Cindy Wity

What’s Up with God?

May 14, 2023 Leave a comment

“What’s up with God?” This question has been posed in various forms throughout history, often in the context of the problem of evil. And often with God’s existence being made contingent upon man’s assessment of God in relation to evil, as was posited by Greek philosopher Epicurus in what has become known as the “Epicurean paradox”:

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to

Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing

Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing

Then whence cometh evil.

If He is neither able nor willing

Then why call Him God?

What’s up with theodicy? Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, one of The Brothers Karamazov in Dostoyevsky’s masterful novel, is a sullen and withdrawn 24-year-old rationalist afflicted with great inner conflict. He rejects the world as it is because it doesn’t line up with the moral reasoning of his “Euclidean mind, an earthly mind”:

“I accept God […] It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s […] that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept.”- Ivan, The Brothers Karamazov, Part 2: Book 5, Chapter 3

Where is the vindication of God’s goodness and justice and the idea of a loving God in the horror of unjust human suffering—particularly the suffering of children?

Going further than Ivan, professional God-denying atheist Richard Dawkins thinks he knows what’s up with God. He’s done a “1619 Project” on God:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Richard Dawkins, THE GOD DELUSION P.31.

It’s not just philosophers and characters in novels and atheists who question “What’s up with God?” Those who have walked in God’s presence have also thought that God as God should act in certain ways.

Job and his friends had strong inclinations as to how God should act. Their back-and-forth dialogues disclose that they thought that God should act with the retribution principle: the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. Do your due diligence, bring offerings and sacrifices and God will return the favor. If you suffer misfortune, it is because you have made God unhappy and you are not as righteous as you thought you were.

Quid pro quo religious rituals were common throughout ancient Near Eastern history. Ancients interested in attaining a god’s favor offered sacrifices in order to receive it. Sacrifice as a form of bribery was also common during the Greek and Roman times when there were many gods to feed and take care of. The religious practitioners thought of the gods as being like them – needy. Now let’s go back in time to the first What’s up with God? situation recorded in Scripture.

As you read Genesis chapter 4 you find that the narrator, without adding any moral qualification of his own, wants the reader to assess what is said and done. Note: this Mother’s Day story doesn’t end well.

The setting: just outside the garden of Eden.

We read that brothers Cain and Abel offer the fruits of their labor to God as a sacrifice. They may have placed the offerings outside the flaming sword-protected gate of the garden. Abel offers the best cuts from the mature firstlings of his flock. Cain offers portions of what’s been growing. They both offer yields from God’s good creation, but there is an issue with one of the offerings. The narrator doesn’t give us the motives behind the offerings but we do get Cain’s reaction and God’s response.

When his offering is not considered by God, Cain became hot with anger. His face became downcast. What’s behind Cain’s response? Likely two very human attitudes: “Why was Abel’s offering accepted and not mine – No fair! Inequality! I am the oldest! What about my rights?!” and “God isn’t supposed to act this way when I give him something. What’s up with God?!”

Cain likely felt that he had rights by placing God in debt to him with his offering. He did what he felt was required and now God must do what is required and return the favor. He had made a deal with his offering perhaps thinking “If I feed God then I get a return on my investment”. As noted above, this was a typical Near Eastern attitude of brokering with the gods for favor (I am not assuming that there are only four humans on earth at this time.)

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4: 6-7

God gives Cain a free-will choice. I read it as “Do you want to be accepted or are you just looking to get your conditional ritual brokering accepted? If you want to be accepted, then do what is right with regard to me and you’ll be accepted. You doing right is infinitely more acceptable than a plateful of greens.”

Or, “Cain, you can continue going you own way. Just be ready to be pounced on and be overtaken by more of the same “What’s up with God?” behavior that overcame and killed your brother Abel. You would then live like a wild animal. Isn’t that how you imagine yourself now –as one of them, free to roam and ready to pounce? I told your parents to continue what I began – bring order to the as-yet-to-be-ordered world, to subdue and rule. Will you choose to be disorder and the sower of suffering for yourself and others?

Cain made his free-will choice. It appears that he decided that God was petty and unfair. So, he weaponized his anger toward God and destroyed his image. He brought Abel to a field and murdered him. But what happens on the field does not stay on the field. Abel’s split blood cried out to God and the “petty and unfair” God came looking for murderously unfair Cain.

“Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

Cain admits no culpability. As a consequence of Cain’s attitude and actions, God curses Cain. The curse in Genesis 4 is very similar to the one in Genesis 3, except that it’s not just the ground that is cursed it is a human being that is also cursed.

“And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

It seems that the punishment God gave Cain was Cain’s heart’s desire: to be his own man and to go his own way. But Cain balks, perhaps realizing that what goes around comes around. And so, for protection, Cain’s implied plea is for God to act like a “brother’s keeper”.

“Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.

The Lord shows undeserved goodwill toward Cain, favor that Cain had once assumed should be automatic with his offering. The Lord treats Cain as Cain should have treated his brother Abel.

Cain should have received the death penalty. (Did Richard Dawkins ever read Genesis 4?), but instead is banished from living near the garden and the Lord’s presence. The mark placed on Cain by God means that God promises to look after Cain in exile, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. The Lord promises Cain justice in avenging his split blood.

These are very sad words: “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” (“Nod” = “wandering”)

In the land of wandering, Cain has a chance to repent and return to God. But . . . the willful Cain goes his own way. Instead of wandering, Cain defies God and builds a city. The city for him equals protection, security, being surround by allies, and a lack of trust in God’s character.

When God didn’t respond to Cain’s offering, Cain could have asked “Why” to gain understanding but his attitude kept him from doing so. He had decided about how God should act. If Cain had asked God “Why?”, would God have answered “Just because I chose your younger brother’s offering this time doesn’t make me petty and unfair? It doesn’t mean that I don’t accept you. You don’t know me. Three dimensions cannot contain me. The fourth dimension of time allows for your understanding of me. And Cain, you assumed something about me with your petty conditional thinking. Had you asked you would have found out what I am like and what I desire. My lack of response was meant as a challenge. I wanted you to respond with questioning humility and to patiently wait for my response.”

What does the Genesis 4 narrator want to us understand? That we must begin our understanding of God with the acknowledgement of and respect for God as God? That God is Other than us? That because God has made himself present to us never means that one is on equal terms with God? That we must not try to domesticate God with our assumptions about him? That Cain thought that God would be as needy as he was for attention and that was the motive for his offering?

God prescribed a “fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” life for Cain. Exile to the land of exclusion was done, I believe, as a means for Cain to take time to reflect on his attitude and on what he had done and to come to the point of repentance and to returning to the presence of God. But self-reliant Cains hunkers down and builds a city for protection. As we shall see in a future post, cities magnify what is in the human heart.

In the Cain and Abel account, the question of “What’s up with God?” is met with “What have you done?”

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“The suffering and evil of the world are not due to weakness, oversight, or callousness on God’s part. But rather, are the inescapable costs of a creation allowed to be other than God.” – John Polkinghorne

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Christine Anderson: If You Want to Know How 1930s Germany Happened, Just Look at the Past 3 Years

"There's a lot of people that think … they would have been in the resistance back then. Well, take a look at what you did in the last three years, and you have your answer,"… pic.twitter.com/4wzCmUIrsA
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 11, 2023

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“The cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a new bright ornament upon the bosom of a self-assured and carnal Christianity whose hands are indeed the hands of Abel, but whose voice is the voice of Cain. The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before the cross it bows and toward the cross it points with carefully staged histrionics but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.” — A.W. Tozer

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Informed Dissent:

Vaccine Atrocities

Former Pfizer VP Dr. Michael Yeadon

Large study finds people who received COVID jab have higher risk of visual impairment – LifeSite (lifesitenews.com)

SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Accumulation in the Skull-Meninges-Brain Axis: Potential Implications for Long-Term Neurological Complications in post-COVID-19 | bioRxiv

Rand Paul says ‘no more,’ urges Americans to ‘resist’ lockdowns and mask mandates | The Post Millennial | thepostmillennial.com

US Military Doctor Testifies She Was Ordered to ‘Cover Up’ Vaccine Injuries | Principia Scientific Intl. (principia-scientific.com)

FOIA Reveals Troubling Relationship between HHS/CDC & the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists – America Out Loud

How to Save Your Life and Those You Love When Hospitalized – LewRockwell

Patient Documents | OurPatientRights.com (protocolkills.com)

LETTER Patient Caregivers and Consent Download

Patient Caregivers and Consent Download

The American Sovereignty Declaration: It’s Time for America to Exit the W.H.O.” – Dr. Robert Malone

“ . . . in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO lied about the nature, origins and effective responses to the Wuhan Virus. The “China Model” of lockdowns, masks and vaccine mandates and digital enforcement mechanisms was endorsed. And the WHO approved the use of expensive and inadequately tested gene therapies as “vaccinations” and the suppression of readily available, effective and inexpensive treatments. Thanks in part to such misconduct, the pandemic has resulted in the deaths of over a million Americans and many more elsewhere around the world, an untold number of whom perished needlessly.

Given the WHO’s appalling record, it is outrageous that the Biden administration is working to give the WHO and its Director-General more power over sovereign nations, including the United States. Yet, U.S. government officials are actively negotiating amendments to existing International Health Regulations and a new treaty governing future pandemics. These accords would effectively repose in Dr. Tedros the authority unilaterally to dictate what constitutes an actual or potential Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and to order how affected nations must respond.” (Emphasis mine.)

The American Sovereignty Declaration (substack.com)

The American Sovereignty Declaration: It’s Time for America to Exit the W.H.O.
Sign at this link>> Sovereignty Coalition

News Release: New ‘Sovereignty Coalition’ Campaign to Prevent the Surrender of American Freedom – Sovereignty Coalition

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How Disney Comes Up With New Movie Ideas – YouTube

Filed under Atheism, Christianity, Evil, Genesis Tagged with atheism, Cain and Abel, Christianity, Genesis, God, the problem of evil

The Way We Live and Die Now

May 7, 2023 Leave a comment

“According to the report “Martyred Christians in Nigeria” issued by Intersociety, over the past 14 years at least 52,250 Nigerian Christians have been brutally murdered at the hands of Islamist militants.’

Over 50,000 Christians killed in Nigeria by Islamist extremists – Vatican News

5,068 Citizens Massacred For Being Christians In Nigeria In 2022, 1,041 Slaughtered In First 100 Days Of 2023 – InterSociety (intersociety-ng.org)

“The attackers targeted the St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in the town of Owo as the worshippers gathered on Pentecost Sunday, according to local officials. They gunned down parishioners and detonated an explosive device, local media reported.”

Nigeria: gunmen kill dozens in ‘satanic’ attack on Catholic church | Nigeria | The Guardian

The world hates and crushes those not in conformity to its prescribed world-order manifestations.

A prescribed world-order? Above, Islamic extremism carried out genocidal attacks. Here’s another example from the last century:

“Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist- Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. . . In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.”

100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead | Hudson

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn chronicled the dehumanizing and destructive force of a prescribed world-order – Marxist-Leninist Stalinism – with its relentless steamroller of conformity.

The same crusade to exact conformity to the prescribed world-order is present today. We see this in calls for “Diversity”, conformity in drag. “Diversity” is one of the ruses used to sort out those who conform from those who do not conform to the prescribed world-order.

COVID mandates – lockdowns, masks, social distancing, vaccines, etc. – were all done by edicts to bring about conformity to a prescribed world-order. Turning over America’s sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO) is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.

A system of spying on people is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.

New WHO Pandemic Initiative Uses ‘Listening Surveillance Systems’ To Identify ‘Misinformation & Rumors.’ – Stephen K Bannon’s War Room

A digital currency is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.

Digital Dollar: When You Don’t Own Money – In The Tank #395 – The Heartland Institute

Steamroller conformity measures – executive orders, regulations, etc. – are now being rolled out for the “climate crisis”. Any who do not conform will be dealt with one way or another.

The same spirit of the world, with its drive to conformity, existed in the first century.

In the gospel according to Mark, we read that religious and political authorities did not like what was Jesus was saying and doing. Jesus had posed a question to a sabbath synagogue group, which by their non-answer, exposed their hard-heartedness. In spite of their conformity-based silence (who would dare speak out with religious authorities in the room?), Jesus went on to heal a man with a withered hand on the sabbath. Offense was taken, for Jesus didn’t conform to the pre-scribed world-order. He didn’t play by the rules.

“The Pharisees [religious authorities] went out right away and began to plot with the Herodians [political authorities] against Jesus, trying to find a way to destroy him “(Mk. 3:6).

Bearing faithful witness, as the early Christians did when they accurately reported what they had seen and heard of Jesus including what they witnessed during his post-resurrection appearances, is a costly commitment of life as it stands up against the prescribed world-order. Some called the witness subversive and divisive. Others alluded to it as misinformation. What the early Christians testified to did not conform to the pre-scribed world-order and so they had to be put down. Many such witnesses proved the fortitude of their faith in Christ by undergoing a violent death.

“. . . all fortitude has reference to death. All fortitude stands in the presence of death. Fortitude is basically readiness to die or, more accurately, readiness to fall, to die, in battle. . . “man must be ready to let himself be killed rather than to deny Christ or to sin grievously.” Readiness to die is therefore one of the foundations of the Christian life.””
Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (University of Notre Dame Press, 1966) 117, 118

“Just like the early church, we are being persecuted. When I became bishop years ago, I inherited a persecuted church. I had no intention then to let the church lose steam, and I don’t want that happening now. We must not be afraid or lose confidence, but plow ahead with mission in the midst of persecution. Courage only comes from God. Outside of Jesus, your own courage will fail you. When you see the gospel at work saving lives, you count your suffering for nothing.”
Benjamin Kwashi, Archbishop of the Province of Jos, Nigeria

(From the Greek word martus (a witness) comes the English derivation “martyr”.)

