A WordPress Blog-THE CHURCH MILITANT Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse. ALL CONTENT FROM HTTPS://RATHEREXPOSETHEM.BLOGSPOT.COM MOVED TO THIS NEW BLOG, MAY 2020
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
New York City released over 2,650 criminals from prison to protect them from the pandemic. But they didn’t stay home or wash their hands. They went back to their old jobs and 100 of them accounted for 190 arrests for crimes like burglary and robbery. A rapist was released and he went back to raping.
One of the freed criminals was responsible for 18 burglaries at closed eateries. And when he was arrested, the end of bail meant that he was set loose. This looting was going on long before the riots.
Now as the rioters and looters rule the streets of Manhattan, when the police manage to arrest them, they have to quickly let them go.
“When it comes to a burglary, a commercial store, which is looting, they’re back out,” Chief Terrence Monahan said. “Because of bail reform, you’re back out on the street the next day. You cannot be held on any sort of bail.”
Of the 650 thugs arrested, almost all will be released back on the street to riot and loot again.
Los Angeles County released about 5,000 criminals accounting for around a third of imprisoned criminals. And with no bail, arrested criminals were set loose and then arrested again. In the first 30 days of the experiment, 213 criminals were rearrested again after being put back on the street.
Sacramento County’s jail population fell 30%, Orange County’s prison numbers dropped by 45%, Detroit’s jail population dropped by 40%, Philadelphia’s by 17%, and Denver’s by 41%. Massachusetts freed 1,000 criminals while Illinois freed around 4,000. Dallas released 1,000 criminals and Hennepin County, the home of the riots that went on to sweep major cities, reduced its prison population by 44%.
What impact did the hundreds of released criminals have on kickstarting the riots?
It’s no coincidence that some of the areas hardest hit by the rioting and the looting had also opened up their prisons to protect inmates from contracting the coronavirus. Despite apocalyptic predictions from policymakers and the media, there were no mass deaths in prisons or ICE detention facilities. But the critical mass of criminals out on the street left police in major cities hopelessly outnumbered.
That was all part of the plan.
While not all the criminals returned to their trade, even those who wanted to go straight had few jobs waiting for them in locked down cities and states that were already suffering from massive unemployment and where the businesses that might have employed them had been shut down.
Not all of the released criminals returned to crime, but the riots provided the perfect opportunity.
Even before the pandemic, state and federal pro-crime legislation pushed by lefties and libertarians had dramatically cut the numbers of criminals being safely held behind bars. New York City’s prison population had dropped from over 25,000 in 2016 to just under 20,000 in 2019. The end of bail meant that criminals never even bothering showing up for trial. And Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to bribe them to come to court with free movie tickets and gift cards. Even before the riots, there had been violent mob attacks on NYPD officers. The attacks have just reached a critical mass in the Black Lives Matter riots.
Anyone who was closely reading the crime numbers could have predicted the mass looting outbreak.
With massive numbers of criminals on the loose, major crimes rose 12%. Car thefts shot up 65%, robberies went up by 25%, and burglaries rose by 22%.
Burglaries of businesses in New York City had shot up 75% by April.
This was slow-motion looting. If you understand that then what happened in Manhattan with organized gangs targeting stores, smashing and grabbing their way through countless businesses, falls into place. The mass looting was not a shocking new development, it was just the existing criminals going public.
The Black Lives Matter riots provided cover for Antifa violence and for organized criminal gangs and individual opportunistic looters, many of whom had been released because of leftist activism.
Free the criminals. Organize riots. Watch cities burn.
In 2006, California had over 165,000 criminals safely locked away. By 2017, the state was down to 115,000 criminals, in part due to an unconstitutional Supreme Court decision ordering the state to release tens of thousands of criminals into the street. Statewide crime rates slowly began ticking up.
Crime rates jumped in 2012, after the Supreme Court’s unconstitutional ruling, and in 2015, after George Soros’ Proposition 47: Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. The name meant the exact opposite of what it actually did, effectively legalizing retail theft. The more discreet version of looting.
After each mass jailbreak, crime went up.
Violent crimes shot up from 151,425 before Proposition 47, to 178,553 in 2017. Property crime rates were where the real action was, not only rising, but defying nationwide downward trends.
While the rioters cry for more pro-crime measures, demanding the defunding of the police, less prosecution, and more criminals freed from prison, that’s exactly what caused the riots.
New York and California aren’t being devastated because of mass public outrage, but because they freed the criminals who are tearing New York City and Los Angeles apart. And they want the rest of the country to follow them down the same rabbit hole until there isn’t a single safe place left in America.
The mass riots and looting are the direct result of freeing thousands of criminals while crippling law enforcement and the justice system. Past upticks in crime rates had been hidden with statistical games and by tainting the system from the bottom up, by defining crime reporting down at the precinct level, to the top, refusing to bring charges against criminals or pleading them down to next to nothing.
Even as people felt less safe, the media and the authorities kept telling them that crime was falling.
The riots tore apart that lie. No one feels safe after watching mobs ransack neighborhoods and assault police. But the media and the authorities have replaced that lie with another lie, falsely portraying the riots as a mass uprising against racism, when they’re really a plot by a small group of radicals and racists, while freed career criminals are doing much of the work of actually wrecking the cities.
Black Lives Matter and Antifa have touched off the riots and looting to overwhelm police forces. And it’s working. Demoralized cops are given a bad choice between arresting motivated rioters or chasing down looters, while knowing that everyone they arrest will out by the next day so that it really doesn’t matter.
The riot endgame will move the war to the next stage with more mass releases of criminals, more crippled police forces, and even less prosecutions. And the next wave of riots will be even worse. There will be another viral video, more manufactured outrage, and even more devastating riots. Each set of riots will include demands that if met will lead to worse riots in the next stage of the conflict.
This is the same old playbook that the Left has used effectively for well over a century.
The myth of law enforcement racism is being used to dismantle police forces and open up the prisons. The released criminals become witting or unwitting shock troops for violent confrontations that tear apart society and build up the political power of the radicals who can turn the violence on or off.
There is only one way forward. Conservatives must work to reverse the pro-crime policies of leftists and libertarians. As the nation experiences curfews and people huddle in their homes, there is no way to escape the truth that if we don’t lock up the criminals rampaging in the street, we will be the ones in jail.
Right now, Black Lives Matter and Antifa, and more importantly their backers from the Democrat Party to the media to academia, are holding a gun to the head of the United States of America. But the worst part of it is that we gave them the gun and put the bullets in it when we began freeing criminals.
Law and order is the only way to take the gun away. Locking up the criminals disarms the Left.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
[Candace Owens’ BLEXIT movement aims to uplift and empower minorities to realize the American Dream. Sign up to receive updates and explore ways to get involved: BLEXIT.COM.]
In this explosive new video, Candace Owens explains why she does not support George Floyd and refuses to see him as a secular saint. She takes this stand while making it clear that it is obviously wrong how Floyd was killed by the police and that she hopes that Officer Derek Chauvin gets the justice he deserves — just as she hopes Floyd’s family gets the justice they deserve through Chauvin’s punishment.
Above all, Candace issues a robust and stirring warning to her fellow black Americans about the grave mistake of turning Floyd into a shining martyr. In her profound remarks, Candace dares to break numerous taboos and tell piercing truths that the leftist guardians of acceptable opinion don’t want told.
Candace’s bold stance in these contentious times distinguishes her as one of the most courageous truth-tellers — and freedom fighters — of our time. Frontpage commends her for that.
“In a twisted way it is fitting that the most destructive week for America in living memory should be topped off by a memorial featuring the nation’s chief racial arsonist Al Sharpton. The memorial remembered pieces of the life of George Floyd who was brutally killed by a policeman pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck until he shut off the handcuffed man’s air supply and he died. Not the least unexpectedly, the malevolent Sharpton used the platform the mourners provided to stoke the fires of racial hatred, attacking all of white America because black America’s problems and miseries stemmed from the fact that “for 401 years white America has had its knees on our necks” – or words to that effect.”
“That this monstrous sham perpetrated on the American people and used as an excuse to burn American cities should be capped off by an incendiary racist diatribe at George Floyd’s memorial was as fitting as it is tragic.”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Photo Credit: Open Doors USA
WASHINGTON —President Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday directing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator John Barsa to develop a plan to prioritize religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy and in foreign assistance funding.
“Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative,” it reads. “Religious freedom for all people worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom.”
The order instructs the secretary of the Department of State and the administrator of USAID to “develop a plan to prioritize international religious freedom in the planning and implementation of United States foreign policy and in the foreign assistance programs of the Department of State and USAID.”
It further mandates that at least $50 million a year be allotted for religious freedom efforts, including those that are “intended to anticipate, prevent, and respond to attacks against individuals and groups on the basis of their religion,” as well as to support accountability for perpetrators, to seek equal legal rights for those of all faiths, “to improve the safety and security of houses of worship and public spaces for all faiths; and to protect and preserve the cultural heritages of religious communities.”
