christ and yet hates those for whom Christ died. We would look askance at someone who says, “I love Jesus, but I hate others who love Jesus.” That person would be blind to the truth of the gospel. In Christ, those who have believed are family. Family members ought not hate one another. We may disagree, we may argue, we may struggle with one another, but we never hate each other.On the other hand, anyone who loves a fellow Christian is like a person who walks around in a well-lit environment! That individual will not stumble because they can see any obstacle in their way (v. 10). Loving fellow believers should be the normal setting for Christians because we believe in the Light of the World!

Go Deeper Are there believers whom you hate? Did you try to justify these feelings? Why is hating a fellow believer like walking in darkness? Extended Reading: 1 John 2-3

Pray with Us What a blessing that You saved us into the family of faith! We are not alone! As we read about love in John’s letters, we pray, Jesus, that You will give us genuine love for our brothers and sisters.

todayintheword.org

February 23 Evening Verse of the Day

Vers. 5. But He was wounded for our transgressions.—The sufferings of Christ:—
Three things suggest themselves as requiring explanation to one who seriously contemplates the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ.

1. An innocent man suffers.
2. The death of Jesus is the apparent defeat and destruction of one who possessed extraordinary and supernatural powers.
3. This apparent defeat and ruin, instead of hindering the progress of His work, became at once, and in all the history of the progress of His doctrine has been emphatically, the instrument whereby a world is conquered. The death of Jesus has not been mourned by His followers, has never been concealed, but rather exulted in and prominently set forth as that to which all men must chiefly look if they would regard Christ and His mission right. The shame and the failure issue in glory and completest success. What is the philosophy of this? Has any ever been given which approaches the Divinely revealed meaning supplied by our text? “He was wounded for our transgressions, etc. We learn here—
   I. THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS CHRIST RESULTED FROM OUR SINS.
   II. THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS WERE RELATED TO THE DIVINE LAW.
   III. THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS BECAME REMEDIAL OF HUMAN SINFULNESS. (L. D. Bevan, D.D.)
   A short catechism:—
4. What is man’s condition by nature?
   (1) Under transgression.
   (2) Under iniquities.
   (3) At feud with God.
   (4) Under wounds and most loathsome diseases of a sinful nature.
5. How are folks freed from this sinful and miserable condition?
   (1) In general, before the quarrel can be taken away, and their peace can be made, there must be a satisfaction.
   (2) More particularly there must be a satisfaction, because there is the justice of God that hath a claim by a standing law; the holiness of God, that must be vindicated; the faith of God, that must cause to come to pass what it hath pledged itself to, as well in reference to threatening as to promise.
6. Who maketh this satisfaction? The text says, “He” and “Him.” The Messiah.
7. How does He satisfy justice?
   (1) He enters Himself in our room.
   (2) Christ’s performance and payment of the debt according to His undertaking, implies a covenant and transaction on which the application is founded.
   (3) Our Lord Jesus, in fulfilling the bargain, and satisfying justice, paid a dear price: He was wounded, bruised, suffered stripes and punishment.
8. What are the benefits that come by these sufferings?
   (1) The benefits are such that if He had not suffered for us, we should have suffered all that He suffered ourselves.
   (2) More particularly we have peace and pardon. Healing.
9. To whom hath Christ procured all these good things?
   (1) The elect;
   (2) who are guilty of heinous sins.
10. How are these benefits derived from Christ to the sinner?
    (1) Justly and in a legal way;
    (2) freely. (J. Durham.)
    Sin:—
    Verses 5 and 6 are remarkable for the numerous and diversified references to sin which they make. Within the short compass of two verses that sad fact is referred to no less than six times, and on each occasion a different figure is used to describe it. It is transgression—the crossing of a boundary and trespassing upon forbidden land. It is iniquity—the want of equity: the absence of just dealing. It is the opposite of peace—the root of discord and enmity between us and God. It is a disease of the spirit—difficult to heal. It is a foolish and wilful wandering, like that of a stray sheep. And it is a heavy burden, which crushes him on whom it lies. So many and serious are the aspects of sin. (B. J. Gibbon.)
    The sufferings of Christ:—
    I. ATTEND TO THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SON OF GOD, as described in the text. The sufferings of the Saviour are described in the Scriptures with simplicity and grandeur combined. Nothing can add to the solemnity and force of the exhibition.
11. The prophet tells us that the Son of God was “wounded.” The Hebrew word here translated “wounded,” signifies to run through with a sword or some sharp weapon, and, as here used, seems to refer to those painful wounds which our Lord received at the time of His crucifixion.
12. The prophet tells us that the Son of God was “bruised.” This expression seems to have a reference to the labours, afflictions, and sorrows which our blessed Lord sustained, especially in the last scenes of His life.
13. The prophet tells us that the Son of God bore chastisements and stripes.
    II. CONSIDER THE PROCURING CAUSE OF THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SON OF GOD. “Our transgressions.” “Our iniquities.”
    III. ATTEND TO THE GRACIOUS DESIGN AND HAPPY EFFECTS OF THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SON OF GOD. “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.”
14. One gracious design and blessed effect of the sufferings of the Son of God was to procure for us reconciliation with God.
15. The renovating of our nature. (D. Dickson, D.D.)
    Substitution:—
    There is no more remarkable language than this in the whole of the Word of God. It is so clear a statement of the doctrine of the substitution of the innocent for the guilty, that we do not hesitate to say, no words could teach it if it be not taught here. We are distinctly told—
    I. THAT THERE BELONGS TO US A SAD AND GRIEVOUS WEIGHT OF SIN. There are three terms expressive of what belong to us: “our transgressions,” “our iniquities,” “gone astray.” These three phrases have indeed a common feature; they all indicate what is wrong—even sin, though they represent the wrong in different aspects.
16. “Transgressions.” The word thus translated indicates sin in one or other of three forms—either that of missing the mark through aimlessness, or carelessness, or a wrong aim; or of coming short, when, though the work may be right in its direction, it does not come up to the standard; or of crossing a boundary and going over to the wrong side of a line altogether. In all these forms our sins have violated the holy law of God.
17. “Iniquities.” This word also has reference to moral law as the standard of duty. The Hebrew word is from a root which signifies “to bend,” “to twist,” and refers to the tortuous, crooked, winding ways of men when they conform to no standard at all save that suggested by their own fancies or conceits, and so walk “according to the course of this world.”
18. The third phrase has reference rather to the God of Law, than to the law of God, and to Him in His relation to us of Lord, Leader, Shepherd, and Guide. There is not only the infringement of the great law of right, but also universal neglect and abandonment of Divine leadership and love; and as the result of this, grievous mischief is sure to follow. “Like the sheep,” they find their way out easily enough; they go wandering over “the dark mountains,” each one to “his own way,” but of themselves they can never find the way home again. And so far does this wandering propensity increase in force, that men come to think there is no home for them; the loving concern of God for the wanderers is disbelieved, and the Supreme Being is regarded in the light of a terrible Judge eager to inflict retribution. And all this is a pressure on God. He misses the wanderers. And through the prophet, the Spirit of God would let men know that the wanderings of earth are the care of Heaven. Nor let us fail to note that in these verses there is an entirely different aspect of human nature and action from that presented in the verse preceding. There, the expressions were “our griefs,” “our sorrows.” Here, they are “our transgressions,” etc. Griefs and sorrows are not in themselves violations of moral law, though they may be the results of them, and though every violation of moral law may lead to sorrow. Still they must not be confounded, though inseparably connected. Grief may solicit pity: wrong incurs penalty. And the sin is ours. The evil is wide as the race. Each one’s sin is a personal one: “Every one to his own way.” Sin is thus at once collective and individual. No one can charge the guilt of his own sin on any one else. On whom or on what will he cast the blame? On influences? But it was for him to resist and not to yield. On temptation? But temptation cannot force. In the judgment of God each one’s sin is his own.
    II. THIS SERVANT OF GOD BEING LADEN WITH OUR SINS, SHARES OUR HERITAGE OF WOE. How remarkable is the antithesis here—Transgressions; iniquities; wanderings, are ours. Wounds; bruises; chastisements; stripes, are His. There is also a word indicating the connection between the two sides of the antithesis, “wounded for our transgressions”—on account of them; but if this were all the explanation given, it might mean no more than that the Messiah would feel so grieved at them that they would bruise or wound Him. But there is a far fuller and clearer expression: “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” This expression fixes the sense in which the Messiah was wounded and bruised on our account. In pondering over this, let us work our way step by step.
19. The inflexibility of the moral law and the absolute righteousness and equity of the Lawgiver in dealing with sin are thoughts underlying the whole of this chapter. The most high God is indeed higher than law; and though He never violates law, He may, out of the exuberance of His own love, do more than law requires, and may even cease to make law the rule of His action. But even when that is the case, and He acts χωρὶς νόμου (“apart from law,” Rom. 3:21), while He manifests the infinite freedom of a God to do whatsoever He pleaseth, He will also show to the world that His law must be honoured in the penalties inflicted for its violation. This is indicated in the words, “The Lord hath laid on Him,” etc. Nor ought any one for a moment to think of this as “exaction.” Exactness is not exactingness; it would not be called so, nor would the expression be tolerated if applied to a judge who forbade the dishonouring of a national law, or to a father who would not suffer the rules of his house to be broken with impunity.
20. It is revealed to us that in the mission of this servant of Jehovah, the Most High would act on the principle of substitution. When a devout Hebrew read the words we are now expounding, the image of the scapegoat would at once present itself to him.
21. The Messiah was altogether spotless; He fulfilled the ideal typified by the precept that the sacrificial lamb was to be without blemish. Being the absolutely sinless One, He was fitted to stand in a relation to sin and sinners which no being who was tainted with sin could possibly have occupied.
22. The twofold nature of the Messiah—He being at once the Son of God and Son of man, qualified Him to stand in a double relation;—as the Son of God, to be Heaven’s representative on earth—as the Son of man, to be earth’s representative to Heaven. Thus, His offering of Himself was God’s own sacrifice (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10; Rom. 5:8; 2 Cor. 5:19), and yet, in another sense, it was man’s own sacrifice (2 Cor. 5:14, 21; Gal. 3:13).
23. By His incarnation, Christ came and stood in such alliance with our race, that what belonged to the race belonged to Him, as inserted into it, and representative of it. We need not use any such expression as this—“Christ was punished for our sin.” That would be wrong. But sin was condemned in and through Christ, through His taking on Himself the liabilities of a world, as their one representative Man who would stand in their stead; and by the self-abandonment of an unparalleled love, would let the anguish of sin’s burden fall on His devoted head. Paul, in his Epistle to Philemon pleads for Onesimus thus, “If he hath wronged thee or oweth thee ought, put that to my account.” So the Son of God has accepted our liabilities. Only thus can we explain either the strong language of the prophecy, or the mysterious sorrow of Christ depicted in the Gospel history. On whatever grounds sin’s punishment was necessary had there been no atonement, on precisely those grounds was an atonement necessary to free the sinner from deserved punishment. This gracious work was in accord with the appointment of the Father and with the will of the Son.
24. Though the law is honoured in this substitution of another for us, yet the substitution itself does not belong to law, but to love! Grace reigns; law is not trifled with; it is not infringed on: nay, it is “established.”
    III. CHRIST HAVING ACCEPTED OUR HERITAGE OF WOE, WE RECEIVE THROUGH HIM A HERITAGE OF PEACE. (C. Clemance, D.D.)
    Vicarious suffering:—
    In a large family of evil-doers, where the father and mother are drunkards, the sons jail-birds and the daughters steeped in shame, there may be one, a daughter, pure, sensible, sensitive, living in the home of sin like a lily among thorns. And she makes all the sin of the family her own. The others do not mind it; the shame of their sin is nothing to them; it is the talk of the town, but they do not care. Only in her heart their crimes and disgrace meet like a sheaf of spears, piercing and mangling. The one innocent member of the family bears the guilt of all the rest. Even their cruelty to herself she hides, as if all the shame of it were her own. Such a position did Christ hold in the human family. He entered it voluntarily, becoming bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; He identified Himself with it; He was the sensitive centre of the whole. He gathered into His heart the shame and guilt of all the sin He saw. The perpetrators did not feel it, but He felt it. It crushed Him; it broke His heart. (J. Stalker, D.D.)
    With His stripes we are healed.—The disease of sin:—
    I. IT IS A WASTING DISEASE; it bringeth the soul into a languishing condition, and wasteth the strength of it (Rom. 5:6). Sin hath weakened the soul in all the faculties of it, which all may discern and observe in themselves.
    II. IT IS A PAINFUL DISEASE, it woundeth the spirit (Prov. 18:14). Greatness of mind may support us under a wounded body, but when there is a breach made upon the conscience, what can relieve us then? But you will say, They that are most infected with sin feel little of this; how is it then so painful a disease?
25. If they feel it not, the greater is their danger; for stupid diseases are the worst, and usually most mortal.
26. The soul of a sinner never sits so easy but that he has his qualms and pangs of conscience, and that sometimes in the midst of jollity; as was the case of Belshazzar, while carousing in the cups of the temple.
27. Though they feel not the diseases now, they shall hereafter.
    III. IT IS A LOATHSOME DISEASE.
    IV. IT IS AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE. Sin cometh into the world by propagation rather than imitation: yet imitation and example hath a great force upon the soul.
    V. IT IS A MORTAL DISEASE, if we continue in it without repentance. (T. Manton, D.D.)
    Recovery by Christ’s stripes:—
28. None but Christ can cure us, for He is the Physician of souls.
29. Christ cureth us not by doctrine and example only, but by merit and suffering. We are healed by “His stripes.”
30. Christ’s merit and sufferings do effect our cure, as they purchased the Spirit for us, who reneweth and healeth our sick souls (Titus 3:5, 6). (Ibid.)
    Healed by Christ’s stripes:—