“If the world hates you,” Jesus went on,” know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were from the world, the world would be fond of its own. But the world hates you for this reason: that you’re not from this world. No: I chose you out of this world.”
Jesus, in the gospel according to John 15: 18-19

This world hates and crushes those not in conformity to its prescribed world-order manifestations. It hates any exposure of its diabolical machinations working to conform people to the ruler of this world. And that is what the Christian life does – exposes world-order lies.

One testifies that one is not loyal to the prescribed world-order as one embodies new creation-ordered reality – Christ in you – and lives that reality out in the home, in the church, and in the community of creation. As spirit-filled Christians we live in the new creation-ordered world. And that puts us in opposition to any conformity to a spirit-voided prescribed world-order.

Some will mock and jeer those not conformed to their prescribed world-order. Others, as history has shown, may gun down those who do not conform (Listen to homily below). For, unlike Christians who take new creation life from the True Vine (Jn. 15), those of the world-order take their life from the fallen, dried up, and withered branch of ideology. For them, adhering to the ideological life is everything. And so, their scripture might read . . .

“Do not be shaped by new creation-order but be fundamentally transformed by the renewing of your mind with prescribed conformity. Then you and others will be able to disapprove of and resist God’s authority and accept the authority of the world-order.”
Antichrist’s Letter to the church in Media 12:2

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“If one part of our body hurts, we hurt all over. If one part of our body is honored, the whole body will be happy.” -1 COR. 12:26

The Crisis of Christian Persecution in Nigeria Download

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Mass for Persecuted Christians

Music: Paul Jernberg

Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven – YouTube

Homilist: Fr. Benedict Kiely (founding director of Nasarean.org)

0:33 – Introit: Look to Your Covenant, O Lord

4:38 – Confiteor / I confess to Almighty God

5:54 – Kyrie / Lord, have mercy

6:37 – Gloria / Glory to God in the Highest

9:39 – Responsorial Psalm: Let the Nations Know

12:45 – Alleluia (traditional Melkite)

14:09 – Homily

31:32 – Universal Prayer / Great Litany (Roman Hurko)

35:15 – Offertory antiphon: You Will Save the Humble People, O Lord

39:51 – Sanctus / Holy, Holy, Holy

41:31 – Pater Noster / Our Father

43:22 – Agnus Dei / Lamb of God

44:32 – Communion antiphon: That Which I Tell You in the Dark

48:15 – The Beatitudes

52:10 – Marian Hymn: We Fly Unto Your Heart of Compassion

53:38 – Closing Hymn: Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven

Nasarean.org | Aid & Advocacy for Persecuted Christians in the Middle East

The Voice of the Martyrs (persecution.com)

VOM Radio – LAOS PASTOR: “God is Real and He Healed Me”

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Josiah Lippincott, a Hillsdale college alum and former page for Devin Nunes, has an essay at American Greatness: Conservatives Lost the Culture War and the Trump Agenda Is the Only Path Forward. Here are a few excerpts:

“COVID-19 made the weakness of American Christianity painfully clear. Protestant and Catholic churches alike overwhelmingly declared themselves nonessential during the spring of 2020. That was, sadly, merely an acknowledgement of a longstanding reality. . .

The vague admonitions to “have faith” and “follow Christ” that pepper the Sunday morning pastoral exhortations from America’s pulpits generally lack any practical core. America’s pastors, with few exceptions, shy away from fighting for the faith they supposedly love. They lack the sternness and fidelity of their forebears. Compare a St. Augustine to a Pope Francis or a Martin Luther to a David French. Our Christian forebears had iron in their souls. The modern pastor is generally soft. . .

America is awash in men’s groups, Bible studies, discipleship training, women’s seminars, and worship conferences. Yet divorce is through the roof, abortion is common, and homosexuality lauded from the very centers of American financial and political power. Whatever utility all this frenetic religious activity has had for the private faith lives of ordinary Americans, it is abundantly clear it has not had any real benefit for the moral and spiritual health of the nation as a whole.”

Josiah makes the point that “Political power doesn’t flow from scoring debate points in the “free marketplace of ideas.” It comes from the willingness to impose one’s beliefs on others and possessing the resources to do so.

All morality requires enforcement.”

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Subversive podcast with Josiah Lippincott

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Informed Dissent:

“A new pandemic prevention initiative by the World Health Organization will rely on “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “rumors and misinformation,” War Room can reveal.

The initiative – Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) – seeks to “guide countries in pandemic planning” while “incorporat[ing] the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.””

“Module one of the initiative’s blueprint describes how the spread of content deemed “misinformation” amounts to a new “health threat” called “infodemics.”’

New WHO Pandemic Initiative Uses ‘Listening Surveillance Systems’ To Identify ‘Misinformation & Rumors.’ – Stephen K Bannon’s War Room

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Live from the Darian Gap: Chinese Communists Plan to Take Over the United States Exposed (banned.video)

Global warming is the largest scam in human history. pic.twitter.com/NDxwVbBPMG
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 5, 2023

After listing off Ms. Furchtgott-Roth's extensive history of expertise as though it were a bad thing, @SenWhitehouse went on a completely baseless tirade about Heritage's funding.

Unfortunately for him, @DFR_Economics was prepared with the facts. pic.twitter.com/wB1AwHRhEH
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) May 3, 2023

‘Net Zero is taking the world’s population backwards’ | Neil Oliver issues grave Ulez warning – YouTube

Filed under 2023 current events, Christianity, Persecution, Political Commentary Tagged with Christianity, Intersociety, Jesus, martyrs, Mass for Persecuted Christians, Nigeria

Diabolical Comedy?

April 30, 2023 Leave a comment

Was it a dream? A prophetic vision?

I saw myself standing before a parchment. It was Sandro Botticelli’s Map of Hell based on Dante’s Inferno. Or, was it? The illustration matched Botticelli’s – a structure of an inverted cone, like a funnel, which degrades with its nine circles to the center of the Earth, where . . .

But as I looked closer, I saw that this Abyss of Hell was a perverted version of Botticelli’s illustration. All that held what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable – the root and the branch of the good and sublime – had been torn up and thrown into the circles of punishment which spiraled downward to the mouth of the drain and into perpetual exile.

Millions upon millions had been ripped from their homes, their farms, their businesses, and their churches. For, it was determined that the abolition of property, families, and religion was necessary for the one true faith of Globalist/Marxist revolution.

Above the pit– the Overworld –was deep darkness and an overpowering stench. It was the darkest of ages, filled with ignorance and propaganda and saturated with a kind of speech that is purely instrumental and devoid of all sincerity and honesty. The smell of death arose from the wars, bio-plagues and famines.

With light shining up from the pit I saw a pair of towers called “Violence” and “Lies”. They stood at the edge of the pit, one at each end of its diameter. Between the towers along the perimeter of the pit stood the corrupt, the slanderers, the licentious, the liars, the moral relativists, the self-righteous ideologues, and fanatics of all sorts.

The mob howled and laughed as they tossed “the enemies of the people” and “those cockroaches!” into the pit. Some danced with signs: “Democracy!” “Progress!” “Revolution!” “Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!” and “No Enemies to the Left”.

I saw myself journey downward. Entering the first circle I saw many wringing their hands. Here were scientists, doctors, and academics required to work on Overworld projects in exchange for better provisions and gentler treatment than others in the lower circles. One doctor whispered in my ear, saying that if she fell into disfavor with the Overworld authorities, she would lose privileges and be sent down.

In circle 2 were people sentenced for their lust for truth and tradition. I saw one man tightly clenching a book – “The Rule of Law” – and another, the U.S. Constitution. I saw many holding onto the Holy Scriptures. Others clutched scores of classical music and others held great works of art and literature. One man held a photograph of his dead mother and father. All of the past had been banished from society, for the past was being rewritten for the future.

In circle 3 were the gluttonous. These had an insatiable appetite for “misinformation” – that which isn’t authorized and allowed by the Overworld.

In circle 4 were placed the greedy. These had kept to themselves and wouldn’t join in the Overworld marches and campaigns. They hid their money from the central bank of the Over Lords, bought and sold in the black market, and gave to the poor. Both the use of the black market and charity had been outlawed. All currency was to pass through the State for its approval and distribution.

In circle 5 I found those who had made the Over Lords angry. These were considered belligerent and useless. For, these had had a life of their own and were unwilling to collaborate and turn in their neighbors. These were also unwilling to vote in and steal the vote for the Overworld elections.

In the 6^th circle held those known for heresy: deniers of “the science”, climate apocalypse deniers, the unvaccinated, the “misinformation” repeaters and those who believed in a “kingdom of God”. One of the Overworld commandments: “Thou shall not question”.

The 7^th circle held those who acted with violence. These had used “hate speech” against those in the Overworld. These had blasphemed the Over Lords with memes, political cartoons, and jokes. Also held here, those who were believed to hold thoughts of animus against the Over Lords.

The 8^th circle held the frauds. These can’t be trusted in the Overworld. They had said good things about the Over World up top but in private they ridiculed the Over World and called for revolt. These had been turned in by a neighbor.

The 9^th circle was reserved for the treacherous. These included whistle blowers, “extremists”, and political subversives -those “truth-tellers” who spoke and acted against the Overworld regime. Those who called Jesus “Lord” were considered treasonous. All in the 9^th circle were sentenced to perpetual exile at the bottom of the funnel gulag and eventual death.

When I came out of this most disturbing trance, I wrote down all that I had witnessed and understood.

There had been a radical reversal of the moral universe: evil was being hailed as “good” and “progressive” in its work of uniting the Overworld with One Ideology. The truly good was vilified as an evil that kept the “good” of the One Ideology from uniting the Overworld.

The rainbow, a pure reflection-of-light symbol of the Creator’s over-arching love for his creation, had been forced to the ground and spoiled by the self-deified. Light was banished, sent underground and out of sight. The One Ideology was declared “the way, the truth and the life”.

I understood that the “fundamental transformation” tempest had so shipwrecked the created order and function of the world that one could say “Hell was empty and all the devils were here” in the Overworld.

I understood the Overworld as a capricious, violent, and lawless place filled with insanity and terror-imposed ideology. The true nature of reality had been subverted by a “two plus two equals five” compulsory mentality. Pamphlets promoting scientism, determinism, collectivism, and the core “ism” – materialism were handed out with the daily ration. As people fed on this “bread” and the gruel of the media, the unthinkable was normalized and so were gulag camps. Squalid personalities, whose conviction of their own vanity and power came from their urge to destroy and their grandiose talk of building a “New World Order”, ruled the Overworld with the steamroller of their ideological enterprise.

And finally, I understood that into the darkness and stench of the Overworld there rose sparks of the human spirit and the incense of prayers from the pit’s soul-destroying circumstance of suffering and repression. I understood these phenomena as the ascent of the human soul in its struggle against the forces of evil. These in the pit had not given up their souls to the Ideological Lie.

I understood that in the man-made Abyss of Hell, created to overcome the light, that night, darkness, and despair could be purged from the soul with suffering’s catharsis. I saw light overcoming the darkness. And I saw the rainbow once again . . . in the glimmering tears of the suffering, the sad, and the longing.

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“Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations…. Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

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Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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“Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in volume I of The Gulag, argued that totalitarianisms share ten things in common:

Fear. “Fear was not always the fear of arrest. There were immediate threats: purges, inspections, the completion of security questionnaires—routine or extraordinary ones—dismissal from work, deprivation of resident permit, expulsion or exile.”
Servitude. Internal passports, legal prohibitions on buying, selling, or renting housing stock greatly limited one’s ability to escape, the right to exit was denied.
Secrecy and Distrust. “This universal mutual mistrust had the effect of deepening the mass-grave pit of slavery. The moment someone began to speak up frankly, everyone stepped back and shunned him: ‘A provocation!’ And therefore anyone who burst out with a sincere protest was predestined to loneliness and alienation.”
Universal Ignorance. Because of number three, no one could trust the information of another, or trust another with information. This resulted in true isolation of the right-thinking person.
Squealing on one another, further eroding any trust that might exist. Without trust, civilization proved impossible.
Betrayal, therefore, became a norm. Sons betrayed fathers, daughters betrayed mothers, husband betrayed wives, and supposed best friends betrayed one another.
Corruption, as a result, became endemic, as the betrayers became professionals, earning positions, status, and wealth for their inside information, true or false. Frequently, one informed on a person simply to acquire something the other person had or had created. The informer then became the owner and the “creator.”
Lies. “The permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence, in the same way as betrayal. Every wag of the tongue can be overheard by someone, every facial expression observed by someone. Therefore every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases, of labels, a selection of ready-made lies.
Cruelty. “And where among all the preceding qualities was there any place left for kindheartedness? How could one possibility preserve one’s kindness while pushing away the hands of those who were drowning? Once you have been steeped in blood, you can only become more cruel. . . . And when you add that kindness was ridiculed, that pity was ridiculed, that mercy was ridiculed—you’d never be able to chain all those who were drunk on blood.”
Slave psychology. The system, ultimately, made men impotent.”

Complied by Brad Birzer @ Totalitarianism’s 10 Things in Common | Spirit of Cecilia

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The rapidly advancing totalitarian nightmare:

The advent of high-speed large volume (5G) digital technology leading to world-wide digital communications leading to almost unlimited interface will be used for totalitarian control. The advent of this technology is already being developed to bring about ultimate control via smart devices, digital health passports, digital implants and the coming Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Previous totalitarian leaders controlled everything they could – the media, the church, the education, production, etc. – with physical terror and show trials. But they didn’t have the omnipresent terror of digital control of communications, commerce, and currency. Digital technology will be the ultimate totalitarian and will bring about the scenario above.