Efforts will also be made in communication with countries that are known to infringe on religious liberty — especially those on the State Department’s Special Watch List and cited in its “Annual Report on International Religious Freedom”, urging leadership to “make progress in eliminating violations of religious freedom” and discussing cases surrounding individuals who are imprisoned because of their faith.
Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, in conjunction with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is authorized to place sanctions on countries that engage in significant human rights abuses.
The order also requires Department of State foreign service employees to undergo training on religious freedom every three years.
The religious liberties organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) applauded the executive order, remarking in a statement that the directive is a “step in the right direction.”
“No one should be persecuted because of their religion or beliefs,” said ADF International Director of Global Religious Freedom Kelsey Zorzi. “For too long, many countries have violated the fundamental rights of people of faith without any consequences. This executive order ensures that religious freedom will be thoroughly incorporated into U.S. foreign policy. It is a much-needed boost to efforts to protect everyone’s inalienable right to religious freedom.”
As previously reported, Christians were among those who met with Trump in the oval office last July as he met with global survivors of religious persecution.
“As Christians in Myanmar, we are being oppressed and tortured by the Myanmar military government,” one man stated. “We don’t have a chance for religious freedom as ethnic armed groups fight against the central military government. Please, American government, focus on ethnic people and ethnic leaders to get democracy and federalism.”
“My parents are pastors; they’re Christian pastors,” also shared a woman from Iran. “They’ve been arrested — all my family — my father, my mother, my brother. They are free on bail, awaiting the trial and long sentences.”
One man from North Korea shared that his cousin’s family had all been killed in the nation for preaching the gospel.
“[M]y aunt’s father-in-law was a Christian, and my cousin’s — her family — was executed because they were sharing [the] gospel,” he stated.
“Even [despite] the persecution of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean citizens, they want the gospel and they want to worship Him now,” he told the president. “They are worshiping in underground churches right now.”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
The 66-year-old founder of the Guardian Angels organization, Curtis Sliwa and a newly-joined member of the group were both attacked and injured this week while “on the job” protecting stores from George Floyd rioters and looters after the start of the 8 pm curfew.
Matthew Chayes
✔@chayesmatthew
·
One of the Guardian Angels guarding the @footlocker was struck in the face by a looter wielding a hammer.
Sliwa is a longtime law and order advocate whose top goal is to defend the community while maintaining order together with the members of his Guardian Angels team. They’re easy to spot with their red berets and jackets and although they all look like bikers, none of them are armed. They’ve patrolled the worst neighborhoods of the city and helped those in need since 1979, today in more than 130 cities across the United States and in places around the world as well.
But on Tuesday night, that rule about remaining unarmed led to Sliwa himself and a second member of the group — Aram Sabet, a newbie to the organization with only nine weeks under his belt — themselves becoming victims of some of the more vicious elements among the George Floyd rioters who have been staying out past curfew in New York City in order to trash and loot as many stores as possible.
“We were in SoHo working our way down Broadway when we heard about looters trying to get into a Footlocker, and we immediately ran to that location,” Sliwa told Fox News. That was around 8 pm, just as the curfew was starting.
Sabet told Eyewitness News7, “They literally surrounded us … with bats, hammers, crowbars, metal bats.” Eventually, Sliwa and his team managed to force the gang to drop the loot; they went up the street, vowing to be back later.
They were good to their word, returning two hours later having changed into all black clothing and wearing backpacks. They had also brought along another 100 thugs to help them as well.
About an hour later, they appeared again, and this time their mob had tripled to about 300 goons, most armed with hammers, lock cutters, claw hammers, metal bats, machetes, crowbars, and similar items.
Sliwa, who stood outside the store, said “They started swinging at us. But we were not going to let them get inside. We were slamming and jamming quite a few of them. They were throwing glass bottles filled with liquids as well as bricks and rocks.”
Sliwa’s group managed to hold out until NYPD forces arrived about an hour later. Both he and Sabet were then rushed to Bellevue Hospital in the heart of the city.
Sabet has a broken eye socket; he had forty-eight stitches with injuries to the eyebrow, left sinus shattered, a broken nose, a chipped tooth, and lost the sight in his left eye. Sliwa, who got hit with a ball hammer, has a linear fracture in his jaw.
Despite the injuries, Sliwa told reporters that he and his Angels weren’t deterred. “We train for these kinds of things. We won’t fold. We are defiant,” he said. “We want to make a difference in these neighborhoods.”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
A great number of the George Floyd rioters across the United States have begun to use the same vicious tactics to attack their targets – primarily police officers and their vehicles – as Palestinian Authority terrorists use.
Washington DC: Secret Service Personnel Attacked
In Washington DC, more than 50 Secret Service personnel protecting the White House were hurt by Molotov cocktails hurled by rioters within the first two days of “protests” over the death of George Floyd during his arrest by a Minneapolis police officer.
Rioters succeeded in setting the White House Guard House ablaze on Sunday night.
More than 5,000 rioters hurled Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices — including large live fireworks — towards the direction of the White House shortly after dark, in a manner similar to Palestinian Authority terrorists attacking Israelis in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley.
NYPD Firebombed Two Consecutive Nights
In New York City, rioters employed precisely the same tactics for the same purpose.
Two sisters were arrested after hurling Molotov cocktail into an NYPD van with four police officers inside the vehicle.
Samantha Shader, 27, of Catskill, NY, has confessed to the attack; she is charged with attempted murder of a police officer, attempted arson, assault on a police officer, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment. Police said Samantha threw the firebomb through a rear window of the van, and while being arrested, allegedly bit an officer on the leg as they struggled to subdue her resistance.
Her sister, Darian Shader, 21, allegedly tried to block police from arresting Samantha and faces charges of resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration.
Civil rights attorney, scholar and law professor Jonathan Turley commented on his blog on Monday when discussing the incident, “The best defense would be to challenge either the allegation that she threw the device or that the device was actually explosive or flammable. A mental capacity defense is often hard to make out with there is preplanning or pre-construction of an explosive device.
“It is hard to imagine any prosecutor bargaining down this charge (ed. note: attempted murder) since, if true, there would have been four officers burned to death if the device actually went off. Unless the device did not contain a flammable or explosive liquid, Shader is looking at serious time if convicted. For a Class A felony, the maximum term is life imprisonment. Even a Class B felony includes up to 25 years in prison.”
In a second firebombing case, an Ivy League-educated New York attorney has been arrested for attacking NYPD police officers, again with a Molotov cocktail. Colinford Mattis, 32, was allegedly aided and abetted by another New York City attorney.
In addition to being an up-and-coming attorney at Pryor Cashman (currently on furlough since April due to the coronavirus situation) Mattis is also a member of Community Board 5 in East New York.
Urooj Rahman, 31, was admitted to the New York Bar in June 2019; she is accused of being the one who threw the firebomb, created from a Bud Light bottle stuffed with a rag, at an NYPD police cruiser parked outside the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene.
A photo was snapped with Rahman holding a black-and-white keffiyeh to her face, possibly to mask her identity, while preparing to hurl the firebomb out the passenger’s side window of the van in which she and her partner were riding early Saturday, May 30.
The attack was recorded by an NYPD surveillance camera, which showed Rahman lighting the fuse on the beer bottle and throwing it through a broken window. The explosion of the device inside the vehicle was also recorded, as was the couple’s attempt to escape.
Both Mattis and Rahman were pursued by police and caught shortly after they fled the scene in their van. The makings for a second Molotov cocktail were found in the back seat, as well as a gasoline container, according to the Department of Justice.
The FBI said in a statement: “Officers pursued the minivan and arrested Rahman and Mattis, who was the vehicle’s driver. The NYPD recovered several precursor items used to build Molotov Cocktails, including a lighter, a bottle filled with toilet paper and a liquid suspected to be gasoline in the vicinity of the passenger seat and a gasoline tank in the rear of the vehicle.”
Both Rahman and Mattis face federal charges of “causing damage by fire and explosives to a police vehicle.”
Each faces a minimum prison term of five years and a maximum sentence of 20 years, if convicted.
Palestinian Authority Terror Tactics – Why Now?
The use of Molotov cocktails and live fireworks by American rioters to attack police as a means of expressing “rage” — a vicious form of attack that up to this point was seen almost solely in attacks by Palestinian Authority terrorists against Israeli motorists, police and military personnel — is now suddenly spreading from coast to coast in violence under the banner of “Black Lives Matter,” leading to the question of where and when this idea was generated, and how its use has come into play.
The coordination of violence between the Black Lives Matter movement and ANTIFA is not yet clear; however, the results from the cooperation between the two on the streets of America from coast to coast is obvious. Cities have burned for nearly a week.
“Black Lives Matter” has also long been associated with anti-Israel messaging and movements such as the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) economic war against Israel.
The “BLM” acronym was slathered in paint along with other forms of graffiti since the death of George Floyd, including such epithets as F—k Police, and in the case of synagogue buildings in Los Angeles, “Back to Palestine!”
How city authorities plan to deal with this new, upgraded level of violence and threat to their law enforcement personnel remains to be seen.
