Vatican City was not constructed by a single person or at a single point in time. Its development spans nearly two millennia, shaped by Roman emperors, Renaissance popes, and famous architects.
Key Figures in the Vatican’s Construction
Emperor Constantine (4th Century AD): Commissioned the original Old St. Peter’s Basilica around 318–326 AD over the traditional site of St. Peter’s tomb. This established the area as the center of Christianity in Rome.
The Renaissance Popes (15th–17th Centuries):
Pope Nicholas V: First conceived replacing the decaying ancient basilica in the mid-15th century.
Pope Julius II: Initiated the grand reconstruction project in 1506 by tearing down the old structure and laying the cornerstone for the modern St. Peter’s Basilica.
Pope Sixtus IV: Commissioned the construction of the Sistine Chapel in the 1470s.
Master Architects and Artists:
Donato Bramante: Designed the original Greek-cross master plan for the new St. Peter’s Basilica.
Michelangelo: Designed the iconic massive central dome and painted the ceiling and altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
Carlo Maderno: Extended the nave and designed the monumental front façade of St. Peter’s Basilica, completing the main structure in 1615.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Designed the grand St. Peter’s Square (the outer colonnades framing the basilica entrance), along with much of the interior Baroque art, including the monumental bronze Baldachin.
Political Establishment
While the physical buildings were constructed over centuries, Vatican City as an independent sovereign nation was officially created in 1929 through the Lateran Treaty, signed by Pope Pius XI and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini.
The Vatican is two things at once—a place with 2,000 years of layered history, and a state that is one of the strangest political creations on Earth. Let’s untangle both.
The Place: Where It All Sits
The Vatican Hill (Vaticanus) sits on the west bank of the Tiber, outside the original boundaries of ancient Rome. In the pagan era it was a marginal area—used for cemeteries and, notably, a circus built by Caligula and Nero where Christians were executed.
Tradition holds that Saint Peter was martyred there around 64–67 AD under Nero and buried on the adjacent hill.
By the 2nd century, a modest shrine marked the site. This is the historical seed of everything that followed.
The Timeline
Early Christian & Imperial Era
~320 AD: Emperor Constantine builds the first Old St. Peter’s Basilica over the presumed tomb.
The Bishop of Rome gradually claims primacy among Christian bishops—partly theological, partly because Rome was the imperial capital.
The Papal States (756–1870)
756 AD: The Donation of Pepin gives the Pope temporal territory—the birth of the Papal States, a real kingdom spanning central Italy.
For over a thousand years the Pope was not just a spiritual leader but a monarch with armies, taxes, and courts.
This era includes the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Renaissance papacy (the Borgias, Julius II), and the commissioning of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.
The Renaissance Rebuild
1506–1626: Old St. Peter’s is demolished and replaced by the current basilica—funded partly by indulgence sales, which helped spark the Protestant Reformation.
The Swiss Guard (1506) and the Vatican Library (1475) take shape in this period.
Collapse & the “Prisoner Pope” (1870–1929)
1870: Italian unification seizes the Papal States. The Pope loses all territory and retreats into the Vatican as a self-declared “prisoner.”
The standoff lasts 59 years.
The Lateran Treaty (1929)
Mussolini and Pius XI sign the Lateran Treaty, creating the modern Vatican City State—the world’s smallest sovereign nation at ~0.49 km².
This is the legal founding of the Vatican as a country. It’s essentially a monarchical absolute state ruled by the Pope, with its own stamps, coins, media, and courts.
Why It Matters Beyond Religion
The Vatican is also a financial and diplomatic power, and this is where the institutional skepticism comes in:
The Vatican Bank (IOR) has a long, documented history of opaque dealings—the Banco Ambrosiano collapse in 1982, allegations of money laundering, and decades of reform pressure.
It maintains diplomatic relations with ~180 countries and functions as a major soft-power broker.
Its archives—released in controlled batches—have repeatedly shown the gap between public narrative and internal record.
The Core Takeaway
The Vatican is a case study in how spiritual authority and temporal power fused into a single institution. It survived the fall of Rome, the Reformation, the loss of its empire, and the rise of the modern nation-state—by adapting, rebranding, and holding its information close.
It is not just a church.
It is not just a country.
It is a 2,000-year-old institution that has outlasted nearly every rival it ever had—and it has always understood that control of the record is as important as control of the territory.
The Political Intrigue of the Vatican
The Vatican is, functionally, an absolute monarchy with an elected king—and any institution that combines absolute power with closed-door elections produces intrigue the way a swamp produces mosquitoes. Here’s the anatomy of it.
The Core Mechanism: Electing a King for Life
The College of Cardinals elects the Pope in a conclave—cardinals locked in the Sistine Chapel, no phones, no outside contact.
The Pope then rules until death or resignation (resignation being rare—Celestine V in 1294, Benedict XVI in 2013).
This means every power play is a long game: factions position for the next conclave years in advance.
The Curia—the Vatican’s bureaucratic apparatus—is where real day-to-day power lives. Control the Curia, and you can frustrate a Pope you can’t depose.
The Greatest Hits of Papal Intrigue
The Borgias (1492–1503)
Rodrigo Borgia becomes Alexander VI through what contemporaries openly described as bribery.
He made his own son—Cesare Borgia—a cardinal and then a military commander, carving out territory for the family.
The family’s grip on the papacy was so brazen that Machiavelli used Cesare as the model for The Prince.
The Cadaver Synod (897 AD)
Pope Stephen VI had his predecessor Formosusexhumed, dressed in papal robes, and put on trial—the corpse propped on a throne while charges were read.
The verdict was guilty; the body was stripped, mutilated, and dumped in the Tiber.
Stephen was later imprisoned and strangled. This is the Vatican’s political intrigue in its purest, most unhinged form.
The Western Schism (1378–1417)
Two—then three—men simultaneously claimed to be Pope, each with his own Curia, treasury, and backers (Rome, Avignon, and briefly Pisa).
It took a council to force a resolution, and it permanently damaged the papacy’s claim to unified authority.
The 2013 Resignation
Benedict XVI resigning—the first pope to do so in ~600 years—was a seismic political event.
The backdrop reportedly involved the VatiLeaks scandal: confidential documents leaked by a papal butler, exposing internal power struggles, corruption, and factional warfare inside the Curia.
What emerged publicly was a picture of a court divided into rival camps, each briefing against the other.
The Permanent Factions
Vatican politics isn’t left/right in the ordinary sense. It’s a set of recurring fault lines:
Reformers vs. Traditionalists — how much to modernize doctrine and governance.
Curialists vs. Outsiders — career bureaucrats vs. those the Pope brings in from outside.
Centralizers vs. National Churches — Rome’s authority vs. local bishops’ autonomy.
The Italian faction vs. everyone else — the Curia was Italian-dominated for centuries; internationalization is an ongoing fight.
Every Pope inherits this machinery and either co-opts, purges, or gets ground down by it.
Where Money and Power Meet
The IOR (Vatican Bank) scandals—Banco Ambrosiano, the 1982 death of Roberto Calvi found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London—are the intersection of finance, politics, and the Church.
These episodes show that the Vatican’s internal politics has never been purely theological. Money, reputations, and institutional survival are always in the room.
The Pattern
Strip away the ritual and the same logic appears every time:
Absolute power + closed elections → factions form.
Factions + no external accountability → leaks, purges, and scandals.
Scandals + institutional survival instinct → controlled disclosure, quiet reshuffling, and the archive stays closed.
The Vatican has survived 2,000 years precisely because it is ruthlessly good at internal politics. The intrigue isn’t a bug—it’s the operating system.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/vatican-e1434989477829.jpg317640Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)2026-10-11 11:36:582026-10-11 11:41:39What is the history behind the Vatican?
“In hoc signo vinces” — Latin for “in this sign, you will conquer” — is one of the most consequential phrases in Western history.
Here’s the story.
The Traditional Account: Constantine at the Milvian Bridge
The phrase is tied to the Roman emperor Constantine the Great on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD.
Constantine was marching on Rome to confront his rival Maxentius, who held the city.