If the Biden regime turns over U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization, our health freedom and all of our freedoms, will become dependent on a few people at the WHO. Right now, I am seeing elected leaders and local governments turning over authority to public health agencies in the state. Local public health authorities do not want the responsibility or the liability of public health, so they will accept WHO’s authority.

Green energy/climate change/environmental justice tyranny. Laws are being passed, regulations are being issued from the administrative state, and the Biden regime has signed an Executive Order that will define and incumber life for Americans. We are living with an energy crisis of Biden’s own making. Inflation is just one of the destructive outcomes of Biden’s policies.

The administrative state, where the likes gain-of-function Anthony Fauci come from, bypasses laws to regulate every part of our lives.

The weaponized DOJ and FBI under Merrick Garland are assailing private citizens in their use of the First Amendment to speak against the government and setting them up for arrest.

The CIA is tracking U.S. citizens, collecting data to be used against them.

Quarantine camps, employed during COVID, will be built and used for the next pandemic – a deadly bird flu bioweapon pandemic.

Smart cities – a control grid for humankind. TRI-STATE SMART CITIES (rumble.com)

Media outlets are given the same narrative so Groupthink is established. The bought-and-paid for media will repeat what it is told. (The same and more will occur when the WHO takes over our health!)

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Podcasts:

2017-10-03 – Daniel J. Mahoney – Hillsdale College (The Gulag Archipelago Reconsidered)

The Ascent from Ideology (Audio Archives) : Daniel J. Mahoney : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Books and link:

Instead of spending time on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and TV, spend time reading about what actually took place the last century and what will take place again if one is more disposed to spend time on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and TV.

In the 1980’s I read the three volumes of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. For some reason I was draw to these works during the Reagan era. Now I understand that these accounts prepared me for the tyranny of COVID mandates starting in 2020 and the totalitarian days ahead.

The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | Goodreads

The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends by Daniel J. Mahoney | Goodreads

The Gulag Archipelago in three volumes : Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The Persistence of the Lie – Daniel J. Mahoney (lawliberty.org)

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Documents:

The-COVID-19-Inoculations-More-Harm-Than-Good-REV-Dec-16-2021 Download

standforhealthfreedom.com- Stand for Health Freedom Download

Advoacy-Tips-Updated-V.-2-11-18-19 Download

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General note: In order to clear up memory for future podcasts, videos, and documents, I will need to remove older podcasts and documents in the coming weeks. Please download as you see fit. Thank you.

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Informed Dissent:

More “less bad news” – in the last week, 45 Americans were reported dead (amongst 67 reported to the US from around the world) – “NOBODY WANTS THE STEENKING VACCINES” (substack.com)

You gotta love green energy solutions:

Video of trucks burning in Dearborn highlights what makes electric vehicle fires so dangerous – YouTube

Wind turbine collapses at Petersburg high school | WCIA.com

The Real Reason Why Fox Fired Tucker Carlson – YouTube

Filed under 2023 current events, Christianity, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Marxism, Political Commentary, Politics, totalitarianism Tagged with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Botticelli’s Map of Hell, Climate change, Dante’s Inferno, Gulag Archipelago, Marxism, politics, totalitarianism

The Land Shall Mourn

April 23, 2023 Leave a comment

“There is no God and we are his prophets.”
― spoken by Ely, an old man the father and son meet on the road in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

In the process of removing God from this world will we abuse our ecosystem to the point of environmental catastrophe? It would appear so in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road.

The Road Protagonists: A father and his son. They walk alone through a scorched America. These two and a few other hungry souls are the only things moving in the ravaged landscape save for the ash in the wind. Stones crack in the cold created by sunlight-blocking ash. Snow is gray.

The Road Antagonist: The world and everyone living in it.

“It is implied throughout The Road that the apocalypse that has shrouded the bleakest of all landscapes was brought about by us, by humanity. That we authored this environmental catastrophe through thoughtless pillaging of resources laid before us. We upset the balance of our ecosystem. And that by extension, we have removed God from this world.”
Christopher C. King. “God’s Silence, Humanity’s Deafness: On Cormac McCarthy’s Two New Novels.” Oxford American, Spring 2023, p.102

Do we prophecy of our own destruction and the extinction of the planet when we say there is no God?

Does playing God with science mean the world will be saved? Would creating a ‘perfect race’ through AI and genetic manipulation save the world? That doesn’t appear to be the case in the deep-space terror movie Alien Covenant unless you think a perfect creation is a face-hugging parasitoid.

Peter Weyland, founder and owner of Weyland Corporation, creates an android. The android chooses the name “David” for himself after observing Michelangelo’s statue.

To find the fountain of youth, Weyland finances a voyage into deep space (Prometheus to LV-223) to search for mankind’s creator. In the process we learn that androids, like the humans that programmed them, can become narcissistic, unhinged and murderous (the most efficient means to a selfish end).

“[Michael] Fassbender plays both the kindly android Walter and his twisted, civilization-ending “brother” David. David can create (and uses that talent to engineer alien life), while Walter cannot — an intentional limitation in his programming. But in a moving and seductive scene that’s been described as possibly homoerotic, David teaches Walter the flute, declaring “you have symphonies in you, brother!” Later, the pair share a kiss, with David telling Walter no one will ever love like he does — before attempting to kill him.”
Couch, Aaron. “’Alien: Covenant’ Screenwriter on the Michael Fassbender Scene That ‘Easily Could Have Gone Wrong.’” The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Apr. 2023

Long story cut way short: android David does away with the kindly Walter android and becomes pseudo-Walter. He boards the colonization ship Covenant as Walter. He does this to continue his face-hugging parasitoid creation project, begun on LV-223, on Origae-6. David freezes his regurgitated face-hugger embryos, tucks in the last of the crew’s survivors and heads to the helm. On his way, David requests Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, Act Two, The Entry of the Gods into Valhalla. David, with an inflated sense of self from having dealt with everything that would stop him, views himself as a God-level creator.

There are those around us with a similar God-complex. They are easy to spot in history and they are easy to spot in everyday life. They walk around with an attitude of extreme entitlement and arrogance. They act with grandiosity, bullying, exploitation, gaslighting, and to isolate and destroy their opponents. They build relationships that serve them and refuse to take responsibility for their actions.

Speaking of God complexes and creating face-hugging monsters, the extremely arrogant Anthony Fauci, the former NIH director – the deceptive Francis Collins, and the CCP played God with bio-weapons. And that led to the release of COVID and that led to the wearing of masks.

(Dr. Li-Meng Yan is a courageous whistleblower

Covid is a BIOWEAPON that leaked from Wuhan lab during military ‘Frankenvirus’ tests, claims Chinese whistleblower | The US Sun (the-sun.com)

Chinese whistleblower exposes COVID-19’s origins on ‘Tucker Carlson Today’ | Fox News )

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What do we know this Earth Day? Do we know what mankind is capable of?

If you have lived just 20 years, all you may know are the COVID and “anthropogenic climate crisis!” narratives. Live to seventy and you see mankind longing for and creating weapons of mass destruction and instigating one war after another in a desire to control territories, resources and humans. Live to seventy and you see mankind creating one crisis after another to transfer money and power to the State.

Is mankind creating an environmental catastrophe or is it that the gods of this world are plundering the resources of the earth and humanity with Green Energy policies that in effect transfer money and power to a few whilst doing nothing to affect the climate and drastically affecting to the negative human flourishing?

Is it OK for the gods of this world to create bio-weapon viruses in their conquest of the earth? Is it OK that the gods of this world produce Frankenstein-like creations with gene mutations in their quest to be god-like creators and AI implants to obtain eternal life for the brain? (cf. Alcasan in C.S. Lewis’ The Hideous Strength. His guillotined head becomes the host for, it seems, Satan.)

Would you agree? If man is a godless soulless creature, a mere chemical phenomenon with no moral center, then all kinds of evil and suffering are possible. The scenarios presented in The Road and Alien Covenant indicate that man knows well the outcome of man without God and man as his own god.

If man is made in the image of God, what does that mean?

It means that we look after God’s temple-cosmos creation not as self-appointed gods but as co-workers with God. As such, we do not exploit and ravage the earth or each other but operate with wisdom and love. These last are not church words that are meaningless in the ‘real’ world.

For us to “Subdue the earth, in the context of the Genesis creation account, means to continue adding form and function to what God has started. For instance, we read in the Genesis account and later in the “Creation Psalm” (104) that God directed “the waters” for the benefit of His creation. Irrigation and water management are examples of humans likewise bringing form and function to creation for the benefit of many.

Psalm 104: 9-13 (Emphasis mine.):

⁹You set a boundary that they [the waters] may not pass,
so that they might not again cover the earth.

¹⁰You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
    they flow between the hills,
¹¹giving drink to every wild animal;
    the wild asses quench their thirst.
¹²By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
    they sing among the branches.
¹³From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
    the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

Wisdom and love perspective: We are part of God’s creation and yet we are to rule over creation as God rules over creation – with love and care. You may feel that God is an absent landlord, but consider that that our image of God designation confirms that God has assigned us the task to care for the works of His hands with the work of our hands. That we receive the Holy Spirit when we believe and are baptized means that we have communication with God. Wisdom and love are imparted to us so that we may act with wisdom and love in the ‘real’ world. Our eyes are opened to God’s view of the cosmos.

God sees us as one creature among many.

“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.” – Maya Angelou

Science and technology before the late twentieth century had splendidly humanitarian aims, but they also had a dangerously anthropocentric tendency that got us into the way of thinking about nature that has proved so disastrous. By viewing the other creatures as valuable only for our sake, only as resources, we have got to the self-defeating point of wasting, spoiling and exhausting the resources. It just isn’t good enough to see environmental issues as about preserving nature for us to use or enjoy. We need to recover the sense that other creatures have intrinsic value. It’s just good that they exist.

The Community of Creation – a sermon preached at St Edward’s church, Cambridge, 28 April 2012 by Richard Bauckham

Therefore, the land shall mourn. —Hosea 4:3

Creation has been groaning and lamenting the effects of mankind’s evil right up to the present time. In McCarthy’s The Road creation’s redemption never comes. Blame for the devastation, by at least one person, has been passed on to a perception of God’s absence: “There is no God and we are his prophets.”

What does redemption look like? It begins by acknowledging that we live in an interconnected and interdependent world. When one part of creation suffers, we suffer.

When we acknowledge that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, we look for ways to address the problem without doing harm to others and the planet. We study the problem without media intervention. We find reliable sources. We don’t make demands. We make positive recommendations and, when possible, take steps to enable ourselves and others to produce a solution.

All of creation – God-imaged men and women and flora and fauna and sea monsters and behemoths and galaxies and planets and weather and insects (not Alien xenomorphs) –is to reflect the “good” form and function given it by the Creator and the loving care God and his co-workers provide.

Like it or not, all things since the Big Bang have worked together for the glory of God, not the glory of men. We can be in sync with that or with The Road.

Psalm 148

Praise for God’s Universal Glory

¹Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
²Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!

³Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!
⁴Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the heavens!

⁵Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for he commanded and they were created.
⁶He established them forever and ever;
he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.

⁷Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
⁸fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!

⁹Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
¹⁰Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!

¹¹Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
¹²Young men and women alike,
old and young together!

¹³Let them praise the name of the Lord,
    for his name alone is exalted;
    his glory is above earth and heaven.
¹⁴He has raised up a horn for his people,
    praise for all his faithful,
    for the people of Israel who are close to him.
Praise the Lord!

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Challenging Net Zero Download

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“Fake and Bake – Earth Day Edition”

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Informed Dissent:

What’s in the Pfizer Documents? | Naomi Wolf – YouTube

Anthony Fauci and the Public Health Establishment | Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – YouTube

The Deep State’s Last Ditch Efforts To Scare Us – The Tenpenny Report

Study Finds “No Evidence” Face Masks Protect Vulnerable Against COVID – Summit News

Former nurse describes COVID-19 protocols as ‘medical murder’ – Alpha News

The Worst Atrocity in the History of the World has been Confirmed (substack.com)

Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular issues and cognitive decline, study says | Daily Mail Online

This is a must read >>>> The Risks of CBDCs | Cato Institute

Central Bank Digital Currencies Are About Control – They Should Be Stopped (forbes.com)

Emmer Introduces Legislation to Prevent Unilateral Fed Control of a U.S. Digital Currency | Press Releases | Congressman Tom Emmer (house.gov) untitled (house.gov)

Sen. Cruz Introduces Legislation Prohibiting Unilateral Fed Control of a U.S. Digital Currency | Senator Ted Cruz (senate.gov)

Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Legislation to Protect Floridians from a Federally Controlled Central Bank Digital Currency and Surveillance State (flgov.com)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Joins Ron DeSantis in Railing Against CBDCs – Decrypt

Oklahoma legislators push back against CBDC with cash bill – JDfor2024

“In July, the Fed will officially launch its FedNow Service. According to the press release, this service will “facilitate nationwide reach of instant payment services by financial institutions — regardless of size or geographic location — around the clock, everyday of the year.”

Protect Yourself Against the Fed’s Central Bank Digital Currency (banyanhill.com)

Dr. Robert Redfield: Bird flu will be a greater pandemic than COVID-19 | Just The News

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“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.” –Flannery O’Connor

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Indiana:

INDIANAPOLIS — A loud boom and bright flash rocked central Indiana on Friday night, and experts believe it was caused by a meteor.

Dr. Brian Murphy, the director of the Holcomb Observatory and Planetarium in Indianapolis, discussed the reports with 13News and said a meteor was the likely source.

“This sounds like it was a fireball, which is a relatively large object,” he said, like a large rock entering the atmosphere.