    “With His stripes we are healed.” We are healed—of our inattention and unconcern about Divine things. Of our ignorance and unbelief respecting these things. Of the disease of self-righteousness and self-confidence. Of our love to sin, and commission of it. Of our love to the riches, honours and pleasures of this world. Of our self-indulgence and self-seeking. Of our lukewarmness and sloth. Of our cowardice and fear of suffering (1 Pet. 4:1). Of our diffidence and distrust, with respect to the mercy of God, and His pardoning and accepting the penitent. Of an accusing conscience, and slavish fear of God, and of death and hell. Of our general depravity and corruption of nature. Of our weakness and inability; His sufferings having purchased for us “the Spirit of might.” Of our distresses and misery, both present and future. (J. Benson, D.D.)
    His stripes:—
    This chapter is not mainly an indictment. It is a Gospel. It declares in glad while solemn language that, terrible as sin is, it has been dealt with. The prophet dwells purposely upon the varied manifestations of the evil in order to emphasize the varied forms and absolute completeness of its conquest. He prolongs the agony that he may prolong the rapture.
    I. OUR NEED OF HEALING. There is no figure which more aptly represents the serious nature and terrible consequences of sin than this one of bodily sickness. We know how it prostrates us, takes the brightness out of life, and, unless attended to, cuts life short. Sickness in its acutest form is a type in the body of sin in the soul. Sin is a mortal disease of the spirit. A common Scriptural emblem for it, found in both Old and New Testaments, is leprosy—the most frightful disease imaginable, loathsome to the observer and intolerably painful to the sufferer, attacking successively and rotting every limb of the body, and issuing slowly but certainly in death.
31. It is complicated. It affects every part of the moral being. It is blindness to holiness, and deafness to the appeals of God. There is a malady known as ossification of the heart, by which the living and beating heart is slowly turned to a substance like bone. It is a type of the complaint of the sinner. His heart is hard and impenitent. He suffers, too, from the fever of unhallowed desire. The lethargy of spiritual indifference is one of his symptoms; a depraved appetite, by which he tries to feed his immortal soul on husks, is another; while his whole condition is one of extreme debility—absence of strength to do right. In another part of the book our prophet diagnoses more thoroughly the disease of which he here speaks (chap. 1:5, 6). No hospital contains a spectacle so sickening and saddening as the unregenerate human heart.
32. The disease is universal. “There is none righteous; no, not one.” What the Bible declares, experience confirms. The ancient world, speaking through a noble literature that has come down to us, confesses many times the condition expressed by Ovid, “I see and approve the better things, while I follow those which are worse.” Christendom finds its mouthpiece in the apostle Paul, who, speaking of himself apart from the help of Christ, mournfully says, “When I would do good, evil is present with me.” And modern culture reveals its deepest consciousness in the words of Lowell, the ambassador-poet, “In my own heart I find the worst man’s mate.” It is a feature of the malady that the patient is often insensible to it. But from every lip there is at least occasional confession of some of its symptoms. There is discomfort in the conscience; there is dissatisfaction at the heart; and there is dread in the face of death and the unknown beyond. The Scriptures are the Röntgen rays of God, and their searching light reveals behind an uneasy conscience, behind a dissatisfied heart, behind the fear of death, behind all the sorrows and evils of life, that which is their primary cause—the malady of sin.
33. This disease is incurable—that is, apart from the healing described in the text. “The end of these things is death”—spiritual death; insensibility to God, and absence of the life of fellowship with Him which is life indeed—physical death, in so far as that natural process is more than mere bodily dissolution, and is a fearful and hopeless leap into the dark; for “the sting of death is sin”—and eternal death. Men are great at quack remedies, and the world is equally flooded with nostrums for the disease of sin. And what is the result of these loudly-hawked specifics? They are as useless as the charms which our grandmothers used to scare away diseases. The Physician is He who gave His back to the smiters; the balm is the blood which flowed from “His stripes.”
    II. OUR MEANS OF HEALING. “With His stripes.” “Stripes” does not mean the lashes that fell on His back, but the weals which they left. We remember how He “suffered under Pontius Pilate” before He “was crucified, dead and buried.” His back was bared, His hands were tied to a low post, and a coarse, muscular giant flourished a whip above Him. It was a diabolical instrument, that Roman whip—made of leather with many thongs, and in the end of each of them a piece of iron, or bone, or stone. Every stroke fetched blood and ripped open the quivering flesh. The Jewish law forbade more than forty stripes being given, but Christ was scourged by Romans, who recognized no such merciful limit. But as we know that Pilate intended the scourging to be a substitute for crucifixion, and hoped that its severity would so melt the Jews to pity that they would not press for the worse punishment—which end, however, was not reached—we may infer that He was scourged until He could bear no more, until He could not stand, until He fell mangled and fainting at His torturer’s feet. Nearly two thousand years have passed since that awful affliction, but its significance is eternal. But how can the sufferings of one alleviate the sufferings of another?
34. Because the sight of them moves us to sorrow. There are certain maladies of the mind and heart for which there is hope if the emotions can be stirred and the patient made to laugh or cry. There is hope for the sinner when the thought of his sin melts his heart to sorrow and his eyes to tears. Sorrow for sin—repentance of wrong-doing—is the first stage in recovery. And there is nothing that will cause penitence like a sight of the Saviour’s wounds.
35. The sight of them relieves our consciences. For as we look at those livid weals we know He did not deserve them. We know that we did merit punishment direr far. And we know that He endured them, and more mysterious agonies of which they were the outward sign, in our stead. Then, gradually, we draw the inference. If He suffered for us, we are free. If our load was laid on Him, it is no longer upon us. Conscience accepts that logic.
36. The sight of them prevents further outbreaks. This cure is radical. It not only heals, it also strengthens. It gradually raises the system above its tendency to sin. For the more we gaze upon those livid stripes, the more intolerable and hateful sin, which caused them, appears, and the more difficult it becomes for us to indulge in it. Our medicine is also a strong tonic, which invigorates the spiritual nature and fortifies its weaknesses. Stanley, in one of his books on African travel, tells of the crime of Uledi, his native coxswain, and what came of it. Uledi was deservedly popular for his ability and courage, but having robbed his master, a jury of his fellows condemned him to receive “a terrible flogging.” Then uprose his brother, Shumari, who said, “Uledi has done very wrong; but no one can accuse me of wrong-doing. Now, mates, let me take half the whipping. I will cheerfully endure it for the sake of my brother.” Scarcely had he finished when another arose, and said, “Uledi has been the father of the boat boys. He has many times risked his life to save others; and he is my cousin; and yet he ought to be punished. Shumari says he will take half the punishment; and now let me take the other half, and let Uledi go free.” Surely the heart of the guilty man must have been touched, and the willing submission by others to the punishment he had merited must have restrained him from further outbreaks as the strict infliction of the original penalty never could. By those stripes he would be healed. Even so, the stripes of our Lord deliver us from the very tendency to sin. For the disease to be healed the medicine must be taken. Our very words “recipe” and “receipt” remind us of this. They are related, and signify “to take.” The selfsame word describes the means of cure, and commands that it be used. Look upon His wounds! And let those of us who have looked for our cure, still look for our strengthening. We should not have so many touches of the old complaint if we thought oftener of the stripes by which we are healed. Look all through life, and you will grow stronger and holier. (B. J. Gibbon.)
    The universal remedy:—
    Not merely His bleeding wounds, but even those blue bruises of His flesh help to heal us. There are none quite free from spiritual diseases. One may be saying, “Mine is a weak faith;” another may confess, “Mine is distracted thoughts;” another may exclaim, “Mine is coldness of love;” and a fourth may have to lament his powerlessness in prayer. One remedy in natural things will not suffice for all diseases; but there is a catholicon, a universal remedy, provided in the Word of God for all spiritual sicknesses, and that is contained in the few words—“With His stripes we are healed.”
    I. THE MEDICINE ITSELF WHICH IS HERE PRESCRIBED—the stripes of our Saviour. By the term “stripes,” no doubt the prophet understood here, first, literally, those stripes which fell upon our Lord’s shoulders when He was beaten of the Jews, and afterwards scourged of the Roman soldiery. But the words intend far more than this. No doubt with his prophetic eye Isaiah saw the stripes from that unseen scourge held in the Father’s hand which fell upon His nobler inner nature when His soul was scourged for sin. It is by these that our souls are healed. “But why?” First, then, because our Lord, as a sufferer, was not a private person, but suffered as a public individual, and an appointed representative. Our Lord was not merely man, or else His sufferings could not have availed for the multitude who now are healed thereby. He was God as well as man. Our Saviour’s sufferings heal us of the curse by being presented before God as a substitute for what we owe to His Divine law. But healing is a work that is carried on within, and the text rather leads me to speak of the effect of the stripes of Christ upon our characters and natures than upon the result produced in our position before God.
    II. THE MATCHLESS CURES WROUGHT BY THIS REMARKABLE MEDICINE. Look at two pictures. Look at man without the stricken Saviour; and then behold man with the Saviour, healed by His stripes.
    III. THE MALADIES WHICH THIS WONDROUS MEDICINE REMOVES.
37. The mania of despair.
38. The stony heart.
39. The paralysis of doubt.
40. A stiffness of the knee-joint of prayer.
41. Numbness of soul.
42. The fever of pride.
43. The leprosy of selfishness.
44. Anger.
45. The fretting consumption of worldliness.
46. The cancer of covetousness.
    IV. THE CURATIVE PROPERTIES OF THE MEDICINE.
47. It arrests spiritual disorder.
48. It quickens all the powers of the spiritual man to resist the disease.
49. It restores to the man that which he lost in strength by sin.
50. It soothes the agony of conviction.
51. It has an eradicating power as to sin.
    V. THE MODES OF THE WORKING OF THIS MEDICINE. The sinner hearing of the death of the incarnate God is led by the force of truth and the power of the Holy Spirit to believe in the incarnate God. The cure is already begun. After faith come gratitude, love, obedience.
    VI. ITS REMARKABLY EASY APPLICATION.
    VII. Since the medicine is so efficacious, since it is already prepared and freely presented, I do beseech you TAKE IT. Take it, you who have known its power in years gone by. Let not backslidings continue, but come to His stripes afresh. Take it, ye doubters, lest ye sink into despair; come to His stripes anew. Take it, ye who are beginning to be self-confident and proud. And, O ye who have never believed in Him, come and trust in Him, and you shall live. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
    A simple remedy:—
    I. THESE ARE SAD WORDS. They are part of a mournful piece of music, which might be called “the requiem of the Messiah.”
52. These are sad words because they imply disease.
53. There is a second sorrow in the verse, and that is sorrow for the suffering by which we are healed. There was a cruel process in the English navy, in which men were made to run the gauntlet all along the ship, with sailors on each side, each man being bound to give a stroke to the poor victim as he ran along. Our Saviour’s life was a running of the gauntlet between His enemies and His friends, who all struck Him, one here and another there. Satan, too, struck at him.
    II. THESE ARE GLAD WORDS.
54. Because they speak of healing.
55. There is another joy in the text—joy in the honour which it brings to Christ.
    III. THESE ARE SUGGESTIVE WORDS. Whenever a man is healed through the stripes of Jesus, the instincts of his nature should make him say, “I will spend the strength I have, as a healed man, for Him who healed me.” (Ibid.)
    Christopathy:—
    I. GOD HERE TREATS SIN AS A DISEASE. Sin is a disease—
56. Because it is not an essential part of man as he was created. It is something abnormal.
57. Because it puts all the faculties out of gear.
58. Because it weakens the moral energy, just as many diseases weaken the sick person’s body.
59. Because it either causes great pain, or deadens all sensibility, as the case may be.
60. Because it frequently produces a manifest pollution.
61. Because it tends to increase in the man, and will one day prove fatal to him.
    II. GOD HERE DECLARES THE REMEDY WHICH HE HAS PROVIDED.
62. Behold the heavenly medicine.
63. Remember that the sufferings of Christ were vicarious.
64. Accept this atonement and you are saved by it.
65. Let nothing of your own interfere with the Divine remedy. Prayer does not heal, but it asks for the remedy. It is not trust that heals; that is man’s application of the remedy. Repentance is not what cures, it is a part of the cure, one of the first tokens that the blessed medicine has begun to work in the soul. The healing of a sinner does not lie in himself, nor in what he is, nor in what he feels, nor in what he does, nor in what he vows, nor in what he promises. It is in His stripes that the healing lies.
    III. THE REMEDY IS IMMEDIATELY EFFECTIVE. How are we healed?
66. Our conscience is healed of every smart.
67. Our heart is healed of its love of sin.
68. Our life is healed of its rebellion.
69. Our consciousness assures us that we are healed. If you are healed by His stripes you should go and live like healthy men. (Ibid.)
    Healed by Christ’s stripes:—
    Mr. Mackay, of Hull, told of a person who was under very deep concern of soul. Taking the Bible into his hand, he said to himself, “Eternal life is to be found somewhere in this Word of God; and, if it be here, I will find it, for I will read the Book right through, praying to God over every page of it, if perchance it may contain some saving message for me.” The earnest seeker read on through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and so on; and though Christ is there very evidently, he could not find Him in the types and symbols. Neither did the holy histories yield him comfort, nor the Book of Job. He passed through the Psalms, but did not find his Saviour there; and the same was the case with the other books till he reached Isaiah. In this prophet he read on till near the end, and then in the fifty-third chapter, these words arrested his delighted attention, “With His stripes we are healed.” “Now I have found it,” says he. “Here is the healing that I need for my sin-sick soul, and I see how it comes to me through the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name, I am healed!” (Ibid.)
    Self-sufficiency prevents healing:—
    I saw a pedlar one day, as I was walking out; he was selling walkingsticks. He followed me, and offered me one of the sticks. I showed him mine—a far better one than any he had to sell—and he withdrew at once. He could see that I was not likely to be a purchaser. I have often thought of that when I have been preaching: I show men the righteousness of the Lord Jesus, but they show me their own, and all hope of dealing with them is gone. Unless I can prove that their righteousness is worthless, they will not seek the righteousness which is of God by faith. Oh, that the Lord would show you your disease, and then you would desire the remedy! (Ibid.)
    Sin deadens sensibility:—
    It frequently happens that, the more sinful a man is, the less he is conscious of it. It was remarked of a certain notorious criminal that many thought him innocent because, when he was charged with murder, he did not betray the least emotion. In that wretched self-possession there was to my mind presumptive proof of his great familiarity with crime; if an innocent person is charged with a great offence, the mere charge horrifies him. (Ibid.)