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PESTILENCES AND LOCUSTS - IS IT THE END OF THE WORLD? (Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The coronavirus pestilence has caused a reported 365,000 deaths worldwide. At the same time, a locust plague is devouring tens of thousands of acres of cropland
and pasture in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, and India. “In Kenya, the locusts are eating in one day the amount of food consumed by all Kenyans in two
days” (“Locusts attack crops,” The Times of India, May 26, 2020). “Iranian officials say the current swarm has already attacked more than 494,000 acres of orchards
and farmland in seven of Iran’s 31 provinces, and caused damage exceeding $7 billion” (Israel Today, May 23, 2020). But this is not the Day of the Lord. The wars
and pestilences and locusts of the Day of the Lord will make the current problems seem like a picnic. At the very beginning of the Day of the Lord one-fourth of the
earth’s population will die from “sword, hunger, and death [pestilence]” (Revelation 6:8). Currently the world population is 7.8 billion, so the death toll would be
2 BILLION! Global health care and emergency systems will be completely overwhelmed. The locusts of the Day of the Lord that are described in Revelation 9 are
not ordinary locusts. They are demonic. They don’t hurt the grass of the earth, they attack men with a tormenting sting like a scorpion, but the torment lasts five
months and is so terrible that men will “desire to die, and death shall flee from them” (Revelation 9:5-6). There will be no vaccination. After this, one-third of the
remaining world population will be killed by a rampaging two million-man army spewing out fire and brimstone (Revelation 9:16-19). That will be another
1.7 BILLION. And those are only some of the judgments that will fall on the earth during the Day of the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ described it as follows:
“For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened,
there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened” (Mt. 24:21-22).
TWITTER EXECUTIVE WHO IS CENSORING PRESIDENT TRUMP IS MASSIVELY BIASED AGAINST CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL VIEWS (Friday Church News Notes,
June 5, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Twitter’s “Head of Site Integrity,” Yoel Roth, boasts of being in charge of “developing and
enforcing” Twitter’s censoring rules. Twitter placed a warning label on two of President Trump’s tweets concerning mail-in balloting on May 26 and a tweet about
the racial violence in Minneapolis on May 29. Roth should not be in charge of such things. He is a braggart who is incredibly biased against conservative thinking.
“Roth has previously referred to Trump and his team as ‘ACTUAL NAZIS,’ mocked Trump supporters by saying that ‘we fly over those states that voted for
A RACIST TANGERINE for a reason.’ ... Roth compared senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels” (“Twitter exec,” Fox News,
May 27, 2020). Roth has no business doing this type of thing, but, in fact, no one at Twitter should be censoring political speech. Who has appointed Twitter as a
speech censor or “fact checker”? Our concern here is not politics. Our concern is freedom of speech in an age when the majority of social media is owned by a few
extremely biased, activist-oriented, anti-Christian companies. If they will censor the President of the United States, they will definitely censor you.
FACEBOOK CEO CRITICIZES TWITTER’S WARNING LABELS ON TRUMP’S POSTS (Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org,
866-295-4143) - Mark Zuckerberg went on record criticizing Twitter’s decision to apply warning labels on President Donald Trump’s posts. Zuckerberg told Fox News’s
“The Daily Briefing” that privately-owned digital platforms should not act as the ‘arbiter of truth. We have a different policy than, I think, Twitter on this. I just believe
strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform
companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.” To that we say a loud Amen! But Facebook has a massive censorship program. It has 15,000 “content
moderators” who search through Facebook pages and determine whether or not the content is acceptable. In December 2018, a Facebook employee “leaked more
than 1,000 pages of documents detailing its content moderation policies and how it polices speech on a global scale” (“After Facebook apologizes for ban,” Fox News,
Dec. 31, 2018). In December 2018, Facebook temporarily blocked Franklin Graham’s Facebook account because in 2016 he supported North Carolina’s state law HB2
that banned cities from requiring businesses to allow transsexuals to use the bathroom of their choice (“After Facebook apologizes for ban,” Fox News, Dec. 31, 2018).
One of Facebook’s 15,000 “content moderators” judged this to be “dehumanizing language,” which shows how much they have capitulated to the homosexual rights
agenda. Simply to speak out in support of a state law is considered some kind of hate toward homosexuals. Graham said the social network is “trying to define truth.
They’re making the rules and changing the rules. Truth is truth. God made the rules and His Word is truth. Actually, Facebook is censoring free speech. The free
exchange of ideas is part of our country’s DNA. ... I think it was just really a personal attack towards me” (Ibid.). In December 2018, Facebook censored pro-life
advocate Obianuju Ekeocha who had posted a link to an article about her pro-life work. Facebook said it “goes against our community standards” (“Big Problems with
Big Tech,” The Stream, Dec. 20, 2018). Obviously Facebook’s “community standards” support the murder of unborn children. Recently Facebook and Instagram
(owned by Facebook) have threatened to ban permanently the account of Olga Shirnina, a professional German-Russian translator and one of the world’s best
colorizers of historic black-and-white photos. Why? For posting beautifully colorized photos of historic World War II events such as the iconic photo of Russian soldiers
raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945. It’s a ridiculous policy, to say the least. Anyone who can’t distinguish properly between the promotion of
violence and violent organizations today and the innocent posting of historic photos has no business in the role of censor.
CHINA FORCES SCHOOL TEACHERS TO RENOUNCE CHRISTIAN FAITH (Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org,
866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Teachers Forced to Renounce,” Bitter Winter, May 18, 2020: “After President Xi Jinping stressed during a national
education conference on September 10, 2018, that the fundamental task for education is to train builders and successors of socialism, the pressure on teachers to
indoctrinate students increased significantly. In June last year, a primary school in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang threatened to dismiss a teacher after
finding out that she also preached in a house church. She was told to stop doing that, or the government would punish the entire school. In August, authorities
investigated a kindergarten teacher in Shenyang, the capital of the northeastern province of Liaoning, because she is a practicing Protestant. She was forced to quit
her job. In November, Chen Qiufa, the CCP Committee secretary of Liaoning Province, demanded to suppress ‘religious influences’ on teachers and students at a
meeting for Party members and provincial government officials. In December, at a training event for local Party members in Liaoning’s Anshan city, participants were
demanded to carry out ‘four investigations’— scrutinize schools, teachers, students, and their actions—to ensure that no CCP members, teachers, and students in
kindergartens, primary or middle schools hold religious beliefs. Similar measures have been implemented at the end of last year in many counties and cities in the
northeastern province of Heilongjiang and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A teacher from the eastern province of Shandong told Bitter Winter that last July,
local education departments carried out investigations targeting newly employed middle school teachers. The primary focus was to find out if they hold religious beliefs
and support the Communist Party.”
LOVERS OF PLEASURES CHURCHES (Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Paul’s prophecy of the last
days in 2 Timothy 3 describes apostates as “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Ti. 3:4). This is a perfect description of last days society, which is
pleasure mad. There has never been more economic prosperity and there have never been more avenues for pleasure. Even most professing Christians love
pleasures more than God. There is some love of God, but there is more love of pleasure. Consider the test of time. How much of one’s time is spent on God
compared with how much is spent on pleasures? Consider the test of money, energy, and enthusiasm. A great many Christians, even in the staunchest Bible-
believing churches, are as sports mad as the secular crowd. Christian youth are as much in love with video games and rock & roll and hip hop and mature-rated
movies and Facebook self-expression as the secular crowd. Consider the typical church’s calendar, which is filled to the brim with entertainment, not only for
children and teens, but also for the “senior citizens.” Over the pleasure program is a thin veneer of God. Think of the average evangelical or even “fundamentalist”
Christian home. There is a little prayer, a little Bible, a little evangelism, a little ministry, perhaps, but there is a whole lot of pleasure. This is accepted as normal
Christianity, but it is actually apostasy.
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So much for abandoning state-sponsored religion. The United States government is now promoting the religious cult of sexual perversion, also known as “gay pride.” In the name of “diversity” and “inclusion,” the taxpayer-funded FBI is celebrating, according to their own words, “the contributions that our LGBT colleagues have made to our country and mission.”
It wouldn’t be funny if this were a joke, but the fact that it’s real just makes this even worse. Exactly what contributions have homosexuals contributed to our country and mission? Sexual depravity? A normalization of a movement that is completely and totally destructive to society? Disease? Not to mention the LGBT movement is diametrically opposed to the worldview this country was founded upon.
Nonetheless, our once-great country is going down the abyss of depravity only to be remembered in textbooks many centuries from now as the country that once stood as a shining light in a largely uncivilized world.
FBI
✔@FBI
At the FBI, we know that diversity makes us stronger. During #PrideMonth, the FBI celebrates the contributions that our #LGBT colleagues have made to our country and our mission.
LIBERALS ADMIT RIOTS & LOOTERS ARE DESTROYING THE DEMOCRATS
★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★
More and more liberals are indeed admitting that the riots and looting are destroying more than just cities; they’re destroying the Democrats themselves! In this video, we’re going to look at the latest calls by leftists for an end to the riots, and how such calls reveal that this wave of civil rest will not ultimately hurt President Trump, but rather, will destroy any hopes Democrats had for November; you’re not going to want to miss this!