According to the historian Eusebius of Caesarea (writing later, in his Life of Constantine), Constantine saw a vision in the sky — a cross of light — with the words τούτῳ νίκα (“by this, conquer” / “in this, conquer”).
In the Latin tradition, preserved by writers like Lactantius, the sign is described as a staurogram-like symbol or the Chi-Rho (☧) — the first two letters of “Christ” in Greek — and the accompanying motto became the familiar Latin “In hoc signo vinces.”
He won the battle. Maxentius drowned in the Tiber when his forces collapsed at the bridge. Constantine credited the victory to the Christian God and went on to legalize and favor Christianity, eventually converting (and being baptized on his deathbed).
What the Symbol Was
The “sign” is generally understood as the Chi-Rho — χχ (chi) and ρρ (rho), the opening letters of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ (Christos).
Constantine reportedly had it painted on his soldiers’ shields before the battle.
It later became a standard on Roman military banners — the labarum — and a core Christian emblem.
Textual Sources (and Their Gaps)
Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum — earliest, describes a dream and the instruction to mark the shields with the heavenly sign. He doesn’t give the full phrase.
Eusebius, Life of Constantine — gives the vision-in-the-sky version, reportedly from Constantine’s own testimony.
The exact Latin phrasing “In hoc signo vinces” is a later standardized form; the Greek τούτῳ νίκα is the version in Eusebius.
So the phrase as everyone knows it is a Latin crystallization of a Greek report of a vision.
Cultural Afterlife
The motto became a favorite across centuries:
Military and chivalric orders adopted it, including the Knights Templar associations in later legend.
It appears on flags, heraldry, and coats of arms across Europe.
It shows up in Masonic and various fraternal traditions.
It’s been quoted in literature, on monuments, and in countless religious and secular contexts as shorthand for “conquer under divine sanction.”
The Larger Significance
Whatever one makes of the vision account, the phrase marks a genuine historical hinge: the moment the Roman Empire pivoted toward Christianity. Whether Constantine saw a real sign, had a strategic political insight, or both, the result reshaped the entire trajectory of Western civilization.
It’s a phrase that has been invoked by everyone from emperors to generals to esoteric orders — a rare piece of Latin that still carries the weight of an empire’s turning point.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/in-this-sign-you-will-conquer.jpg360640Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)2026-10-11 08:28:302026-10-11 08:30:57“In hoc signo vinces” one of the most consequential phrases in Western history
“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us; do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.” ― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Please read “I Do Not Cry for Europe” It is truly OUTSTANDING!
“As a Jew, I Do Not Cry for Europe: Watching the Twilight of the Continental Hypocrisy”
Harry Liberman
For centuries, Europe’s favorite and most enduring cultural tradition hasn’t been the opera, the architecture, or the haute cuisine. It has been the art of the scapegoat. And for two millennia, the script never changed: when the plague struck, when the economy collapsed, or when an empire began to rot from within, the solution was always to blame the Jews.
But history, it turns out, possesses a pitch-black sense of irony.
Today, as the continent slides into its twilight, those who were systematically hunted, expelled, and betrayed are sitting back, opening a bag of kosher popcorn, and watching the final act of the European drama unfold. I do not cry for a continent that engineered its own moral and demographic collapse.
It is a spectacle two thousand years in the making.
Let the historical record be completely unvarnished: Jews are not native to Europe.
The presence of the Jewish people on that continent did not begin with a peaceful migration; it began in chains. Following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the brutal suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, hundreds of thousands of Jews were torn from their indigenous homeland in Judea and dragged across the Mediterranean as slaves to build the foundations of the Roman Empire.
Once there, the West promptly appropriated Jewish theology.
Europe built an entire civilization around a Jewish teacher named Jesus—a man who lived and died without ever hearing the word “Christian”—and then spent the next two millennia persecuting his kin for the crime of existing. The continent happily accepted the foundational texts of the Hebrew Bible, only to write a “New Testament” that essentially argued God had made a mistake the first time around, requiring imperial intervention—like Rome’s Emperor Constantine suddenly morphing into a saint—to correct the divine record.
Yet, even as captive Jews turned citizen, a staggering chronological lineage of Jewish brilliance consistently built the framework of European excellence—gifts that Europe simultaneously exploited and despised:
Maimonides (Rambam) (1138–1204): The preeminent philosopher and physician who revolutionized medieval medical science and Aristotelian philosophy.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519): The quintessential Renaissance master whose maternal ancestry links the peak of European artistic genius directly to a Jewish line. This was brought to light by archival discoveries in Florence by historian Carlo Vecce, who unearthed a 1452 act of liberation notarized by Leonardo’s father for an enslaved Circassian woman named Caterina.
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677): The radical philosopher whose foundational treatises on ethics and political thought single-handedly birthed the secular European Enlightenment.
Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786): The cultural pioneer who synthesized Jewish tradition with modern German philosophy, reshaping European literary criticism.
Karl Marx (1818–1883):The idiot self hating Jew ,embraced by anti Semites whose seminal texts permanently rewrote the rules of global sociology, labor, and capital and brought empires into decline !He is the European version of Dathan, who is played by the legendary actor Edward G Robinson in Cecile B De Milles Ten Commandments : Much like Dathan using his status to manipulate or betray his community from within, Marx subverted the biblical concepts of individual agency, law, and faith that sustained his ancestors. Tyrannies who adopted Marxism : how did that work out for China , Soviets , Cuba , Europe, Venezuela ,etc and currently the rage among the progressive left via millionaire leaders like Bernie Sanders whose anti capitalist pro Marxist speeches went from Millionaires to Billionaires . If ever he becomes a Billionaire the language will become Trillionaires … if only Bernie grew a beard … ancestry.com they might be related.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): The pioneer of psychoanalysis who unlocked the unconscious mind and established the framework of modern clinical psychology.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955): The theoretical physicist who formulated the theory of relativity, forever changing human understanding of time, space, and gravity. [1]
In World War I, Jewish soldiers fought loyally for the Kaiser, proudly wearing the Iron Cross on their chests. The reward?
A few decades later, the civilized world gathered at the Evian Conference of July 1938, where 32 nations stood up one by one to offer theatrical “sympathy” for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi terror—while simultaneously locking their doors. Delegate after delegate gave bureaucratic excuses for why their nations’ strict immigration quotas could not be altered. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, while acting sympathetic in public, maintained a tight lid on immigration, ensuring America’s doors remained closed.
The inaction of Western powers at Evian directly emboldened Hitler.
The Nazi regime openly mocked the democratic world, noting with great pleasure that foreign nations criticized Germany’s treatment of Jews but refused to open their own borders when given the opportunity. As a result, the British White Paper trapped desperate refugees, and the continent looked the other way while six million were funneled into industrial slaughterhouses. The Allied liberation of 1945 wasn’t a grand moral rescue; it was merely an afterthought, arriving just in time to catalog the ashes of a genocide that global indifference—and the intentional silence of institutions like the New York Times and the Roosevelt administration—had enabled.
Even today, Europe clings to its looted Jewish history.
Austria proudly filled its museums for decades with stolen masterpieces like Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I—the “Woman in Gold”—refusing for generations to return what was plundered from Jewish hands. Meanwhile, Poland has managed a macabre monetization of the Holocaust. The ashes of a once-thriving population of 3.5 million Polish Jews are no longer there, yet the state-sanctioned dark tourism industry surrounding the death camps continues to heavily sustain the local economy.
All of this occurs while modern Eastern European authorities consistently block the restoration of, or compensation for, the massive amounts of private Jewish property seized during the tragedy. Poland remains the only major country in the former Soviet bloc that has never implemented a comprehensive private property restitution law for assets seized by the Nazis and subsequently nationalized under communism. Instead, they codified this refusal by enacting an administrative law setting a strict 30-year statute of limitations on legal challenges, effectively shutting down thousands of valid inheritance claims from Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
But Europe’s loss became the foundation of modern superpower dominance.
When the tides of hatred drove Jewish minds across the Atlantic, America won the day. It was Jewish intellectual power, patents, and unmatched resilience that transformed the United States—fueling the nuclear arms race that won the Cold War, building the cinematic empire of Hollywood, shaping the neon architecture of Las Vegas, and securing Western dominance.