Crews and services investigate loud boom near Hamilton County | wthr.com (Video)

Illinois:

Chicago

City told to reinstate employees fired over COVID-19 vaccination requirement – Chicago

Tribune Citizen Free Press on Twitter: “Lori Lightfoot reacts to the violent riots in Chicago this weekend: “It’s wrong to say it’s mayhem.” https://t.co/C3PxSlXWHu” / Twitter

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You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Filed under 2023 current events, Christianity, creation, creation care, Environment Tagged with Alien Covenant, Christianity, creation, creation care, environemnt, The Road

Earth Day – Don’t Re-Greta Green Energy

April 21, 2023 Leave a comment

With the arrival of Earth Day, a movie and novella come to mind.

Contact is a sci-fi movie involving science, politics and faith.

“Dr. Ellie Arroway is employed in the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She was inspired to pursue a career in science and communication, starting with amateur radio, by her father who has since passed away. Her work involves listening to radio transmissions from space in the hopes of finding signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.” Contact (1997 American film) – Wikipedia

My favorite line of dialogue in the movie occurs early on. Ellie’s father offers his daughter words of wisdom as her youthful enthusiasm and curiosity about topic of interest innocently overlooks the time and effort required before useful results are encountered: “Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.”

With these simple words, I hear Ellie’s father preparing Ellie for proper scientific method and how not to science: “You’re excited. You want results. Don’t get ahead of the facts. Be patient in your quest for results. And, don’t propose applications born out of your passion, but only out of established facts. There is form and function in place in the cosmos. Don’t get ahead of it and don’t go around it to get results you think you should find. If you focus on one thing going wrong then you’ll miss what works and what is going right. Don’t fixate on one thing to the exclusion of all else. Small moves, Ellie, don’t Greta it.”

Small measured moves in one’s research for factual results – there is no rush (except where motives are compromised) – should also be exercised in the proposed application of one’s findings. Stay away from hyperbole. In other words, don’t fashion computer models with overstated feedback loops that generate hockey stick graphs that are intended to accelerate human, societal and environmental change in a desired direction. That is immoral and unethical. And . . .

“We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.” Christopher Hitchens

How Dare You!

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretense but an idea: and an unselfish belief in the idea–something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…”
―Marlowe in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness, an 1899 novella by Joseph Conrad, takes place in the Congo. There “the Company”, an unnamed European organization, is running a colonial enterprise – Congolese doing enforced labor to harvest ivory. The exploitation of a land and its people is at the heart of the story.

“. . . while the text is widely recognized as an indictment of the greed and ruthlessness that generally drove European imperialism in Africa, most readers are unfamiliar with the fact that the setting is the event in imperial history so uniquely horrific in its sheer scale of suffering and death that it has been termed the African Holocaust. As Conrad himself would [later] characterize the situation . . . it was “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.”
-A. Michael Matin, Introduction to Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction, Barnes & Noble Books, 2003, p. xxxiii

Elephants and native Africans both died as a result of man’s pursuit of ivory. The entire enterprise was rotten at the core. The cruelties and greed at work in this “conquest of the earth” are part of a greater, timeless evil.

Now cobalt, mined by the Congolese (and the Uyghurs in China), is a coveted substance in man’s conquest of earth. And we find, if we dare to look, that Green Energy-based colonialism is no different than the ivory-based colonialism talked about in Heart of Darkness. Both exploit people and resources. “The horror! The horror!

“Some 60% of the world’s cobalt supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where nearly three-quarters of citizens live in extreme poverty.”

“Cobalt is widely used in the production of goods, including batteries for smartphones, computers, and electric vehicles, for which demand is growing. The DRC is a global leader in cobalt production and accounts for over 50 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves. Children routinely work in these mines, often under hazardous conditions. While mining is on the DRC’s list of hazardous activities for which children’s work is forbidden, the majority of cobalt mining in the DRC is done informally, where monitoring and enforcement are poor.”

Combatting Child Labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Cobalt Industry (COTECCO) | U.S. Department of Labor (dol.gov)

“Cobalt is essential to power the rechargeable lithium batteries used in millions of products sold by Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla every year. The insatiable demand for cobalt, driven by desire for cheap handheld technology, has tripled in the past five years and is expected to double again by the end of 2020. More than 60% of cobalt originates in DRC, one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world.”

Apple and Google named in US lawsuit over Congolese child cobalt mining deaths | Global development | The Guardian

“Around one-fifth of cobalt mined in the DRC comes from small-scale artisanal mines. People, including children as young as 7 years old, work in hazardous conditions without gloves to protect them from contact dermatitis, breathing cobalt-laden dust that is associated with a potentially fatal lung disease. Miners work in unsafe tunnels that are liable to collapse and bury them, all in settings that are prone to violence and sexual exploitation.”

Cobalt is critical to the renewable energy transition. How can we minimize its social and environmental cost? | Ensia

Cobalt plays an important role in renewable biogas technology. Renewable Energy | Cobalt Institute

Cobalt Mining: The Dark Side of the Renewable Energy Transition | Earth.Org

The rush for cobalt in the Congo reveals the human cost of the world’s green energy future – ABC News

“Products that are fundamental to nearly all global “green pledges” — including electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and industrial-grade storage batteries — require minerals that are produced with significant human rights violations.

A green transition will require the development of advanced technologies which require certain minerals found in mines across the globe. These minerals, though, are largely sourced from regions with few labor and environmental protections such as China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Russia.”

Petition · Stop Apple, Samsung And China From Exploiting Children To Mine Cobalt In Congo · Change.org

Testimony: China-backed cobalt mines in Congo exploit 40,000 child workers | Catholic News Agency

Child labor in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo – Humanium

See what mineral Commodities are required for Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, and Batteries:

Critical Mineral Commodities in Renewable Energy | U.S. Geological Survey (usgs.gov)

“A lithium producer for carmakers including BMW AG and Tesla Inc. is beginning work to assess battery metals projects in Xinjiang, deepening links between electric vehicle supply chains and a region at the heart of human-rights allegations against China.”

Chinese lithium giant pulls EVs deeper into forced labor glare – MINING.COM

China uses Uyghur forced labour to make solar panels, says report – BBC News

Copper is used in wiring and construction as well as electric vehicles, solar panels and other green technologies. Electrification is expected to increase annual copper demand to 36.6 million metric tons by 2031 . . .

Copper Shortage Threatens Green Transition – WSJ (archive.fo)

In pictures: South America’s ‘lithium fields’ reveal the dark side of our electric future | Euronews

Environmental Justice?

“While electric cars reduce fossil fuel emissions once they are on the road, the production of the lithium-ion batteries that power them causes more displacement and CO2 emissions than the production of regular gas-powered cars. Disposal of the batteries at the end of their life cycle is also a growing concern.” Lithium: Not as clean as we thought – Climate360 News (lmu.edu)

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Early in my life I asked God for wisdom. And like Solomon of old, I received wisdom and didn’t always make use of it. Folly, foolish impulses and knee-jerk responses followed out a practice of self-deception. You can’t fool wisdom, so consequences followed. Wisdom and her words never left my side.

These days I’m interested in discerning the truth and in not being exploited. I am a Christian realist and not gullible. Before retiring I had worked the last fifteen years in the electric grid modernization division of a stellar engineering company – a global leader in power and energy with expertise in grid modernization, renewable energy, energy storage, nuclear power, and fossil fuels. I am a proponent of nuclear energy. So, when I heard this> Germany shuts down last nuclear power plants, some scientists aghast (cnbc.com) I was stunned. The shutdown of the final three reactors was “a blow to climate advocates who support nuclear energy as a clean, zero-carbon source of electricity”. Fear was the driver of the shutdowns and of an emotionally driven choice.

As a Christian, I have found God’s messaging to be true and faithful. At the same time, I am very skeptical of the world’s messaging, knowing man’s voracious hunger for power, man’s insatiable greed to possess land, people, and goods, and man’s endless capacity for evil. Add to this man’s susceptibility to peer pressure and GroupThink. As such, wise words and small moves are not guiding today’s science towards useful ends.

A rush to judgement and then a rush to be on the side of consensus is not useful, except for those with an agenda. Deceit and drastic moves seem to be the guiding science and populations toward a designated outcome. One recent horrifying example has been burned into our conscientiousness.

Deceit: to avoid oversight and the Obama administration’s ban on gain-of-function research, Anthony Fauci moved the gain-of-function bio-weapon and vaccine research to China. Funding came from the CIA and the Dept. of Defense via money laundering institutions.

We are now aware, despite all of the deceitful media coverup, that Anthony Fauci’s unauthorized gain-of-function nightmare escaped the Wuhan lab. People died from COVID and Fauci lied about gain-of-function research to Congress.

Drastic moves: any enthusiasm and curiosity on the public’s part to know the source of COVID was thwarted with labels of “misinformation” and “conspiracy theory”; doctors and scientists who bucked “the science” consensus were silenced; a constant “the science” narrative permeated the media; fear of death was promoted; business and job-destroying mandates were rolled out; lockdowns; masks; untested mNRA vaccines were pushed endlessly; OSHA was employed to enforce vaccine compliance.

There was a rush to get big pharma’s product to market and keep it there. Hence, the blocking of existing and effective repurposed drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin took place so that an “emergency-use vaccine’ could be employed.

And with the vaccine, lives were lost with sudden deaths occurring and adverse effects are multiplying. Not useful results unless you love profit and power. Not small moves nor wisdom. Rather science used for exploitation.

The COVID psyop did some of the work of enslaving and colonizing people and resources the Great Reset. Now, there is the myth of apocalyptic anthropogenic-produced climate change. The myth is hyped as an existential threat that requires immediate action. Computer models, media reports and web articles have produced consensus outcomes. Follow the money and the desire to be on the “right” side of the narrative.

Climate change is being advertised with signs and wonders: “consensus” “polar bears” “seas rising” “hockey stick” “Climate crisis” “extreme weather”. Web articles promote the climate change narrative, e.g., Global warming could be juicing baseball home runs, study finds | WVXU; Climate Cultists Blame Global Warming on Rice | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila. The climate change narrative/psop is actively working to get you believe, by mere repetition, that humans represent at least 50% of climate warming and that human behavior and practices must change NOW. No small moves. NOW!

And so, U.S. and European Union governments, the U.N. and WEF have made drastic pledges of our tax money for a so-called green transition away from fossil fuel dependence and toward renewable energy production in an effort to stave off “cataclysmic climate change”. This despite the fact that fossil fuels, namely crude oil, natural gas and coal, continue to supply more than 80% of the world’s energy needs and the electric grid, power generation plants, and EV chargers are nowhere near ready to supply electric power needed to support the people of the world. Their answer: there should be less people and use children to do what we want.; that’s why we have open borders.

(FYI: a SpaceX rocket is not powered by an EV charger.)

Based on my examination of the climate change topic, I’m a climate realist. Climate change is occurring but at a small level – not at catastrophic levels. Some of the warming may be due to coming out of ice age not long ago. Computer models DO NOT tell the whole story of climate change nor should they be used as (end-of-the world) predictors. There are too many moving parts in our ancient biosphere to account for. Most important: should we exploit land and people to “save the planet”?

Now consider these well-known facts: inflation Is not under control, the southern border is out of control, government spending is out of control, the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is not under control. Democrat cities are not under control. The same people in charge of these things tell you that the “climate crisis” is real and they will work to control it. I would not entrust the earth and my life to these people. They have mismanaged and destroyed what they are responsible for, including lives in their charge.

Mayor Eric Adams vows to reduce NYC’s food-based emissions at agencies by 33% in next 7 years (msn.com)

Biden: "By the way, anybody who doesn't think we have global warming, hang out with me man." pic.twitter.com/SSW6EAJjM4
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 19, 2023

Small circumspect moves, not based on hyperbole and overstated feedback loops but based on factual information, in the direction of mitigating climate change is a wise Christian position. There is no climate emergency no matter how times it is repeated in the media.

You can listen to a climate emergency debate at this link Yes, the Climate Is Changing. No, It’s Not an Emergency | Opinion (newsweek.com) (Note: the “crisis” advocate Heather speaks from a hyperbolic viewpoint. She repeats “the science” without including science facts and insists that what she relates about global warming is “not debatable”. She goes on to call for a “systemic transformation”. I immediately sensed that she has been socially-emotionally schooled in the climate narrative and is therefore has been made its communications director.)

Not only are children being exploited to supply metals for Green Energy mandates, children are also being exposed to climate change trauma in their schools. Why? Why traumatize kids and create stress, anxiety, and depression in our children about a supposed “existential threat” to the planet? Where are the adults?

Greta is a prime example of a child that has been traumatized by the climate change narrative. The narrative stole her childhood.

Why exploit children by programming them to repeat narrative words “crisis” and “the science” like the “crisis” advocate mentioned in the podcast above? Why are children being taught that science involves accepting “the science” narrative and forming a consensus (groupthink)? Why are children not being taught that science involves curiosity and inquiry?

We Must Address Trauma Caused by Climate Change | Psychology Today

ISTSS – Public Resources Climate Change and Trauma

“The results of this study add to the growing body of evidence that higher domain-specific knowledge is associated with lower domain-associated anxiety. They also contribute to the emerging literature on the construct of climate change anxiety, which so far has focused on demographics, attitudes, and personality characteristics as predictors and neglected the role of environmental knowledge. . .”

Environmental knowledge is inversely associated with climate change anxiety – Watts Up With That?

*****

The Frankenstein climate change narrative “lives” if social media has its way:

“The changes, which will go in effect on April 21 to mark Earth Day, will crack down on “misinformation” (information harmful to powerful interests) about climate change and elevate “authoritative information” (information amplified by powerful interests invested in pushing the man-made climate change hoax).”