"A Fordham alumna, Urooj Rahman, Fordham College at Lincoln Center ’11 and Fordham Law ’15, was arrested in New York City on May 30 for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail, a type of homemade firebomb, at an unoccupied New York City Police Department (NYPD) cruiser during the Black Lives Matter protests."
"Since Rahman is a resident of Brooklyn, where the attack occurred, she did not travel across state lines to incite violence, which is a federal crime. Rahman was born in Pakistan but grew up in Bay Ridge and has been working for Bronx Legal Services for almost a year. Her friend Salmah Rizvi told Gothamist, “She’s never promoted violence and she’d never harm another human being.”"
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All the forces arrayed against free society are coming together in these riots.
The Soros Fellowship is here. And here yet again, note that the New York Post refers to Hamas-linked CAIR as “an organization that critics call anti-Israel and supportive of terrorism but which describes itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization.” That’s much better than most establishment media coverage, which usually goes only with how CAIR describes itself. But the Post’s Bob Frederick misleads when he suggests that CAIR’s unsavory ties are only allegations of its “critics.” CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named not by “critics,” but by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refusedtodenounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim “Honest Ibe” Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.
Why the silence on all that, Mr. Fredericks?
“Ex-analyst under Obama guarantees bail for alleged bomb-throwing lawyer,” by Bob Fredericks, New York Post, June 4, 2020:
A former intelligence analyst who worked in both the State and Defense departments during the Obama administration guaranteed bail for a New York lawyer who allegedly firebombed an NYPD vehicle — calling her “my best friend.”
Salmah Rizvi, an NYU Law grad who now works for the prestigious DC firm Ropes & Gray, helped secure the release of fellow lawyer Urooj Rahman by agreeing to be a suretor for her bail during a bail hearing in Brooklyn federal court Monday, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“Urooj Rahman is my best friend and I am an associate at the law firm Ropes & Gray in Washington, DC. I earn $255,000 a year,” Rivzi told the judge, who sprang Rahman over prosecutors’ objections.
Rizvi’s intelligence work for the feds involved “focusing primarily on sanctioned finance operations,” according to her bio on Ropes & Gray’s website, which also touts her pro bono legal work.
She “maintains an active civil rights and human rights pro bono practice, focused on prison reform, LGBTQ equality, and immigration. She represents asylum seekers at various stages of litigation,” it says.
Her LinkedIn page says she worked for the feds from May 2008 to August 2013.
She also worked as a legal intern for the NYCLU from September 2014 to May 2015, and for the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan from September 2015 to January 2016, according to the page.
Colinford Mattis and Rahman are accused of driving around near the 88th Precinct stationhouse in Fort Greene on Friday night and early Saturday and trying to pass out Molotov cocktails to crowds protesting the death of George Floyd who were clashing with police.
Shortly before 1 a.m., Rahman allegedly got out of the minivan that Mattis was driving and tossed one of the firebombs into an empty cop car near the stationhouse.
They were arrested nearby and charged federally with causing damage with fire and explosives to a cop car.
Prosecutors decried Rahman’s release during Monday’s hearing.
“We don’t believe this is the time to be releasing a bomb-thrower like the defendant into the community,” argued federal prosecutor Ian Richardson….
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It is significant that jihadist Iran would come out in solidarity with Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Friendship between Leftists and Islamic supremacists (the red-green axis) is an alliance of mutual convenience. Their accord is really about their mutual goal to destroy America by subversion. Back in 2017, Ayatollah Khamenei hailed Black Lives Matter, and in July 2016 Arab social media gloated over the slaughter of policemen in Dallas. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan also called for the murder of police in the name of Islam, and he invoked the Quran. The communist-rooted Black Lives Matter states on its own website:
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).
What better group for jihadists to ally with in trying to tear down America? Yet racism against blacks is endemic in the Arab world; black slavery persists in Libya, Mauritania, Sudan and Algeria. Women are also deemed to be inferiors in Islam, and under Islamic law, homosexuals are to be murdered. All of these causes — gay rights, women’s rights, black rights — Leftists merely pretend to care about, either for votes or for more nefarious reasons.
“Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement of support to violent rioters burning down homes and businesses throughout the United States” and declares “the world is standing with you.”
Not according to Nestride Yumga, an American citizen originally from Africa who said this about BLM: “Black Lives Matter is a joke. You are the racists.”
“Iran Tells Leftist Rioters: ‘The World Is Standing with You,’” by Frances Martel, Breitbart, June 1, 2020:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement of support to violent rioters burning down homes and businesses throughout the United States this weekend, asserting on Monday, “the world is standing with you.”
“The world has got heard your outcry over the state oppression,” ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi said at his regular briefing on Monday. “The world is standing with you. The American regime is pursuing violence and bullying at home and abroad.”
“We are greatly regretful to see, along with people across the world, the violent scenes the U.S. police have recently unfolded. We deeply regret to see the American people, who peacefully seek respect and no more violence, are suppressed indiscriminately and met with utmost violence,” Mousavi continued, demanding police “stop violence against your people and let them breathe.”
Elsewhere, the Iranian Foreign Ministry posted a statement online claiming falsely that “vicious dogs” were attacking peaceful Americans on city streets, citing a remark by President Donald Trump claiming that said dogs would greet anyone breaching the White House fencing. There is no evidence of widespread use of police dogs during the current round of arson and looting this weekend.
“Failed [sic] to keep its promise of stopping wasting money [sic] on foreign adventurism and embattled in a Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] crisis of its own making, U.S. regime now employs army, vicious dogs and ominous weapons to intimidate protesters,” the ministry said, adding the U.S. should “listen to its people and change its bankrupt policies.”….
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In the midst of outright chaos across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, anarchy has broken out in cities all over the country. Stores are being looted. Buildings are being burnt to the ground. Cops are being murdered. And complete and total destruction is the end goal of far-left activists like Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA who, for the most part, are running the show in these city streets.
Despite the fact that there are a few peaceful protesters, it is undeniable that these protests are not peaceful. And in the midst of the complete and total act of defiance against law and order, anyone in these streets marching with these people should be seen as participants. Their very presence is an act of approval of what is taking place — even if you speak against it.
From a Christian perspective, it is normally best to disassociate from chaotic rebellion against government–especially when the cause has devolved from a righteous movement to an unrighteous power grab with an end goal of the destruction of Western civilization. But, Joel Osteen is not a Christian — so what should we expect?
Joel Osteen — a fake pastor and pretend Christian — has, however, been spotted marching along with these hooligans in the streets of Houson, TX, where his multi-million dollar enterprise is headquartered. Almost exactly a year ago, he was spotted marching with Lady Gaga at a gay pride march. I guess since pride festivals have been canceled, this is second best for him. At least he’s wearing a mask.
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The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported on May 19, 2020 that “Germany and the Palestinian Authority (PA) released a joint statement expressing ‘grave concern’ over Israel’s declared intention to begin annexing parts of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley. The same German government has ignored Israel’s legal rights in Judea and Samaria and imposed Nazi-like sanctions on Israeli products from these Jewish communities.
Germany has been on the side of Israel’s enemies time and again. Germany was a partner in the 2015 flawed Iran nuclear deal, which Israel vehemently opposed, charging that it gave the radical Islamic Republic a clear path to a nuclear bomb. Germany has also been Iran’s major trading partner, and a leader in thwarting the U.S. imposed sanctions on the ayatollah’s dictatorship. The Iranian regime has repeatedly threatened to “wipe the Jewish state off the map.”
Germany is also opposed to the Trump administrations “deal of the century” Middle East peace plan, which Israel overwhelmingly supports. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, complained that the Trump plan required a “balanced approach.” He stated that, “Only a negotiated two-state solution acceptable to both sides can lead to a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” In his apparent pro-Palestinian bias, Maas clearly ignored Mahmoud Abbas’ (Palestinian Authority President) repeated rejections of Israel’s peace proposals, including the 2008 generous peace offer by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s repeated invitations to Abbas to come to the negotiating table. Abbas also rejected the Trump peace plan even before it was presented.
Germans are guilty of perpetrating the greatest crime in history, the industrial liquidation of European Jewry, known as the Holocaust. Germany’s history, moreover, is replete with antisemitic violence against Jews. Whether during the crusades, or the ‘hep hep’ pogroms against the Jews throughout Germany in 1819, ostensibly aimed against Jewish emancipation. Germany has been, throughout history, a leading source of antisemitism and anti-Jewish racism. Today, with the memory of the Holocaust still fresh, German hostility to the Jewish state, although hidden from view, is alive and well in Germany’s Foreign Ministry, and it is reflected in its major policies.
The German Foreign Ministry is working behind the scenes to delegitimize Israel by funding Non-Governmental Agencies (NGO’s) that work openly do that job. At the same time, the German Foreign Ministry unknowingly or intentionally is damaging the relationship between Germany and Israel. All this is done while official Berlin is releasing declarations about Germany’s moral obligations to the Jewish state.
