Eight of the Top Ten Countries that are Persecutors of Christians are Majority-Muslim

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How strange! Why might this be? Could it have something to do with these teachings of Islam?

Jesus is not the Son of God and belief in the Trinity is “excess”: “O people of the book, do not exaggerate in your religion or say anything about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and his word that he conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from him. So believe in Allah and his messengers, and do not say Three, Stop, it is better for you. Allah is only one God. It is far removed from his transcendent majesty that he should have a son. Everything that is in the heavens and everything that is on the earth is his. And Allah is sufficient as defender.” — Qur’an 4:171

And: “It is not fitting for Allah that he should take to himself a son. Glory be to him, when he decrees a thing, he says to it only, Be, and it is.” — Qur’an 19:35

Jesus was not crucified: “And because of their saying, We killed the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the messenger of Allah, they did not kill him nor crucify him, but it seemed so to them, and indeed, those who disagree about this are in doubt about it, they have no knowledge of it except pursuit of a supposition, they did not kill him for certain.” — Qur’an 4:157

Those who believe in the divinity of Christ are unbelievers: “They indeed have disbelieved who say, Indeed, Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say, Who then can do anything against Allah, if he had willed to destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone on earth? To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. He creates what he wills. And Allah is able to do all things.” — Qur’an 5:17 (cf. 5:72)

Christians have forgotten part of the divine revelations they received: “And with those who say: Indeed, we are Christians, we made a covenant, but they forgot a part of what they were reminded about. Therefore we have stirred up enmity and hatred among them until the day of resurrection, when Allah will inform them of their handiwork.” — Qur’an 5:14

Those who believe that Jesus is God’s Son are accursed: “And the Jews say, Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say, The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the statements of those who disbelieved before. May Allah curse them. How perverse they are.” — Qur’an 9:30

Christians who do not accept Muhammad and the Qur’an are the most vile of created beings: “Indeed, the unbelievers among the people of the book and the idolaters will remain in the fire of Gehenna. They are the most vile of created beings.” — Qur’an 98:6

Muslims must fight against and subjugate Christians: “Fight against those do not believe in Allah or the last day, and do not forbid what Allah and his messenger have forbidden, and do not follow the religion of truth, even if they are among the people of the book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” — Qur’an 9:29

Also, a hadith has Muhammad predicting that Jesus will return at the end of the world and break the cross, as it is an insult to Allah’s power to say that he would have allowed one of his prophets to be crucified: “Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, son of Mary [Jesus] will shortly descend amongst you people [Muslims] as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the pig and abolish the Jizya [a tax taken from the non-Muslims, who are in the protection, of the Muslim government]. Then there will be abundance of money and nobody will accept charitable gifts.’” — Bukhari 3.34.425

Iran ranked eighth hardest country to be Christian

Article 18, January 18, 2023:

Iran has risen back to eighth place on an annual list of the countries where it is hardest to practise the Christian faith.

This marks a return to Iran’s 2021 ranking on the World Watch List, which is produced by Christian charity Open Doors International, after a year in ninth place.

For the past five years, Iran has oscillated between eighth and ninth place on the list.

This year, Iran has moved back above Afghanistan, which last year topped the list, even ahead of perennial “winner” North Korea.

The other countries in the top 10 are Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sudan.

Iran’s rise by one point in Open Doors’ scoring system was “mainly caused by an increase in reported violent incidents”, said the charity, “including an abduction”.

“The outlook for Iranian Christians, in particular converts from Islam to Christianity, is by no means improving,” Open Doors said….

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Hanoi Jane Fonda: ‘There’d Be No Climate Crisis if It Wasn’t For Racism’

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This week on NBC’s The Kelly Clarkson Show, actress/activist/Vietnam-era traitor Jane Fonda has declared that the current “climate crisis” is a result of racism, because “everything’s connected.”

“Well, you know, you can take anything -– sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, whatever, the war, and if you really get into it, and study it and learn about it and the history of it and — everything’s connected. There’d be no climate crisis if it wasn’t for racism,” she said.

Asked to elaborate, Fonda replied, “Where would they put the shit? Where would they put the poison and the pollution? They’re not gonna put it in Bel Air. They’ve got to find some place where poor people or indigenous people or people of color are living. Put it there. They can’t fight back. And that’s why a big part of the climate movement now has to do with climate justice.”

This is a ridiculous simplification of the issue and doesn’t address where the vast majority of pollution comes from (it doesn’t come from “shit” put in black neighborhoods), but it’s par for the course for climate activists.

This isn’t the first time Hanoi Jane has tried to make bad weather a social justice issue. In a December appearance on MSNBC’s The Beat, she claimed — again without evidence — that racist and misogynistic “mindsets” are causing the “climate crisis.”

Jane Fonda

147 Known Connections

Supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement

In late May 2020, while scores of American cities were being ravaged by violent Black Lives Matter– and Antifa-led riots in the aftermath of the infamous police-involved death of a black Minneapolis man named George Floyd, Fonda claimed that most of the protests were non-violent. “I think it’s important for us to recognize that the media cameras may be focused on the breaking of windows and the burnings and the fires, but the vast majority of people at least in the cities where I talked to people and from what I have seen on tv, it’s non-violent,” she told CNN’s Don Lemon on May 31. “These are people who are white. They are Latino. They are old. They are young. They are in wheelchairs, they have children with them. They have dogs with them. And it’s organized. Black Lives Matter, Color of Change, they don’t want violence. I don’t know who the people are that are doing the violence, but I think what matters is that more and more white people are getting it.”

To learn more abut Jane Fonda, click here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Asleep at the Wheel’: DeSantis Highlights Justice Department’s Abortion Double Standard

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It’s no secret that the Biden Justice Department appears to be highly politicized—and now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is underscoring that.

Asked Thursday about the indictment this week of two pro-abortion activists in Florida on charges of spray-painting threats on the exterior of a pregnancy resource center, DeSantis said he was “surprised” the case had moved forward since “the Department of Justice had not been willing to hold those types of perpetrators accountable.”

“Meanwhile, on the other side, you could have a pro-life advocate [with] a picket sign and they’re going to treat him like he’s some hardened criminal,” the Republican governor added, saying there is a “massive imbalance” in how pro-life and pro-abortion activists are treated by federal law enforcement.

The indictments were a “step in the right direction,” DeSantis said, noting that there should be accountability for those trying “to intimidate these crisis pregnancy centers.”

The governor called on the Justice Department to change its approach.

“The DOJ has been asleep at the wheel on this for a long time,” DeSantis said. “So I’m glad to see it, I am surprised to see it. But they need to do a lot more.”

The facts back up DeSantis’ take.

Since the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last May, an astonishing 79 pregnancy resource centers and pro-life organizations have been vandalized or attacked, according to a CatholicVote tracker.

Yet, despite these scores of attacks, only two pro-abortion activists appear to have been indicted. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request from The Daily Signal asking whether any additional arrests were made in attacks on pro-life organizations or pregnancy resource centers.

Even a pregnancy resource center a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol Building and about two miles from the Justice Department wasn’t spared: In June, a vandal or vandals doused the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center’s front door in red paint and painted the words “Jane Says Revenge”—a reference to the domestic terrorist group Jane’s Revenge—on the exterior of the center.

Other pregnancy resource centers and pro-life organizations have been subjected to even more violent attacks. CompassCare Pregnancy Services, near Buffalo, New York, was firebombed June 7. Life Choices, a pregnancy resource center in Colorado, was firebombed in June, as was Wisconsin Family Action, a pro-life organization.

Susan Campbell, director of the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center in Lynchburg, Virginia, described a June 25 attack on the center in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“They had taken crowbars to almost all of our windows, two of our doors, and just shattered all of the glass,” Campbell said. “They had spray-painted [the shapes of] coat hangers on the sidewalks, on the brick facing of the buildings, and [wrote] political things like ‘Vote blue.’”