TikTok To Censor Content That Challenges Global Warming Dogma – Summit News

You’ll likely hear these words: “Our climate is changing at an unprecedented and alarming rate with profound impacts on human life.” Please don’t buy into this lie. Be skeptical of such hyperbolic claims.

world-climate-declaration-version-06272215121 Download

WCD-version-06272215121.pdf (clintel.org)

Below are four podcasts and links with viewpoints to help you discern what is true and moral and just this Earth Day:

Podcasts:

Green Imperialism: How the West’s Climate Agenda Keeps Developing Countries Poor (Guest: Vijay Jayaraj) – The Heartland Institute

Climate Imperialism: Clean for Me but Not for Thee – The Heartland Institute

Climate Change Madness Tournament – The Heartland Institute

#099: Frank Mitloehner: Cattle, climate change and the methane myth | Ag Future: Innovation in Agri-Food (podbean.com)

Home

Home – CO2 Coalition

Home – ClimateRealism

New WUWT Global Temperature Feature: Anomaly vs. Real-World Temperature – Watts Up With That?

Sen. Ron Johnson on Climate, COVID, and Government Control at Heartland Institute Climate Conference – The Heartland Institute

Giant Wind Turbines Keep Mysteriously Falling Over. This Shouldn’t Be Happening. (msn.com)

A resource to better understand the background of the climate change religion:

Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World That Never Was by Iain W. Provan (goodreads.com)

“Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet. A purely rational education will not suffice.”

― Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

*****

William Happer: Noble Lies and the Evil They Allow – YouTube

*****

Filed under 2023 current events, Climate change, Environment Tagged with Climate change, Earth Day, global warming

There All Along

April 16, 2023 Leave a comment

“For the first time, people knew with certainty that there was more to the natural world than meets the eye.” [i]

The development of optical devices – telescopes, microscopes, and camera obscuras – enabled the curious in 17^th century Europe to see beyond the boundaries of the naked eye. With enhanced vision, natural philosophers and artists were learning to see beyond what one was accustomed to seeing and beyond strongly held beliefs and theories of how things were. Acceptance that the world was very different than it seemed followed.

A patent for the “looker”, an instrument “for seeing things far away as if they were nearby“, was filed by a Dutch master lens grinder and spectacle maker Hans Lippershey in 1608. A backstory goes that children were playing with lenses in his spectacle shop. The kids noticed that a nearby weather vane looked larger when a pair of lenses were stacked. Lippershey’s patent was turned down on the grounds that the device was so simple that anyone could build one. Indeed, three Dutchmen had applied for the patent at the same time.

A year later, Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician Galileo adapted his own “looker” to view the heavens. By grinding and polishing lenses and adding aperture stops, he improved the magnification up to about thirty times. With the modified spy glass, Galileo was looking for observational evidence to prove that the earth was going around the sun and not vice versa. He started his observations with the moon and found that it wasn’t a smooth uncorrupted surface as people were led to believe by the Catholic church. The Galilean moon had crater spots and irregular terrain.

“The prevailing astronomical tradition had long taught that the heavens were perfect and unchanging, in contrast to the earth, which seemed in constant upheaval. This claim derived from the simple observation that change was almost never observed in the heavens. Christian theology, inspired by this pagan Greek idea, had interpreted the consistency of the night sky in terms of sin and the fall.”[ii]

Galileo developed the scientific method and in so doing natural philosophy began to change from prevailing tradition accounts to experiment-justified and mathematically explained accounts. His revolutionary telescopic discoveries furthered the acceptance of the Copernican heliocentric system and eventually an unwanted acceptance into the Inquisition process. The crime: seeing what was there all along and not seeing what he was told to see.

Spectacle lens stacking was also behind the invention of the compound microscope about 1590. Three Dutch opticians or spectacle makers—Hans Jansen, his son Zacharias Jansen and Hans Lippershey are credit with credited with the invention. The curious would use the microscope to explore new unseen worlds. One such inquisitor was Dutch civil servant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

Leeuwenhoek, grinding and polishing his own lenses, began his pioneering observations of freshwater microorganisms in the 1670s. He effectively launched microbiology in 1674 as the first to observe bacteria and protozoa, thereby laying the foundations for the sciences of bacteriology and protozoology. His researches on lower animals refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation.

(I find it so interesting that Leeuwenhoek started doing his microbiology work on his own, without grants and schooling in optics and biology. He examined a vast range of specimens -insects, canal water, cow’s eyes and dragonfly’s eyes, human body parts, and much more. He was determined to see beneath the surface and what was there all along. With the help of local drafters who drew the microscopic images, Leeuwenhoek passed his observations on to the Royal Society of London where they caused quite a stir.

The camera obscura optical device had been around for a long time – long before it was named. In his 1611 book Dioptrice, German astronomer Johannes Kepler coined the term camera obscura which means ‘dark chamber’ in Latin.

The instrument, up until the 16th century, typically took the form of a closed room with windows shuttered and a small hole in a blind or door. Light entered the room through the hole and cast an image onto a screen or onto the wall opposite the door. This type of dark room camera obscura was used by astronomers to make solar observations without damaging their eyes.

The ‘pinhole’ was later (mid-16th century) replaced with a convex glass lens, used in spectacles since the 13^th century. The updated camera obscura made it possible to accurately draw the camera image by tracing outlines onto a paper screen. Through the lens and a light-controlling aperture diaphragm the projected image, smaller than actual size, was clear and bright with a concentration of color and a noticeable effect on color in deep shadow. Because this device provided a more accurate representation of the likeness of things and things not seen by the naked eye, it was of interest to surveyors, cartographers, topographers and painters, including Johannes Vermeer.

Small world. Born the same week of October 1632 as microscopist Antoine van Leewenhoek, Vermeer lived near Leewenhoek. The two Dutchmen lived on streets across from the small Delft Market Square. They may have known each other, but that is only conjecture as there is no evidence to support their relationship. They lived during the Dutch Golden Age, a time in Holland of economic, cultural, and scientific knowledge expansion. It was time of freedom from intellectual inquisitions.

(I recommend Laura J. Snyder’s Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing for more on the life and times and work of Vermeer and van Leewenhoek and the optical instruments behind the Scientific Revolution that made it possible to see “that there was more to the natural world than meets the eye.”)

Many artists at this time, wanting to depict more realistic images, were experimenting with optical devices such as mirrors and the camera obscuras. It Is not known that Vermeer used the camera obscura. Perhaps, based on the camera’s projected image, Vermeer created a shadowy image outlining the scene before painting. Artists at that time were keen on keeping their methods secret.

We can only guess at the use of a double-convex lens or the camera obscura for The Cavalier and the Young Woman. The scene is a wide-angle lens view. Note that the man is much larger than the woman which reflects an accurate depiction tending toward a photo realistic quality. Many artists at that time would paint both the man and the woman the same size based not on sight but on how things should be perceived.

Many Dutch homes, at the time of Vermeer, were filled with paintings depicting everyday life. Vermeer both collected and sold such paintings while running an inn that operated in the lower part of the family home. He painted up in the loft. At one point Vermeer and his wife Catherina had eleven children to support.

Vermeer is well-known for his depiction of individual women in quiet domestic scenes, most notably the mysterious Girl with The Pearl Earring. Was this Vermeer’s daughter?

Vermeer also captured the times. Natural philosophers were studying heaven and earth and Vermeer captured this in The Astronomer and The Geographer. Optical devices are required for both disciplines.

Vermeer’s interest in the natural world can be seen in his obsession with maps – depicted in nine of his paintings. See The Cavalier and the Young Woman for one example.

Vermeer began and ended his painting career with paintings of religious iconography: Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1654-55) and Allegory of Catholic Faith (1670-74).

What were the natural philosophers thinking during this period? A couple of examples might reveal the range of thought.

“I think therefore I am” René Descartes believed that everything he knew, or believed he knew, came from his senses and sensory experience and was therefore suspect. Descartes “espoused an epistemology, or method of knowledge acquisition, that expressed mistrust in the senses, and placed primary value on reasoning from ideas found in the mind rather than from observations of nature.”[iii]

Francis Bacon defended the empirical study of nature and wanted to avoid bringing preconceived notions and prejudices into the findings. He argued for a cooperative and methodical procedure to keep knowledge from being subjected to the four idols of the mind that skewed findings off in a certain direction. He “rejected the claims of those who thought that all knowledge, even knowledge of the physical world, came primarily through human reason and not the senses.”[iv]

Natural philosophers like Descartes and Bacon investigated the natural world with an understanding of God as the Creator. They had views of spiritual reality and wanted views of physical reality. With the new optical devices they were able to see beyond the religious symbolism found in art, architecture, and the simplistic and even disparaging views of nature. Their investigations did not lead them to reject God. Instead, they saw science as a way of learning more about God.

Here’s Francis Bacon’s motivation for aggressively studying both God’s word and God’s world:

To conclude, therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or the book of God’s works, divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficiency in both; only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and again, that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together.

Francis Bacon (1824). “The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England”, p.11

Bacon also said A little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back. A lot of science took place in the 17^th century.

“At the moment, the scientific world was in the midst of a revolution. The so-called Scientific Revolution, today associated with Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Harvey, Galileo, and Newton was brought about in part by a new emphasis on empirical methods – making careful observations of the natural world – as opposed to the nonempirical, logical methods preferred by many medieval followers of Aristotle. No longer would the reliance on ancient texts, or armchair philosophizing about the world from a scholar’s study, be considered adequate. The clarion call of natural philosophers (for they were not yet called “scientists”) became “See for yourself”. [v]

With the aid of telescopes, microscopes, and camera obscuras the evidence of things not as yet seen – millions of stars, microbes, the color of shadows and much more of the natural world – came into view for natural philosophers and painters. They dared to see for themselves what was there before ancient texts and religious dogmas came out with authoritative views of the natural world. They saw what was there all along.

*****

Daring to see:

Today we have radio telescopes, infrared telescopes, x-ray telescopes, the Hubble telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. With the JWST we can see light wavelengths not visible to us. And, we can see back in time towards the beginnings of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago. Check out this podcast to learn more about JWST: 124. Deb Haarsma | James Webb Space Telescope | Language of God (biologos.org)

We have the Large Hadron Collider which “boosts particles, such as protons, which form all the matter we know. Accelerated to a speed close to that of light, they collide with other protons. These collisions

produce massive particles, such as the Higgs boson or the top quark. By measuring their properties, scientists increase our understanding of matter and of the origins of the Universe.”

We have positron emission tomography scan (PET scan), radiographic technique to examine the metabolic activity in various tissues especially in the brain.

We have functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which measures the small changes in blood flow that occur with brain activity.

There are two microscopes that can zoom in to a resolution of less than an angstrom (one ten-millionth of a millimeter)

X-ray examination: “X-ray use has become a common practice among art authenticators. Not only does it unlock secrets underneath paintings, but it helps to establish authenticity.”

*****

Informed Dissent:

Dr. Robert Malone’s Testimony on COVID-19 Injections and the 5th Generation Warfare Against Humanity (rumble.com)

Merck Partnered with Moderna in 2019 to Vaccinate America’s Farms Using mRNA Technology – YouTube

How Long Have You Been Consuming Gene Therapied Pork? (mercola.com)

SHOCKING UPDATE: FBI Now Admits to 40 Undercover Agents Infiltrated the Crowds on Jan. 6 #Fedsurrection | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

“Chris Wray and Merrick Garland Are Pure Evil. 100% Evil to Their Core.” – Steve Bannon on the Biden Regime’s Unprecedented Attack on Christians | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft

Pravda propaganda:

Biden Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen Says ‘The United States is Doing Extremely Well, Economically’ (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Mike LaChance

(GALLUP) Top worries: inflation, economy, drug use, healthcare, Social Security | Sharyl Attkisson

The Coming Digital Currency Nightmare:

Brave New Europe: Pay fine and go directly to JAIL if you use more than $1,000 in cash… – Revolver News

Texas May Launch Its Own Gold-backed Digital Currency | OilPrice.com

Disney+ has unveiled a German original about a teenager who falls in love with the devil from the team behind Netflix’s How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast).

Disney+ Original Greenlit From ‘How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’ Team – Deadline

7 members of CDC team assessing chemical exposure in East Palestine, Ohio, fell ill | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Any power that government takes from the people, it will never return voluntarily. Every power that government takes, it will ultimately be abused to the maximum extent possible. Nobody ever complied their way out of totalitarianism. The only thing we can do is resist.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at Hillsdale College

*****

The Left destroys whatever it touches:

[i] Laura J. Snyder, Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing, New York W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015, p.319

[ii] Karl W. Giberson, The Wonder of the Universe: Hints of God in Our Fine-Tuned World, InterVarstiy Press, 2012, p. 49

[iii] Snyder, 187

[iv] Ibid, 319

[v] Ibid, 4

Filed under Art, Astronomy, astronomy, Christianity, Science Tagged with 17th century, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Astronomy, Christianity, Johannes Vermeer, microscope, Science, Scientific Revolution, telescopes

Not DOA

April 9, 2023 Leave a comment

It wasn’t an Easter greeting card . . . or was it?

The other day I received a mailer from a local cremation-burial company. I hadn’t been online looking for a last responder. My profile must have been purchased on the cyberinfo Stock Exchange: a person of a certain age who lives in a certain area with a certain income.

The letter starts We need your help.

(I haven’t done embalming, but maybe I could help with the flowers.)

We are conducting a survey to determine how members of our community plan for one of the hardest things a family has to face . . . the death of a loved one.

(Who’s this loved one? Let’s find out.)

The end-of-life service wants to assist with sensitive, caring and professional help. . . We need to know the real thoughts and feelings of individuals just like you. Well, there you have it. It’s documented. I have “real thoughts and feelings” just in case you thought of me as plastic and pitiless. I am not penniless, either, and that brings me to their quest for help.

The one-page front and back letter has a survey of nineteen questions and an offer of an ABSOLUTELY FREE! Final Wishes Organizer if I return the completed survey.