This dichotomy is perhaps a symptom of Germany’s latent antisemitism on one hand, and its efforts to re-brand itself as a new Germany, to redeem itself from its sordid past. German society has never truly confronted its antisemitism in the post war era. Contemporary Germans have a ready excuse that they have atoned for the Holocaust by restoring synagogues, (which they burned and destroyed in 1938 during the Kristallnacht pogroms) and built memorials for the dead Jews (that they are responsible for killing). Antisemitism is, however, pervasive throughout German society. For more than 20 years after WWII, about 100 former members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party held high ranking positions in the West German Justice Ministry.
A recent study which reviewed former Justice Ministry personnel files, showed that the prevalence of former Nazi officials in the Justice Ministry allowed them to shield one another from post-war justice. Some of these former Nazi officials took part in the murderous violence known as Kristallnacht. The presence of many Nazis in the post-war German administration created a sense of denial about Nazi crimes. For many Germans, the Nuremberg Trials were merely a kind of “victors justice,” and not Nazi Germany barbarism and genocide. Germans today, to repress their guilt for the Holocaust, are practicing what amounts to a “secondary antisemitism.” They resent living Jews for reminding them of their guilt. They have assumed the role of victim, with the Jews being their victimizer. Hilda Walter, a German Jewish journalist quipped that “It seems the Germans will never forgive us for Auschwitz.”
These days, while the German government expresses concern over growing antisemitism in Germany, it is funding antisemitic NGO’s. According to NGO-Monitor, “Officially, German funding is aimed at combatting poverty, securing food, establishing peace, democracy and human rights…However, German federal funding is allocated to, among others, organizations that promote anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), lawfare campaigns, anti-Zionism, a one-state vision, antisemitism, and violence.”
The vehicle to disburse funding to Israel’s enemies is the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The BMZ is the primary federal authority managing German development policy. With a budget of 10.2 billion euros (2019), the BMZ provided the Palestinian territories with 85.7 million Euros in 2016. German government generosity includes the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), a leading group engaged in political warfare against Israel. It is promoting BDS, and regularly levels false accusations of Israeli apartheid and racism, and support for a Palestinian “right of return,” which is inimical to a two-state solution. Miftah is another Palestinian organization funded by German government largesse. This group promotes resistance against Israel, which means terror attacks. It regularly accuses Israel of perpetrating “massacres,” cultural genocide, war crimes, and apartheid.
The German Foreign Ministry’s particularly harmful action has been the subversion of the Germany-Israel Friendship Association, which was formed in 1966 (a year after diplomatic relations were established between the two countries). The Association has 50 branches across Germany and between 5,000-6,000 members. The Association was, from the start, an a-political body supported by all German political parties, aimed to express their commitment to Israel. To expand its activities, the Association sought and received funding from the German government, and it has received 500,000 Euros annually, which is disbursed by the German Foreign Ministry.
The German government financial aid to the Association is not without a price. The Foreign Ministry used the aid to subjugate the Association to its policies, which often times contradicts Germany’s alleged commitment to Israel’s security. The same Foreign Ministry regularly votes against Israel in international bodies, including the UN.
The Association Board of Directors was ordered by the Foreign Ministry to immediately cease dealing with issues pertaining to UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). Germany is the top donor to this agency specifically devoted to the Palestinians, and to no other refugees. UNRWA, as an organization, is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state by serving as an incubator for Palestinian terrorists. The Association was instructed to focus only on cultural activities affiliated with a particular political camp – the Israeli left.
In what amounts to a sharp blow to pro-Israel activities in Germany, the German Foreign Ministry announced that it is curtailing its financial support from a project used by the Association in conjunction with pro-Israel groups called “Days of Israel,” which are held around Israel’s Independence Day. “Days of Israel” activities take place in major German cities and towns. It includes speeches, performances, movies, and information booths that promote Israel. It is apparent that the biased German Foreign Ministry resents the pro-Israel message that the “Days of Israel” represents. They would rather have the Association present more “balanced” programs.
Young members of the Association on Study Tours to Israel were instructed by the German Foreign Ministry to avoid civic organizations associated with the political Right. They were especially warned not to meet with Jewish “settlers.” They were however, encouraged to meet with radical Leftist organizations.
It is becoming increasingly clear whose side Germany is on.
The Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial was one of 16 public art works damaged when thousands of protesters swarmed Boston Common on Sunday night.
A $3-million dollar restoration project for the sculpture dedicated to the African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War was granted clearance just last week. The outbreak of the coronavirus had delayed the project.
The conservator’s recent prep work protected the front of the bronze relief with plywood, but its concrete backside was vandalized with four-letter words and phrases including “Black Lives Matter,” “No Justice, No Peace,” and “Police are Pigs.”
“This monument is considered one of the nation’s greatest pieces of public art and the greatest piece to come out of the Civil War,” said Liz Vizza, executive director of the Friends of the Public Garden, “It was, amazingly enough, dedicated 123 years ago on May 31st – the day it was defaced.”
Accident or not an accident?
The Shaw Memorial captures the likenesses of the first African American volunteer infantry unit – the 54th Massachusetts Regiment – that fought after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Their colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, advocated for the men to join the war because they desperately wanted to fight for freedom. If the soldiers had been captured in battle they could have been enslaved or killed. Their heroic story was recounted in the 1989 Hollywood film “Glory.”
So did the Black Lives Matter thugs know what they were vandalizing and not care? Or did they consider the soldiers contemptible because they fought for the United States?
Either answer is conceivable.
These racists hate America. They hate anyone who supports this country and fights for it, black or white.
Vizza said the Friends and the city rallied quickly to carefully clean all 16 damaged works including the 9/11 Memorial in the Public Garden and the statue of Abigail Williams on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. They finished on Tuesday.
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The assault on St. John’s Episcopal Church by radicals and racists was the ugliest moment of the D.C. riots. Not only was the famous 204-year-old church, which every president since Madison has attended, sprayed with graffiti, but some of the thugs even tried to burn it down by starting a fire in its basement.
The attack and President Trump’s subsequent visit to the ‘Church of Presidents’ captured the attention of a nation. But what happened to St. John’s was not an aberration. The Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots have been associated with attacks on churches and synagogues across the United States.
The victims of New York City’s leftist riots included St. Patrick’s Cathedral as the venerable 142-year-old building was defaced with obscenities and the three letters BLM for Black Lives Matter, along with “George Floyd” and “No Justice, No Peace”.
In Richmond, Virginia, Beth Ahabah, a 225-year-old Reform Jewish congregation, had the windows in its grand 116-year-old building smashed by rioters.The building is now covered over with plywood. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, a 175-year-old building, also in Richmond, was defaced with graffiti. Finally, rioters in Richmond broke the windows of the West Broad Church of Christ, an African-American congregation. They left intact the one pane of glass reading, “Welcome”.
Some of the nationwide vandalism of churches and synagogues featured generic Black Lives Matter slogans, but some had hateful messages that were specifically targeted to the houses of worship.
The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, a 108-year-old building, was at the center of some of the local riots, including the hit-and-run of three Denver police officers, and suffered permanent damage. The walls were also vandalized with graffiti reading, “Pedofiles” and “God is dead”.
Some of the windows of the facility were broken and the gates were badly damaged.
In Los Angeles, Congregation Beth Israel’s walls were defaced with graffiti reading, “F___ Israel” and “Free Palestine”.
Elan Carr, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, visited the synagogue, and stated, “This graffiti is yet more evidence that anti-Zionism is Antisemitism.”
The hateful messages that defaced the Denver cathedral and the Los Angeles synagogue were leftist in ideology. They also had nothing to do with racism or any of the imaginary causes of the riots. Instead they are evidence that the radicals are settling their pre-existing grudges with churches and synagogues.
The largest sustained burst of synagogue vandalism took place in Los Angeles. The Fairfax area, home to both leftist hipsters and traditionalist Orthodox Jews, was heavily targeted by the rioters who, in addition to looting stores, defaced multiple synagogues, including the aforementioned Congregation Beth Israel, Beit Medrash Kehilat Yaakov (Congregation of Jacob), the synagogue of Rabbi Gershon Bess, the most important Jewish religious leader in the city, as well as Congregation Tiferes Tzvi and the Young Israel of Hancock Park. Three religious schools, Bais Yaakov School for Girls, Bnos Devorah High School, and Ohr Eliyahu Academy, were also vandalized.
Rioters tried to deface the Shaarei Tefila (Gates of Prayer) synagogue in the area, but members of Magen Am, a security organization protecting houses of worship, whose instructors include former IDF and Navy SEAL members, protected the synagogue from being vandalized by the leftist rioters.
Some of the ugliest graffiti was reserved for the Baba Sale synagogue of Moroccan Jewish refugees named after the Rabbi who had helped lead Moroccan Jews out of the Muslim country and to Israel.