Yet today, Washington treats the independent Jewish state like a dog on a leash, patting itself on the back for providing $3.8 billion in conditional military aid, while actively restricting Israel’s ability to decisively win its conflicts. This dynamic traces right back to 1948, when the State Department instituted a strict, comprehensive arms embargo on the region, preventing the nascent Jewish state from legally purchasing weapons to defend itself from annihilation. [1]
The internal politics behind this embargo were dripping with cold-blooded realpolitik.
While President Harry S. Truman harbored personal and political sympathies for a Jewish homeland, his administration was fiercely divided. The Department of State, led by Secretary George C. Marshall, alongside the Department of War, fiercely opposed any intervention that favored the Jews. Paralyzed by fears of losing access to Arab oil fields and terrified that a conflict would allow the Soviet Union to plant its flag in the Middle East, Truman’s advisors pushed a strict, unyielding embargo. Officially, it was framed as an even-handed neutrality act. In practice, it was a death sentence designed to cripple only the Jews, as the State Department even went so far as to block domestic shipments of steel plating intended to protect civilian trucks from ambush.
When the West completely abandoned Israel to a potential slaughter, it was an unexpected player that shattered the embargo: Czechoslovakia. Authorized behind the scenes by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin—who mistakenly hoped a socialist Israel would undermine British imperial dominance—Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk stepped into the strategic vacuum to sign a massive, secretive weapons contract.
Through an illegal smuggling network code named Operation Balak, Prague funnelled a desperate lifeline of armaments to the Jewish forces. The Czechs delivered over 34,500 P-18 Mauser rifles, 5,500 MG 34 machine guns, and over 50 million rounds of ammunition. Most critically, they supplied Israel’s very first fighter aircraft—25 Avia S-199s (salvaged German Messerschmitts) and 61 Spitfires—while providing secret military bases to train 81 Israeli pilots and ground crews. It was these smuggled Czech weapons that transformed a fragmented underground militia into a real army, arriving just in time to stop the advancing Arab armies on the coastal plains. [1]
The political betrayals peaked with the sabotage of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan (Resolution 181). While the international community voted to establish independent Jewish and Arab states, Great Britain engaged in deliberate, malicious non-compliance. The British completely blocked the UN Palestine Commission from entering the territory to oversee a peaceful transfer of authority, actively ensuring administrative chaos.
As Mandatory forces withdrew, British double standards were on full display. While the Americans denied the Jews a single bullet, the British Empire actively funded, maintained, and armed the Transjordanian Arab Legion to the tune of £2 million a year. This professional fighting force was explicitly led by seconded British military officers under the direct command of General John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha). [1]
In May 1948, this heavily armed, British-led force invaded the newly declared state. The Legion targeted Jerusalem, cutting off the main highway from Tel Aviv, enforcing a brutal blockade, and systematically starving 100,000 Jewish residents. The Arab Legion fortified the strategically superior police fortress and monastery at Latrun, completely shutting down access to the holy city. In a desperate bid to break the siege, rudimentary and outgunned Israeli forces launched five separate, bloody assaults on the al-Latrun salient. Waves of newly arrived, untrained Holocaust refugees were thrown into the inferno of the Latrun battles, suffering devastating casualties under heavy Jordanian artillery.
Though Israel eventually bypassed the bottleneck via the makeshift “Burma Road” to keep Jerusalem alive, Glubb Pasha’s forces successfully ethnically cleansed every single Jew from the Old City of Jerusalem and the ancient cradle of Judea and Samaria. Their historical ties were severed, Jewish properties were seized, and the region was illegally rebranded with a geographic fiction: “The West Bank”. When Jordan codified a “no-Jews” policy into its charter, only two nations on earth officially recognized the land grab: Great Britain and the newly minted state of Pakistan. This was par for the course for a British regime that later armed the Nigerian military to starve and slaughter two million Biafrans, mostly children, all to secure the oil flow.
The absolute pinnacle of this historic revisionism, however, belongs to the architects of global Anglo-colonialism.
In a coordinated diplomatic maneuver, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia officially recognized a Palestinian state. The stomach-turning irony requires immediate psychological and historical therapy. They are rushing to institutionalize the very label invented by second-century European Roman occupiers—Syria Palaestina—explicitly coined by Emperor Hadrian following the bloody suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE to punitively wipe the indigenous Jewish name of Judea from the map. [1]
Even before this formal recognition, the Trudeau government in Ottawa scrambled to resume millions in taxpayer funding to UNRWA, completely glossing over damning intelligence that employees of the agency directly participated in the October 7 massacre.
This entire performance is a masterclass in modern virtue signaling.
These Commonwealth nations choreograph these moral lectures while standing squarely on the stolen graves of the indigenous populations they systematically dispossessed, relocated, and erased to build their own vast settler empires. To witness the occupying governments of Ottawa and Canberra—built on the absolute destruction of First Nations and Aboriginal sovereignty—preach human rights and map-making to the actual indigenous survivors of Judea, right after the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, is nothing short of sick.
The grotesque circus reaches its peak across the Atlantic, landing directly on the flagpoles of Toronto City Hall.
Under the watch of Mayor Olivia Chow, Toronto approved the raising of the Palestinian flag—enabling the symbolic erasure of Judea from the comfort of a stolen municipality. The local theater is profoundly unhinged: a municipal leader representing a settler entity with barely 150 years of fabricated history has the audacity to scold a people with over 4,000 years of documented, unbroken lineage anchored in the Torah, the Bible, and the Koran. [1]
The hypocrisy folds in on itself entirely when one realizes this symbolic act of erasure is staged on the stolen lands of colonial Kanata—a country that literally appropriated its very name from the rightful indigenous owners who, like the Jews of Judea, were named directly after the land that bore them. For a shallow settler administration to lecture the original indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East is a supreme insult.
It ignores the reality that Jewish civilization stands on its own distinct historical foundation—an ancient taproot from which both Christianity and Islam branched, and without which neither theological architecture can even stand.
But empires, like all expansionist illusions, have an expiration date.
Rome fell. The Ottomans vanished. And Great Britain, once an empire upon which the sun never set, is now a fractured island watching its own cultural and political foundations dissolve. The colloquial moniker “Londonistan” isn’t just a political talking point; it is a mirror reflecting a continent that has fundamentally rewritten its own demographics through centuries of colonial hubris.
The structural metrics of European decline are now laid bare in undisputed, bleak mathematical reality. According to official data from Eurostat, the entire European Union population is projected to enter a terminal, irreversible downsize. The continent’s total fertility rate has cratered to a disastrous 1.38 births per woman—miles below the 2.1 replacement threshold.
Over the next few decades, the EU workforce is projected to shrink by millions of workers annually, while the over-80 demographic is set to nearly triple. Without [an ironic twist of fate and an existential threat to Europe ]”external migration”, from former Colonies- Algeria etc, nations like the UK, France, etc are mathematically projected to lose between a third and a half of their total populations by the end of the century.
The resulting domestic fractures are tearing the old consensus apart.
Major European capitals are rapidly losing their historical and secular identities, replaced by deep, unraveling civil polarization over border control, soaring demographic dependency ratios, and collapsing social welfare safety nets. Having spent generations meddling across the globe for oil and territory, European capitals are entirely paralyzed by the internal demographic inertia they themselves set in motion. The chickens have finally come home to roost.
Great cinematic minds like Cecil B. DeMille understood this eternal truth.
He didn’t build his Hollywood legacy on European myths; he built his greatest epics around the ancient narrative of Jewish endurance, culminating in The Ten Commandments. DeMille recognized that Jewish identity is defined not by a narrative of passive victimization, but by divine agency, law, and an unyielding pride that has outlasted every tyrant for 3,000 years.
Following the horrors of October 7, the old continent once again leaned into its historical muscle memory, seemingly expecting the Jewish state to fracture, apologize, and fade away under the weight of global condemnation. Instead, the paradigm has flipped.
Today, Europe looks into the mirror and sees a fractured future of cultural erasure and imperial decline.