The survey, the letter says, is designed to help the service know what I (and not just any member “of our community”) want and need at “this most difficult time”. Well, at “this most difficult time” I want free stuff. But the survey didn’t go there. The first question is a wink and a nod come-on.

How old are you? Are you Under 25, between 26-40, between 41-65, 66 or older?

This service obviously knows my age range, where I live, and that I am retired which means that during “this most difficult time” I am receiving a portion of my life’s hard-earned income back as a monthly “benefit” from the government. The death service wouldn’t buy information that was a dead end.

O Death where is they sting? With the number of online and mail solicitations for life insurance I receive, I get the idea that everyone wants a piece of me during “this most difficult time”. When I’m dead they’ll have nothing of me and I’ll like it. And I better die in the next ten years.

The government-run program designed to protect, provide, help, and secure ECONOMIC SECURITY for people in the United States and which has been tracking my income whereabouts since birth, will be depleted by 2034. Social Security will bite the dust – but not because of me. And, if the tear-it-all-down Democrats have their way, our republic will bite the dust before 2034. To celebrate, they’ll erect statues of a Smartphone, Dylan Mulvaney, Barack Obama, a Black-gloved fist, Chairman Mao, and Martin Luther Floyd. Give me liberty or give me death.

Which of the following would you choose – burial or cremation? Hmmm. I would like to bury the elemental composition of my body, 23% of which is carbon. This last will serve as my offset for a life well-carboned. And I would like to cremate my past. Star dust to star dust, ashes to ashes, and a tick up on my final social credit score. I want to be known as the Environmental Dead Person of the Year. Who wouldn’t?

The survey continues with a range of “Show me the money” questions such as Are you currently employed? Are you aware of prepaid funeral plans? How much do you expect to pay for a funeral? Do you have life insurance, a will? Who’s the money person we should be talking to? And, to expand the scope, do you have a need for a cemetery plot? That’s the last thing I need.

(Check the boxes and we’ll tell you which box is yours. We have convenient layaway plans. Come in and check out our waiting room!)

The last question asks if I want more information about funeral planning and the types of service available. If so, I am to return the completed survey in the postage paid envelope with my phone number and address. Should I throw the service an old bone and complete the survey?

According to the mailer, the free guide “provides insightful information about planning ahead”. The guide, no doubt, nudges the reader into preparing for a tidy prepaid end. One doesn’t want to leave any loose ends. I’m half Dutch, so I’m half tidy and half-loose ends, as those who know me would confirm.

Final Wishes? To not be fed plant-based food, to not be vaccinated and fed with vaccinated food, and to die in the shire.

Planning ahead? I’d like to make it convenient for everyone like with my birthday. But every year I pass my death day and have no clue.

A tidy end? I plan on being there when I die. And afterward. That’s been prepared. I will share in the life of God’s new age and his kingdom on earth.

And, though an old hymn says “I can’t feel at home in this world anymore”, this world is my home. I’m not just passing through. I will return with the Lord and continue to walk around on resurrection ground and reign on this earth as a priest to our God.

You purchased a people for God,

From every tribe and tongue,

From every people and nation,

And made them a kingdom and priests to our God

And they will reign on the earth.”

-The Revelation of John 5: 6-10

*****

Mr./Ms. Rep./Sen.,

When you use my income to fund government programs that are earmarked to benefit interest groups, e.g., “$3 million for an LGBTQ museum in New York, more than $3.6 million for a Michelle Obama Trail, and authorization for the creation of a Ukrainian Independence Park”, you are not benefitting Jen Q Public. You are picking winners and losers. And, Jen Q Public is on the losing end.

Taxation means I have less money to take care of myself. With every tax increase I am forced to give less to my neighbor and to those people who need it via organizations that I can monitor and see results. Taking money out of my hands and stuffing it in your coffers is taking away charity, aka love, and replacing it with impersonal bureaucracy.

As spent, every tax dollar benefits your reelection campaign to do more picking of winners and losers. You do not represent Jen Q Public when you spend money like this. You represent yourself.

I want my money back. I do not want your welfare and your public assistance programs and your public health bureaucracy and your earmarks and your wars. I want my money back. I want to take care of myself and my neighbor. Get your hands out of my pocket.

US leads the rest of the world with $196 billion given to Ukraine amid war with Russia | Fox News

*****

Ornithology Project:

By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation;
they sing among the branches. Psalm 104: 12

A couple of months ago I purchased a Zoom H4n Handy Recorder to record bird song. Below is one of my first attempts to capture local bird song. I am still learning how to use the recorder and the Audacity audio software to filter out distortion, so bear with me.

In this recording, captured this Easter morning about 6 AM in central Indiana, you will hear me walking toward the birds, wind distortion in the middle, more walking and relocating and then a solo bird song against a background chorus of bird song.

Around the 2 min. mark you will start to hear some wind distortion

Around 2:30 I am walking into the wind and relocating

Around 3:20 the wind distortion ends

Around 3:40 a bird solo

230409-000 Easter Morning Central Indiana Bird Song

These birds actively communicate in the early morning. I’m an early bird, so this research is a good fit for me and my Parrolet Henry approves. Next up: refining my recordings and discerning which types of birds these are.

Just this morning I noticed a nest being built on a wreath I hung on a patio door. the birds of the air have their habitation at my place, too. Soon, new life.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology—Home | Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Informed Dissent:

The Evidence for Antidepressants Causing Mass Shootings (substack.com)

How the FDA Buried the Dangers of Antidepressants (substack.com)

Fauci Says the Quiet Part Out Loud: “There Will Absolutely be an Outbreak of Another Pandemic…It May be Next Year…” | The Gateway Pundit | by Brian Lupo

How mobile phones have changed our brains – BBC Future

They are coming for our food . . .

Paging Dr. Malone… US beef and pork lobbyists claim mRNA livestock vaccines will begin this month… – Revolver News

“Martyrdom in Our Lifetime” – Dr. Thomas Williams Warns of the Growing Anti-Christian Assault in America Today (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

Your brain on COVID-19 vaccines . . .

SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Accumulation in the Skull-Meninges-Brain Axis: Potential Implications for Long-Term Neurological Complications in post-COVID-19 | bioRxiv

America Has An Egg Problem And It’s Creating Weak Men | Evie Magazine

Why Reparations are Wrong – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)

American Banana Republic – The American Mind

They’re coming to free speech away:

French woman faces $13,000 fine for Facebook post calling President Macron “fifth” (reclaimthenet.org)

standforhealthfreedom.com-Shining a light on POLIO Download

*****

“We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.” Christopher Hitchens

*****

The Midwest:

Chicago:

CHICAGO GOES FULL COMMIE: Radical Socialist Brandon Johnson Is Predicted Winner in Mayor’s Race Against Pro-Police Moderate Candidate Paul Vallas | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

Chicago’s new mayor wants to start a race war… could be the most dangerous Marxist yet… – Revolver News

Brandon Johnson wins 2023 Chicago mayoral race, defeating Paul Vallas – Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)

Wisconsin:

GOP lawmaker wins Wis. Senate seat, creating supermajority | News | channel3000.com

Liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz Wins Wisconsin Supreme Court Race—Here’s Why It Matters (forbes.com)

Indiana:

In a statement, [Indiana’s Gov.] Holcomb said it is “important that we recognize and understand” that struggles with gender dysphoria are real. But also said that medical transitions should “occur as an adult, not a minor.” . . .

Holcomb signs gender-affirming care ban for trans youth into law (wfyi.org)

Gov. Holcomb – Do not send Indiana money and support to Zelensky. It is not our war!

“In his tweet Gov. Holcomb stated: “We will continue supporting Ukraine’s defense and sovereignty amid Russia’s senseless invasion.”

Indiana’s governor joins other state leaders on video call with Ukraine’s president | News | wdrb.com

The Green Religion:

Your property first, Jamie . . .

Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon says seize private land for wind and solar builds | Recharge (rechargenews.com)

Ending Racism:

Woke people, listen up

Morgan Freeman on ending racism: pic.twitter.com/Wha9MLuZFL
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 26, 2023

*****

“All My Exes CHANGED THEIR SEXES” 😂 | Buddy Brown | Truck Sessions – YouTube

Filed under Christianity, Death, Easter, Easter Tagged with bird song, Christianity, death, Easter, funerals, Ornithology

Suppression

April 8, 2023 Leave a comment

If you had lived in the Roman-occupied Holy Land in 4 BC, you would have known about the Roman general Varus who crushed a Jewish revolt against the Roman authority. The causes of that revolt and later revolts stemmed from several factors: the cruelty and corruption of the Roman leaders, Jewish religious nationalism, the impoverishment of the Jewish peasantry, and the corrupt priesthood class.

Varus sent a part of his army into the country, against those that had been the authors of this commotion, and as they caught great numbers of them, those that appeared to have been the least concerned in these tumults he put into custody, but such as were the most guilty he crucified; these were in number about two thousand. War 2.66-79, Josephus (Emphasis mine.)

Mass crucifixions continued in the first century.

“. . . given that crucifixion was seen as an extremely shameful way to die, Rome tended not to crucify its own citizens. Instead, slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians, foreigners, and — in particular — political activists often lost their lives in this way.”

Jesus wasn’t the only man to be crucified. Here’s the history behind this brutal practice. | Live Science

4 BC is a time of violent suppression under an unyielding Roman rule. If you said something and acted against that rule, you were crucified to keep order under Roman rule. If you said nothing and lived with the oppression then you were quick to point fingers to keep order for yourselves under Roman rule.

“the citizens received [Jarus] and cleared themselves of having any hand in this revolt, and said that they had raised no commotions, but had only been forced to admit the multitude, because of the festival, and that they were rather besieged together with the Romans, than assisted those that had revolted.” War 2.73, Josephus

We don’t know the exact year of Jesus’ birth. Most scholars go with 4 BC.

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Mark’s gospel account opens with John the Baptist clearing the way for Jesus with baptisms of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The account immediately turns to Jesus and the start of his ministry. We then read of a growing following and of eye-witnessed accounts about unclean spirts being cast out, the sick being healed, and a dead twelve-year old girl being raised to life. And, we learn of Jesus’ words and their impact on local communities as they were heard in the synagogue.

Jesus’s teaching was met with astonishment (Mk. 1:22): “he wasn’t like the legal teachers; he says things on his own authority”.

Later, when Jesus returned to his home region for a time and on the sabbath taught in the synagogue, his words were again met with astonishment (Mk. 6:2). And also, with consternation.

“Where does he get it all from?” they said. “What’s this wisdom he’s been given? How does he get this kind of power in his hands? Isn’t he the handyman, Mary’s son? Isn’t he the brother of James, Joses, Judah and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” They took offense at him. (Mk. 6:1-3)

Then we read that Jesus “couldn’t do any remarkable thing there, except he laid hands on a few sick people and cured them. Their unbelief dumbfounded him”. (Mk. 6: 5-6)

Earlier in the gospel account, Jesus’ relatives, hearing about the growing crowds and excitement surrounding Jesus, came to restrain him. “He’s out of his mind,” they said (Mk. 3:21). Experts from Jerusalem also showed up and tried to discredit him, labeling the source of Jesus’ power as demonic. Jesus dealt with them in no uncertain terms (Mk.3: 22-27).

In these accounts we see the attempted suppression of Jesus by his family, his community and by religious authorities. His family dubs him crazy and tries to rein him in from bringing more unwanted attention to them. His hometown community takes offense, perhaps thinking “You are uppity talking like that, saying things on your own authority. You’re one of us. Get with the program. Don’t make waves. Fit in and makes us happy that we can be around you.” The religious authorities started a smear campaign.

Undoubtedly, the locals feared antagonizing Roman authorities which could then lead to arrest and possible crucifixion. And just as undoubtedly, the religious leaders from Jerusalem, mediators between Rome and the Jewish population, wanted to keep the peace and their positions. They feared a newcomer, extraordinary in word and deed, upsetting their apple cart. They began a program of misinformation about Jesus.

The push to silence and discredit Jesus and his astonishing words and deeds led to unbelief that conformed to the world around. And that led to the suppression of the remarkable in Jesus’ local community.

*****

Right after this, in Mark chapter 6, we read that Jesus goes around to villages teaching. Suppression tactics do not stop his kingdom work. Jesus sends out the Twelve in pairs to expand his ministry. The twelve were chosen for this reason (Mk. 3:13-14).

“They went off and announced that people should repent. They cast out several demons; and they anointed many sick people with oil, and cured them.” (Mk. 6:12-13).

And then we read that Jesus’ name became well know and reached the ears of the King (Mk.6: 14).

(This king, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, was the son and a successor of Herod the Great the Roman client king of Judea until his death in 4 BC. And though Herod the Great had a religion of Second Temple Judaism, he lived with extreme paranoia that resulted in terror:

Herod the Great was a brutal man who killed his father-in-law, several of his ten wives, and two of his sons. He ignored the laws of God to suit himself and chose the favor of Rome over his own people. Herod’s heavy taxes to pay for lavish projects forced an unfair burden on the Jewish citizens.)

When Herod Antipas heard about Jesus he said “It’s John the Baptist, risen from the dead! That’s why these powers are at work in him.” (Mk. 6:14).

Mark goes on to relate what happened to John the Baptist:

“Herod had married Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. John regularly told Herod it wasn’t right for him to take his brother’s wife; so, Herod gave the word, arrested him, and tied him up in prison.” (Mk.6:17-18).

Herodias, not at all happy with John saying these things, wanted him dead, but Herod wouldn’t let that happen. Herod was afraid of John because he considered John “a just and holy man”. And, Herod would come down to John’s cell and listen to him talk. “What he heard disturbed him greatly, and yet he enjoyed listening to him” (Mk.6: 20).