Not only did the racist thugs spray paint “BLM” on it, but also added, “f___ pigs” and “help minorities”.
The congregation, which had reopened, is now closed.
Some of the looting and violence came as Jews were celebrating the holiday of Shavuot, which commemorates the Ten Commandments being given by God to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Many Jewish store owners were unaware of the pogrom being carried out against their houses of worship and businesses. And there is at least some evidence that the pogromists were deliberately targeting Jews.
A local milliner reported cars driving down the street and screaming, “F___ Jews”.
Rioters also targeted Our Lady of Mt. Lebanon-St. Peter Cathedral, a Maronite Catholic church in Los Angeles. The 83-year-old cathedral is also home to a middle eastern refugee congregation. And the Black Lives Matter bigots reminded them of the persecution that they had fled by scrawling, “Kill All Cops” and “Make America Pay for its Crimes Against Black Lives” on its iconic exterior.
In Dallas, the Saint Jude Chapel in Downtown Dallas had its windows smashed in with rocks.
“They probably didn’t even know this was a church. And that’s just some glass. Who cares,” Father Jonathan Austin insisted. “I’m with them 100 percent.”
While the Saint Jude doesn’t quite look like a traditional church, the words, “Saint Jude Catholic Chapel” above its entrance are very clear and impossible to miss.
The Cathedral of the Assumption, the fourth oldest building in Louisville, and the third oldest Catholic Cathedral in regular use in this country, suffered damage when rioters shattered the windows of its rectory. The historic building’s facade is now covered with plywood boards.
In Santa Rosa, a window in the Unitarian Universalist Congregation was smashed in.
“Clearly, he didn’t see the ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner in our window,” Rev. Chris Bell complained.
One of the more serious radical attacks on houses of worship took place in Little Rock, Arkansas when a fire at the Lewis Street Church of Christ burned through the roof.
In Minneapolis, where all the hate and rage began, the 106-year-old Basilica of Saint Mary, the first basilica in the country, suffered fire damage when a fire was started under a pew.
And in St. Paul, the Church of St. Mark was tagged with graffiti.
There are also reports that numerous other churches and synagogues have been defaced.
While the media has tried to pretend that the assault on St. John’s Episcopal Church was an accident or an aberration, the sheer number of incidents from New York City to Los Angeles make it clear that the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots displayed a nationwide pattern of targeting houses of worship.
These attacks tried to destroy the physical symbols of faith and to demoralize people of faith.
That is what the Left has always done.
The Left infiltrates churches and synagogues, but it is its own religion. Its faith is not directed toward any power higher than government, its prayers are uttered in regulations and academic papers, its theology is practiced by smashing glass and shattering doors, and churches and synagogues have always been its targets. When its stormtroopers are loosed in the streets, they go to war against those who believe.
What happened in Washington D.C., in Los Angeles, in New York City, in Minneapolis, and in cities across America, was the latest expression of the hatred of the radicals and racists for any other belief system.
There is an inquisition in America today. And it punishes heresies, such as proclaiming that all lives matter, or believing in anything other than social justice, with social pressure, loss of work, and force.
What the theorists who would be gods hate above all else is those who reject them and believe in God.
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By Barbara Loe Fisher
Fear is a primal biological response to a perceived threat to our survival. Fear triggers momentary paralysis and then a fight or flight reaction before the brain can rationally analyze and calibrate our response to a perceived threat. 1
Right now, people around the world are living in fear of being infected or infecting someone else with a new coronavirus that can kill those most vulnerable without warning. Along with confusion and uncertainty, which prolongs fear, many of us are traumatized by the authoritarian measures governments have taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that began in China in late 2019.
The “new normal” is disorienting, like we have taken a hit to the gut and then to the head that we didn’t see coming. Maybe that is why so many Americans, who value freedom of speech, religion, assembly, privacy and the right to work, have given those constitutional rights up, without stopping to think through the ramifications of the larger precedent being set.
We are slowly coming out of shock five months after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared a public health emergency on January 31, 2 which escalated six weeks later into a social distancing lockdown when the World Health Organization declared a COVID-19 pandemic on March 11. 3
Questions About the Lockdown Response to COVID-19 Pandemic
There are lots of questions being asked now about whether the lockdown response to the new coronavirus has matched the threat, questions like:
Why did the U.S. fail to immediately screen people at sea ports and airports for illness as soon as the outbreak was identified in China and got worse in February so they could be quarantined and tested? 45678
At the beginning of the pandemic, why were Americans told masks were useless and to stop buying and wearing them, when now we are told we must wear masks? 9101112
Why were U.S. emergency supply warehouses, which were supposed to be stocked with pandemic preparedness equipment for health care workers, completely empty? 13
Why were residents of nursing homes and other crowded medical facilities not effectively screened and tested to make sure the sick were not being housed with the healthy? 14151617
Why did U.S. public health officials persuade lawmakers to almost immediately lockdown and home quarantine most of our population,18 instead of using traditional disease control measures that identify, quarantine and treat the sick? 19202122
Opening Up Conversation About Science, Health and Liberty in the U.S.
As we let go of fear and return to rational thinking, it is opening up a public conversation about science, health and liberty that is going viral, despite attempts by Big Pharma and Big Tech working with governments and mainstream media to censor it.2324252627
In the United States of America, we live in a constitutional republic where democratically elected representatives make laws, and state governments are a check and balance on the authority of the federal government. 28
American values and beliefs, which have influenced the adoption of human rights in international law,29303132 are embedded in the 1776 Declaration of Independence 33 and codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. 34
Americans value autonomy and individuality. We believe each person is a unique and independent individual with an inalienable right to life and liberty.35
We value the human right to freedom of thought, expression and belief; freedom of conscience and association; and respect for privacy – all civil liberties that limit the power of government. 36
We value equal opportunity for all and mobility within society based on individual initiative and hard work, not on hierarchy, inherited privilege or government permission. 37
We are a pragmatic and adaptable people who value the use of common sense and practical solutions to problem solve, achieve and succeed. 38
We are a generous people and believe that voluntarily helping others by donating our money and time is a personal choice motivated by charity, not by communal expectation or a legal requirement. 39
Above all, we are a self-reliant, optimistic people with an indomitable spirit and faith in our ability to overcome adversity individually and as a nation. 404142
Some of the core values, which have shaped our history and defined who we are as a nation, have been put on trial in 2020 because we are paralyzed by fear of a virus that doctors say could be hiding in the breath of every person who comes near us and contaminate everything we touch. 4344 Often described in military and apocalyptic terms as a war for human survival against an “invisible enemy,” 45464748 the authoritarian lockdown approach by governments to the coronavirus pandemic has been framed as a choice between safety and liberty.
In horror, we watched the coronavirus pandemic unfold in February 2020 with Chinese officials either chasing citizens suspected of being infected with the virus into the streets and dragging them away to quarantine camps, or using hammers, nails and blocks of wood to barricade families into their apartments. 49505152 Then, after scientists and U.S. public health officials used mathematical models to warn lawmakers to lock down the U.S. or prepare for between 1.7 and 2.2 million Americans to die of COVID-19, 535455 we were filled with an uncommon fear and uncertainty that continues to haunt our lives.
The Fear of Entering Public Spaces and Getting Too Close to Each Other
As most states emerge from months of quarantining people in their homes and shuttering businesses,56 many Americans are still afraid to enter a public space because we are warned over and over again that the invisible enemy will kill us if we don’t stay six feet away from each other at all times, even outdoors. 57 Parents have been urged not to hug their children if a member in their family has been exposed to the virus. 58 In one city, government officials told residents to take photos and report fellow citizens who violate social distancing rules by getting too close to each other outside.59
We see fellow Americans be arrested for not wearing masks, 6061 or walking on deserted beaches, 6263 or for taking their children to empty playgrounds. 6465 Small business owners, who are struggling to feed their families, are being sent to jail for re-opening without government permission. 66 Food banks are running out of food because families, who have never stood in a food bank line in their lives, have no other choice. 67
It doesn’t feel right, but most of us comply with the new rules, afraid to be the one who gets a dirty look or is yelled at or arrested – or worse – if we don’t comply.
COVID-19 Mortality Estimates Far Exceed Reality
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 and CDC officials predicted it could kill 1.7 million Americans, by May 22, there had been 335,000 COVID-19 reported deaths among the world’s seven billion people with about 96,000 of those deaths reported in the U.S. [68] How the death toll would have been affected if global lockdowns had not taken place to try to slow the infection rate and delay population based herd immunity will be debated for years to come. [69]
Although the vast majority of COVID-19 infections are thought to be asymptomatic, data shows the estimated symptomatic infection-mortality rate in America is currently at most 1.3 percent. 70717273About 90 percent of people who die are over 65 years old, with the majority of those people suffering with one or more chronic poor health conditions like heart or lung disease, obesity, diabetes and hypertension.74 More than 80 percent of children who die from COVID-19 also suffer with chronic illness and disabilities like immune suppression, obesity, diabetes, seizures, developmental delays and genetic disorders. 7576
We all hope to live long and productive lives but nobody escapes death and, for some, it comes sooner than expected. The sudden unexpected death of a person for any reason is a tragedy, especially for that person’s family and friends. The deaths of tens of thousands during this pandemic or any pandemic is a tragedy. The feelings of loss and helplessness are magnified when individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 die alone, separated from their families, denied the comfort of taking their last breath in the company of people they love and who love them.77
Are We Really All in This Together?