Meanwhile, Israel—rooted in the very soil of Judea and Samaria from which it was driven—stands resilient, armed by its own agency, and defended by its own hands. For those who survived the crusades, the inquisitions, the white papers, and the betrayals, the view from the theater seats is remarkably clear.
You cannot boycott the history that sustains who you are—and right now, Europe is finally paying the price of admission.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Europe-in-flames.jpg360640Amil Imanihttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAmil Imani2026-10-04 06:29:352026-10-11 12:39:09“As a Jew, I Do Not Cry for Europe: Watching the Twilight of the Continental Hypocrisy”
American vulnerability emanates from a sense of complancency and gullibility.
We belive what we are told and what we want to believe. Despite millennia of history, we choose to disbelieve the many leaders are actively working for a worldwide caliphate as the endpoint of expess Islamist goals.
California is a living example of a “Califate-In-The-Making” incrementally, largely under the radars of the silent majority.
California is now officially recognizing two Islamic holidays after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation making Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha official state holidays.
The law gives Muslim state workers the right to take those days off, and public schools may choose to close in observance of the holidays.
Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, while Eid al-Adha commemorates the conclusion of the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.
“This is really disconcerting,” Rabbi Michael Barclay told CBN News.
“Ramadan is not a month of peace; in fact, al-Qaida calls it the month of conquests,” he explained. “And it’s a horrible statement about California and about our politicians who are pandering for whatever money or votes they think they can get from the Islamic community.”
Commentators like Barclay argue that recognizing these Muslim holidays puts Islamic traditions on a special tier above Christian and Jewish holidays. The push to elevate Islam appears to result from a growing alliance between Muslim advocacy groups and political progressives.
“The state of California doesn’t honor any other religion. But now suddenly they’re kowtowing and catering to what is effectively Sharia law,” Barclay said.
California has a smaller percentage of Muslims compared to Christians and Jews, and yet major Islamic holidays have now received state-level recognition without equivalent status for other faith traditions, critics note.
Meanwhile, Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign a separate bill recognizing the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in state law. However, that measure would not grant the same status that has been awarded to the Muslim holidays.
Instead, the bill would only require public schools and universities to make reasonable efforts to avoid scheduling public meetings or major events on those Jewish holy days.
California does not officially recognize Christmas or other Christian holidays as paid state holidays.
Muslims make up about 1% of California’s population, Christians are 55%, and Jews are closer to 3%.
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Staffed by a group of acclaimed news professionals, CBN News delivers stories to over a million viewers each day without a specific agenda. With its headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va., CBN News has bureaus in Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and elsewhere around the world.
What began as a segment on CBN’s flagship program, The 700 Club, in the early 1980s, CBN News has since expanded into a multimedia news organization that offers today’s news headlines and other stories that impact the global Christian community.
More than 150 Virginia pastors have signed an open letter urging voters to reject two proposed constitutional amendments on abortion and marriage. The letter adds a broad coalition of Protestant voices to the growing faith-based opposition ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
“We believe these two amendments must be rejected for the Commonwealth of Virginia because they will harm our state as they are opposed to human flourishing and contrary to the Word of God,” the pastors write.
The signers are from congregations across the commonwealth, from Arlington and Alexandria to Lynchburg, Roanoke, Virginia Beach, and Tazewell. They include Jesse Johnson of Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Ryan Helfenbein of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Brian Autry of Grove Avenue Baptist Church in Henrico, Benjamin Purves of Occoquan Bible Church in Woodbridge, and Courtney McBath of Calvary Alliance of Churches in Norfolk.
Virginia Pastors Unite
A pastor who helped coordinate the letter told the Daily Signal that about 90 churches are currently represented, reaching an estimated 50,000 parishioners across Virginia.
Early voting began Sept. 18. The ballot measures reached voters after winning approval in two consecutive sessions of the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, as Virginia requires for constitutional amendments.
The pastors’ letter follows a high-profile “Catholics Vote No” campaign by Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington. He had priests in 70 parishes across Northern Virginia read a letter at Mass opposing the amendments. That effort built on a joint statement he issued in August with Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout.
‘Let Your Baby Live’
Ballot Question 1 would amend Virginia’s constitution to expand abortion access throughout pregnancy and eliminate the need for parental consent. The pastors expressed strong opposition to the amendment and its fatal consequences for the unborn.
“Abortion is the killing of a pre-born child in the womb,” they write. “It is moral distortion to present this violation of the sixth commandment as a moral good or as a fundamental right, and it is deceptive framing to present abortion’s destruction of life as healthcare.”
The letter speaks directly to women facing an unexpected pregnancy: “To the mother considering abortion, we implore you, let your baby live.”
It also rejects the idea of abortion as a parental right. “There is never a parental right to take the life of a child,” the pastors write.
‘What God Has Defined’
Question 2 would strike the constitution’s 2006 definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and replace it with language guaranteeing two adults the right to marry regardless of sex.
The pastors argue that marriage “has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman into a single, exclusive union.” They cite Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:6: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
“It is likewise true to say what God has defined, let not man seek to redefine,” the letter says.
The pastors also warn that the amendment carries other implications.
“Denying reality only brings a ripple effect of harm to society that is acutely felt by individuals, families, schools, and sports teams,” they write.
‘We Disagree With You for Your Good’
Like the letter from Burbidge to Catholics, the Protestant pastors speak directly to Virginians and implore them to vote against the amendments.
“If you support these amendments, know that we disagree with you for your good, and for the good of Virginia,” they write. “Love will communicate truth and speak for the good of others, and it does not go silent when the need is great.”
The pastors also “repudiate hateful and harassing behavior or attitudes directed toward any individual.” They close by inviting readers to pick up a Bible, read the Gospel of John, and visit one of the signers’ churches on a Sunday.
The pastor who spoke to the Daily Signal said additional signatures are still being added. Any Virginia pastor who affirms the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation may sign the letter. Organizers review names before posting them, and they encourage pastors to share the letter with their congregations.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Letter-Virginia-Pastors-Want-Every-Voter-to-Read.jpg360640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2026-09-28 12:42:292026-09-29 05:39:15The Letter Virginia Pastors Want Every Voter to Read Before Nov. 3
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” — The Declaration of Independence
During the American Revolution our Fore Fathers wore the full armor of God and prevailed. And so must we, today and forever.
Faith, Family and Freedom won.
The “Full Armor of God” comes from the New Testament in Ephesians 6:10–18, written by the Apostle Paul.He uses the metaphor of a Roman soldier’s battle gear to describe how believers can stand firm against spiritual trials and opposition.
Ephesians 6:10–18 (NIV)
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then:
Belt of Truth buckled around your waist,
Breastplate of Righteousness in place,
Feet Fitted with the Readiness that comes from the gospel of peace,
Shield of Faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one,
Helmet of Salvation, and
Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”
Breakdown of the 6 Elements
The Belt of Truth:Grounding your mind, life, and actions in integrity and truth rather than deception.
The Breastplate of Righteousness: Guarding your heart and motives through moral uprightness and Christ’s righteousness.
Shoes of the Gospel of Peace:Keeping a firm footing and being ready to share peace and hope.
The Shield of Faith:Deflecting doubts, temptations, and negative attacks.
The Helmet of Salvation:Protecting your thoughts, mind, and perspective with the assurance of salvation.
The Sword of the Spirit:The primary offensive tool—using the scripture and truth to counter falsehood.
May God continue to shed his light, blessings, protection and grace upon us all.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Wear-the-Full-Armor-of-God.jpg360640Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)2026-09-24 06:17:382026-09-28 12:45:02Americans Must Now Wear the Full Armor of God so that We Can Take a Stand Against the Devil’s Schemes
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (known around the world as “Padre Pio”) was a giant of a man. Thousands flocked to attend his Masses or to receive the sacrament of confession from him. Many who had the opportunity were deeply moved to grow closer to God. Decades after his death, we too can grow in holiness by learning from this great saint’s example.
An Italian priest known for his deep prayer life, Padre Pio (1887-1968) was insistent that everyone should be dedicated to growing in prayer. He said, “In the spiritual life he who does not advance goes backward. It happens as with a boat, which always must go ahead. If it stands still, the wind will blow it back.”