Exell, J. S. (n.d.). Isaiah (Vol. 3, pp. 112–118). Fleming H. Revell Company.

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53:4–6. Israel states that He was punished for His own sin. The despised Servant bore our griefs (better translated “suffering”; see comments on 53:1–3) and carried our sorrows. The words may contain the idea of sickness, leading some to believe that faith in the Servant guarantees immediate healing of all diseases. However, this does not mean that all sicknesses will immediately be cured because of the Servant’s vicarious suffering. Rather it is promising that the Servant’s death would ultimately provide deliverance and healing for all who believe in Him. The Servant did indeed take the punishment for sin and therefore would provide immediate forgiveness to someone who trusts in Him. However, removing the penalty for sin will not remove the presence of sin in a believer’s life until after the resurrection. In the same way, the forgiveness of the sins that cause sickness does not guarantee healing from diseases until the presence of sin is removed at the resurrection at the end of days.
Israel now confesses that upon viewing the Servant’s suffering, the nation had concluded that the Servant was undergoing divine punishment. He was stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted (v. 4), all terms that indicate punishment for sin. The word stricken, meaning “to smite with disease for sin,” was used when both Miriam (Nm 12:9–10) and Uzziah (2Kg 15:5) were stricken with leprosy for sin.
Penitent Israel now recognizes that while the Servant was indeed being punished for sin, it was not for His sins but theirs. The Servant’s suffering included being pierced through for our transgressions (v. 5). The Hebrew word translated pierced (mekholal) means “wounded to death” and conveys a violent and painful death (Dt 21:1; Is 51:9). The Servant was crushed for our iniquities. Although the word crushed means “broken” or “shattered to pieces,” it is not generally used in a literal way but with a metaphorical sense, as in a “contrite [lit., “crushed”] spirit” (Is 57:15) or “contrite heart” (Ps 51:17). Israel now understood that the Servant took the punishment (chastening) they deserved, that He was flogged (by His scourging) in order to bring their spiritual healing. The substitution of the Servant for the people certainly foretells the sacrifice of the Messiah Jesus as a sacrifice for the sickness of sin (1Pt 2:24).
Penitent Israel now summarizes what they have learned: They are the ones who have strayed from God like sheep and followed their own desires. Consequently, the Lord has caused the punishment for the iniquity (guilt) of us all to fall on Him (v. 6).

Rydelnik, M. A., & Spencer, J. (2014). Isaiah. In M. A. Rydelnik & M. Vanlaningham (Eds.), The moody bible commentary (pp. 1088–1089). Moody Publishers.

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53:4–6 The remnant now knows and acknowledges the truth about Him. They confess: “It was our griefs He bore, our sorrows He carried, yet as we saw Him on the cross, we thought He was being punished by God for His own sins. But no! It was for our transgressions, for our iniquities, and in order that we might have peace, in order that we might be healed. The truth is that we were the ones who went astray and who walked in self-will, and Jehovah placed our iniquity on Him, the sinless Substitute.”
Until that time when the remnant acknowledges Him, we who are Christians can confess:

He was wounded for our transgressions,
He bore our sins in His body on the tree;
For our guilt He gave us peace,
From our bondage gave release,
And with His stripes, and with His stripes,
And with His stripes our souls are healed.
He was numbered among transgressors,
We did esteem Him forsaken by His God;
As our sacrifice He died,
That the law be satisfied,
And all our sin, and all our sin,
And all our sin was laid on Him.
We had wandered, we all had wandered,
Far from the fold of “the Shepherd of the sheep”;
But He sought us where we were,
On the mountains bleak and bare,
And brought us home, and brought us home,
And brought us safely home to God.

—Thomas O. Chisholm

Our Lord Jesus suffered all five kinds of wounds known to medical science: contusions—blows by a rod; lacerations—scourging; penetrating wounds—crown of thorns; perforating wounds—nails; incised wounds—the spear.

MacDonald, W. (1995). Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments (A. Farstad, Ed.; pp. 979–980). Thomas Nelson.

An Eternal Pledge | VCY

And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord. (Hosea 2:19-20)

Betrothment unto the Lord! What an honor and a joy! My soul, is Jesus indeed thine by His own condescending betrothal? Then, mark it is forever. He will never break His engagement, much less sue out a divorce against a soul joined to Himself in marriage bonds.