Whether the new coronavirus jumped out of an animal in a Chinese live food market 78 or escaped from a biohazard lab, 7980whether the virus kills an estimated one to two percent of those symptomatically infected or far less, 81 this year billions of people around the world have followed the advice of the World Health Organization, government health agencies and doctors, who tell us that this “invisible common enemy” must be vanquished using any means possible because, collectively, “we are all in this together.” 82
Public health officials have persuaded lawmakers to divide the American people into two classes: those who are considered “essential” and allowed to continue working and those who are considered “non-essential” and barred from earning a living. 83848586 Small businesses and services judged to be “non-essential” have been forced to close their doors, including daycares, schools, churches, restaurants, theaters, barber shops and salons, gyms, parks and beaches while, paradoxically, everyone is free to roam through grocery stores, drug stores and big box stores like Walmart, Target and Home Depot owned by big corporations.
The Mass Suffering Generated by Widespread “Sheltering in Place”
Tens of millions of healthy Americans have obeyed orders to “shelter in place” and self-quarantine at home for months, sacrificing their jobs and losing their savings, 878889destroying one third of the small businesses middle class citizens have worked a lifetime to build, 9091while parts of the travel, 9293949596restaurant, 97 retail 9899and personal care industries 100 go bankrupt. By the end of May, there were more than 38 million Americans unemployed, representing almost 24 percent of the labor force, and most of them are low hourly wage earners who don’t have savings to pay the rent or buy food while they are out of work. 101102103
So the homeless rate in the U.S. is projected to increase by 45 percent this year, with almost one million people homeless by the summer.104 At the same time, Congress is driving up the national debt in an attempt to delay the complete collapse of our economy by using taxpayer money to pay people to stay away from each other. 105
Fear of a virus has prevented people sick with heart disease, cancer and other health problems from being treated in hospitals that have been told to only treat patients infected with COVID-19. 106107 Neglected children and battered women have been trapped for months in homes with their abusers, while calls to mental health hotlines from depressed, anxiety-ridden and suicidal children and adults have increased by nearly 900 percent 108109110111 and, in some cities, prison inmates – even those charged with violent crimes – are being released from jail with the justification they should not be exposed to COVID-19. 112113
With our children locked out of classrooms and the faithful blocked from worshipping in churches, synagogues and mosques, fear has stopped most of us from publicly questioning the premise that the price of safety is liberty. 114115116117118119
Few have challenged the mantra repeated over and over again by doctors and politicians in positions of power that this dystopian reality we are now living in will be the “new normal” 120 until we are all tested and everyone is vaccinated when a COVID-19 vaccine is available because then, and only then, will it be “safe” for government to give back at least some of the liberty that has been taken from us. 121122123124125
What we have allowed to be done in the name of public health has no parallel in American history or human history.
No Lockdowns for Past Epidemics and Pandemics
The world did not lock down during centuries of epidemics of smallpox, which was a highly contagious virus and had a case fatality rate of 30 percent. 126 Americans did not stop working to prevent epidemics of diphtheria when that contagious disease swept through communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with a mortality rate of between 5 and 10 percent that was even higher for children. 127 Societies have not closed businesses and schools to prevent tuberculosis, a contagious disease that spreads the same way as coronavirus and has a case fatality rate still between 20 and 70 percent. 128129
In 1918, state Governors did not order healthy people to shelter in place and put tens of millions of Americans out of work during the Spanish Flu Pandemic, when that highly contagious H1N1 influenza virus had a case fatality rate of more than 2.5 percent.130
So why are the majority of people in educated societies like the U.S. cowering in fear before a virus that does not cause any symptoms or complications in the majority of children and adults under the age of 65, and has a mortality rate of about one percent, which is even lower if all the asymptomatic infections are counted? 131
In America, why are we allowing fear to erode cultural values and beliefs that have sustained and defined who we are as a nation for 245 years?
1982: The Challenge to Vaccine Science, Policy, Law and Ethics
The profound ramifications of what is happening this year in the name of public health and the slippery slope that has been created is expanding the conversation about science, health and liberty that has been going on for several centuries in academic, philosophical and political circles, 132133134135136137 but didn’t go public in post-World War II America until 1982, when parents of vaccine injured children challenged the science, policy, law and ethics of mandatory vaccination, the most revered of all medical interventions in the history of public health programs.138
Mothers and fathers, whose children died or were brain injured in the 1970s and 80s by the crude whole cell pertussis vaccine in DPT, had simple goals: we wanted safer vaccines, more and better quality scientific research to identify those children at high risk for being harmed by vaccination, and the inclusion of informed consent protections in public health policies and laws. 139140141142 At first, defensive vaccine manufacturers, public health officials and pediatricians met our request for safer vaccines and better science with anger and dismissal. 143 Before Congress passed the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act giving vaccine makers a partial liability shield but also acknowledging that vaccine safety should be a national priority, 144145 we were patronized. Then, when we refused to go away, we were demonized. 146147148149150
Today, any person who talks about their or their child’s vaccine reaction or criticizes one-size-fits-all vaccine policies is called ignorant. 151152 Any person who points out how low vaccine licensing standards are or how big the long standing gaps in vaccine safety research are, is accused of being a science denier and slapped with the “anti-vaxxer” label.153154
If you question the orders of doctors, who believe it is moral to enforce “no exceptions” vaccine laws that sacrifice vaccine vulnerable children in the name of the greater good, you are called “selfish” for defending the ethical principle of informed consent and refusing to offer up your child’s health for herd immunity. 155If you protest against vaccine policies that deny people an education, medical care and employment based on their vaccination status, you are called a danger to society. 156 If you criticize information disseminated by the CDC and World Health Organization, you are branded a threat to global health and can be censored on the Internet or far worse. 157158159160161
Strategies Creating a “New Normal” During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Does this sound familiar? It should, because it is the same rhetoric and political tactics being used during this COVID-19 pandemic to keep the people fearful and compliant.
It is the same strategy that will be used to label you a selfish threat to the public health if you don’t agree to be electronically tagged, tested and tracked by health officials when thousands of COVID-19 “contact tracers” fan out across America to test for COVID-19 infections. 162163164 It is the same strategy that will be used when you are told you must get an antibody test and obtain an “immunity passport” 165 before you are given back your freedom to participate in society – that is until a fast tracked coronavirus vaccine is licensed and your passport to life and liberty becomes proof you have received a COVID-19 vaccine – perhaps simultaneously delivered and tracked via a microneedle quantum dot tattoo on your skin. 166
Will a positive antibody test be accurate 167 or does it even matter? Every day, we hear scientists and public health officials arguing about whether or not naturally acquired coronavirus immunity means anything at all, 168169170171 while promoting the idea that a COVID-19 vaccine is the only thing that will give us immunity and save us all.172173
Tomorrow, the “new normal” in America may well include the order to “Show me your vaccine papers” [174][175] before you can enter a store or restaurant, go to school, attend a football game, get on a plane, train or subway, obtain a driver’s license, be admitted to a hospital or nursing home, get a room at a hotel or walk on a public beach, if health policy and lawmakers do not use common sense to adopt a more balanced approach to dealing with a virus that, so far, has changed everything. [176][177][178][179]
There is no oversight [180] on the decisions we allow scientists and doctors with big titles and even bigger salaries to make for us, [181][182][183] decisions that can affect the biological integrity of each one of us and profoundly impact the way we live our lives.
Yet, science is not perfect, doctors are not infallible, and the risks of having a complication to an infectious disease or a vaccine can be higher or lower depending upon the genes and epigenetic history we inherit, the environments we live in, and the life choices we make. [184][185][186][187]
Health of a Society Defined by Absence of Chronic Disease and Disability
The health of a society is not solely measured by the absence of infectious disease but, more importantly, by the absence of chronic disease that destroys quality of life and lowers a nation’s life expectancy because it often leads to premature death.
In America every year, heart disease kills 647,000 people; lung disease kills 160,000; uncontrolled hypertension and stroke kills 146,000, and diabetes kills 83,000 people, [188]while millions more suffer cancer [189] and other types of immune and brain disorders. [190] America has the worst life expectancy, [191] the worst infant mortality [192] and maternal mortality [193] rates and the highest prevalence of chronic illness and disability [194] of all developed nations in the world, even though we have one of the most highly vaccinated populations in the world, [195] with over 94 percent of school children having received dozens of doses of vaccines for the past three decades. [196][197]
Today, only four adults in 10 are considered healthy, while over 50 percent have one chronic disease and 30 percent suffer with two or more. [198] An astonishing 25 percent of all children have a chronic poor health condition [199] like asthma, epilepsy, food allergies, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune disorders, developmental delays, autism, anxiety and depression, and diabetes. [200]
In fact, chronic disease marked by unresolved inflammation in the body 201 202 is the Number One cause of death and disability in America and is responsible for most of the annual $3.5 trillion dollars spent on health care. 203 It is an epidemic that is crippling and killing far more people than COVID-19 or any other pandemic in our history.