“In red on the stamped concrete, it read ‘If abortion ain’t safe, you ain’t safe,’” she added.

In stark contrast, the Justice Department took action on several pro-lifers accused of violating the FACE Act, a law that is supposed to apply to both abortion clinics and pregnancy centers.

In March, the Justice Department announced the indictment of nine people for violating the FACE Act. In September, the FBI arrested a pro-life dad of 11, Mark Houck, for allegedly pushing a pro-abortion activist who he said was harassing his son. According to Houck’s attorney, Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, “20-plus heavily armed federal agents with shields and long guns” came to the Houck home in Pennsylvania to arrest him.

In October, the Justice Department announced the indictment of 11 pro-life activists in Tennessee on charges of violating the FACE Act. Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee, told The Daily Signal that when he was arrested, the FBI came to his home with “guns pointed at the door.”

“When I opened the door and saw the guns pointed at me, I asked them what they wanted, who they were looking for, and they said they wanted me,” Vaughn said.

Nor should the DOJ’s actions come as a surprise.

My colleague Mary Margaret Olohan reported in December that a top DOJ official, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, “described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a ‘devastating blow to women throughout the country’ that took away ‘the constitutional right to abortion’ and increased ‘the urgency’ of the DOJ’s work—including the ‘enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.’”

The Justice Department should be enforcing the law, not making politically driven decisions about what cases to prioritize and which to ignore.

DeSantis is right to call out the Justice Department. Let’s hope that attacked and vandalized pregnancy resource centers get justice sooner rather than later.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

AUTHOR

Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko is editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. Send an email to Katrina. .

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Policeman’s Resignation Shows the Fallout over Marriage Has Begun

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Last week, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis (N.C.) bragged to The Washington Post that he doesn’t “vote for anything” that he thinks “will have a serious political consequence.” They were glib words for a man who’d just put his name behind a bill rewriting marriage for every American. Like the 11 other Republican senators whose moral courage collapsed before the nation’s eyes, Senator Tillis would have you believe there’s no fallout from his vote for same-sex marriage. But a young Georgia policeman who’s out of a job over his beliefs would beg to disagree.

“Christians should not be fearful of this legislation,” Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) wrote in an op-ed for the Indy Star. The so-called Respect for Marriage Act, he insisted, offers “far more in the way of religious liberty protections than [we have now].” Tell that to Jacob Kersey, who was a 19-year-old rookie of the Port Wentworth Police Department, until his supervisors decided his views on marriage were too “offensive.” Try telling Jacob that Christians don’t need to worry that these laws “will be used as a weapon to bludgeon them for their beliefs,” as Senator Young claimed, because this young man — like every American with a bullseye on their backs — won’t believe it.

Barely a month after Joe Biden signed his name to the law upending marriage in all 50 states, every excuse these 12 Republicans made is turning out to be exactly what conservatives warned they were — lies. “… [W]e have just improved on religious liberty protections … across the United States,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said, despite every legal argument to the contrary. Now, these dozen senators are making prophets out of conservatives, who warned that abandoning marriage would only usher in a new wave of oppression.

For Kersey, that oppression was swift, coming less than 24 hours after a Facebook post he made on his personal account. “God designed marriage,” he wrote January 2. “Marriage refers to Christ and the church,” he explained in reference to in Ephesians 5. “That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.”

The next day, the Daily Signal reported, Kersey’s supervisor called to tell him that someone had complained about the message. Take it down, he was told. Jacob refused. For that, he was hauled into a meeting with three superiors, Major Lee Sherrod, Captain Nathan Jentzen, and Police Chief Matt Libby, and ordered to “turn in everything he had that belonged to the city.” While people are entitled to their own views, Libby said, talking about natural marriage is the same as using a racial slur. It’s like “saying the N-word or ‘F— all those homosexuals,’” the chief insisted.

Despite the promise they saw in him as a police officer, the three men agreed Kersey would have to be placed on administrative leave while the city considered whether his job could be salvaged.

A week later, Kersey was given a choice: keep your opinions off social media or turn in your badge. If he wanted to post Scripture, fine. But if he shared anything else that offended someone, he could be fired. Does that sound like “a good step forward for religious freedom” to you? Is that what Todd Young meant when he talked about showing “diverse beliefs proper respect?” Or how Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) defines “tolerance?”

A few sleepless nights later, Jacob resigned. “I didn’t believe that my department had my back, and I didn’t really want to go back and play that game and just wait to be fired, because I know it would happen at some point,” he told “Washington Watch” Thursday. “The leadership at that police department claims to be Christian. But I just don’t understand why they would say that an outspoken Christian is the same thing as a racist. It’s just absolutely ludicrous to try to equate me to [someone] who hates people based off the color of their skin, because I believe in God’s design for marriage.”

“I really enjoyed being a police officer,” Kersey admitted. “And that was a huge part of my identity at a young age. And I look forward to doing that for a long time. But, you know, you have to follow when Jesus calls.” As Jacob said, “We really, really have to understand that this isn’t all just a big political game. This is a spiritual battle that’s going on right now. … And Christ is King — and if we’re believers and we really believe that, then we should be fighting for His comprehensive rule overall, especially in our hearts, and we should stand for Him and His word.”

In the meantime, Jacob could lose his whole career because 12 grown senators couldn’t muster the courage he’s shown at 19. He is the fallout they denied, the collateral damage of a decision that will haunt our country for generations. While these men and women hold up their law’s non-existent protections as a shield from criticism, know that very real Americans have no defense. No shelter for the attacks that will come.

When we asked Jacob what he would say to the 51 Republicans who turned their backs on him and millions of other Americans, he grew serious. “My decision to stand up for biblical truth goes back to the Bible in Genesis 3. I see the serpent whispering in the ear of Eve. And Adam, who knows very well what God has said, stood passively by and let sin happen. And I think there are going to be consequences for those who stand idly by and watch the serpent slither around and ignore God. If you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to have to decide — are you going to be like Adam? And what are the consequences for your action?”

Today, the consequences are exactly what we warned: the Left and those trying to curry favor with the intolerant mob are now empowered with the force of government to crush anyone who lives out their biblical faith. The retort of the 12 Republicans will likely be that the action against Jacob was unlawful, and he would have a good chance of prevailing in court. But why should a 19-year-old have to go to court to defend the teaching of the Bible in order to be a police officer? While it’s true he could win that challenge, the real effect is upon those watching.

“You can see exactly what they’re doing,” Dr. Albert Mohler warned when the votes were imminent. “They’re coming for us.”

And Jacob Kersey is just the beginning.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. 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.

GENESIS TWELVE 1-3: Is God’s Court Now in Session?

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Genesis 12:1-3: Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Shortly after God recreated the earth (Genesis 1 and 2), His created man disobeyed Him and brought a curse from God on all mankind, and the earth, that would have a lasting effect on every person who would ever be born. Even though man and the earth were cursed, men continued to reproduce and the earth continued to function, albeit in a way that was much less pleasant than God’s original plan. God’s action as a result of man’s disobedience was a curse and a judgment, but it was NOT a show of God’s wrath.

God’s plan for mankind has always been to provide a peaceful environment and judgments against the actions of men that violate the law are absolutely necessary for society to function in an atmosphere of peace without chaos.

Please do not confuse God’s Judgment with God’s Wrath. A short period of time of God’s judgment is NOT the same as the wrath of God that is displayed in the Book of Revelation among other scriptures. Judgment, sometimes instant, sometime incremental, is meant to bring change in behavior. Wrath, on the other hand is a means of utterly destroying the rebellion that causes sin to manifest. Through appeals and repentance, judgment can be stopped and reversed, sometimes with a lessened ability to thrive in life, but there is NO reversal, no escaping from, God’s wrath.