Three times the Lord says, “I will betroth thee.” What words He heaps together to set forth the betrothal! Righteousness comes in to make the covenant legal; none can forbid these lawful bans. Judgment sanctions the alliance with its decree: none can see folly or error in the match. Lovingkindness warrants that this is a love union, for without love betrothal is bondage and not blessedness. Meanwhile, mercy smiles and even sings; yea, she multiplies herself into “mercies” because of the abounding grace of this holy union.

Faithfulness is the registrar and records the marriage, and the Holy Spirit says “Amen” to it as He promises to teach the betrothal heart all the sacred knowledge needful for its high destiny, What a promise!

https://www.vcy.org/charles-spurgeon/2026/02/23/an-eternal-pledge/

Absolutely No Remembrance | VCY

And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews 10:17)

According to this gracious covenant the Lord treats His people as if they had never sinned. Practically, He forgets all their trespasses. Sins of all kinds He treats as if they had never been, as if they were quite erased from His memory. O miracle of grace! God here doth that which in certain aspects is impossible to Him. His mercy worketh miracles which far transcend all other miracles.

Our God ignores our sin now that the sacrifice of Jesus has ratified the covenant. We may rejoice in Him without fear that He will be provoked to anger against us because of our iniquities. See! He puts us among the children; He accepts us as righteous; He takes delight in us as if we were perfectly holy. He even puts us into places of trust; makes us guardians of His honor, trustees of the crown jewels, stewards of the gospel. He counts us worthy and gives us a ministry; this is the highest and most special proof that He does not remember our sins. Even when we forgive an enemy, we are very slow to trust him; we judge it to be imprudent so to do. But the Lord forgets our sins and treats us as if we had never erred. O my soul, what a promise is this! Believe it and be happy.

https://www.vcy.org/charles-spurgeon/2026/02/23/absolutely-no-remembrance/

Perfect Purity | VCY

He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment. (Revelation 3:5)

Warrior of the cross, fight on! Never rest till thy victory is complete, for thine eternal reward will prove worthy of a life of warfare.

See, here is perfect purity for thee! A few in Sardis kept their garments undefiled, and their recompense is to be spotless. Perfect holiness is the prize of our high calling; let us not miss it.

See, here is joy! Thou shalt wear holiday robes, such as men put on at wedding feasts; thou shalt be clothed with gladness and be made bright with rejoicing. Painful struggles shall end in peace of conscience and joy in the Lord.

See, here is victory! Thou shalt have thy triumph. Palm, and crown, and white robe shall be thy guerdon; thou shalt be treated as a conqueror and owned as such by the Lord Himself.

See, here is priestly array! Thou shalt stand before the Lord in such raiment as the sons of Aaron wore; thou shalt offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving and draw near unto the Lord with the incense of praise.

Who would not fight for a Lord who gives such large honors to the very least of His faithful servants? Who would not be clothed in a fool’s coat for Christ’s sake, seeing He will robe us with glory?

https://www.vcy.org/charles-spurgeon/2026/02/23/perfect-purity/

If I’m Saved by Grace, Why Fight Sin? | Crossway

Grace and Sin

Several years ago, I struck up a conversation with my taxi driver on the way home from the airport. He was a nice man and a committed Muslim. When he found out I was a pastor, he was eager to talk about our different faiths, and he shared one of his major objections to Christianity: “You believe God will forgive you no matter what you do,” he said, “and therefore, you’ll live however you want.” He was convinced that abundant grace must lead to abundant sin.

We know he was mistaken. We know that we cannot continue in sin so that grace may abound (Rom. 6:1–2). We know that God calls us to flee from evil and pursue righteousness (1 Tim. 6:11). Yet we also know this isn’t easy. And although we would not embrace my taxi driver’s logic, we might see how to prove his point in the way we live. For example, we might become apathetic about resisting temptation, growing far too content with certain sinful patterns, while declaring our dependence upon God’s grace. We might find ourselves acting as if freedom from condemnation means we are free to continue in sin.

But Martyn Lloyd-Jones says living this way demonstrates that we have “failed to understand . . . the whole object and purpose of grace.”¹ In his grace, God not only pardons us; he also transforms us. Having been justified, we are now being sanctified (1 Thess. 5:23). And God’s sanctifying grace makes continuing in sin—willfully and unrepentantly—illogical, inappropriate, and ultimately impossible.

Why? Because his grace has fundamentally changed our relationship to sin. We are now “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). Consider what this means.

Christians are dead to sin.

Throughout the Bible, we see that sin does not merely consist in our personal failures. Sin is also a powerful force that has reigned throughout history, causing chaos and destruction (Rom. 5:21). You can think of sin as a wicked tyrant seated on a terrible throne, looking out on this fallen world full of people dominated by his dark authority. But sin sees some who have escaped. They have left his dominion in the only way possible: They have died.

When we die, we leave one realm and enter another. Death does not send us into oblivion, ending our existence. Death is a departure that brings us to a new destination. And Christians have left sin’s dominion. We have “died to sin” (Rom. 6:2).

At funerals, you often hear people say, “We lost him,” or “She passed away.” Similarly, sin could say the same thing about every Christian. When God saved us, sin lost us. We passed away from the realm of sin’s power. God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13).

In this kingdom, “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14). And as my taxi driver recognized, this means that there is no condemnation for us. But this also means that sin has lost its mastery over us. We have been set free from sin’s rule, and there’s no going back. We cannot live as if nothing has changed. We cannot go on willfully, unrepentantly living in sin.

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Christians are alive to God.

Saying Christians are dead to sin is only half of the good news. We are also alive to God. Having been born again and blessed with the indwelling presence of God’s Holy Spirit, we are now set apart for his good purposes in this world. And there is a biblical word for people like this: saints.

Are you comfortable calling yourself a saint? Many of us would say, “Paul was a saint. My grandmother was a saint. But me? Not so much.” The reason for our negative response is likely a faulty definition. A lot of people reserve the word saint for some special class of super-spiritual Christians. But that’s not what the word means. A saint is someone whose life has been set apart and dedicated to God. A saint is someone alive to God. A saint is simply a Christian.

We see this all over the New Testament. The word saint appears over forty times in Paul’s letters, and it always describes believers. Regular believers. Not some unique class of believer. For example, Paul begins his letter to the Romans by addressing “all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints” (Rom. 1:7; cf. 1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2).

Sinner is not our defining label anymore. We are saints. Saints who sin, but saints nonetheless.

This means that when God calls us to be holy, he is not commanding us to pursue an identity that we may or may not attain. He is calling us to live out the identity we already have. He is not calling us to become something we are not. He is calling us to be who we are in Christ.

On our own, we would be powerless to resist sin’s demands and pursue God’s commands. But we’re not on our own.

Christians are in Christ.

Christians are dead to sin and alive to God because we are “in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). The words “in Christ” or some variation of it—such as “in him” or “with him”—appear hundreds of times in the New Testament, and they often refer to the doctrine of union with Christ.

Union with Christ refers to the believer’s position in Christ established at conversion, experienced in all of life, and enjoyed forever. This union is the source of every spiritual blessing we enjoy, including the strength to fight sin and pursue holiness.

On our own, we would be powerless to resist sin’s demands and pursue God’s commands. But we’re not on our own. When God saved us he united us with Christ. And in this union with Christ, something remarkable happens: We become so identified with Christ that we can now say we died and rose with him. His story becomes our story.

We know Jesus’s story. He was crucified, died, and was buried. But did you know that when you came to believe in him, you were buried with him? Paul says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death” (Rom. 6:4). We were crucified with him, and our old lives enslaved to sin ended (Rom. 6:6). But that’s not all.

“Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too . . . walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). In union with Christ, we live with Christ. God caused us, who once walked in spiritual death, to rise in spiritual life (Eph. 2:5–6). And like children learning to walk, we don’t take off running right away. We still stumble, trip, and fall. We still struggle with sin. But in Christ, we really do walk in newness of life. And our job is to embrace and enjoy this reality by striving after a life that honors our Savior.

Christians cannot continue in sin.

“Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom. 6:1–2). A Christian is someone whose fundamental relationship to sin has changed. We have died to sin. We live to God. We are united with Christ.

All of this is a gift of God’s grace. And like any good gift, it is meant to be enjoyed. Enjoying the gift of new life in Christ means resisting the sin that brings us pain, hurts others, and grieves God (Eph. 4:30). And enjoying the gift of new life in Christ means pursuing the kind of life Christ himself lives: delighting to do the will of the Father (John 4:34).

As Christians, we have been crucified with Christ. We are dead to sin. And we have been raised with Christ. We are alive to God. We are saints. Saints who sin, but saints nonetheless.

Believe that with all your heart, and then fight sin with all your might.

Notes:

1. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans 6: The New Man (Banner of Truth, 1972), 11.

Brad Wetherell is the author of Saved to Sin No More: How Union with Christ Empowers a Life of Holiness.

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Brad Wetherell (DMin) is senior pastor of the Orchard, a multisite church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Brad also serves on the steering committee of the Gospel Coalition’s Chicago regional chapter, which gathers pastors for encouragement, fellowship, and prayer. Brad and his wife, Kristen, have three children.

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‘Change My Mind’ LIVE Q&A from Michigan Technological Univ. (Houghton, MI)

LET’S GO HUSKIES! Join Dr. Frank Turek on the 2026 ‘Change My Mind’ college tour on TUES. 2/23 at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, MI as we continue Charlie Kirk’s mission to make heaven crowded! Grab your seat at 7:00 PM ET in the Rozsa Center as we continue honest, open conversations about truth, God, Jesus, morality, identity, justice, science, current events, and so much more. Skeptics, Christians, and everyone in between are invited to the mic to ask Frank questions, examine the evidence for Christianity, and join discussions that truly matter.
This event is FREE and open to the public, but if you can’t make it in-person, be sure to watch online!

Source: ‘Change My Mind’ LIVE Q&A from Michigan Technological Univ. (Houghton, MI)

February 23 Afternoon Verse of the Day

THE SONG OF THE WORTHY ONE

When He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.” And the four living creatures kept saying, “Amen.” And the elders fell down and worshiped. (5:8–14)

The appearance of the Lamb as He moves to take the scroll causes praise to break out from everywhere in the universe. The praise accelerates in an ascending crescendo of worship as the oratorio of redemption reaches its climax. To the two majestic doxologies of chapter 4 are added three more in chapter 5. The spontaneous outburst of worship results from the realization that the long-anticipated defeat of sin, death, and Satan is about to be accomplished and the Lord Jesus Christ will return to earth in triumph and establish His glorious millennial kingdom. The curse will be reversed, the believing remnant of Israel will be saved, and the church will be honored, exalted, and granted the privilege of reigning with Christ. All of the pent-up anticipation of millennia finally bursts out at the prospect of what is about to take place.
As they began their song of praise and worship, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. That they offer the same worship to Christ that they did to the Father in 4:10 offers convincing proof of Christ’s deity, since only God is to be worshiped (cf. 19:10; Matt. 4:10).
After Jesus accomplished redemption by bearing sin on the cross, God raised Him from the dead and exalted Him to His right hand. Jesus received back the glory He had had in the Father’s presence before the world began (John 17:5). To the Ephesians Paul wrote of Christ, “[God] raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:20–22).
But though exalted to the Father’s right hand, Jesus Christ is not yet fully reigning. Psalm 2:6–12 speaks of the future day when Christ rules on the earth:

But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain. I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware.” Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled.

Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse once observed that there are four things out of place in the universe: the church, which should be in heaven; Israel, which should be living in peace occupying all the land promised to her; Satan, who belongs in the lake of fire; and Christ, who should be seated on His throne reigning. All four of those anomalies will be set right when Christ takes the scroll from His Father’s hand.
But before He begins to unroll it in chapter 6 comes the song of praise in chapter 5. As they prostrated themselves before the Lamb in worship, John noticed that each one of the twenty-four elders was holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (The grammatical structure of the Greek text seems to indicate that it was only the elders, not the living creatures, who held those two items.) Harps were frequently associated in the Old Testament with worship (e.g., 2 Sam. 6:5; 1 Chron. 15:16, 20, 28; 16:5; 2 Chron. 5:12; 29:25; Pss. 33:2; 71:22; 92:1–4; 144:9; 150:3; cf. Rev. 14:2; 15:2), but they were also closely linked to prophecy. In 1 Samuel 10:5 Samuel said to Saul, “Afterward you will come to the hill of God where the Philistine garrison is; and it shall be as soon as you have come there to the city, that you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with harp, tambourine, flute, and a lyre before them, and they will be prophesying.” Similarly, when about to prophesy, Elisha said, “ ‘Now bring me a harpist.’ While the harpist was playing, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha.” (2 Kings 3:15 NIV). First Chronicles 25:1 records that “David and the commanders of the army set apart for the service some of the sons of Asaph and of Heman and of Jeduthun, who were to prophesy with lyres, harps and cymbals” (cf. vv. 3, 6). The harps held by the elders probably symbolize all of prophecy, which culminates in the momentous events about to take place.
In addition to the harps, the elders were also holding golden bowls full of incense. These wide-mouthed bowls were used in the tabernacle and the temple (1 Kings 7:40, 45, 50; 2 Kings 12:13–14; 1 Chron. 28:17; 2 Chron. 4:22; Jer. 52:19; Zech. 14:20), where they were connected with the altar. They symbolized the priestly work of intercession for the people. Scripture elsewhere associates the burning of incense with the prayers of the saints in Psalm 141:2; Luke 1:9–10; and Revelation 8:3–4 (cf. 6:9–10). The incense in these bowls represents the prayers of believers through the ages that God’s prophesied and promised redemption of the earth might come. Taken together, the harps and the bowls indicate that all that the prophets ever prophesied and all that God’s children ever prayed for is finally to be fulfilled.
As the elders brought before God the desires and prayers of the saints, they sang a new song. Since (with the possible exception of Job 38:7) the Bible nowhere records angels singing, it is best to see only the elders as singing here. (Adopting the variant reading found in many manuscripts “You … have redeemed us to God,” as the New King James Version does, further reinforces that point, since the four living creatures are holy angels who have no need to be redeemed.) That is consistent with the rest of Scripture, which pictures the redeemed singing praise to God (cf. Judg. 5:3; 2 Chron. 5:13; Neh. 12:46; Pss. 7:17; 9:2; 61:8; 104:33; 146:2; Acts 16:25; Eph. 5:19) and angels speaking it (cf. Luke 2:13–14). Throughout Scripture the new song is a song of redemption (Pss. 33:3; 40:3; 96:1; 98:1; 144:9; 149:1; Isa. 42:10; Rev. 14:3).
The song opens with a reaffirmation that Christ is worthy … to take the book and to break its seals. He is worthy because He is the Lamb, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the King of kings and Lord of lords. To break the book’s seals means to enact the judgments written in it. Then, further reinforcing Christ’s worthiness, the song continues, for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. That phrase elaborates on the statement of verse 6 that the Lamb had been slain, explaining the significance of His death. It was Christ’s substitutionary, sacrificial death that purchased for God … men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Purchased is from agorazō, a rich New Testament word for redemption that pictures slaves purchased in the marketplace and then set free. At the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ paid the purchase price (His own blood; 1 Pet. 1:18–19) to redeem men from every tribe (descent) and tongue (language) and people (race) and nation (culture) from the slave market of sin (cf. 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23; Gal. 3:13). Those four terms appear together also in Revelation 7:9; 11:9; 13:7; and 14:6 and encompass all of humanity.
It must have been a thrilling, exhilarating realization for John that the redeemed would one day include people from all over the world. In a day when the church was small, isolated, struggling, and sinful, John must have been concerned about its future—especially because five of the seven churches addressed in chapters 2–3 had such serious and potentially fatal problems. The knowledge that persecution and sin would not extinguish the spreading flame of Christianity must have brought joy and hope to the apostle’s heart.
The song moves on to express the results of redemption: You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth. The use of them instead of “us” indicates the vastness and comprehensiveness of redemption. The twenty-four elders move beyond themselves to sweep up all the saints of all the ages into their paean of praise and adoration. The redeemed are a part of God’s kingdom (cf. 1:6), a community of believers under God’s sovereign rule. They are also priests to our God (cf. 20:6), signifying their complete access to God’s presence for worship and service. The present priesthood of believers (1 Pet. 2:5, 9) foreshadows that future day when we will have total access to and perfect communion with God. During the millennial kingdom, believers will reign upon the earth with Christ (20:6; 2 Tim. 2:12).
In verse 11 John says for the fourth time in the chapter that he saw something. As he looked, he heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands (cf. Dan. 7:10). To the voices of the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders are now added those of innumerable angels. Myriad means “ten thousand,” apparently the highest number for which the Greeks had a word. The phrase myriads and myriads describes an uncountable host. Hebrews 12:1 also says that the number of holy angels cannot be counted. They number at least twice as many as the fallen angels (demons) according to Revelation 12:3–4.
The vast host began saying with a loud voice (cf. Neh. 9:4; Pss. 33:3, “shout”; 98:4, “shout”) the familiar doxology, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. Once again, the emphasis is on Christ’s death providing a perfect redemption, because of which He must be given worship, praise, and adoration. He is worthy to receive recognition because of His power and omnipotence. He is worthy to receive recognition because of the spiritual and material riches that He possesses—He owns everything (Ps. 50:10–12). He is worthy to receive recognition because of His wisdom and omniscience. For all those things and all His other absolute perfections, Jesus Christ is worthy of all honor and glory and blessing.
As the great hymn of praise reaches a crescendo, every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them joins in. This all-inclusive statement is reminiscent of Psalm 69:34: “Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything that moves in them,” and the concluding verse of the Psalms, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!” (Ps. 150:6). This mighty chorus cries out, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.” Endless blessing, endless honor, endless praise, endless glory, and endless worship belong to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The creation is unable to contain its joy over its imminent redemption (cf. Rom. 8:19–22).
Lost in wonder, love, and praise, the four living creatures could only keep saying, “Amen.” That solemn affirmation means “let it be,” “make it happen” (cf. 1:6–7). And the elders fell down once again and worshiped.
Soon, this mighty host would march out of heaven to execute judgment, gather the elect, and return with Christ when He sets up His earthly kingdom. The stage is set.

MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1999). Revelation 1–11 (pp. 169–173). Moody Press.

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12. They were saying in a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive
    power and wealth and wisdom and strength
    and honor and glory and thanksgiving.”

No mention is made of harps or other musical instruments. We may assume that the heavenly host sang, but the text reads that they uttered a loud shout in unison so that the sound came as one voice.
The wording of this second hymn expresses much the same thoughts as the hymn sung by the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders (vv. 9–10). But the angels have no need of redemption; they have learned from the church about the mystery of salvation (Eph. 3:10; 1 Pet. 1:12). They stand in awe at the wonder of God’s redeeming love in Christ Jesus. They are the ones who rejoice in heaven when one sinner on earth repents and cries out to God for mercy (Luke 15:7, 10). They are sent out as God’s messengers (Ps. 104:4; Heb. 1:7), and they are servants of the saints who are to inherit salvation (Heb. 1:14). They sing loudest praises to the Lamb, for they themselves have an integral part in the process of salvation by conveying divine messages to God’s people.
Thus the angels compose and sing a hymn, dedicated not to God but to the Lamb. Their song is more compact and even richer in attributes than the hymn sung by the cherubim and elders. It is unique because of its sevenfold construction: it lists seven nouns in succession that are ascribed to the Lamb: power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and thanksgiving. Seven is the number of completeness (compare 7:12). The four living creatures ascribed glory, honor, and thanksgiving to God seated on the throne (4:9), and the twenty-four elders do the same thing except that instead of thanksgiving they use the term power (4:11). Note, however, that the heavenly beings once call God worthy because of his work of creation, but twice they name the Lamb worthy because of his redemptive work (4:11 and 5:9, 12 respectively).
Some scholars divide the seven attributes into objective qualities (power, wealth, wisdom, and strength) and subjective qualities (honor, glory, and thanksgiving). Even though this demarcation has merit, the question is whether John wished to convey a division of qualities. For instance, glory is a heavenly attribute that people observe but are unable to increase. By contrast, honor is the act of people paying respect; and the act of thanksgiving “evokes man’s thankful response for benefits received.” All the other qualities belong to God and the Lamb.
This song has its origin in heaven, yet the individual words reveal acquaintance with an Old Testament doxology composed by David: “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor.… Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now, our God, we give you thanks and praise your glorious name” (1 Chron. 29:11–12). Hence the Old Testament is the basis for the New Testament, reflected even in this angelic hymn.
Qualities that belong to God are now ascribed to the Lamb. These qualities are power as inner strength; wealth that comes from God; and wisdom that God freely gives to his people. Strength is a synonym of power, and honor and glory frequently appear as a pair (e.g., Ps. 8:5). God grants these qualities to his people, and they in turn express their thanksgiving to him and the Lamb.

Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Vol. 20, pp. 212–213). Baker Book House.