Now, you know the story of Herod’s birthday and the great party attended by his supporters, military officers and the great and good of Galilee. Herodias’s daughter dances and wows the crowd and the birthday boy. What Herod saw moved him greatly. He enjoyed watching her dance. So, he offers to give the girl a gift to match the wow of her dance.

When Herod hears the girl’s gift request, he becomes panic-stricken, perhaps thinking “This is a holy man. You don’t mess with that. People like him you keep around and under control . . . and there goes the one voice that moved me to distraction.

Herod had made oaths to give her a wow gift in front of his guests. And, “He hadn’t the guts to refuse her” (Mk.6:26). So, John was beheaded.

In this account we read of suppression of John the Baptist on account of what he was saying in public. He was locked up to control the PR surrounding Herod’s immoral marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias. In jail, John didn’t remain silent. And Herod, whose father Herod the Great was into Second Temple Judaism, thought the abrasive John a curious figure to be observed, perhaps like a woman’s sensual dance.

Herod hears about Jesus doing astonishing things and that he’s a just and holy man. He reckons John the Baptist has been resurrected. (Now what have I done?”)

*****

“Two particular details about Roman crucifixion are of special interest to us in this book. First, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that Jesus of Nazareth grew up under the shadow of the cross…The Galilee of Jesus’ boyhood, then, all knew about Roman crosses (Antiquities 17.286-98; War 2.66-79)…When he told his followers to pick up their crosses and follow him, they would not have heard this as a metaphor…The second point of special interest for us is the way in which the Romans sometimes used crucifixion as a way of mocking a victim with social or political pretensions. “You want to be high and lifted up?” they said in effect. “All right, we’ll give you ‘high and lifted up.’” Crucifixion thus meant not only killing by slow torture, not only shaming, not only issuing a warning, but also parodying the ambitions of the uppity rebels. They wanted to be move up the social scale? Let them be lifted up above the common herd…”

-from the chapter The Cross in Its First-Century Setting, N.T. Wright’s The Day the Revolution

*****

Psychology defines suppression as pushing unwanted thoughts, emotions, memories, fantasies, and more out of conscious awareness so that you’re not thinking of these things anymore.

In 4 BC terms, suppression would include dealing with people who are seen as a threat to the system and who annoy and make certain people feel uncomfortable. Such people were mocked, scourged, and put on display for the public’s conscious awareness.

Forms of suppression from 4 BC to the present have included public derision, impalement, death by burning, crucifixion, labeling, canceling, shadow banning, blocking, misinformation campaigns, repeating lies, criminalizing dissent, fines, gag orders, persecution, false charges, arrest, and imprisonment.

What makes the world godless and by what means?

Suppressing the existing facts of reality and the established facts of truth makes the world godless.

In your search for truth . . .

Does your theology suppress science so you don’t have to deal with thinking about science?

Does your science suppress any thought of God so you don’t have to deal with messy, uncomfortable thoughts and emotions?

Does your political view suppress facts as long as there are enough people going along with lies and half-truths?

Is crucifixion the ultimate suppression?

No. See the empty tomb. Unbelief is the ultimate suppression.

*****

This Easter Please Remember The Jan 6ers and Their Families Who Have Been Severely Abused by Federal Judges in Washington DC | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft

The Easter Please Remember Mathew Perna and All of the Men and Women Persecuted by the Biden DOJ from Jan 6 | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft

El Salvador’s President . . .

*****

Filed under 2023 current events, Christianity, Easter, Good Friday, History Tagged with Christianity, Easter, Good Friday, history, Oppression, persecution

Popular Kingship

April 2, 2023 Leave a comment

A new king, from humble origins, came to exalt the lowly and abase the haughty. This king was not born in a royal palace in Jerusalem. He was born in small town Bethlehem where King David’s line of ordinary people began.

According to Dr. Luke’s genealogy (Lk. 3:23-38) this new king did not come through the line of Solomon and the kings of Judah. This new king descended from David’s little-known ninth son Nathan.

One day this king made a slow assent up to Jerusalem, the city of kings. He’s not riding a majestic steed. He’s riding a beast of burden – a donkey (Zech. 9:9). There are no trumpets and no royal entourage. There’s just a ragtag band of disciples and a lot of everyday folk waving Feast of Tabernacles palm branches with great expectations of a mighty warrior king in their midst.

The large crowd that had come for the festival had heard that this king had come to Jerusalem. They had heard that he had done a wonderous sign: called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead. They wanted to see for themselves. They took their palm branches and went out to meet him.

This king had visited the lowly in their districts, in their towns, in their homes, and in their synagogues. The grass roots had been acknowledged and now they respond to the populist king as he heads up the hill. The disciples, still thinking in kingdom overthrow terms, energize the crowd.

“Hosanna!” they shouted. “Welcome in the name of the Lord! Welcome to Israel’s King!”

The Pharisees, who were plotting to kill Lazarus (Jn. 12:10) whereby destroying any evidence of a sign and disheartening his followers, called out to the king to have him rein in his disciples. But the king responded, “If they stayed silent, the stones would be shouting out.” Every bit of the groaning creation, including the lowly stones underfoot, would have a say in the matter. This king would not throttle his followers. But that day, he did throttle their political dreams.

This king did not overthrow the local Roman authority and establish himself on a throne. No. This king, in a matter of days, would overthrow death and establish new creation life with access to his ages old throne room where he sits robed in majesty and strength (Ps. 93:1-2).

*****

God used lowly salvation agents to bring about a reversal of status, not just for the agent but also for Israel and the world.

Hannah, a lowly and alone salvation agent – a barren woman in a society that mocked the barren – is given a child, Samuel. This prophet and judge would one day anoint David, the socially insignificant son of a peasant farmer, to be King. Samuel anointed David in Bethlehem. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, descended from the line of David, as described above. Hannah’s motherhood and reversal of status, as Mary’s later, would lead to the salvation of Israel and of the world.

Hannah prayed (1 Sa. 2) a reversal of status prayer that foreshadows a king (David):

“My heart exults in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in my God.
My mouth derides my enemies
because I rejoice in your victory.

There is no Holy One like the Lord,
    no one besides you;
    there is no Rock like our God.
Talk no more so very proudly;
    let not arrogance come from your mouth,
for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
    and by him actions are weighed.
The bows of the mighty are broken,
    but the feeble gird on strength.
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
    but those who were hungry are fat with spoil.
The barren has borne seven,
    but she who has many children is forlorn.
The Lord kills and brings to life;
    he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
    he brings low; he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
    he lifts the needy from the ash heap
to make them sit with princes
    and inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,
    and on them he has set the world.

He will guard the feet of his faithful ones,
    but the wicked will perish in darkness,
    for not by might does one prevail.
The Lord! His adversaries will be shattered;
    the Most High will thunder in heaven.
The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;
    he will give strength to his king
    and exalt the power of his anointed.”

Mary, with a similar theme in her song of praise, says this in The Magnificat:

“My soul declares the Lord is great,

My spirit exults in my savior, my God.

He saw his servant-girl in her humility . . .

Down from their thrones he hurled the rulers,

Up from the earth he raised the humble.

The hungry he filled with the fat of the land,

But the rich he sent off with nothing to eat.

He has rescued his servant, Israel his child,

Because he remembered his mercy of old,

Just as he said to our long-ago ancestors-

Abraham and his descendent forever.”

And here’s, David 2 Sam. 2:28:

You deliver a humble people,
but your eyes are upon the haughty to bring them down.

And in Psalm 18:27

For you deliver a humble people,
but the haughty eyes you bring down.

As we have just seen, agents of salvation from the lowest ranks of society have their status reversed. This is brought about by God on behalf of the humiliated, oppressed, and the poor. God elevates the lowly – those forgotten and disenfranchised by those in power – and brings down the proud.

Palm Sunday is a reminder that the world sees things one way – as a Game of Thrones – and that our King doesn’t play games.

*****

Prof. Richard Bauckham:

RICHARD BAUCKHAM JESUS AND THE EYEWITNESSES The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony – YouTube

Could it be that form criticism thinking has morphed into advocacy for a “Living” Theology that, like with advocacy for a “Living Constitution, seeks to add what culture seeks to add, e.g., the normalization of perverse sexual relations.

The Authenticity of the Apostolic Eyewitness in the New Testament with Professor Richard Bauckham – YouTube

Filed under Christianity, Gospels, Palm Sunday Tagged with Christianity, Palm Sunday, the Gospels

A Flood of Devastating Disorder

March 26, 2023 Leave a comment

It has been said by those who have gone on before us that in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. The Left, with its love of death and taxes and underworld ideology, have added to what is said to be certain: racism and climate change.

Racism’s certainty, as claimed by those who seek to benefit, is the Heart of Darkness inherent in all white people from time immemorial – a sweeping generalization that ignores vast accounts of reality. (Union troops killed in action: 110,000. Total dead: 360,000. Wounded: 275,200. And you need reparations? You need your head examined!)

As wielded by the Left, racism is that which does not accord with that which comes out of the Left’s mouth or pen. That is a well-documented documented certainty. A charge of racism is meant to silence dissent and to proclaim the above forgone conclusion. For, one is even deemed “racist” just for opening one’s mouth in utter disbelief upon hearing the Left speak.

Regarding the other certitude candidate, the Left is working the climate change apocalypse narrative up to a fever pitch of do-or-die certainty. Do what you are told or the world will end. This they know, for The Science tells them so. The media and classrooms are the Sunday Schools of the climate religion.

“Climate realists should gird their loins in preparation for the pending onslaught of stories in the mainstream media proclaiming this or that seasonal weather event is being enhanced by anthropogenic climate change to some degree somehow or other.

For the past two decades, every year as winter wanes and spring springs, the media has engaged in its contemporary rite of spring: climate fear.”

– H. Sterling Burnett, PhD, [Fill in the Blank Climate Crisis] Season Is Here

The first day of spring this past week and, lo and behold, rain is forecasted. Heavy rains and flood warnings are noted for certain areas. Low lying areas, flood plains, areas close to existing water and sewer systems that cannot handle the runoff will see flooding, as expected.

TV viewers will again see pictures of flooded streets and videos of some reporter dude flapping his jaw in flapping rain gear in a flapping storm. No one likes flooding. Some have incurred it and have dealt with it. We can’t control weather but we can control what we do with the weather given us. But hold on! Climate bookies are telling us the stakes have been raised.

“Never before extreme weather” is being forecasted based on the certainty of assumptions:

The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify with global warming, which likely increases the intensity of extreme precipitation events and the risk of flooding. (Emphasis mine)

How climate change is making record-breaking floods the new normal (unep.org)

As global warming increases the likelihood for more extreme weather events to occur, risks will expand beyond the high-risk areas known today. More extreme flooding must be expected, and for the towns and cities where flooding has already occurred, theirs will no longer be a ‘once in a lifetime’ risk but now far more frequent. (Emphasis mine)

Climate change impact on flood and extreme precipitation increases with water availability | Scientific Reports (nature.com)

Will the risk of flooding in your area soon be media-ascribed to an anthropogenic-caused risk level of RED based on the transmission of rain drops in your area? Anything is possible as we have seen with the COVID plandemic. Flatten the curve of that nonsense.

H. Sterling Burnett, PhD recommends that “when you see stories this year claiming climate change is causing an apocalypse of allergies, maple syrup disappearance, floods, hurricanes, drought, and wildfires, check the facts. It will make you feel better. The Heartland Institute provides the fully referenced data on these and other extreme weather trends at ClimateRealism.com and ClimateataGlance.com.”

Climate Change Weekly #465: [Fill in the Blank Climate Crisis] Season Is Here – The Heartland Institute

Here’s a podcast discussing green imperialism and what myopic climate activism does to poor

Manmade extreme flood conditions, not of the hydrologic kind, are upon us. Economic flood waters, digital flood waters and cultural flood waters are rising quickly around us. They are devasting in nature.

Economic Flood Waters:

Food costs, fuel costs, declining and stagnant wages, high interest rates, the inverted yield curve, and increasing levels of personal debt are some of the major indicators of the catastrophic effect of the reckless control of the economy.

The Fed is ‘trying’ to get the flood waters of inflation under control while the Biden regime along with Democrats and feckless Republicans are flooding the economy with massive inflationary spending. The $1.7 trillion Omnibus bill is the latest torrential rainfall. More dollars are chasing fewer goods. The dollar is being devalued. It makes perfect nonsense.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell are incompetent in their roles. They should never have been put into their respective positions.

When it comes to inflation incompetence, look no further than Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. In her powerful position, Ms. Yellen is supposed to advocate sound economic policies that help the American people. But when millions of hardworking families were struggling with out-of-control inflation not seen in 40 years, Ms. Yellen helped pave the way for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which had nothing to do with reducing inflation. Even Paul Krugman at The New York Times admits: “The strategically misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act is mainly a climate bill.” –In Biden’s incompetent Cabinet, how has no one been fired or asked to resign? – Washington Times

Jerome Powell has no economic background. Both Yellen and Powell talk the talk as they are Washington insiders. They are also puppets of the Biden regime and that doesn’t bode well for Americans who are under water. And there’s this:

Growing Distrust Of Federal Reserve Heightens Concerns Of Incompetence (forbes.com)

The Federal Reserve is supposed to monitor the nation’s banks for risk. Is it up to the job? (nbcnews.com)

The same person who said “inflation is transitory” and later admitted that she was wrong is now saying “the banking system is sound” even though After SVB collapse, almost 190 new banks could fail, says new study (usatoday.com)

From now on, moral hazard rules.

The End of Market Discipline for Banks – WSJ (archive.fo)

The people entrusted to secure the U.S. dollar and the financial system are incompetent and politically biased and that means that low and middle class people like you and me will be soon overwhelmed by the extreme financial events pouring out of bad decisions.