Throughout the ages, God has stepped into the realm of time and humanity and judged men’s actions that, had they NOT been judged and stopped, would have seriously interfered with God’s plan for humanity.

Human Justice

A courtroom is a place where justice is sought and judgment is meted out. Anyone who has ever been in a courtroom as a spectator, or as a member of a jury called to hear testimony and decide a case against a person accused of wrongdoing, is aware that the ‘full weight and authority’ of that court is behind the proceedings as well as the final judgment/decision of the case. That authority, granted by the laws of the land in which the court is established, has the power to enforce the sentence levied against the accused and will use that power to ensure the sentence is carried out.

Here in the US, courts are established and function on local, state and federal levels, and they conduct their business according to the laws of the entity which has the ‘jurisdiction’ to start indictment procedures, levy charges, and conduct trials in order to enforce the laws of that entity.

The decisions of judges and juries are, in most cases, subject to appeals rights that are granted by law to those convicted of criminal activity.

God’s Blessing and Cursing

I doubt there are few true believers who cannot quote Genesis 12:1-3, but how many are aware of the seriousness of God’s words in those three verses?  The King James version says there is a ‘blessing for blessing’ and ‘curse for curse’ action involved based on how a person, or a nation, treats the Jews, but it goes much deeper than that.  Some have called it a ‘like for like’ blessing and curse, but a deeper look into the meaning of the words speaks much more.

The KJV says: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse 1 him that curseth 2 thee:,

1 curse , (arar, Strong’s 779, pronounced aw-rar’) meaning to execrate (declare to be worthless or abhorrent, to loathe), and to bitterly curse (to declare to be loathed, excommunicated/cut off and  utterly damned/destroyed).

2 curseth (qalal, Strong’s 7043, pronounced kaw-lal’), meaning to revile, to show contempt for (the feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base or worthless, to scorn, to insult, to disrespect.

As you can see, the words translated ‘curse’ (God’s action against those who curse Abraham/Israel), and ‘curseth’ (man’s action towards Abraham), in Genesis 12:3 are two distinctly different Hebrew words with similar yet somewhat different meanings. The word 1curse refers to the God’s attitude of toward those who curse Abraham and Israel, and His  actions/judgment already levied against such people, while the  word 2curseth refers to the hate-filled and disrespectful actions of the Gentile nations toward Abraham and the Jewish people, all of whom “were in Abraham’s loins” when the scripture was written.

From the above explanation, it should be understood that, while the “blessing for blessing” pronouncement may be a “like for like” action, the “curse for curse” pronouncement is hardly that. God so respects Abraham that all who treat Abraham and the Jewish people with disrespect, trying to make them feel, or appear to be, inferior and worthless, are in eternal danger.

As a sidenote, the word ‘disrespect is a transitive verb, indicating some action taken “toward someone” rather than being an intransitive verb describing an action that does NOT happen to someone. God appears to be saying that He is always aware of the intent behind our words, possibly the more so as they are spoken against ‘The Apple of His Eye’ (compare Hebrews 4:12 KJV).

Also notice that the writer of Genesis uses the word ‘them’ in the blessing action of verse three, referring to people (plural), possibly even nations of people, who by blessing the Jewish people can partake of God’s promised blessings; in contrast, the word ‘him’, used in the cursing action indicates that God sees every individual separately when anyone curses Abraham/Israel.

Based on these explanations,  a  better and more accurate translation of Genesis 12:3 would be: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that disrespects or makes light of thee, I will utterly despise and destroy.” It boils down to this: any person making light of, or disrespecting, Abraham is in effect, disrespecting and making light of God Himself.  This is the same as mocking God and we are told in Galatians 6:7, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”.  Remember, every word you speak is a ‘spiritual container’ of what is in your heart.

God does NOT mince words and when He is speaking to Abraham in this passage, He wants us all to know His true feelings on the matter.

So, what does all this have to do with the appearance of judgment and God’s Court being in session?

God, Jehovah, the God of Jews and Christians, has not only spoken HIS word on the Jewish people and how He expects the world (Gentile nations) to treat them based on His love for them, but he watches over that word and monitors the world in order to identify those who a) align with His word  and treat the Jewish people as He demands and to separate them from those who b) defy His word and treat the Jewish people with disdain, hatred and disrespect (see Job 34:21 KJV, Proverbs 15:3 KJV, 1 Peter 3:12 KJV). God’s observations become evidence He will use in determining the fate of those who are called into His court to answer for their words and deeds.

Patience and Longsuffering

God, Who is longsuffering, compassionate and patient, waits and allows all those who are subject to His law and commandments to make wise decisions regarding His commandments. By placing the ‘blessing and/or cursing Israel option’ before all people, He shows His justness and righteousness, not only to Jewish people, the object of His promises to Abraham, but to all those who are given the choice to either obey, or defy, His word and command to ‘bless and NOT curse’ them.

All people of the world, throughout the centuries since Abraham was made the beneficiary of God’s everlasting covenant regarding the land He promised to Abraham and his offspring, have been providing, and are continuing to provide, the evidence3 God will use to judge them for their actions; and God’s eye misses nothing.

3 Matthew 12:37 KJV

Just as human courtroom decisions are backed by the full weight and authority of the court, God’s decisions in His Court of Justice are backed by HIS authority.

All Will Answer

As was shown in the explanation of Genesis 12:3, every person as well as every nation will give an account of their treatment of the Jewish people. God sent the Jewish people from their ancestral homeland as a means of punishment for their rejection of His love, mercy and compassion, in the person of Jesus, the Messiah, but as a means of determining who of the Gentile peoples of the world would obey His word in Genesis 12:3 and bless the Jewish people in their exile. History records those who have been merciful and kind to the Jews as well as those who treated them with hatred and disdain.

We are seeing a worldwide increase now in the hatred of the Jewish people by those who do not believe God will honor His word; that lack of belief is obvious in the actions of entire nations that would like nothing more than to see every Jew destroyed and their promised land divided between the enemies of Israel and God.

Many times God has warned the nations about touching “the apple of His eye” and foretold what their fate would be if they fail to heed His warnings. Still, there are many who continue to defy God and risk His wrath and judgment for their defiance. Here in the United States, those who are unbelievers, as well as many who claim to be Christians, have treated the Jewish people with utter contempt and hostility. Such is bad enough on the part of individuals, but even worse when done by governments, especially governments that have signed agreements with the nation of Israel to be their help in time of attack by other nations that want to destroy the Jewish state.

God proclaimed that He would make Jerusalem a “cup of trembling’ (Zechariah 12:2-3 KJV) to all the nations round about Israel for their attempts to divide Jerusalem, the city where God has placed His Name (2 Chronicles 6:6  KJV). Many times the US government leaders have offered their “peace initiatives” that included a demand to divide Jerusalem and give the Eastern part of the city, wherein is the Jewish Temple Mount, to be the capital of a Palestinian State within the ancient borders of Israel.

Those government leaders have gone even further and deliberately tried to coerce the nation of Israel to divide their God-given land with the many millions of sworn enemies surrounding her and  publicly state they ‘yearn for peace in the Middle East’. So many “Land for Peace” initiatives have been undertaken by the US government over the past 45 years, many of which were openly attempted, it would be impossible to name them all. Even worse is those that were done in secret by those in our government who only wanted the glory of bringing peace to an area where peace seems an impossibility. However, that glory belongs to God and to Him alone. He will bring an everlasting peace when Jesus returns to destroy all the enemies of God at the end of the seven year Tribulation Period.