Mid-Day Digest · February 23, 2026

“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”

THE FOUNDATION

“No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America.” —George Washington (1788)

IN TODAY’S DIGEST

• Executive News Summary
• Featured Analysis: Team USA Delivers
• More Analysis
• Best of Right Opinion
• Best of Videos
• Short Cuts
• Today’s Meme

EXECUTIVE NEWS SUMMARY

The Editors

• Olympic gold: It’s been 46 years since the iconic Miracle on Ice, when the USA men’s hockey team took down the mighty Soviet Union and then went on to win Olympic gold. Since 1980, there had been no gold medals for USA men’s hockey, while our neighbors to the north have taken home the gold three times, defeating the U.S. twice in the championship game. On Sunday, the U.S. gold medal drought ended after Team USA defeated Canada 2-1 in a thrilling game that went wire to wire, won by Jack Hughes’s overtime goal. “This is all about our country right now,” he said in an immediate post-game interview. “I love the USA. I love my teammates. It’s unbelievable. The USA hockey brotherhood is so strong. … I’m so proud to be American today.” Indeed.
• Trump implements 15% tariff: President Donald Trump is nothing if not persistent. After the Supreme Court’s stunning decision to strike down his tariff regime on Friday, Trump immediately took action to reimplement his tariffs. Having been told that the “Liberation Day” tariffs enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were unconstitutional, Trump immediately enacted a global 10% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Despite enacting his backup plan, the president still blasted the SCOTUS decision as “anti-American” and suggested that the justices were influenced by “foreign interests.” On Saturday, Trump raised the global tariff further to 15%. Those hoping SCOTUS would put an end to Trump’s tariff regime will likely be disappointed, as it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.
• Mexico kills kingpin, cartel retaliates: Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho,” was Mexico’s most wanted criminal and the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel until he was killed in a military operation on Sunday. El Mencho was injured during his capture and died in transit to Mexico City for medical attention, and at least nine other cartel members were killed in the operation. Almost immediately, Jalisco thugs struck back, plunging the region into chaos. Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, saw gangsters burning trucks and cars as well as blocking roads. The tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta also saw violence erupt. The U.S. embassy urged Americans to seek shelter as the Mexican government works to restore order. Although the U.S. provided some intelligence to help with the operation, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum continues to steadfastly deny U.S. military forces permission to target the cartels within Mexican territory.
• Iran’s nuclear project and the U.S. military buildup: Last June, Operation Midnight Hammer saw U.S. B-2s bomb Iran’s premier nuclear facilities, with the White House declaring them “obliterated.” Experts suggested that by destroying centrifuges and burying the sites in rubble, Iran’s nuclear project had been delayed by one or two years. Now, less than a year later, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff warns that Iran is only a week away from having enough enriched uranium to create at least one bomb. President Trump has suggested that, given the massive U.S. military buildup off the shores of Iran, the mullahs should come to the negotiating table, give up on nuclear weapons, and work out a deal. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group are already in position, while the approaching USS Gerald R. Ford has reached the eastern Mediterranean.
• Mamdani’s shoveling IDs: New York’s first socialist mayor just can’t seem to catch a break. As the city faces its first blizzard in nearly a decade, he is calling for paid volunteers to shovel snow. The catch for the mayor, endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, is that volunteers must bring photo ID. Just a driver’s license won’t do. No, New York is demanding that volunteer snow shovelers bring two small photos, originals and copies of two forms of ID, and a Social Security card. The DSA has actively campaigned against voter ID laws, calling them a “campaign to reverse the gains of the Civil Rights Movement.” Democrats believe you need copious forms of ID to shovel snow on a volunteer basis, but not to vote.
• California Democrat vulgarly insults Trump: Former U.S. Rep. and current California Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter spoke at the state’s Democrat Party convention over the weekend. Apparently, Porter is suffering from a raging case of TDS, as she focused her candidacy on her ire toward Donald Trump. During her speech, she held up a whiteboard upon which was scrawled “F*** Trump,” saying, “Yeah, that’s right, f*** Trump.” She added, “Together, we’re gonna kick Trump’s a** in November.” She accused Trump of killing people in the streets, taking away healthcare, and attacking democracy. RNC spokesperson Nick Poche responded, “The good news for Katie Porter is that she can pick up her medication for far less thanks to TrumpRx. … The bad news is her all stunts no substance campaign just came in a distant fifth, and no amount of abusing her staff will change that she won’t be governor.”
• Could two GOP candidates win California’s gubernatorial primary? There’s still a long way to go before the June 2 jungle gubernatorial primary in California, but the current situation has Democrats worried. Emerson College polling shows that the leading candidates are Republican Steve Hilton with 17%, and tied at 14% are Republican Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrat Eric Swalwell. Other leading Democrats include Katie Porter at 10% and Tom Steyer at 9%, with the rest of the candidates struggling to break through. For Democrats, the situation doesn’t look promising since their jungle primary system will advance the top two candidates regardless of political affiliation. If the Democrat field stays this crowded and split, both Republicans could theoretically advance to the general election, giving the deep-blue state its first GOP governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011.
• Uber won’t let violent felons drive: Following a bit of investigative journalism by The New York Times, Uber was exposed for having allowed in 22 states those with criminal records, including violent felonies, to work for the company as drivers. While Uber had a policy banning drivers who had murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, and terrorism convictions, the company did permit drivers who had other violent criminal records, so long as their convictions were at least seven years old. Since the Times’s report, Uber has changed its policy and now bars all individuals convicted of violent felonies, sex offenses, and child or elder abuse from driving for the company.
• Qatar’s spending influence: Qatar continued to expand its influence and lobbying by tripling its funding for U.S. universities in 2024-2025, making it the largest foreign financier of higher education, with China in second place. As The Washington Free Beacon reports, “The five biggest recipients of Qatari money over the years, according to the Department of Education, are Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown University, Texas A&M, and Northwestern University in that order.” All of these universities and others across the U.S. have negotiated contracts with the Gulf state and have opened satellite campuses, including a medical branch, in Qatar. Is the increasing culture of antisemitism on these campuses connected to their financial ties to Doha? Qatar is one of the biggest financial backers of Hamas and still harbors its leaders. Despite increased scrutiny over its influence deals and support for terrorism, Qatar continues its funding efforts.
• Universities shuttering women’s and gender studies over Trump’s anti-DEI order: A growing number of colleges and universities across the country are ending their women’s and gender studies programs in an effort to comply with the Trump administration’s mandate against schools promoting DEI ideology. Prominent schools like the University of Iowa and the University of California, Santa Cruz have nixed their women’s studies programs, while Texas A&M University is phasing out its program this year. The question is just how thoroughly schools are dumping these programs. As University of South Florida professor Marc Defant observed, “In many places, it looks less like a full rollback and more like a ‘wait-and-see’ posture and a shift to less visible or differently labeled programming.”

Headlines

• Federal judge blocks release of Jack Smith report’s second volume (Fox News)
• Man shot dead by Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago was obsessed with Epstein files (NY Post)
• U.S. evacuates non-emergency personnel from Beirut embassy (NewsNation)
• DC police sweep labor secretary’s office over allegations against her husband (RedState)

The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.

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FEATURED ANALYSIS

Team USA Delivers

Douglas Andrews

God, I’m sorry. I’ll see you next Sunday.

So said more than one American yesterday morning at 8:10 ET as they settled in for the final event of the Winter Olympics in Italy — the gold medal hockey match between Team USA and Team Canada.

It didn’t disappoint.

From the drop of the first puck, you felt the clamminess in your palms because you knew this wasn’t just any hockey game or any Olympic event. You jumped out of your chair when a full-speed Matt Boldy split two Canadians by popping the puck up onto the blade of his stick and Tiger Woodsing it forward before beating Canadian goalkeeper Jordan Binnington with the game’s first goal. Then you felt a sense of foreboding as the Canadians — whose team included the NHL’s first-, second-, and fourth-leading scorers — began to impose their will, far outshooting us throughout the game, including 19-8 in the second period. Yes, the Yanks kept clinging to that 1-0 lead, but it seemed only a matter of time before the walls fell in.

Connor Hellebuyck, though, had other ideas. The American keeper singlehandedly kept us in the game with one crucial save after another, including a preposterous behind-the-back stick job to deny Canada’s Devon Toews from point-blank range. On another occasion, with Hellebuyck on his knees in the middle of a wild scrum, it was his teammate, defenseman Charlie McAvoy, who batted down a certain goal that the Canadians’ Tom Wilson had jabbed over Hellebuyck’s shoulder. Hey, it’s a team game.

With the game tied at 1-1 after regulation, it went to sudden death, with three skaters per side instead of five. Here, we felt that the slick-skating Americans had at least a slugger’s chance. And sure enough. After withstanding a furious Connor McDavid rush, Jack Hughes beat the Canadians’ Cale Makar to a loose puck and headed up ice with teammate Zach Werenski, who fed Hughes beautifully, who then beat Binnington “five hole” with the Golden Goal.

A few minutes earlier, Hughes had been spittin’ Chiclets from a nasty high-stick to the mouth courtesy of Canada’s Sam Bennett. But were Hughes to have been offered the trade of a couple of choppers for an Olympic gold medal, he’d have crossed-checked his grandma for the opportunity.

“This is all about our country right now,” said Hughes in a viral post-game interview. “I love the USA. I love my teammates. It’s unbelievable. The USA hockey brotherhood is so strong. We had so much support from ex-players. I’m so proud to be American today.”

Hughes wasn’t done. Asked how they managed to get it done, he immediately credited others. “Unbelievable game by Hellebuyck,” he said. “He was our best player tonight by a mile. Unreal game by our team. Just a ballsy, gutsy win. That’s American hockey right there. That’s a great Canadian team, but we’re USA, we’re so proud to be Americans. Tonight was all for the country.”

If that doesn’t give you chills, you might check your pulse.

As for Hughes’s missing teeth, he credited — what else? — American dentistry. “I’m lucky I’m from the best country in the world, and we’ve got great dentists there, too. I’m lucky I’m American, and they’re gonna fix me right up.”

Ultimately, it was good ol’ American grit that prevailed on the exact day when, 46 years ago, a group of American college kids engineered the greatest upset in hockey history, the Miracle on Ice, by beating the unbeatable Soviet Red Army team in Lake Placid, New York. There was nothing miraculous about this year’s team beating the Canadians — unless you consider Connor Hellebuyck standing on his head for 61 minutes and 41 seconds a miracle — but that doesn’t make the victory any less sweet. While there exists a ton of respect between the Canadian and American players, some of whom are NHL teammates, our two countries have — perhaps you’ve noticed — been somewhat at odds of late.

“You be the judge of who was the better team today,” said a stunned and embittered Canadian, Nathan MacKinnon, who was on the ice when Hughes notched his game-winner, and who missed a chance to put Canada up 2-1 in the third period when he missed a chip shot from point-blank range on the left side of a wide-open U.S. net. I suspect he slam dunks that puck 99 times out of 100, but not yesterday. When the hopes and dreams of a hockey-crazed nation are sitting on your shoulders, it can affect even the surest hands in the game.

I wonder if anyone on the Soviets’ awesome Red Army team tried to claim MacKinnon’s weak-saucy consolation prize 46 years ago. I wonder if Fetisov or Maltsev or Kharlamov or Tretiak said, after the Miracle on Ice, “Yeah, we lost the gold, but we were the better team out there.”

Nyet. The better team was the American team. And they proved it by beating MacKinnon and his fellow Canadians, 2-1. Indeed, the Americans swept the hockey golds in Milan, with Team USA women having beaten, yes, Canada by an identical 2-1 score in sudden death a few days earlier.