Practically speaking, this means that habits of prayer are absolutely necessary for holiness. We must schedule time for prayer each day, ideally in a quiet place. Our prayer ought to be structured around time with Scripture and formal prayers like the Our Father, but it should also leave space for communion with the living God who is truly with us. A good prayer habit opens the door to advancement in the spiritual life and, ultimately, renewal of the entire person.
Consistent prayer leads away from restlessness and toward peace. Padre Pio advised, “Do not worry over things that generate preoccupation, derangement, and anxiety. One thing only is necessary: to lift up your spirit and love God.”
It is easy to be drowned by the struggles of life. But if we are consumed by the daily worries of finances, work, and family, we can forget the crucial reality that God is always faithful. This truth does not mean that we will never experience trials; it means that God is near to us even—or perhaps especially—when we are bearing great crosses in life. No pain or trial will ever conquer His love.
Ultimately, living out this truth requires constant trust in God’s care. We must, as Padre Pio exhorted, learn to be obedient to God. “Where there is no obedience,” he said, “there is no virtue; there is neither goodness nor love. And where there is no love, there is no God. Without God, we cannot reach Heaven. These virtues form a ladder; if a step is missing, we fall down.”
Growth in goodness and holiness requires us to make sacrifices. We must place others before ourselves, rejecting selfishness and pride. We must grow in virtue so that we can navigate our self-centered inclinations.
“The best means of guarding yourself against temptation,” Padre Pio said, “are the following: watch your senses to save them from dangerous temptation, avoid vanity, do not let your heart become exalted, convince yourself of the evil of complacency, flee away from hate, pray whenever possible. If the soul would know the merit which one acquires in temptations, suffered in patience and conquered, it would be tempted to say: Lord, send me temptations.”
Self-control in the face of temptation is crucial for growth in virtue. We must control what we look at, how we act, and what we listen to. Our physical senses help us to receive reality, but if they are undisciplined, they can also open us to what is evil.
Two of the greatest vices we must battle are pride and laziness. Their opposites, humility and perseverance, grow as we pray because prayer forces us to recognize that we are not God.
Temptations can be conquered through a commitment to daily prayer and a reliance on the power of God. This is the life that Padre Pio lived, and it is the one that we are called to as well.
So, consider how you can cling to prayer more consistently and how your actions can be sacrificial above all else.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Padre-Pio.jpg360640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2026-09-21 07:32:022026-09-21 07:34:27Sacrifice and Prayer: The Wisdom of Padre Pio
“Do not add to his words, or He will rebuke you and prove you a liar.” (Proverbs 30:6)
The whole Bible encourages and equips Christians for political involvement.
Not one verse opposes it—just the opposite, as great Christians throughout history have affirmed. Claiming otherwise violates the Scripture, “Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6), creating needless division and guilt in the body of Christ, along with the sharp moral decline of modern civilizations.
The Bible and subsequent history show that God has always placed his people in government, including in evil and pagan nations, as “salt” and “light” to glorify Him and bless all people.
That’s because government is not a “necessary evil”—another modern error—but rather God’s good design. Just as bad spouses don’t nullify God’s good design for marriage, bad officials don’t nullify his good design for government. God created all nations, and all government officials, knowingly or not, are God’s servants with his authority for their legitimate duties.
Today’s moral decay is tied to Christians shunning politics, letting others choose who governs us. As stewards of the right to choose our government leaders, we are accountable to God for doing all we can to ensure they use their authority, and our taxes, only for good, not evil.
Believers who exempt themselves from that civic duty as “citizens of heaven” forget they are dual citizens of this world and the next. Like Paul, we expect the benefits of earthly citizenship—police, fire and ambulance services, safe roads and airports, ethical banks and shops, honest judges and lawyers, reliable utilities, a strong military, and more. Many Christians provide those vital services. It is our sacred duty to select moral, competent officials to lead them.
The many benefits of earthly citizenship come with responsibilities. Some Christians pray for good government leaders, yet do nothing to obtain them, contrary to biblical teaching to pray and then act in accordance with our prayers.
Finally, ask yourself: Does Satan want Christians IN or OUT of politics? History provides the stark, undeniable answer.
There is nothing in this world that is not God’s. Politics isn’t forbidden territory for Christians to disdain, it’s God’s turf for his people to claim!
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
Gary Meredith has spent over four decades in creative and strategic roles conducting fundraising and capital campaigns for conservative and Christian clients. These include Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Media Research Center, The Heritage Foundation, and Hillsdale College, for which he was the original producer of their popular online courses. He was creative director on capital campaigns for two of America’s greatest presidents’ homes—Washington’s Mount Vernon and the Reagan Ranch.
As a layman volunteer for GotQuestions, Gary has answered over 600 challenging Bible questions from around the world. He and wife Nancy have two married sons and four grandchildren, with whom he enjoys playing sports, music, and board games. They live in Northern Virginia, just far enough outside Washington, D.C.
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Over the centuries, countless Christians have been moved to prayer by the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud famously bears the image of a crucified man. Many—including myself—believe the Shroud to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ and the image to be a miraculous picture of God made man. The Shroud gives viewers the chance for a face-to-face meeting with Jesus himself.
The Shroud has always been met by some with skepticism. Its verifiable history goes back to the 14th century, when a bishop argued that this supposed relic was a forgery.
In 1988, the cloth was scientifically analyzed, and at the time it seemed like the skeptics might be right. Through the (then) most advanced carbon dating techniques, researchers dated the Shroud of Turin to sometime between 1260 and 1390. Last summer, arguments arose again due to the claims of a Brazilian 3D artist named Cicero Moraes. Until last summer, it seemed that the evidence said the shroud was not the burial cloth of Christ.
This prompted all of the latest evidence to be brought together in support of the authenticity of the Shroud. However, new evidence has changed things. Research, founded on a technique named Wide Angle X-Ray Scattering, concluded that the cloth is from the 1st century (the same time period as Jesus’ birth and death). This method of analysis analyzes the deterioration of the thread and penetrates deep into the core structure of the fabric.
Further study revealed that the carbon dating testing was contaminated. The cloth was left unprotected for centuries and the testing does not have the same accuracy as Wide Angle X-Ray Scattering. Furthermore, new DNA research on the cloth has concluded that the genome pattern suggests the person was born in the Middle East.
Despite lengthy investigation, scientists have not been able to decipher how the image was made on the fabric. There is no pigment on the cloth. There is no detectable ink. The image on the cloth seems to be both unexplainable and unrepeatable—at least by human beings.
The best explanation scientists have posited is that some sort of electromagnetic radiation (seen as a burst of intense light) somehow left marks on the cloth.
William West, an Australian journalist, collects much of the updated research in his book titled “Riddles of the Shroud: Questions Science Can’t Answer.”He writes: Forensic pathologists have noted the following:
“The perfect wounds and blood deposits on the cloth were not disturbed by the removal of the body. When you dress a wound in a cloth bandage, it sticks hard, and when the bandage is removed, the blood clots break up and traces of flesh can be found on the cloth. There is no evidence that the blood deposits on the Shroud have been disturbed. It appears that the body simply ‘dematerialised’ in a way that did not disturb the blood, at the same time leaving behind an image that could not have been created in the Middle Ages, any more than in the first century.”
For the faithful, recent analysis enabled by new technology has provided confirmation of the relic’s authenticity. But more important than scientific arguments about the shroud is the proof of what happens when people pray with it.
Last summer, the new scientific analysis of the Shroud of Turin made me want to venerate it. I printed a 4by6 foot image of the Shroud and placed it on the shelf in our small prayer space at home. For more than a year, I have gazed on this image daily when I first wake up in the morning and when I pray before going to bed.
Looking upon the face of Jesus each day for a year has altered me.
The science behind the miraculous nature of the shroud is amazing, yes. But seeing the face of Jesus Christ has moved me to speak to him more personally and intimately. Venerating images of Christ transforms us.
We all seek to meet God, face-to-face. We desire to encounter him as a real living person—not as a part of our imagination.
God does not desire for us merely to rattle off words to Him; He wants us to be in genuine union with Him. Jesus warned, “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7).