Meanwhile, all those nations and phony “Friends of Israel” who interfered with God’s plan WILL be held accountable, some in the very near future and all others when they stand before Jesus, face to face, to give an account of their deeds.

Summary

Just as the courts of law in most nations are involved daily in calling their courts to order so that Justice and Judgment can be accomplished, even so the Judge of all the earth will hold His court when He is ready to present HIS evidence, pass judgment and carry out the proper sentences on those who foolishly mocked God and mistreated ‘The Apple of God’s Eye’.

For more than forty years, I have seen what should be obvious to any keen observer, events that, based on the timing of their occurrences, were judgments against the United States for their heavy-handed actions against the State of Israel in attempts to make the Jewish people bow to the wishes of whatever administration was in power in Washington DC at the time. Some of those events brought catastrophic results, destroying cities with the loss of many lives. In my mind, most of those events were intended to bring repentance, godly sorrow and a change in behavior that would end in a return to the God of Heaven Who was so instrumental in establishing this nation.

However, as merciful and longsuffering as God is, when those events produced little if any repentance, He still waited patiently for the people of this nation to seek Him. Now, it appears that the days of God’s patience may be nearing an end. On any given day, the signs of a further distancing from God by the people of the US are apparent. How much longer will God remain patient in the face of such open hostility and increasing sin, rebellion and hatred toward Him through their hostility toward Israel on the part of our citizenry?

Conclusion

Do not be surprised at sudden judgments that may seem to ‘appear out of nowhere’ against those nations and peoples that should know better than to challenge God and invoke His judgment.

God’s timing and justice is always perfect. When that Court is convened and the Judge of all the earth has made His decision, there will be no appeal of the sentence of His judgment on those who have mocked God and the Jewish people. His sentence will be carried out and many people will suffer and die.

Possibly the worst part of having that sentence read is knowing that, as bad as the sentence and punishment is, it is nothing compared to God’s wrath which is laid up for all who disobey Him.

A wise course of action for all people would be to seek God now, study His word and become convinced of His love for all people and for The Apple of His Eye, and not risk  God’s judgment OR His wrath.

Blessings and Maranatha!

budaroo@twc.com

©2023. Bud Hancock. All rights reserved.

Technology and The Values Gap

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While the need for America to arrest its decline down into a new Marxist Dark Age grows painfully more obvious each day, just how do we arrest and, hopefully, reverse such a steep decline? For starters, let’s assume those of us born before 1946 understand the need for a return to our founding documents and values, meaning a return to Traditional American Values. the younger generations who will have to do the heavy lifting needed to restore America to where it was prior to the elections of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. “Patriot Act” Bush, and Joe Biden.

Communications technology, despite all the upsides of computers, the Internet, and Social Media, also has the downside of creating a huge communication gap between our elders and our youngsters whose knowledge of the world comes from their computer screens, video games, their cell phones, and from a public education system that has abandoned even such basics as cursive handwriting.

For example, if Granny hand writes a note of congratulations to grandson Jimmy for achieving something worthwhile, Granny’s cursive handwriting will look like a foreign language to little Jimmy. Jimmy, who only understands block printing on computer screens, will need an older person to interpret Granny’s kind note. Already many Jimmies of driving age are totally baffled by cars with manual transmissions. Moreover, Jimmy’s grandchildren are likely to grow up knowing only autonomous vehicles and wondering how on earth their elders were allowed to drive such dangerous machines by themselves.

Many of these examples are found in Victoria Kirin’s book: Stories of Elders, 2019. Kirin poses the question of how can older generations transmit their values to younger generations who have become high-tech incommunicado?

Our exhortations of the thinking of Aristotle, Epictetus, Herodotus, Plato, Socrates, Cicero, Franklin, Paine, Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson are not likely to reach ears covered by earbuds. Nor are they likely to comprehend the values of the early (not the later) Romans: Mercy, Dignity, Tenacity, Frugalness, Gravity, Respectability, Humanity, Industriousness, Prudence, Wholesomeness, Self-control, and Honesty.

Early Rome’s values produced an empire with a 10,000-mile border that lasted for over 1,100 years but only fell when their version of Las Vegas (Pompeii) diverted their attention from robustly defending their borders. Hello! Does this sound familiar?

Our mere 245 years of existence pale in comparison with the Roman Empire. Recall, many empires fell due to internal decay: Mandarin China, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey, Tsarist Russia, and Soviet Russia. Great Britain exhausted itself by fighting Germany twice and Japan once. Tojo’s Japan and Nazi Germany had to be bombed into submission.
So, what’s the solution to inculcating the values that made America great into the younger generations? If this writer knew the answer, you would be reading it right here. Meanwhile, it might help if all of us elders try to live our lives like the Pilgrims of old and make America once again like the Reverend Winthrop’s “City upon a hill.”

Suggested reading:

Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology that You Don’t by Victoria Kirin, 2019.

Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy, 2006.

The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America by Rebecca Rose Fraser, 2017.

Errand into the Wilderness by Perry Miller, 1952.

©2023. William Hamilton. All rights reserved.

Paul Pelosi Attack Footage Released

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Video and audio footage of a home intruder attacking the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been released over the objections of San Francisco prosecutors.

The attacker can be seen grabbing Paul Pelosi and bashing him with a hammer before police officers brought down and arrested the suspect. Pelosi was dressed in a shirt and underwear and he was knocked unconscious by the attacker’s blow. Pelosi was holding a drink and opened the door for police officers, who asked the attacker to “drop the hammer,” body camera footage shows.

Pelosi’s 911 call was also released and he described an unknown gentleman who came into the house waiting for Nancy Pelosi. The gentleman told Pelosi to put the phone down and do what he says, while describing himself as a Pelosi’s friend.

Pelosi, 82, was hospitalized for six days due to a skull fracture and other serious injuries suffered during the attack. Nancy Pelosi told CNN last week it will take “a little while for him to be back to normal.”

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Murphy ruled Wednesday that the footage could be released after news organizations pushed for it, according to The New York Times (NYT). Prosecutors argued the video would fuel speculation and limit the attacker’s right to a fair trial. Murphy responded by pointing out that the footage was aired during a preliminary hearing in December, NYT reported.

The footage was captured by Capitol Police surveillance cameras and the body cameras of police officers who responded to Pelosi’s 911 call around 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 28th.

Prosecutors have charged San Francisco resident David DePape with the attack. He pleaded not guilty to federal and state charges including attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. DePape waived his right to a speedy trial and his trial date will be set Feb. 23.

DePape is a Canadian national living in the U.S. illegally who reportedly suffered from mental illness and drug addiction, according to the Los Angeles Times. He allegedly believed the attack was a “suicide mission” and wanted to have “a little chat” with Nancy Pelosi. She was in Washington, D.C., at the time of the attack.

DePape reportedly became fixated on conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party over the past few years. He previously held liberal views as a nudist activist, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pelosi Says She Doesn’t Like MSNBC

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

When Does a Government Become Illegitimate in the Eyes of God?

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The Bible says all authority is established by God and rulers are ministers of God. So, when do when do leaders lose their legitimate authority to rule over our lives?

Last week, Kamala Harris was in Florida to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision legalizing abortion, which (as everyone in America knows) was overturned this past June.

In her typical arrogant tone, she made a speech attempting to defend a woman’s right to abort her child because those rights were supposedly enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.

Among her exact words were: “A promise that we made in the Declaration of Independence that we are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Except … that’s not what the Declaration of Independence says.

The correct recitation of that historic document is that all mankind is endowed by their Creator “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” [emphasis added]

How convenient that Harris left out the most important human right of all, the right to life.

Pure evil.

For Harris to intentionally omit this God-given right is to push the narrative that no living being has a right to life. But she had to, didn’t she? According to her, the unborn do not have this right. It’s OK to kill them.