For people who are acutely aware of their debts, higher rates intensify the woes, said Ashley Agnew of Centerpoint Advisors in Needham, Mass. “It feels more like a punishment than an interest rate,” she said.

Fed hike: Here’s how much rates for credit cards, car loans and mortgages have jumped – MarketWatch

The following three screen shots from Data Visualization | The Biden Inflation Tracker | The Heritage Foundation:

Under the Biden regime . . .

All of the above financial flood waters didn’t have to rain down on us, but the Biden regime brought the devastating disorder of the green new deal upon us starting on day one: Biden executive orders: The 17 things Joe Biden did on Day One (politico.com)

BIDEN ECONOMY: Federal Government Spending UP 40% Since 2019 as Inflation Soars and Recession Looms | The Gateway Pundit

Keep in mind: the people who are mishandling the economy and bringing about the managed decline of the country are some of the same people who call you names and want to control the climate.

Digital Flood Waters:

We immerse ourselves in digital streams. We own handheld devices for texting, paying, playing, watching and talking. We are walking data streams. And driving data streams.

Late model cars have digital tracking. It’s there for “roadside assistance” and to track your wear and tear on the car. Drive Safe & Save type apps used to monitor your driving habits and to automatically record trips. The app will give you feedback about your acceleration, braking corner, speeding and distracted driving. The insurance company rewards you (premium discount) for being enrolled in their data stream.

Panera Bread to Introduce Palm Scanners Next Month that Will Store its Customers’ Biometric Data for its Loyalty Program and Cashless Payment | The Gateway Pundit

Biometric screening at airports is spreading fast, but some fear the face-scanning systems (nbcnews.com)

To Enjoy an “Easier and Better Life With Smart Home Devices” we buy smart TVs, smart appliances, smart thermostats, smart cameras, smart locks, smart security systems, smart speakers, etc. etc. We are embedded in data streams and may have them embedded in us. And that’s a problem.

There are enormous risks in involved with online data. For example, at the end of last year I learned that the company I had been working for had received a ransomware attack. I received a letter from the company saying that my personal information had been stolen. The company set me up with a credit monitoring company but my personal information is out there in the cyber underworld.

There are home title thieves who can go online and steal your title and leave you holding enormous debt and no title.

On the receiving end of your data are people and/or AI systems monitoring you. Neither consider you a person. You are a data stream that for one, can be monetized and for another can be controlled to be the perfect consumer. You already know this and go along with it with every click.

So, you should know that when the Fed comes out with Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and replaces physical cash, your whole life will then be a data stream not under your control.

Your purchases of food and gas, of everything, will be monitored and controlled by ESG AI algorithms who don’t give a hoot about you and your situation. A social credit system will be employed to the end that you will be made to submit to whatever the gods of this world decide atop the DAVOS ziggurat.

Many have been seduced by the programmable digital world. Many spend their time knee deep in digital streams. But the manmade digital flood that is coming will overtake them. They will be left hanging on to whatever non-digital flotsam you can find to hold on to.

Below is a brief summary of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and how they can be wielded against society to enforce ESG compliance. From Digital Dollars – The Heartland Institute:

A digital dollar’s threats to privacy and freedom are real. First, the government could easily block transactions. This already happens as government pressure has led banks and PayPal to cancel accounts. The Canadian government blocked funding for the Freedom Convoy truckers. A CBDC empowers government micromanagement of our transactions.

Second, digital dollars could have expiration dates or automatically lose value. This undermines money’s ability to serve as a store of value, or let people hold onto purchasing power. Non-counterfeit money represents unconsumed production, the accumulated pay you never spent. It should not expire, ever. (Emphasis mine.)

ESG – Central Bank Digital Currencies Download

The Unified Commercial Code (UCC) is being modified to accommodate digital assets:

The Proposed 2022 Amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code: Digital Assets (americanbar.org)

Tell your representatives that you do not want CBDC and to kill UCC modification bills. Tell your representatives that you are not all happy with the managed decline of America that they are taking part in.

US Senator Ted Cruz tries again with new bill to block CBDC (cointelegraph.com)

Cultural Flood Waters:

Here’s the CDC’s advice about Floodwater After Disaster or Emergency:

Open wounds and rashes exposed to floodwater can become infected. Vibrios, for example, are naturally occurring bacteria that live in certain coastal waters and can cause skin infections when an open wound is exposed to them. This can happen during floods. To protect yourself and your family: Avoid exposure to floodwater.

It is difficult to avoid the bacterial flood waters of our culture. Without proper borders, it flows in and infects.

The culture’s bacterial flood waters have entered our home via TV, the internet, and smartphones. Children are babysat by TV programs that infect and wound young susceptible minds. It is no different for teens and adults, as they passively invite in the bacterial flood waters with its deteriorating effect on their being.

Bacterial flood waters have entered our education systems via the degenerate sponsors of CRT and the sexualization of children. Our school children are becoming infected with gay porn that is promoted in the classroom and in school libraries.

Elementary school teacher says confusing kids about gender is ‘the goal’ – Alpha News

Bacterial flood waters have entered our churches via “acceptance” and “inclusion” policies and via mega church structures that hid sin. Catholic congregations are becoming infected by priests who promote open borders and homosexuality. Moral failings, abuse, toxic internal structures, and the utter hypocrisy of leadership as seen in mega churches like Hillsong and Willowcreek reveal the church has been infected with the cultural bacteria.

Sewers have backed up from torrents of hedonism that rain down on us from the digital clouds. One is easily infected, via devices, with the bacterial sewer water of a hedonistic lifestyle. “You need such and such or so and so to be truly happy. Click here.”

Those who practice abortion, homosexuality, and “affirming care” leading to permanent mangling of children’s bodies have crossed a cultural Rubicon, unaware that they have been led there by Malthusians.

Those who are forced to use pronouns that do not match a person’s gender are being forced to lie to their neighbor.

Our culture has been infected by bacterial flood waters brought about by the manmade deluge of the misuse, disordering and dysfunction of Nature – a product of cultural climate change activism.

Gay Iconoclasm: Holding the Line against the Radical LGBT Agenda

The massive flood of illegal immigration created by the Biden regime’s manmade open border policy is altering the cultural landscape of our country. The U.S. will soon be covered in the flood waters of economic opportunists (not refugees), terrorists, gangs, drugs dealers, pedophiles, criminals, and fentanyl.

As such, the U.S. will become a third world country – just what the fundamental-transformation-hate-America ideologues have so desired. Then U.S. citizens will be ordered around like Venezuelans are dictated to by Nicolás Maduro and Brazilians by CCP controlled Lula de Silva.

The open border’s flood of illegal immigrants is not being done as an act of compassion and generosity on the part the Left. It is being done to destabilize America. It is being done to flood the zone of American’s resolve against a New World Order leadership that wants to own America, with those who come in depending on government, aka the Biden regime.

A very brief history of back in time:

In the beginning the cosmos, established by God, was non-ordered. The primary act of creation was bringing into existence the ordering of the material cosmos and human society. God brought order to our world and at the same time left non-order for humans to “subdue and rule”, i.e., work with God to bring about order.

“God didn’t produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.” – John Polkinghorne

Disorder stands in opposition to order. Disorder works to move the center of order from God to man who says “I will order life my way”. Order and the yet-to-be-ordered are affected by the inherently evil disorder. Chaos – out of order – ensues, as evidenced in our world today. Human disorder flooded the days of Noah and is flooding our lives today.

Hyperbole was used by a Hebrew author to describe a devastating flood just like other Ancient Near East (ANE) account authors did. For example, reading these accounts one gets the idea that the flood was universal and covering the earth. But there is no geological record of such a worldwide flood. The flood is certainly wide-ranging in its devastation, so it is not a local flood either. Hyperbole was used to make important theological points.

In ANE accounts the gods were dependent on humans to supply their needs. They became unhappy with unruly mankind and decided to flood the earth and wipe away mankind. A remnant was saved to continue serving the gods’ needs.

The Hebrew flood account can be understood as a God “order-bringing event” to the creation he once ordered. Noah is to be the order-preserving remnant.

“The connection of Noah’s name to the flood suggests that besides being presented as an act of judgement, grace and deliverance, the narrator is recounting this event as a sort of “reset button.” God uses non-order (the waters) to eliminate disorder (pervasive violence) and then to reestablish optimal order (even as he recognizes that disorder remains [Ge. 8:21]).” – Tremper Longman III & John Walton, The Lost World of the Flood, Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate, 118

What I see happening in our world today is similar to the ANE accounts of the flood. The gods of this world, who are dependent on humans to supply their needs, specifically wealth and power, have become unhappy with mankind. Mankind is too independent and not organized the way they want. They have decided to flood the earth and bring about a Great Reset: “We will order life our way”. A flood of disorder, they assume, will wipe away the God-ordered world. But they are off center . . .

The human mind may devise many plans,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established. -Proverbs 19:21

The climate apocalypse narrative is hyperbole. It is being used as hyperbole to produce a theological point: that transformational change, not of the climate but of humanity, away from the image of God, is necessary. The gods of this world will use any means necessary, including and not limited to the above, to bring about devasting disorder that they believe leads to a New World Order.

As we have seen, the NWO gods used “The Science” for the COVID plandemic to move people to a place of submission. Consider the devastating disorder brought upon people with mandates and the untested mNRA DNA altering vaccine.

They are now using “The Science” in the climate change narrative for the same reason. “The Science” will be used again and again to bring about the NWO.

Now, because I don’t accept NWO theology and won’t submit to NWO gods does not mean that I reject science. That is an oft used criticism used by NWO gods to say that I’m not thinking straight or that I’m not thinking about the right things. I don’t reject science. I reject the NOW’s “The Science” hyperbole.

Having said all this, what are you prepared to do . . . about devastating disorder?

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Climate Change – What is the science behind this?

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Alarmism? I guess that I am somewhat inured to it. The year the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific, I was born. There were Duck and cover drills in my elementary school.

I have lived with a heightened state of alarm brought about by the prospect of nuclear war, the state of the Cold War, and the burgeoning unrest centered around the Viet Nam War. And, there was and continues to be the alarming outcomes brought about by the economic mishandling of policy makers.

And there was the end of the world eschatology alarmism of The Late Great Planet Earth and later, the Left Behind series.

I don’t know of anyone on the earth who is omniscient or all knowing. And that includes scripture and science prognosticators. False prophets abound. They over promise and under deliver.

All of the above situations and alarms were manmade.

On another familiar subject . . .

My own experience with flooding goes way back to the time my father was mayor of a suburban Chicago village. Continuous rain flooded a creek that runs from the Wisconsin border down into the Des Plaines River and right through the eastern section of the village.

The flooding caused significant damage to commercial and residential property. The overflow of the creek’s waters blocked the main throughfare through the village, preventing commerce.

Illinois Senator Charles Percy came down to meet with my father. The two of them got into a row boat to survey the damage. State monies came later to shore up the creek, to pay for the damage, and to help with storm water management. A year later a tornado hit our village and tore up some apartment buildings. Extreme weather happens.

The village was situated on a flood plain. Our basement flooded every spring until my father put in a sump pump. He saw what would happen again and adapted.

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Informed dissent:

Notice the increase. These terms and “white supremacy” are used more and more to silence dissent and to program you to react the same way.

🚨 Fmr. CDC Director Dr. Redfield: "This Pandemic Was Caused by Science"

"I think it was done probably as part of a biodefense program that largely was trying to make a vaccine vector…but unfortunately that virus escaped…probably somewhere in the September [2019] timeframe.… pic.twitter.com/Gm841fLuk7
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 21, 2023

Former CDC Director: “This pandemic was caused by SCIENCE”… – Revolver News

12ft | Court blocks COVID-19 vaccine mandate for US gov’t workers | AP News

Significant birth rate drop in most heavily Covid-vaccinated European countries | Sharyl Attkisson

Children Dying at Highest Rate in Decades, Researchers Warn – Slay News

Research shows that, for Europe, C19 “Vaccines” kill 3-4 times more than C19 Disease (substack.com)

View the video in the following link . . . and don’t let them get away with it.

Mistakes Were NOT Made: An Anthem for Justice (Video) (substack.com)

A Letter to Dr Andrew Hill | Dr Tess Lawrie | Oracle Films (rumble.com)

U.S. Doctors Admit Tens of Thousands Killed During The “Pandemic” By Putting Them On Ventilators – Nwo Report

What Ed Dowd says here is the most powerful assessment of the humanitarian catastrophe wrought by public health authorities (& those who control them) via their demonstrably & increasingly insane policies of mass toxic vaccination with denial of effective, cheap early treatments. -Dr. Pierre Kory

Informed Dissenter:

These “public health” hoodlums (Fauci & Bowser) come to the hood to push vaccines but not Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to save lives.

Watch: Fauci, DC Mayor Bowser Rejected As They Promote COVID Vaccine Door-to-Door (resistthemainstream.com)

[VIDEO] One guy from the hood looks Fauci in the eye and demolishes 3 years of propaganda in 37 seconds flat… – Revolver News

Mind control is extremely dangerous to our democracy:

Who watches TV anymore? 🤣

Twitter is the legacy media now. @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/SKTgxAPccy
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) March 20, 2023

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The “ESG” Climate Report:

Filed under 2023 current events, Climate change, Culture, Digitalization, Economics, Immigration, Lawlessness, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, social engineering, The Great Reset Tagged with CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency, Climate change, culture, Davos, digital currency, economy, Globalism, Great Reset, Illegal Immigration, inflation Janet Yellen, Jerome Powell, Joe Biden, Noah flood, open borders, the Fed

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THIS SIDE OF PARADISE

“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton

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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
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“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
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“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
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“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
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“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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This is what the LORD says:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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