We are meant to hear Jesus Christ and meet Him as a real person who is alive—our Savior in our presence. I knew that truth intellectually, but viewing the face of Jesus each day has challenged me to live it.
The Shroud of Turin can aid us in making prayer more real, authentic, and moving.
It is not merely a tool for defending the truth about who Jesus was. It is not simply a weapon to show that Christianity is valid and unlike any other religion. The Shroud facilitates a meeting between the viewer and the Creator of the Universe. In the small and dimly lit chapel of my own home, I have witnessed the power of seeking to spend time with an image of the literal face of Jesus.
So seek His face. Look at the shroud. Gaze at the savior, your Creator.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Shroud-of-Turin.jpg360640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2026-09-16 04:51:322026-09-16 04:53:36Seeing the Face of God, Literally: The Shroud of Turin
This film is inspired by the biblical book of Daniel and ancient prophetic traditions preserved in Scripture.
With epic cinematic language and an engaging and reverent narrative, the story portrays the life of an exiled man who became a witness to unseen wars, fallen empires, and eternal decrees written before time itself. What begins as captivity transforms into revelation.
What seems to be political history unfolds as divine prophecy.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Daniel-The-Movie-The-Film-that-Shocked-the-World.jpg360640Editorial Board - DrRichSwier.comhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngEditorial Board - DrRichSwier.com2026-09-06 11:03:092026-09-06 11:05:02“Daniel” — The Film that Shocked the World by Unraveling the Scriptures
Often called the “indispensable man” of America, one thing is for certain: the United States as we know it today would not be the same without the influence of George Washington. Some consider the Founding Father to be one of the greatest to ever live, “but not as great as Jesus Christ, for absolute certain,” commented Washington scholar Peter Lillback on “Washington Watch” last week. And while Washington was only a mere mortal, his greatness is grounded in his remarkable faith in God.
“As we celebrate America’s historic 250th anniversary, it’s very important for us to remember our nation’s Christian roots and the faith of our Founding Fathers,” explained “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice. “George Washington was a leader, obviously, during the American Revolution and our nation’s first president. And he was known for his life of prayer and known for drawing inspiration from Scripture.”
But in the increasingly secularized world of academia, some have claimed that our nation’s first president was a deist. “The first truth that we need to realize is that Washington grew up in a biblically literate culture,” Lillback remarked. “Our research into Washington shows that he knew the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. He quotes it over 200 times in different ways, through reference or through quotes, through allusions, [and] biblical language.”
Lillback, president emeritus at Westminster Theological Seminary as well as the author of “George Washington’s Sacred Fire,” has done extensive study on how Washington’s faith influenced both his private and public life. Lillback shared that a letter Washington penned about the Battle of the Monongahela proves the general’s Christian faith.
“[In the letter] he says, ‘Four bullet holes in my coat. Two horses shot out from under me.’ He was the only officer that was not wounded or killed in that battle. And he wrote home and said, ‘By a miracle of providence I have been spared.’ He came to love the doctrine of providence by experience,” Lillback asserted.
“He ends up using that word in his writings some 270-plus times. He believed that God was active in history. That’s why it’s impossible to identify him as a deist, because a deist believes that God is not active in history. George Washington believed that God was active in history and spared him in what was really a massacre.”
Washington also advocated for the army to have chaplains while he was active in the military during the 18th century. Lillback explained that the position of the chaplain was of the utmost importance to Washington when he was the leader of the army. In British military tradition, the ranking officer was a chaplain, Lillback added, which means that Washington was a chaplain himself before he joined the American army, and one with a vibrant prayer life.
“You can find at least 100 prayers that he wrote in his own hand. Sometimes they’re only a sentence long,” Lillback described. “It was known, in fact, by the enemy of the American army, the British newspapers, when they described Washington’s camp. They say it is known that every day in his tent he has prayers. So he would use the Book of Common Prayer and lead his men in prayer. He would pray with his chaplains. He prayed all the time. That’s the evidence.”
While at the Valley Forge encampment, Washington told his men that he wanted them to be Christian soldiers, Lillback went on. “‘Above all the things you’re seeking, the honor and glory of being a soldier, seek the greatest of all, the greatest honor of being a Christian,’” Lillback explained he encouraged them. “He says we must imitate the divine author of our blessed religion if we ever hope to be a happy nation. That spirit carries with him as he becomes the president.”
Despite Washington’s lack of higher education, he oversaw the Constitutional Convention, in which the evidence of his spiritual wisdom can be observed, said Lillback. Washington knew we were a selfish and sinful people.
Lillback commented that the most Christian thing in the Constitution is the creation of separated powers. “There’s multiple checks and balances because people are sinful. … [The Founders] were saying, ‘We’re setting up a new empire, but it’s in the midst of another empire that’s been around for 1787 years,’ and he is our Lord. They recognized that they were in the Christian era, following Christian truth. And the check and balance of power reflects that Federalist Paper principle that human beings are sinful and their power must be checked.”
While there are some scholars who teach that Washington was a deist, we must take his own words as truth; the man proclaimed to be a believer. “The evidence is everywhere that he was a Christian. In his context, in his family, in his own words,” Lillback underscored. “I think that trumps anything any scholar, any propagandist of a secular American can foist upon us.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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A Jewish man named Daniel hosted a prayer meeting in his house, but local authorities didn’t like it. They forbade the prayer meeting from happening. They sent police to watch his house. His neighbors didn’t like his Jewish beliefs either, so they joined the authorities in snooping on him. This may sound like the persecution of the Old Testament prophet, who nearly became lion food under a draconian law in the ancient dictatorship of the Persian Empire. But it actually describes the experience of Daniel Grand, a Jewish resident in post-COVID Ohio.
In January 2021, while much of the country still groaned under ineffectual mask mandates, Grand, an orthodox Jew, tried to start a Sabbath prayer meeting in his home in affluent University Heights, a Cleveland suburb. The local authorities responded with a cease-and-desist letter, followed by police cruisers patrolling his street to ensure the order was followed.
The mayor even encouraged neighbors to watch the Grand home to see whether Jews were gathering inside, and one obliged by aiming a surveillance camera at his house. “City officials demanded architectural drawings of his home, issued property citations, withheld his certificate of occupancy, and, at times, refused to collect his trash,” summarized American Enterprise Institute fellow Edward Blum and Mattathias Project cofounder Rabbi Cary Kozberg.
At a commission meeting, one neighbor indiscreetly revealed the true reason for opposing Grand’s prayer meeting, saying, “I am not Jewish, and I do not want our neighborhood labeled as Jewish.”
Why would the prayer meeting make the neighborhood seem Jewish? Because orthodox Jews don’t drive on Saturday, all the attendees would walk to Grand’s house. But this fact simply makes it less of a nuisance; the gathering would feature no additional traffic, parking, or noise to disturb the residential repose of the neighborhood.
It’s hard to ignore the overt parallels between the experiences of Daniel Grand and Daniel the prophet. In the reign of Darius, Persian officials who were jealous at Daniel’s success “sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel” but concluded, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God” (Daniel 6:4-5). So, they contrived a law banning prayer (6:7) and conspired to find Daniel in the act of praying (6:11) in his own house (6:10)! Those officials famously threw Daniel to the lions (6:16), but God protected him (6:22).
Fortunately, the city of University Heights has no lion’s den for insubordinate Jews. Under the Eighth Amendment, anti-Semitic local officials may only pursue their vendettas with pettiness. (Refusing to collect his trash, really?)
Furthermore, in America, victims like Daniel Grand may challenge unjust actions against them in a court of law, whereas there was no appeal from the law of the Medes and Persians (Daniel 6:12). “Grand’s complaint alleges that the city has enforced its permit requirement against home gatherings of Orthodox Jews and no one else — poker and bridge games, book clubs, game nights, and sorority and fraternity gatherings were never targeted for enforcement,” write Blum and Kozberg. “And treating religious activities worse than secular activities is something that the Constitution does not tolerate.”
However, Grand already lost twice, both at the district level and before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Sixth Circuit ruled that Grand’s case was not “ripe” because the city had not issued a final administrative ruling against him.