Our anti-human government

No wonder some political commentators are calling our current government “anti-human.”

Here’s what FOX News commentator and podcaster Dan Bongino, said on Jan. 21:

“Just listen to the liberals talk; liberalism in essence is anti-human. Listen to how they talk about people: the ‘deplorables,’ the rednecks. They see you as a proliferating virus to this atheistic god they have, Mother Nature. And they see nothing … stopping them from doing bad things.”

Want more evidence of government officials’ being “anti-human”?

A couple of weeks ago, a staggering 210 House Democrats voted against a bill requiring doctors to save the lives of babies that survive abortions. Let them die. Kill them.

That’s anti-human.

Though it’s tempting to delve into the cesspool of other anti-human practices, policies and dictums of our United States government, it would distract from my main question:

When does a government become illegitimate in the eyes of God?

The answer is surprisingly simple if one holds the Bible as the infallible word of God.

When government leaders cease to be ministers of God, they become illegitimate. THAT role is their sole purpose: To be God’s servants.

The Apostle Paul says, “there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” [Ro. 13:1]

Think about that for a moment: Unless a government official is “established by God,” he or she has no authority over anyone’s life, ever.

Xi Jinping? None in China. Ali Khamenei? None in Iran. Kim Jong-un in North Korea? Nope. Not from God.

But how do we know if our rulers are “established by God”?

Again, the answer is simple:

He or she must be “a servant of God to you for good.” [4]

But what is “good”?

Simple again:

He or she must be “an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.” [4]

“For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.” [6, emphasis added]

Simple, isn’t it? They must be devoted to good and to the punishment of evil.

Our “Upside Down” Government

Anyone who has watched the Netflix series Stranger Things will recognize our current government in Washington D.C. as the “Upside Down” from a God-ordained government. Legitimate governmental authority has been turned into a dark, nightmarish negative image of what it once was, and not just in D.C.

More and more, we witness open servants of evil running federal, city and local governments. Let’s call them … oh, I don’t know … ministers of Satan, whose real goal is not to govern for “good” or to bring wrath on evil, but to make a mockery of God, His laws, His justice and His creation.

They are purveyors of evil. They celebrate and applaud evil. They invent new forms of evil.

They are NOT established by God regardless of how people voted or how brilliantly a rigged election was manufactured. People can vote for evil people. But those rulers have NO God-given authority over mankind.

I’ll repeat Paul’s words:

“[T]here is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” (Emphasis added)

Our Founding Fathers knew that. They wrote a 1,338-word Declaration saying as much when they told King George and all the king’s men to hightail it back to their side of the pond. They were no longer needed, accepted or had any legitimate power to rule in the colonies.

King George lost his authority to govern the American colonies because he was accused of violating the unalienable rights God gave man: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Winston Churchill (did he ever tire of carting that heavy bag of great quotes around?) told the House of Commons in 1948: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it!”

Welcome to the Show that Never Ends: government authorities becoming tyrants who refuse to be servants of God for good.

No longer do Americans look at their future with great anticipation or excitement. Instead, they look over their shoulders with fear of the next mass killing at a Wal-Mart, a church or a school.

Since May 2020, nearly 300 vandalism attacks against Catholic churches alone have been committed.

There’s essentially a war along our southern border – more like a surrender – that has seen over 4 million illegal immigrants invade our country since Joe Biden took office. Countless (literally countless) numbers of these “immigrants” are terrorists, sex traffickers, drug runners and hardened criminals who steal the lives, liberties and happiness of millions.

Yet, when Biden visited Mexico earlier this month and met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Liar-in-Chief didn’t talk about ways Mexico could help our nation secure the lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Americans.

No: He spoke about ways the two nations could promote diversity, “equity,” and gender inclusivity, along with fighting “climate change.”

The White House is more concerned with turning children into circus attractions and cracking down on “terrorist” moms at school board meetings than making sure those same moms have baby formula to feed their infants so they can grow up cherishing their God-given male- or femaleness.

I could go on and talk about random attacks and killings, the devaluation of police officers, hardened criminals that are never prosecuted, stores shuttering across the nation because of theft, drug addicts menacing people and stores and dying on the sidewalks of big cities, and the insane push to disfigure little children into freaks of nature.

Government without God’s Authority

Only those who have never read the Bible could convince themselves that these people are “servants of God for good” who “bring wrath on those who practice evil.”

But if these rulers have NO authority because only God can establish legitimate leadership, how do we respond to these illegitimate tyrants and their demands for our ungodly compliance?

Pause to think about people being forced to use transgender pronouns. Healthcare workers being forced to perform abortions. Doctors being told they must assist in euthanasia as a kind of “medical care.” Churches being told they must close their doors.

Our Founding Fathers drew the road map for us to follow, and it’s probably not what most people think.

The American colonies did not declare war on Great Britain. Instead they declared their independence.

In fact, during the first Revolutionary War battle on April 19, 1775, Captain John Parker told his Minutemen as 700 British regulars approached Lexington Green:

“Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here.” Parker believed firing first would be tantamount to treason.

Paul Revere, standing off to the side, agreed.

“Let the [English] soldiers pass by. Do not molest them without they begin first.”

Indeed, the redcoats did fire first during the conflict that came to be known as the Battle of Concord.

800 British soldiers squared off against 400 militia. Through the use of guerrilla tactics (to which the British were unaccustomed), the militia forced the redcoats to flee, inflicting 300 casualties that included 73 deaths.

The Americans stood their ground, having declared their independence. They viewed starting a war as treason, but likewise had no compulsion to believe that declaring their independence was a treasonous act.

When government leaders are not servants of God for good, when they fail to be avengers on those who practice evil, they have no authority from God, they are not established rulers.

To protect ourselves, the Bible warns us to put on the “full armor of God.” Then it commands us to stand against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” [Ep. 6:12]

“When the day of evil comes,” the Apostle Paul says (and it’s looking like it’s now here), “stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” [12]

That’s exactly what Captain John Parker’s men did. They stood their ground.

That’s exactly what we need to do to oppose an illegitimate government without God’s authority to rule over us.

Also, like our Founding Fathers, this additional admonition from Jesus would serve us well:

“And He said to them, ‘But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his cloak and buy one.’” [Luke 22:36]

© Martin Mawyer from Majority Report. All rights reserved.

EDITORS NOTE: This Majority Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Elon Musk Meets With Speaker McCarthy And Minority Leader Jeffries. Here’s What They Discussed

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Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a surprise visit to the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Musk said he met with the two House leaders to discuss ways in ensuring that Twitter is fair to both sides of the political aisle after taking over as the social media company’s CEO in October.

“Just met with @SpeakerMcCarthy & @RepJeffries to discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both parties,” he tweeted.

McCarthy exited the meeting with Musk and declined to discuss what the meeting entailed. He told the reporters that the tech mogul wished the Speaker a happy birthday.

“He came to wish me a happy birthday,” he told reporters, who turned 58 Thursday.

McCarthy said he did not discuss the debt ceiling that recently exceeded $31.4 trillion, and ignored all other questions related to the matter, Bloomberg reported. The press did not witness Musk leave the meeting or the building after their appointment together on the second floor ended.

Musk is a longtime donor of McCarthy and expressed support for him stepping up as speaker during the tumultuous, days-long speaker vote among members of the House. The California Republican finally became speaker after 15 ballots.

The tech mogul has become a popular figure among the political right since urging people to vote Republican and voting for candidates of the party for the first time in the special election held in Texas’ 34th district. He publicly shared that he cast his ballot for Republican Texas Rep. Mayra Flores.

He further became a vocal proponent for free speech amid his $44 billion purchase and eventual takeover of Twitter. He later reinstated the account of former President Donald Trump following a public poll calling for his return.