As the merciless crew at The Babylon Bee quipped, “Communists once again suck at hockey.”

Donald Trump called the team immediately afterward, and you could hear the joy in his voice. “Congratulations,” he said. “That was an unbelievable game. … I want to shake hands with everybody, but I gotta shake hands with that goalie.”

And if you’d thought you’d seen it all, I give you FBI Director Kash Patel, there in the Team USA locker room afterward, drinking a beer and singing Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” with his fellow Americans.

Yesterday, we were all Americans. And we were treated to a spectacular game by a group of patriotic young Americans who — rather than bad-mouthing their country or competing for the commies — put America unequivocally first.

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MORE ANALYSIS

• Emmy Griffin: Liu vs. Gu: A Story of Two American-Born Athletes — One chose to represent her country. The other chose to represent her country’s greatest enemy.
• Thomas Gallatin: Tucker Beclowns Himself in ‘Detention’ — Painting Israel in a negative light, Tucker Carlson falsely claimed that he was “detained” by Israeli security at the airport in Tel Aviv.
• Nate Jackson: The Tariffs Are Dead, Long Live the Tariffs — The Supreme Court may have struck down President Trump’s tariffs on Friday, but hours later, he had reimplemented them under other authority.
• Gregory Lyakhov: The Supreme Court’s Tariff Ruling Was Constitutionally Correct — Even if you support President Donald Trump’s tariffs and strategy, six of the Court’s justices came to the right conclusion.
• Roger Helle: ‘The Real Housewives of Minneapolis’ — After watching anti-ICE protests night after night, I think there should be a series about Minneapolis housewives.
• Armed Forces Tribute: The Few, the Proud — Iwo Jima — On this day in history, the American flag was raised atop Mount Suribachi.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Gary BauerSupremes Torpedo Tariffs; Trump Immediately Launches Plan B
• Tony PerkinsWhen Free Exercise Draws Hostility
• Allen WestThe Incompatibility of Sharia Law With the U.S. Constitution
• The Washington StandAs Lawsuits Multiply, Transgender Reversal Movement Gains Momentum
• The Babylon BeeCanada Now Officially an American Province

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

BEST OF VIDEOS

• Mamdani Gets Backlash for Requiring IDs for Snow Shovelers — DSA comrade and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants you to provide IDs to have the honor of being an “emergency snow shoveler.”

SHORT CUTS

AOC Apologist

“Rather than the substance of her arguments [in Munich], it was [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s] on-camera stumbles when answering questions about specific world affairs that rocketed around conservative social media and drove plenty of the discussion about her visit.” —The New York Times’s Kellen Browning circling the wagons

Spin Doctor

“Republicans have decided that they would rather shut down FEMA, shut down TSA, and shut down the Coast Guard than get ICE under control.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)

Non Compos Mentis

“The AGs in many states are … almost jubilant about being able to use these laws to ban young people from accessing content that could be educational if they are queer.” —”transgender” Minnesota State Rep. “Leigh” Finke arguing against an age verification law that aims to protect children from porn

Village Idiots

“The [Charlie Kirk] memorial service was one of the most potent examples of the shift we’re seeing in our culture right now. Where a large segment of American Christians are being activated by these ideas, radicalized by these ideas. That say they are the persecuted ones and that they need to stand up for Christian’s rights.” — Georgetown University visiting scholar Matthew Taylor

“Free speech is a [sic] pure bulls**t if nobody knows how you are guided through this so-called free speech, especially when it is to be guided from one hated speech to another hated speech.” —French President Emmanuel Macron

Doomsday for Tariffs?

“The Court’s decision is likely to generate other serious practical consequences in the near term. One issue will be refunds. Refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the U. S. Treasury. The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers.” —Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent in the 6-3 decision on Donald Trump’s tariffs

“I’m a simple man: when [Samuel] Alito and [Clarence] Thomas agree on a legal matter, I assume they’re right.” —Michael Knowles

“The administration has other tools in its toolbox. It can actually impose tariffs under other statutes.” —constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley

“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again.” —President Donald Trump

For the Record

“We should not forget that in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris won all 12 states that did not have voter ID. Things that make you go hmm…no wonder why Marxist leftists do not want ICE out and about in their unconstitutional and unlawful self-declared ‘sanctuary’ states and cities.” —Allen West

Upright

“Pride in one’s nation and one’s civilization, properly understood, is not a warrant for self-satisfaction but a summons to duty, a reminder that for us to whom much has been given, much is asked. In Munich, [Marco] Rubio was not just Trump’s good cop but a mature American leader towering above the crowd.” —Michael Barone

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TODAY’S MEME

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For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.

ON THIS DAY in 1945, the American flag was raised atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Three of the six Marines in that famous photograph were later killed in action before the battle concluded. Too many Americans now have no concept of the price of Liberty.

“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”

Christian Persecution Reaches Extreme Levels in Several Nations | Lifeway Research

Ye Jinghan photo | Unsplash

Annual tracking of Christian persecution highlights areas where believers are under intense levels of pressure and violence.

By Aaron Earls

Around the world, many Christians face imprisonment, violence, and even death due to their faith in Jesus.

Open Doors and Global Christian Relief, two organizations tracking Christian persecution, released their annual findings highlighting the nations in the world where believers face the most resistance.

Open Doors’ World Watch List

The 2026 World Watch List from Open Doors ranks the 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution. In the top 15 nations, persecution levels are considered “extreme,” while those in the other countries are enduring “very high” levels of persecution.

Open Doors scores the nations on a total scale of 0 to 100, composed of scores from six categories, including five areas of pressure—private, family, community, national, and church life—and violence. In the 50 worst nations alone, more than 315 million Christians face very high or extreme persecution.

One in 7 Christians are persecuted worldwide, according to Open Doors. Circumstances are worse in Africa, where 1 in 5 suffer under persecution. Meanwhile, the highest frequency happens in Asia, with 2 in 5 Christians enduring persecution.

1 in 7 Christians are persecuted worldwide, including 1 in 5 in Africa and 2 in 5 in Asia, according to Open Doors. Share on X

The total number of Christians killed for their faith increased last year from 4,476 to 4,849, according to Open Doors. Of those deaths, 93% happened in sub-Saharan Africa, including 3,490 in Nigeria alone. Only three countries on the World Watch List reached the maximum violence score. All three of them are sub-Saharan: Sudan, Nigeria, and Mali.

According to Open Doors, “Multiple complex co-factors in the region, ranging from instability and insurgency to weak governance, have left Christians vulnerable and subject to violent attacks from extremists.”

The 15 nations with extreme levels of Christian persecution and their scores are:

1. North Korea (97)
2. Somalia (94)
3. Yemen (93)
4. Sudan (92)
5. Eritrea (90)
6. Syria (90)
7. Nigeria (89)
8. Pakistan (87)
9. Libya (87)
10. Iran (87)
11. Afghanistan (86)
12. India (84)
13. Saudi Arabia (82)
14. Myanmar (81)
15. Mali (81)

Global Christian Relief’s Red List

For their part, Global Christian Relief (GCR) produces an annual Red List, which highlights the five worst nations across five categories of persecution. Their totals and rankings differ from Open Doors because they rely on publicly available information, which is difficult to come by in some countries.

Much like Open Doors, the GCR Red List identified Nigeria as the nation with the most Christians killed, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Russia, and Mozambique.

Last year, more Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria than in any other country, according to Global Christian Relief. Share on X

The most occurrences of violence and intimidation toward churches, including building attacks, happened in Rwanda. GCR said “restrictive state regulations have led to thousands of church closures” in the African nation. Others among the top five are Mozambique, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and Ukraine.

Topping the arrests category is China. The communist nation “remains a leading example of extensive religious control enforced through registration requirements, surveillance, and mandatory alignment with state ideology,” according to GCR. The rest of the five worst include Russia, Iran, Vietnam, and Nicaragua.

By far, the nation with the highest number of displaced Christians is Mozambique, according to GCR. “Islamic State-affiliated Ahlu Sunnah wa Jama’s (ASWJ) continues to target Christian-majority villages, churches, and community leaders,” said the report. “Attacks often involve widespread destruction, looting, and forced recruitment, resulting in mass flight.” Others on the list are Myanmar, Nigeria, India, and Mexico.

The country with the highest levels of abductions, sexual assaults, forced marriages, and other forms of physical abuse against Christians is Mexico, where it is closely related to “criminal governance rather than religious ideology.” Nigeria, India, Ethiopia, and Myanmar round out the top five.

Church awareness

According to a 2025 Lifeway Research study, 93% of U.S. Protestant pastors have used at least one of six ways to raise awareness in their church of persecuted Christians worldwide.

Pastors are most likely to say they have encouraged their congregations to pray for Christians suffering under persecution (86%) or prayed in a worship service for them (85%). Two in 3 pastors (66%) talked about modern global persecution in a sermon.

Fewer Protestant pastors have handed out information about persecuted Christians (31%), had an event to bring awareness (17%), or shown a video in a worship service about the issue (16%). Just 7% said they had done none of these.

“The United States has extensive freedom for people to practice their faith without fear of retribution,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “Despite the distance from persecution, pastors and churches are not ignoring the persecution Christians are experiencing throughout the world.”

For permission to republish this article, contact Marissa Postell Sullivan.

Aaron Earls

@WardrobeDoor

Aaron is the senior writer at Lifeway Research.

Source: Christian Persecution Reaches Extreme Levels in Several Nations

CNN Slams Keir Starmer’s “Atrocious” Ratings, ‘Makes Trump Look Like Abraham Lincoln’

02-23-2026 • https://www.zerohedge.com, by Steve Watson

This brutal takedown highlights how Starmer’s globalist policies are alienating Brits across the board.

As the Labour leader clings to power, his war on free speech and commitment to protecting illegal immigration is fueling a backlash that could spell the end for his regime. With polls showing just 20% approval, Starmer’s grip on Number 10 looks increasingly tenuous.

The Overton News clip, which has gone viral on X, captures CNN’s scathing assessment of Starmer’s popularity nosedive.

In the segment, analyst Harry Enten declares, “These numbers are absolutely ATROCIOUS! I mean, you never see numbers like this in the United States of America.”

Focusing on the dire stats, Enten points out, “Britons who like Keir Starmer, look at this — overall it’s just 1 in 5! It’s just 1 in 5, 20%!”

Even within his own ranks, support is crumbling:

“His OWN party, Labour, he’s just at 52% there.”

The commentary escalates, revealing, “I’ve even seen numbers with satisfaction in the TEENS — and this is actually HIGHER than the lowest.”

The most striking line compares Starmer unfavorably to Trump:

“You know, we always talk about Donald Trump being unpopular in this country — but Donald Trump looks downright like Abraham Lincoln compared to Keir Starmer’s numbers at this point!“

The latest YouGov survey from February 2026 shows Starmer’s net favourability at -47, with only 22% viewing him positively against 69% unfavorably. That’s an improvement from January’s -57, but still abysmal for a sitting PM.