Grand appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear the case (Grand v. City of University Heights, Ohio) in its upcoming term. Specifically, the court will decide whether “a credible government threat that deters the exercise of fundamental rights … is displaced by” the administrative “finality requirement.” In other words, in cases with clear evidence of government hostility to religion, must a person wait until receiving a final “no” from that governmental entity before bringing a federal lawsuit?
If the court decides that a finality agreement is required, the danger is that local governments could simply drown residents in delays and red tape, so that their religious discrimination complaints can never receive a court hearing.
“A right that cannot be vindicated until the government that violated it finishes its paperwork is mere toleration (if not intolerance), not liberty,” Blum and Kozberg argue.
But the U.S. Constitution is (or should be) better than that, as President George Washington declared in an August 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation,” Washington wrote. “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”
“The Government of the United States,” Washington continued, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” and it “requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”
Peaceable assembly in a private home for purposes of prayer is practically the best possible behavior for a citizen, and University Heights, Ohio allegedly tried to punish Daniel Grand for trying it. Then again, Daniel the prophet was also a model subject, and he was thrown to the lions.
Thus, the Jews in exile have always been persecuted. God sent an angel to close the lions’ mouths, and Daniel’s opponents faced the fate they hoped to inflict on him. In the case of Daniel Grand, God may use the Supreme Court to play the same protective, reversing role.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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Just in time for the one-year anniversary of the murder of evangelist and Christian activist Charlie Kirk, one of the left’s leading influencers mocked him.
Islamist and socialist influencer Hasan Piker recently made fun of Kirk and his death in front of an international audience, drawing “cheers and laughter from his audience.” Piker has the ear of DSA senatorial candidate for Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.
These are cynical days. As we all remember, Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood on a college campus in Utah before the watching world on September 10, 2025.
About a year before his murder, I was privileged to interview him for Christian radio. We were discussing his anti-Woke book, entitled, Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West. The purpose of this piece, a year after his death, is to let Charlie speak from the grave.
In that interview, Charlie warned us about some of the dangerous forces in our society that threaten our very existence, if they continue to rise.
I asked Charlie, “Why should the woke control our lives, limit our destiny, and deny us our God-given liberties?”
He responded, “Well, they shouldn’t, and that’s what the book is all about. It’s about trying to reclaim our position in this country and to restore self-government. The woke, I believe, is the demonic. I believe it comes from a very dark place. The woke is a mixture of postmodernism, of nihilism, of deconstructionism all mixed together. The woke have taken control over almost every single major institution in this country.”
Kirk went on, “And it’s going to require an effort of people of all different sorts of backgrounds, but especially people of faith to rise up, to understand the enemy, and to fight for liberty, and to fight for righteousness….We need to fight in every way we possibly can, and this book lays out the path forward.”
I asked him if he wanted to define woke further than what he had just said. Charlie responded, “Well, the best way I could define it is it’s a group and an ideology that complains until they control. So they complain about certain injustices, inequities, inequalities until they control institutions.”
I asked him to contrast the views of the founding fathers—who said our rights come from God—with today’s woke crowd.
Charlie said, “The idea of inalienable rights is totally at odds with the woke. You see, they don’t believe in a God. They don’t believe in the eternal and transcendent purpose now. Instead, they believe that there is no purpose. There is no meaning. And again, the woke is just a filler term for what we have been fighting on the spiritual domain for the last couple-thousands of years. And the enemy comes to lie, steal, cheat, and destroy. But Jesus has come to give life and life more abundantly, as it says in John 10:10.”
Question. Have things gotten better or worse since Charlie said the following in our interview? “And if pastors and Christians start to rise up and speak out more, we can be ultimately successful. But right now it seems the church is largely indifferent towards the rise of Marxism in the West” [emphasis mine].
He added, “I call on Christians to start to really rise up and to start to understand the stakes in front of us. It’s easy to just issue forth negative criticism or complaints. It’s going to be the question of whether or not we do something constructive and whether or not we combine our forces together to fight for goodness, truth, and beauty.”
Charlie also addressed the source of our liberty—God. He said, “Liberty is not man’s idea. It is God’s idea. And that is a very important thing, that God wants us to be free. In the first statement of the Ten Commandments, God says, ‘I’m the Lord your God, who delivered you out of the house of bondage in Egypt’ [Exodus 20:2]. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’[2 Corinthians 3:17]. In Leviticus 25:10, the Lord says—and it’s on the Liberty Bell: ‘Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.’ And so it is God’s heart for us to be free. The woke do not want us to be free. They want us to be controlled and afraid. And so we need to get the message out.”
I’m confident that if Charlie were alive today, he would warn us that much more about the rise of the woke Marxists in America and radical Islamists today, like those who mocked the anniversary of his murder. Thankfully, his widow, Ericka, assistant Andrew Kolvet, and others are continuing the vital work he started at Turning Point USA.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/CHARLIE-KIRK-SPEAKS-ON-MARXISM.jpg360640Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Newcombe, D. Min.2026-09-02 11:31:582026-09-02 11:33:25Charlie Kirk Speaks from the Grave
Many Jewish democrat liberals would probably only feel rain if spat upon by antisemitic progressives.
The undeniable rise of vulgar antisemitism on the left and in the Democratic Party is a reality that has caused many liberal American Jews to finally take notice, though some go to great lengths to rationalize it as a reaction to President Trump and ignore the foundational influence of Jew-hatred in progressive ideology. Self-delusion is a powerful tool for maintaining political dogmas.
Unlike Jewish members of the British Labour Party who staged a protest exodus when antisemitism roiled their ranks under leader Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Democrats cannot seem to muster the same resolve to chastise their own establishment, despite its embrace of radicals and socialists whose ideologies are steeped in hatred of Jews and Israel. Indeed, some even justify supporting radical candidates for the sake of party unity, as did those national Democratic leaders who endorsed Abdul El-Sayed — an anti-Israel Senatorial candidate — after he won the Michigan primary.
Only Alan Dershowitz seemed to get it right when he resigned his membership and described the Democrats as “the most anti-Israel, most anti-Semitic, most pro-terrorist, most anti-American party in modern American history.” He was so alienated over the Democrats’ embrace of radicalism that he registered Republican for the first time in his life.
In contrast, many Jewish liberals would probably only feel rain if spat upon by antisemitic progressives.
This point was underscored in a recent discussion with a friend who was outraged at the increase in Jew-hatred across the American political, cultural, and academic landscape, but felt compelled to blame Trump. While she conceded that neither Trump nor conservatives hold any sway over the academic establishment, Democratic party, or legacy media, she theorized that they are emboldened in their Jew-hatred because of Trump’s supposed antisemitism.
I pointed out the logical disconnect between statement and fact by challenging her to provide specific examples. She could not. And when I mentioned the Trump family’s decades-long charitable relationships with assorted Jewish institutions, she argued they were politically motivated – although these associations long predated Trump’s entry into politics.
Trump’s father, Fred, for example, donated land and funds for construction of the orthodox Beach Haven Jewish Center. He also contributed to Long Island Jewish Medical Center and numerous Jewish charities and was a longtime booster for Israel Bonds. Given the father’s longstanding support for Jewish causes and the State of Israel, it should not be surprising that the son would continue the family tradition, supporting among other institutions Beit El Yeshiva in Israel, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Jewish National Fund, and some Chabad centers in the United States.
I then subtly goaded my friend by asking whether, despite these connections, prejudice could be inferred from earlier associations with bigoted organizations and personalities, to which she replied “of course.” Thinking I had thrown her a lifeline, she asserted that relationships with antisemitic churches or anti-Israel zealots could clearly indicate Jew-hatred. I then informed her that Trump had no such associations, but Barack Obama did – for example, his twenty-year membership in the church of Jeremiah Wright (a well-known radical pastor criticized for antisemitic rhetoric and falsely accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing) and his validation of Israel-haters like Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, in whom he expressed personal pride.
If those criteria are suggestive of antisemitism, I asked, how could she justify voting for Obama twice, especially given his tendency to downplay hostility against Jews or falsely equate it with “Islamophobia,” and his failure to acknowledge the Jew-hatred that permeated his progressive base (and perhaps correlated with the more than seven-thousand antisemitic incidents and hate-crimes reported during his presidency)?