AUTHOR

NICOLE SILVERIO

Media reporter. Follow Nicole Silverio on Twitter @NicoleMSilverio

RELATED ARTICLE: Elon Musk Huddled With GOP Leaders And Donors. Here’s What He Told Them

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Massive Spike in Excess Deaths Sparks Calls for ‘Urgent Investigation’

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The left is blaming ….. slow ambulances. Uh huh.

Scroll: Covid ‘vaccine’

Massive spike in excess deaths sparks calls for an ‘urgent investigation’: NHS crisis is blamed for nearly 3,000 more Brits than usual dying each week

  • 17,381 deaths registered in England and Wales in the seven days to January 13
  • This is the highest number of excess deaths since the UK’s second Covid wave
  • Health experts say 999 delays, long A&E waits and backlogs could be to blame

By Shaun Wooller Health Editor For The Daily Mail, 24 January 2023:

MPs have called for an urgent investigation into Britain’s soaring death rates as thousands more people than usual are dying each week.

Some 17,381 deaths were registered in England and Wales in the seven days to January 13 – 2,837 above average for the time of year.

This is the highest number of excess deaths since 3,429 in the week to February 12, 2021, when the UK was experiencing its second wave of Covid-19 infections and vaccination had only just begun.

On that occasion, deaths involving coronavirus accounted for 37 per cent of all those registered, according to the Office for National Statistics

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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UK Government Ending COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Healthy People Under 50

Died Suddenly: Ex-Detroit Lions Linebacker Jessie Lemonier Dies at Age 25

14 Year Old Football Star Estrella Martin Dies Suddenly

“COVID-19 Vaccines Are Not Associated with Sudden Death” – FDA Responds to Post-Vaccine Spike in Sudden Deaths

Great Food Reset: ‘Lab-Grown Meat’ Harvested in ‘Massive Steel Vats’ Edges Closer to Fed Approval

Lockdowns and Vaccines Caused More Death Than They Prevented

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

4 Ways to Safeguard Your Child from Radical Gender Ideology

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When we find ourselves encountering education professionals who sincerely believe and defend concepts like Queer Theory and believe they have a moral obligation to teach those concepts to children for the good of society, it is long past time for parents and concerned citizens to act. Gender ideology is a dangerous force in education and our culture. Parents can take several important steps to safeguard our own children and our communities from this evil influence.

1. Parents need to be the most important person in their children’s lives.

Our right to direct the upbringing of our children is unquestioned. Our responsibility to our children is confirmed by our love for them. We need to make sure that we know our children’s hopes and dreams, their friends, their teachers, and those who influence them. When schools have policies that would seek to “affirm a gender identity” in children without the knowledge or consent of parents, we can protect our children — and ourselves — by being fully engaged in relationship with our children.

One of the common rejoinders to efforts to enact policies to protect children from secret social transition in schools actually does have a grain of truth in it. Gender activists will demagogue: “If you want to find out what gender your child is, just ask your child; the school can’t hide that from you.” We can see the arrogance and dishonesty behind such a comment, but it makes a point too — never let anyone know your child better than you do.

2. In the event of a gender identity crisis in your home, be careful to get the right help.

There are fewer resources for parents who do not wish to affirm their children in a gender delusion, but they are good resources. Desist, Detrans, and Detox by Maria Keffler is a wonderful book with advice from a mother and former public school guidance counselor. Be careful not to rely on the advice of “gender specialists.” It is more likely than not that advice from this perspective will “affirm” a sex change approach rather than explore the reasons for gender dysphoria and seek to integrate body and mind consistent with biological reality.

3. Engage your school system or state legislature.

If you wish to engage your school system or state legislature to protect the rights of parents and children, there are many efforts underway to use as guides. Groups like Family Research Council, Parents Defending Education, and Parental Rights Foundation are ready to help, with research, advice, and connections to other resources. Making sure to keep parents at the center of the process is key.

Virginia’s recently drafted model policy includes this useful definition: The phrase “transgender student” shall mean a public school student whose parent has requested in writing, due to their child’s persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs with his or her sex, that their child be so identified while at school. The Virginia draft is a reaffirmation of parental rights, keeping parents front and center.

4. Never doubt yourself when you stand for the truth of biological sex.

History is littered with examples of medical fads that have victimized people and cultures: lobotomy, eugenics, and recovered memories are just a few examples. The gender fever seems to be breaking. It will take parents and a public committed to truth spoken in love to protect our children and heal our culture.

We live in the greatest nation on earth, the beacon of hope for the world. Let’s make America’s school systems as exceptional as our nation. Our children, entrusted to us by God, deserve our very best.

AUTHOR

Meg Kilgannon

Meg Kilgannon is Senior Fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council.

RELATED ARTICLE: Parents, It’s Time to Get Your Child Off of Social Media

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. 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.

The Corporate Cancel Club: How 1,000+ Companies Stack Up on Anti-Conservative Bias

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If you’ve been in the conservative movement long enough, getting canceled is almost inevitable. At some point, your beliefs about faith, the climate, marriage, abortion, or transgenderism will put you crosswise with America’s woke CEOs, and a notice will arrive in your inbox: You’ve been dropped. For some, that’s a badge of honor. For others, it’s a monumental headache. Either way, finding a vendor who won’t take their radical politics out on clients has never been harder. Fortunately for today’s counter-culturists, there’s help.

For everyone who’s felt like choosing a business partner, merchant, or bank is like walking through a minefield blind, the 1792 Exchange is about to make life easier. The group’s new database, released Tuesday, scores more than 1,000 companies on how likely they are to cut ties with consumers over their beliefs. In their Spotlight Report: Corporate Bias Ratings, each business is graded on the low, medium, or high likelihood that conservatives will be canceled, denied service, or pressured to compromise based on their “political and religious views.”

It should be a powerful weapon in the hands of conservatives and faith-based groups, who’ve not only started doing battle with corporate activism on the state and shareholder levels but who are also desperately in need of safe, neutral spaces in today’s marketplace. “We want Americans to understand where they are truly free to conduct business,” the exchange’s president and movement veteran Paul Fitzpatrick said in a statement. This project, he explained, is the “result of countless hours investigating ‘woke’ corporate bias against religious expression, freedom of speech, and free enterprise.”

Fitzpatrick insists the goal is two-fold. First, “to help Americans understand the risks present with certain corporations and give them a voice when they encounter this type of discrimination.” But just as importantly (and maybe more so), the desired outcome is “for the ‘high risk’ companies, especially public ones, to take notice, change their behavior, and serve all customers — regardless of ideology.”

Finding these Fortune 500 pressure points has become a more urgent priority for conservatives, who finally found a champion in corporate giant-killers like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R). Now, what was once a lonely crusade for a handful of activists has turned into a full-blown grassroots effort to force Big Business to abandon its hyper-politicized agenda.

For longtime targets of the Left, like Family Research Council, the 1792 Exchange’s report came as welcome news. In the last couple of years, FRC has been dropped or had its contracts revoked by MobileCause (September 2020), Soundcloud (Fall 2020), Sprout Social (Fall 2020), Buffer (September 2021), and ContentCal (October 2021) — all either implicitly or explicitly for holding biblical views. Now, as more companies lean into radical ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investing, faith-based organizations are even more at risk.

“When corporations are politicized,” Fitzpatrick told The Washington Stand, “it harms shareholders, America’s retirement savings, makes energy and food more expensive and more scarce, and makes our nation less safe. We want to help U.S. corporations be more profitable and push back against activists trying to leverage them. To do so, they must treat their customers, employees, vendors, and communities with respect.”