Other trackers paint an even grimmer picture. Ipsos reported satisfaction in the teens late last year, aligning with CNN’s observations. Opinium’s February poll pegs his net approval at -44, with over half the public calling for his resignation.

Starmer’s woes stem from policies that prioritize globalist agendas over British interests. Mass immigration continues unchecked, straining public services while borders remain porous. Economic missteps, like burdensome regulations on businesses, echo the failures of socialist experiments.

Recall our earlier coverage where a former aide to Starmer revealed how a “stakeholder state” – an unelected network of insiders, NGOs, and civil servants – effectively controls the UK government.

Paul Ovenden described this “political perma-class” as diverting power from voters to elite priorities, wasting resources on fringe issues while ignoring secure borders and sovereignty.

Read Full Story

Anti-American Disinformation Feeding Divisiveness: Who’s Behind It? | The Gateway Pundit

Anti-American Disinformation Feeding Divisiveness: Who’s Behind It?

No Kings protest in New York City. Wikimedia Commons.

Liberal think tanks and the mainstream media, which have a strong left-leaning bias and an intense hatred of President Donald Trump, have convinced many Americans that the United States is slipping economically, militarily, and diplomatically. However, the fact is that America remains the strongest nation on earth, and the strongest nation that has ever existed, across those three dimensions.

The media have people believing Trump is to blame for an American loss of status that has not occurred. This narrative is being used to fuel divisiveness. The numbers, however, do not support claims of America’s imminent demise at the hands of the president.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP. As of 2025 and 2026 IMF projections, U.S. nominal GDP is approximately $30.5 trillion, compared to China’s $19.2 trillion. The U.S. economy is roughly 1.5 times larger than China’s in dollar terms.

To propagate the myth that China is poised to displace the United States as the world’s number-one economy, liberal media rely on purchasing power parity measures. PPP compares how much a quantity of money buys in one country versus another. When adjusted for PPP, China’s economy surpassed the United States around 2014. In 2025, China’s PPP GDP is roughly $41 trillion.

The issue with PPP, however, is that China’s GDP is not $41 trillion. It is $19.2 trillion, and on world markets, China can only buy $19.2 trillion worth of goods and services, whereas the United States can buy $30.5 trillion. The PPP measure is useful in understanding how roughly half of China’s population survives on about $10 per day, but it does not make that income equivalent to the U.S. median income of $55,000 per year.

Liberals and the media try to convince Americans that President Trump has mismanaged the economy so severely that the dollar is losing its status as the global currency. But the reality is the opposite. The dollar remains the only viable global currency.

In 2026, foreign currency reserves show a nominal figure of 58 percent, according to the IMF, while an alternative measure that includes agencies places the share at approximately 67 percent. In trade settlement, 58 percent is invoiced in U.S. dollars, while about 88 percent of trade is settled in dollars. In foreign exchange turnover, the dollar comprises 89 percent of all currency exchanges. In commodities, the nominal share is 95 percent, while oil and gas pricing accounts for approximately 98 percent in U.S. dollars.

The United States maintains the most powerful and technologically advanced military in history. According to SIPRI 2025 data, the U.S. spent approximately $997 billion on defense, nearly 40 percent of total global military spending and more than the next 10 countries combined.

The U.S. is the only nation capable of sustained blue-water power projection, operating 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. China has three, only one of which is comparable to U.S. technology. By tonnage, the U.S. Navy ranks first in the world. Although China has more ships, roughly 370 to America’s 290, the U.S. fleet is nearly three times larger by displacement. A single U.S. supercarrier outweighs the entire navies of many countries. The U.S. Coast Guard, with about 240 cutters, ranks among the largest fleets of armed vessels globally, exceeded by only a few nations.

The United States also fields three of the world’s largest air forces. The U.S. Air Force operates more than 5,200 aircraft, with over 13,000 total aircraft across the U.S. inventory. The U.S. Army, with more than 4,300 helicopters, ranks among the largest air arms by total airframes. The U.S. Navy operates roughly 2,400 aircraft, primarily carrier-based fighters and support aircraft, surpassing most national air forces.

The U.S. leads NATO and participates in multiple alliances that expand its reach. Five Eyes unites the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in intelligence sharing. AUKUS integrates the defense industrial bases of the U.S., UK, and Australia, including cooperation in submarines, artificial intelligence, and hypersonics. The Quad, consisting of the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India, coordinates maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. NORAD, a binational command with Canada, treats North American airspace as a single defense zone. The United States also maintains mutual defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, along with major non-NATO ally agreements with 19 countries.

Reports that the U.S. is losing diplomatic power are an example of this type of disinformation.

The Asia Power Index 2025, published by the Lowy Institute, ranks the United States as the number-one power in Asia, citing its enduring resources and influence. The report notes a slight drop in the U.S. score in 2025 due to a transactional foreign policy approach that created friction with some allies. Even so, the institute does not rank the U.S. second, nor does it name Europe or China as the new leading diplomatic power. It records a decline in score, not a loss of primacy.

The Global Soft Power Index 2026, published by Brand Finance, also ranks the United States number one in the world for soft power, citing familiarity and influence in media, science, and education. The report records a one-year decline in reputation and governance scores among top nations, but it does not rank Europe or China ahead of the U.S. It shows reduced prestige metrics while maintaining overall leadership.

Beyond think-tank rankings, analytics from 2025 and early 2026 measuring global attention share, policy gravity, and economic centrality indicate continued U.S. dominance. Media analytics show that global traffic spikes are tied to U.S. executive actions. The U.S. president generates sustained international coverage unmatched by other leaders. Reports from media organizations across dozens of countries in early 2026 identified U.S. political developments as primary drivers of global web traffic and subscriptions.

Foreign-policy analytics also document anticipatory compliance, in which governments adjust domestic policies in response to expected U.S. actions. In 2025, NATO members and Asian allies such as Japan and South Korea increased defense spending in alignment with U.S. election cycles and executive decisions. Statements by European and Latin American leaders in early 2026 show legislative and diplomatic agendas framed in response to U.S. positions.

Economic centrality further reflects this influence. Trade databases and market analytics in 2026 show that U.S. tariff policy statements affect shipping, insurance, and price forecasts within minutes. As of February 2026, U.S. energy production provides direct or indirect leverage over roughly 20 percent of global oil output, extending influence from North America to parts of Latin America. These data points measure market response rather than perception.

The disconnect between the reality and the online perception of Americas global standing suggest fifth-generation warfare, a form of psychological warfare centered on demoralization and internal division rather than direct battlefield engagement. Instead of tanks and missiles, the focus shifts to weakening social cohesion.

This strategy seeks to divide citizens along generational, racial, and gender lines. It promotes distrust between parents and children, men and women, and among racial and social groups. The objective is internal fragmentation rather than external defeat.

Russia and China have both been known to push narratives and promote negative stories about the United States, seeking to demoralize or divide the population. George Soros and other global donors have funded protests in which slogans, signs, and rhetoric appeared planned and manufactured as part of a coordinated campaign.

The extreme left, Marxists, and progressive activists have also pushed opposition to President Trump and to the government. The fact that students are walking out of high schools to protest ICE is troubling, especially when it appears that teachers supported or encouraged them.

The big question is who is behind this, and how it can be stopped.

The post Anti-American Disinformation Feeding Divisiveness: Who’s Behind It? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Mexican President holds briefing on killing of drug lord

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum provides details on the operation that led to army’s killing of the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, ‘El Mencho’. #mexico #elmencho #sheinbaum #unitedstates

Source: Mexican President holds briefing on killing of drug lord

LISTEN: AOC’s Fiancé SNORES Throughout Her Meltdown Attacking Critics and Trump Following Her Embarrassing Foreign Policy Errors | The Gateway Pundit

LISTEN: AOC’s Fiancé SNORES Throughout Her Meltdown Attacking Critics and Trump Following Her Embarrassing Foreign Policy Errors

Riley Roberts, AOC’s Fiancé, snores while she tries to defend her performance in Munich, Germany, earlier this month. Credit: Fox News/AOC Instagram

The love of AOC’s life spoke for all Americans following her latest meltdown over her humiliating foreign policy mistakes earlier this month in Munich.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the New York Democratic Congresswoman went on social media this weekend and made a fool of herself by blaming everyone but herself for her failures, which have shown she’s not ready for primetime.

AOC’s voice quivered as she held back tears.

“If you think that I don’t understand foreign policy because, out of hours of discourse about international affairs, I pause to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exists on Earth, I’m afraid the issue is not my understanding, but rather that perhaps you’ve grown accustomed to a president who never thinks before he speaks,” AOC complained.

During her childish tantrum, her Fiancé, Riley Roberts, can be heard in the background snoring like a chimney.

Was he simply too tired from a long week or just exhausted from AOC continuing to obsess?

WATCH AND LISTEN:

WATCH: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responds to critics of her widely mocked performance at the Munich Security Conference in a social media video that is going viral, in part, because her fiancé is snoring through it. pic.twitter.com/0KMQmwooi7

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 23, 2026

If this is what Mr. Roberts has to deal with constantly, he has our sympathies.

Earlier this month, AOC delivered one of the most humiliating performances by a U.S. politician in modern history at the Munich Security Conference. She made a host of mind-boggling gaffes in response to simple questions while botching basic geography.

In one instance, a moderator at the event asked AOC if the US should commit troops to defend against China, and she turned into a stuttering mess.

“Um, you know, I think that, uh, this is such a, uh, you know, I — I think that this is a, umm, this is of course a, uh, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States – uh and I think what we are hoping for is we want to make sure that we never get to that point,” AOC said.

In addition to the ugly episode, AOC also incorrectly stated that Venezuela was below the equator and called Secretary of State Marco Rubio racist for saying cowboys came from Spain.

AOC then called The New York Times and vented her fury over the coverage of her gaffes and the questions she was asked.

“This reporter came up to me and was like, ‘Is Munich the new New Hampshire?’ And I cannot say enough how out of touch and missing the point, genuinely, that is,” AOC whined during the interview with the Times.

“Global democracies are on fire the world over, and established parties are falling to right-wing populist movements.”

The post LISTEN: AOC’s Fiancé SNORES Throughout Her Meltdown Attacking Critics and Trump Following Her Embarrassing Foreign Policy Errors appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Surprise: Basing College Admissions On Merit Instead Of Skin Is Good For Everyone

New evidence shows that the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action is not a setback; instead, it facilitates improved outcomes for all.

Source: Surprise: Basing College Admissions On Merit Instead Of Skin Is Good For Everyone

Newsom Tells Predominantly Black Crowd That He’s Just Like Them Because He Can’t Read Well

Watch governor hair gel tell a predominantly black Southern audience that he’s dumb, just like them.

https://notthebee.com/article/gavin-newsom-tells-predominantly-black-crowd-in-atlanta-im-like-you–im-a-960-sat-guy–i-cannot-read-a-speech/