My friend had no comeback, so she declared our debate a stalemate — though such can only occur when neither side has a winning argument. Our colloquy ended, however, simply because she was confounded by facts she did not like but could not refute. That’s not a stalemate. I told her she is free to dislike Donald Trump for any reason or none at all – he certainly can be polarizing and is given to dramatic hyperbole. But faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she could not justify her dislike based on nonexistent antisemitism. Neither could she prove her thesis that liberal antisemitism is stimulated by Trump’s supposed hatred of Jews, considering his multigenerational history of philosemitism and support for the Jewish state.
Part of her problem — and in fact the problem of many on both left and right — is the inability to define Jew-hatred or recognize its uniqueness. Antisemitism is referred to as the “world’s oldest hatred” because of its breadth, scope, and antiquity; and though not exclusive to right or left, religious or secular, its meaning is shaped by multifarious ideological orientations.
Indeed, doctrinal antisemitism can be found in the scriptures of other so-called Abrahamic religions because of their foundational need to delegitimize the people and faith they claim to supersede. Jews are demonized throughout Christian scripture, for example, which depicts them as deceitful spawn of the devil (e.g., John 8:44-47), bloodthirsty murderers of Jesus and the Prophets (e.g., Matthew 23:31-33; 1 Thessalonians 2), bearers of hereditary blood guilt (e.g., Matthew 27:25), and denizens of “the synagogue of Satan.” (Revelation, 2:9; 3:9.)
And despite liberal claims of Muslim tolerance, Jews are likewise villainized in the Quran, which accuses the Jews of perverting their own scripture (e.g., Sura 3:71; 4:46), and Hadith, which contains eschatological passages foretelling the Jews’ end-times annihilation (Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 4, Book 56, No. 791). Muslim scripture also contains multiple references concerning the use of hudnas (false treaties) to facilitate belligerent conquest over non-Muslims.
Though progressives may be familiar with anti-Jewish themes throughout Christian literature, they tend to describe Islam as “a religion of peace.” However, they do so not because they understand the Quran (most have not read it) or the lengthy history of anti-Jewish persecution under Islam. Rather, progressives feel political kinship, particularly with Islamists who share their rejection of western values — even though their endorsement of feminism, gay rights, and trans advocacy would subject them to discrimination or death under Sharia law.
Jewish conservatives often downplay Christian hatred or ambivalence regarding Jews to avoid scuttling political alliances, particularly “friendship evangelism,” which uses affinity for Jews and Israel as subterfuge to proselytize. While evangelicals claim they do so out of love, they are guided by the belief that Jews are spiritually doomed unless “saved” by Christian doctrines that, in truth, are pagan in origin and opposed by Torah law. Moreover, their actions reflect profound ignorance of Tanakh and disrespect for the Jewish spirit. Yet, some conservatives turn a blind eye to preserve Gentile support for Israel, which may be an important policy, but should be judged with open eyes.
This can lead to uncomfortable situations, however, like one that occurred during a recent Christian Zionist conference featuring multiple speakers, including a “messianic Jewish” influencer whose presence offended Jewish guests and prompted some to walk out. When a rabbi explained to the organizers that “messianic Judaism” is not Judaism at all, but rather a deceptive Christian movement created by missionaries to evangelize Jews through the dissimulative use of misappropriated cultural symbols and customs, they could not satisfactorily explain the motivation for inviting this presenter in the first place.
Clearly, anti-Judaism is not always physically violent; sometimes it presents surreptitiously as goodwill to seduce Jews away from the faith of their ancestors.
Whereas doctrinal Jew-hatred can be expressed both physically and spiritually, the root cause is not always religion. It can arise from ethnic and economic stereotypes and tensions, folk myth, racial presumptions, or xenophobia, as well as secular intellectualism. Quite famously, Voltaire attacked the Jews’ religion and culture, Immanuel Kant depicted them as a “nation of cheaters,” Schopenhauer derided their moral values, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain demonized them as racial parasites (well before Hitler).
Hatred of Jews is so widespread and disparate that it would seem to be supernatural. And in fact, this is what Biblical prophecy suggests, as stated in the Torah: “The Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other…and among those nations, you will not be calm, nor will your foot find rest. There, the Lord will give you a trembling heart, dashed hopes, and a depressed soul.” (Sefer Devarim, 28:64-65.) However, the Tanakh in Nevi’im also prophesies the Jews’ collective redemption and integral role as a “light to the nations” during the messianic era. (Sefer Yeshayahu, 49:6.)
Perhaps what Jewish liberals fail to understand is the paradigmatic diffuseness of antisemitism and that no ideology or culture is singularly responsible for it or immune to it. Before they blame their political opponents for spewing hatred, they should hold a mirror to their own worldview and acknowledge that moral impurity knows no partisan bounds; and then they should rediscover the beauty and relevance of Tanakh.
Life is a gift from God. As a grandfather, some of my fondest memories recently come from time spent with my grandchildren. But there are some in our society who seem to be gleeful about killing babies up to the moment of birth, through abortion.
Case in point. Recently, the governor of Massachusetts signed the most radical abortion bill imaginable. Killing babies in the womb, even up to the very moment of birth. That’s infanticide. And the ladies surrounding the governor signing this bill were all smiles and joy, as if they were saying, “Isn’t this wonderful?”
In his End of Day report (8/20/26), Gary Bauer describes the signing ceremony this way: “There was a big celebration in the office of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey recently. Over a dozen very happy ladies surrounded her desk at a bill-signing ceremony. Sadly, they were celebrating the deaths of innocent babies.”
There wasn’t even a hint that there might be anything wrong with what Healey was signing into law. Irony of ironies. The governor’s action does not jibe well with the official governing document of her state.
One of the oldest constitutions in the world still operating is that of Massachusetts, dating back to 1780, seven years before our national constitution was written. Theoretically, legislation from that state should comport at least with the spirit of that document.
John Adams was the chief author of the Bay State’s governing document, which includes these words: “It is the duty of the people, therefore, in framing a constitution of government, to provide for an equitable mode of making laws, as well as for an impartial interpretation, and a faithful execution of them; that every man may, at all times, find his security in them.”
“Security”?—except for those who are unborn.
Our later second president continues: “We, therefore, the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the great Legislator of the universe, in affording us, in the course of His providence, an opportunity, deliberately and peaceably, without fraud, violence or surprise, of entering into an original, explicit, and solemn compact with each other.”
So, with God’s help, we the people of this state are engaging in a “solemn compact” together. No “violence” —except for ripping out the unwanted baby in the womb?
Article I says: “All men are born free and equal.” But to Healey and company, they have to be born in the first place. The unborn or preborn seem to have zero rights there now.
Article II states: “It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe…in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience.”
Conscience rights and our duties to God are important here in this state. Well, not really these days, with this barbaric new law of abortion up to the moment of birth.
The Adams document goes on to say how, under God, the citizens are endowed to be their own rulers.
And Article VII notes, “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”
The good? The protection? The safety? The prosperity and happiness? Only those born need apply.
Why all these quotes from the Massachusetts Constitution? Because, theoretically, its principles should have something to do with the legislation signed into law. But apparently not these days.
Later, when he was our second president, John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
The ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah declared, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” Those 2700-year-old words still apply. Surely, they’re calling abortion good, not bad.
Meanwhile, some of the most vociferous voices against abortion come from those who used to be promoters of it. That includes the late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a pioneer of the pro-abortion movement. But he came to have a change of heart when he realized the humanity of the unborn.
A co-founder of NARAL, he became aghast at the immorality he helped unleash—and that was already 40 years ago (with tens of millions of abortions in America since). In his book, The Abortion Papers (1983), Nathanson wrote, “I believe that an America which permits a junta of moral thugs to foist an evil of incalculable dimensions upon it, and continues to permit that evil to flower, creates for itself a deadly legacy: a millennium of shame.”
That shame continues in the recent “celebration” in the Massachusetts governor’s office.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Massachusetts-Gov.-Maura-Healey.jpg360640Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Newcombe, D. Min.2026-08-26 16:12:102026-08-29 04:37:05Calling Evil Good