Progressives have tried to capture the last conservative institution — corporations — to “change our culture and economy in ways they couldn’t achieve through Congress or the courts,” Fitzpatrick insisted. But those scales may finally be tipping, thanks to a Republican Party no longer willing to fund the Left’s war on their values. This latest development puts businesses’ virtue signalers on notice: Americans won’t rest until all viewpoints have a seat at the table.

Until then, “we want to equip you to protect yourself,” Fitzpatrick says, “whether you’re running a small business, nonprofit, or your family.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. 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.

A Road to Nowhere

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Stephen P. White: If Cardinal Robert McElroy has his way, we’ll be left with a vision of Christian life which lacks any hint of the freshness of the Gospel.

Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego has penned a lengthy reflection (available here) on how the synodal process might address the exclusion of certain categories of people. The essay covers a lot of ground, but the bulk of it is concerned with the questions of how to address, “the exclusion of divorced and remarried and L.G.B.T. Catholics, particularly on the issue of participation in the Eucharist.”

Reading the essay, I couldn’t help but think of H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous line: “A God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Which is to say: this was in no way an edifying document.

Where to begin?

While pastoral in tone, the essay deals almost entirely in abstractions. Concrete acts by particular moral agents simply don’t register. Exclusion is treated not as a consequence of sin, but as something inflicted upon sinners by the Church. Sin is not what divides us; the Church’s hang-ups about sin do.

So we read, for example, “[T]he exclusion of men and women because of their marital status or their sexual orientation/activity is pre-eminently a pastoral question, not a doctrinal one.”

The Church has gone to great lengths to insist that no one is excluded from receiving the Eucharist because of sexual orientation, which Cardinal McElroy surely knows. But even as he attempts to collapse the distinction between sinner and sin, McElroy draws a bright line between the moral life and our relationship with God, just as he does between pastoral and doctrinal matters. He writes:

The heart of Christian discipleship is a relationship with God the Father, Son and Spirit rooted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The church has a hierarchy of truths that flow from this fundamental kerygma. Sexual activity, while profound, does not lie at the heart of this hierarchy. Yet in pastoral practice we have placed it at the very center of our structures of exclusion from the Eucharist. This should change.

It is true that sexual morality is not at the heart of the hierarchy of truths of the faith in precisely the limited sense that no moral teaching of the Church is at the heart.

Of course, the reason God gives us the moral law is precisely to guide us toward those actions and habits that bring us closer to Him and to our neighbor, and to avoid those actions that impede, damage, and destroy those same relationships.

This is why Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And why, shortly before equating lust with adultery, he gave his disciples this warning:

Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

The actual words of the Scripture stand in jarring contrast to the disjointed view of doctrine and pastoral concerns, as Cardinal McElroy presents them. Curiously, the essay’s only reference to Scripture, such as it is, is to the title of a Synod document which is taken from Isaiah: “Enlarge the Space of Your Tent.” Not incidentally, Scripture scholars say this really refers, not to “inclusion,” but the territorial expansion of Israel, i.e., conquest.

For his part, the Cardinal is concerned that the Church places too much emphasis today on sexual morality. Were it not for the utter collapse of marriage in the West, the malformation and perversion of a whole generation of young people through pornography, the daily reminders that our gnostic culture promotes a view of the human person which renders the body meaningless and the Incarnation incoherent, and the Church’s own decades of failure to adequately address sexual abuse, he might have a point.

Cardinal McElroy has often expressed concern about polarization in the Church and has long been a critic of various notions of individual autonomy that mark American culture. Yet when it comes to reception of the Eucharist, that most inextricably communal reality in Christian life, McElroy stakes out a maximalist view of individual conscience: “While Catholic teaching must play a critical role in the decision making of believers, it is conscience that has the privileged place. Categorical exclusions undermine that privilege precisely because they cannot encompass the inner conversation between women and men and their God.”

As I’ve written before, nowhere is the individualist strain in American Catholicism more manifest than in the ubiquitous belief that reception of the Holy Eucharist is a private matter rather than a fundamentally ecclesial reality. Here we see it from Cardinal McElroy in its starkest form.

So diminished is the ecclesial dimension of the Eucharist in favor of private conscience, that one could easily miss McElroy’s call for open communion: “[T]he church must embrace a eucharistic theology that effectively invites all of the baptized to the table of the Lord. . .”

Unsurprisingly, the very thing Christ died to save us from – sin – barely registers in the Cardinal’s essay. Nor do we read anything about that beautiful Sacrament by which Christ offers us a remedy for even the gravest of sins. In some 3,000 words on the pastoral urgency for inclusion, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not mentioned even once.

Sin, mercy, conversion, redemption: all these dissolve into flaccid platitudes about inclusion, listening, dialogue. Behind this fog of abstractions and platitudes, the fundamental drama of salvation – the very substance of the Good News – is obscured.

What we’re left with is a vision of Christian life which lacks any hint of the freshness of the Gospel. If that’s the path the synod takes, it will be a path to nowhere. And all of us, not least those in the difficult pastoral circumstances Cardinal McElroy is so genuinely and admirably concerned about, will be the worse for it.

You may also enjoy:

Robert Royal’s Dear Bishops: Clear Your Minds of Cant – and Can’t

Brad Miner’s Homosexuality in Scripture

AUTHOR

Stephen P. White

Stephen P. White is executive director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America and a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2023 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

‘We Need New Blood’: DeSantis Rebukes Ronna McDaniel’s RNC Leadership

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Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida called for new leadership at the Republican National Committee (RNC) Thursday as the committee prepares to vote on a chair.

“We’ve had 3 substandard election cycles in a row, ‘18, ‘20, and ‘22, and I would say of all of those ‘22 was probably the worst,” DeSantis said during an interview with Charlie Kirk. “Given, the political environment of a very unpopular President Biden, huge majorities of the people think the country’s going in the wrong direction.”

WATCH:

“That is an environment that’s tailor-made to make big gains in the house and the Senate and state house – state houses all across the country. And yet that didn’t happen and in fact, we even lost ground in the U.S. Senate, and so you know, I think we need a change,” DeSantis continued. “I think we need to get some new blood at the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC out of DC.”

Republicans gained ten seats in the House during the 2022 midterm elections and lost one Senate seat, underperforming expectations of a nation-wide “red wave.” Notable losses included that of Dr. Mehmet Oz to Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and former NFL running back Herschel Walker to Democratic Sen. Rafael Warnock of Georgia, along with retired general Don Bolduc, who failed to unseat Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called the performance “a great night” in a Nov. 9 Fox News appearance. McDaniel faces a re-election fight from Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and member of the RNC following Republicans in the November mid-term elections. Dhillon blasted McDaniel, telling Politico the RNC “whiffed” in the midterms by failing to support several candidates in close races.

Only 14% of respondents to a Jan. 11 Trafalgar poll supported a fourth term for McDaniel. McDaniel did not respond on the record to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, but sent endorsements from prominent Republicans in Florida, including Sen. Rick Scott.

AUTHOR

HAROLD HUTCHISON

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Stepping Up’: Harmeet Dhillon Announces Bid To Replace McDaniel As RNC Chair

Market Legend Jeremy Grantham Warns Of ‘Brutal Decline’ In 2023

Swalwell Fell For A Chinese Honeytrap

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Great Food Reset: ‘Lab-Grown Meat’ Harvested in ‘Massive Steel Vats’ Edges Closer to Fed Approval

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European Union approves worms and crickets for human consumption.

The Great Food Reset: ‘Lab-grown meat’ harvested in ‘massive steel vats’ edges closer to fed approval & U.S. dinner plates – As EU approves human consumption of worms & crickets

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “You Will Eat lab-grown ‘meat’ and bugs — and Be Happy. Or so the forces of the Great Food Reset believe. Bill Gates is gobbling up U.S. farmland (now the single largest owner) and the World Economic Forum pushes eating bugs, and the U.S. FDA and USDA edge closer to approving lab-grown ‘meat’ — Bon appetite?!

A food crisis and transformation are just the ticket for even more chaos that the WEF can exploit for their Reset agenda. The World Economic Forum is so eager to promote synthetic ‘meat’ that they are touting numerous ways to print up to 6 kilograms of the fake meat an hour. As part of this new coerced Great Diet Reset, the WEF has advocated eating bugs to save the planet. The Davos-based group has explained, “Why we might be eating insects soon.”

Our future is being planned by our overlords, load up on eating bugs to save the planet! It is a future that will happen, only if we allow it. It’s time for the Great Reject. Rise up and defy the Great Reset.”

By: Marc Morano – Climate Depot

January 26, 2023 9:46 AM

Climate Depot Special Report

Lab-grown meat moves closer to American dinner plates – ‘Grown in enormous steel vessels called bioreactors & processed’ into meat-like substance– Eat lab-grown meat from ‘massive bioreactors’ to save the earth! ‘Our planet is in crisis’ – Restaurateur Andrés, known for his work on global food security, told Reuters he wants to sell cultivated meat because of its environmental benefits. “We can see in what is happening all around us, in every country around the globe, that our planet is in crisis,” he said.

(Reuters) – Once the stuff of science fiction, lab-grown meat could become reality in some restaurants in the United States as early as this year. Executives at cultivated meat companies are optimistic that meat grown in massive steel vats could be on the menu within months after one company won the go-ahead from a key regulator. … Cultivated meat is derived from a small sample of cells collected from livestock, which is then fed nutrients, grown in enormous steel vessels called bioreactors, and processed into something that looks and tastes like a real cut of meat. Just one country, Singapore, has so far approved the product for retail sale. But the United States is poised to follow. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in November that a cultivated meat product – a chicken breast grown by California-based UPSIDE Foods – was safe for human consumption. …

Another draw is that growing meat in a steel vessel instead of in a field could reduce the environmental impact of livestock, which are responsible for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions through feed production, deforestation, manure management, and enteric fermentation – animal burps – according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

RELATED ARTICLES:

Bill Gates wants to stop cows from burping & farting in latest investment – Funds Australian-based company to reduce livestock emissions

European Union Approves Mealworms & Cricket Powder For Use in Bread, Crackers, Chocolate, & Soups Despite ‘Inconclusive’ Allergy Data

Europeans now also allowed to eat cricket powder and small mealworms – Earlier in January, the Commission also approved the use of small mealworms. The small mealworm may be used as (spread) paste, frozen, dried and powdered. Powdered mealworm larvae will also serve as a food supplement.

Daily Wire: Cricket powder will now be permitted in a number of food products, such as multigrain bread, crackers, cereal bars, biscuits, beer-like beverages, chocolates, sauces, whey powder, soups, and other items “intended for the general population,” according to the new regulation. Cricket One, a company that asserts that the insects are “nutritionally more efficient” and serve as a more reliable “source of alternative protein” than livestock, submitted the original application.

Watch: Morano on OAN TV on Great Food Reset – U.S. soon to be eating ‘lab-grown meat’ – Broadcast January 25, 2023 – OAN TV – In Focus With Addison Smith

Op-ed: The Great Food Reset – By Marc Morano

The Great Food Reset has arrived: Expect ‘real’ food shortages, Biden declares – Meanwhile, Bill Gates & China buy up U.S. farmland– Climate Depot’s Morano: “If the Davos crowd of the World Economic Forum were looking for a better global environment on which to enact their central planning vision of a Great Reset, it would be hard to imagine a more conducive chaotic time than right now.”  See: Watch video: World Economic Forum’s utopian Great Reset vision of 2030 – ‘You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy’ – ‘Whatever you want you’ll rent & it’ll be delivered by drone’ – Meat will be ‘an occasional treat’.

Also see: ‘Americans May Have to Say Goodbye to Steak & Burgers as Beef Costs Rise’ as inflation soars – Just what the climate activists always wanted!

Watch: Morano’s 20 min. speech on The Great Food Reset Takeover of Our Farms & Food Supply

Great Food Reset: Watch: School kids munch on insects as cricket snacks introduced to 1000 schools to ‘help save the planet from global warming’

Kid’s manipulated with bug-eating PSYOP: ”Chips are great aren’t they, and these chips are even better, because I think they are better for you, did you know that? Yeah, that way you know, mum and dad might let you have more chips. Good stuff” the interviewer said.

[ … ]

”Many children have the power of pester, so in some cases can be great agents of dietary change within the family” said Verity Jones from the University of the West of England in Bristol.

Marc Morano commented: “The Great Reset is happening here and now. This is not circa 1991, when we we were talking about a shadowy secretive vision of a New World Order. This is 2022 now and we are seeing a ‘new normal’ being imposed upon the world.

    1. Our current energy system is being intentionally collapsed ;
    2. Our transportation system is being intentionally collapsed; (and our freedom of movement is being stripped away)
    3. Our First Amendment free speech rights are being collapsed by government & corporate collusion;
    4. Our high-yield agricultural system is being intentionally collapsed to create man-made food shortages and chaos; and
    5. The ability to eat meat is being banned to compel us to eat ‘lab-grown’ fake meat and eat insects. Artificially caused food shortages will create demand for insect eating.  And our betters are using our children as hand-picked little ministers of propaganda to promote insect eating and ‘pester’ adults to comply with the agenda. (See:The Great Food Reset has arrived: Expect ‘real’ food shortages, Biden declares – Meanwhile, Bill Gates & China buy up U.S. farmland)

Watch: Morano on Fox News on the Great Food Reset: China & Bill Gates buying up U.S. farmland – Pushing fake meat & bugs – ‘Unfiltered w/ Dan Bongino’

Dan Bongino: Here to weigh in is the author of the upcoming book, The Great Reset…Marc, no one knows more about the Great Reset than you, you literally wrote a book on it, we just showed the cover. …Is what we are seeing in the Netherlands a sign of things to come if the climate activists get their way here in the U.S. and other places?

Marc Morano: ‘We know that Bill Gates’ goal is to get us to stop eating meat and get us to start eating lab-grown, vegetable oil-processed fake meat. The same with Al Gore. The same with the World Economic Forum. They are pushing insect-eating as well. The United Nations, the World Economic Forum…That’s been their goal, the whole entire goal. First of all, you have the World Economic Forum which Bill Gates is a prominent member. You have Bill Gates buying up farmland — the single largest American farmland owner now, according to NBC News. I know no one likes a monopoly so don’t worry Dan. China is also gobbling up American farmland. So it’s a competition. We actually have good old market competition — China versus Bill Gates. Who do you want to win that battle? …

This will have devastating consequences because as the old Chinese proverb says, ‘When food is on the table there are many problems. When there is no food, there is only one problem.’

RELATED ARTICLES:

Great Reset By Marc Morano – Chapter 12 Excerpt: ‘COVID Lockdowns Morph to Climate Lockdowns’

The Great Food Reset: ‘They really *do* want you to eat bugs’ – ‘They’ve made meat expensive & launched a PR campaign to promote bug-eating’

Michael Shellenberger: ‘I mean look at these guys. They’re obsessed’

‘Green Elitism Behind Farmer Crackdowns’ – ‘What role is the World Economic Forum playing?’

Listen: Morano on DC’s WMAL talks Biden’s ‘climate emergency’, lockdowns & the Great Food Reset: You Will Eat Nothing & Be Happy

Analysis: The Lies Behind Lab-Cultured Fake Meat – A Great Food Reset – ‘Aim is to control populations by creating dependence on private companies that control the food supply’

How to feed a nation – The miracle of the modern food supply

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