U.S. public health officials have no explanation for why the majority of Americans are sick, except to blame the people for making themselves sick by smoking and drinking too much, eating junk food and not getting enough exercise or sleep. 204
COVID-19 Mortality in U.S. Impacted by Multiple Failures
Whether or not you buy that explanation, the fact that over 160 million people in our population are afflicted with chronic poor health may be at least one reason why there have been more COVID-19 related deaths reported in the U.S. than any other country. That, along with the fact that on March 24, the CDC told doctors and coroners to list COVID-19 as the official cause of death for a person, even if that person had one or more chronic health conditions or had never been tested for COVID-19. 205
Mortality from COVID-19 in the U.S. has also been impacted by the systematic neglect of well-funded federal health agencies like the CDC and BARDA. 206207 The government was caught totally unprepared for an influenza-like pandemic, despite Congress and three Administrations appropriating billions of dollars to federal health agencies since 2006 to prepare for a pandemic just like this one. 208 Instead, warehouses were left empty without emergency supplies of masks, gowns and gloves for health care workers 209 and without diagnostic tests, equipment and therapeutic agents to help patients survive complications associated with an epidemic of a viral respiratory disease like coronavirus. 210
That is because federal health agencies, which have forged public-private business partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry, 211 have given most of the money Congress handed them for pandemic planning to drug companies to build new vaccine manufacturing plants and produce more vaccines for the national stockpile. 212213 As the World Health Organization, the CDC, businessman Bill Gates and NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci keep telling us, using lots of vaccines is the best way to stay healthy and fast tracking a COVID-19 vaccine to market is the only way the world will ever be a safe place to live again 214215216
Corporations, Governments Cut Corners in Race to Develop COVID-19 Vaccines
So global pharmaceutical and biotech companies are now developing over 100 experimental COVID-19 vaccines, with a handful leading the race after being given billions of dollars in funding from the U.S. government, the Gates Foundation and other organizations. 217218 Some of these coronavirus vaccines being created by scientists will use as yet unlicensed DNA, messenger RNA and nanoparticle technology, oil based adjuvants and electricity, to genetically manipulate and hyperstimulate strong inflammatory immune responses in the body. 219220
Some companies are skipping animal trials, 221 which are an important part of the vaccine licensing process to answer questions about whether COVID-19 vaccines could cause neurological reactions or more severe coronavirus infections in vaccinated animals or fail to work at all. These are only a few of the short and long term problems that could have devastating consequences for humans being vaccinated.
Some companies are cutting corners by conducting Phase 1, 2 and 3 trials simultaneously, but will they investigate whether half of US adults and a quarter of children suffering with chronic illness are at increased risk for adverse responses to the new COVID-19 vaccines before they are licensed and mandated?
Other vaccine manufacturers want the green light to deliberately infect human clinical trial subjects with COVID-19 to see how well an experimental vaccine works. 222 Enthusiastic “bioethicists” are jumping on board to help advance this type of “new normal” in vaccine research, but parents of vaccine injured children are logically asking why it is ethical to intentionally infect humans with a new virus in a clinical trial when for decades public health officials have insisted that it is absolutely unethical to conduct a prospective clinical trial comparing health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children to determine whether vaccines are harming far more than “one in a million.” 223224
So, while we are being ordered to obey new rules that require us to give up our constitutional and human rights, drug companies and government health officials are violating old rules that govern ethics and the scientific method for proving that vaccines are safe and effective. 225
Jacobson v. Massachusetts: A Utilitarian Ruling by SCOTUS with Tragic Consequences
Science is not perfect, doctors are not infallible, and vaccines carry risks that can be greater for some than others, which is why voluntary vaccination should have been unanimously upheld in the 1905 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. 226 Instead, the majority sitting on that high court more than a century ago viewed the notoriously reactive smallpox vaccine as a sacred cow and medical doctors as infallible so they could affirm the constitutional authority of state legislatures to mandate smallpox vaccinations during outbreaks. The Court said:
“The matured opinions of medical men everywhere, and the experience of mankind, as all must know, negative the suggestion that it is not possible in any case to determine whether vaccination is safe.”
Using bad logic and bad science while leaning heavily on the pseudo-ethic of utilitarianism, state governments were given the green light to legally require vaccination based on a “common belief” that vaccination is safe and effective, rather than proven fact. Piously waving the greater good flag to justify throwing civil liberties out the door, the Court majority ruled that citizens do not have a legal right to be free at all times because there are “manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subjected for the common good.”
The Court said that state legislatures can exercise police power to restrict or eliminate civil liberties, including freedom of religion, during public health emergencies in order to “secure the general comfort, health and prosperity of the state.”
But the justices also warned that mandatory vaccination laws should not be forced on a person whose physical condition would make vaccination “cruel and inhuman to the last degree.” They said:
“We are not to be understood as holding that the statute was intended to be applied in such a case or, if it was so intended, that the judiciary would not be competent to interfere and protect the health and life of the individual concerned. ‘All laws,’ this Court has said, “should receive a sensible construction.”
One academic activist attorney has said that the 1905 Jacobson ruling “is often regarded as the most important judicial decision in public health.” [227] That is not an overstatement because, in 1927, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes used it to issue a eugenics ruling in Buck v. Bell that affirmed the constitutional authority of Virginia to forcibly sterilize a young woman mistakenly judged by state officials to be mentally retarded.228
Justice Holmes declared, “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes,” leading the way for mass sterilization of tens of thousands of Americans that doctors and government officials judged to be genetically defective, or morally unfit or otherwise a threat to the public health during the 1920s and 30s. [229]
This is the tragic legacy of Jacobson v. Masschusetts, 230 an immoral utilitarian ruling that public health officials cling to in order to justify legally requiring people to use vaccines that carry a risk of injury or death and applying societal punishments for refusing to do it. 231232
State Legislators Primarily Make Most Public Health Laws
During this time of fear and confusion, the Jacobson ruling also reminds us that it is democratically elected representatives in state legislatures who make public health laws governing people living in different states. That is because what is not defined in the US Constitution as a federal activity is reserved for the states, which is an important check on federal government power. Elected lawmakers in your state can choose to mandate a few or many vaccines with or without exemptions, while the federal government has the authority to mandate vaccinations for people entering the U.S. or crossing state borders. 233
It was this understanding that prompted NVIC in 2010 to launch our free online Advocacy Portal at NVICAdvocacy.org that monitors proposed vaccine-related legislation and helps Americans educate lawmakers so flexible medical, religious and conscience vaccine exemptions can be secured and protected in public health laws. Despite aggressive lobbying efforts by vaccine manufacturers, public health officials and medical trade groups, until 2020, vaccine exemptions and informed consent rights have been successfully defended in multiple states over past decade, even though California, New York and several other states have taken those rights away. 234
Now, it looks like voluntary vaccination will be on the line in every state as the Vaccine Culture War, 235 which is the tip of the spear in a much larger culture war about values and beliefs going on in this and many other countries in the 21st century, is brought home to every person and every community in America.
Contact Your Legislators Now and Vote in November
You have an opportunity, right now, to contact your elected representatives and let them know how you feel about protecting civil liberties and vaccine informed consent rights in your state. Sign up to use NVIC’s Advocacy Portal to defend voluntary vaccine choices.
And when you go to the polls on November 4, 2020, think hard about who you are voting for and why. If you don’t like the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that your Governor or other elected representatives have made, your vote in this and every election beyond this one could affect whether America will continue to value liberty or throw it away.
Because if the state can tag, track down and force individuals to be injected with biologicals of known and unknown toxicity today, then there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the state can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.
Be the one who never has to say you did not do today what you could have done to change tomorrow.
It’s your health, your family, your choice, and our mission continues:
No forced vaccination. Not in America.
Note: This commentary provides referenced information and perspective on a topic related to vaccine science, policy, law or ethics being discussed in public forums and by U.S. lawmakers. The websites of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) provide information and perspective of federal agencies responsible for vaccine research, development, regulation and policymaking.
Click the plus sign at the bottom of this page to view and/or post comments on our commentary.
One week ago, YouTube banned me for a week and gave my channel a strike for “hate speech.” The video that was labeled “hate speech,” however, is a brief discussion of the persecution of Christians in various parts of the world. After submitting two appeals, and having both appeals rejected, we can only conclude that YouTube is banning videos for reporting Christian persecution, and that YouTube has therefore declared war on Christians.
EXPOSING SICK ROOTS OF “SEX EDUCATION”~KINSEY, CIA & CHILD ABUSE
In this interview with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman, Liberty University Professor Dr. Judith Reisman drops a bombshell: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in supporting “research” by pervert Alfred Kinsey involving massive amounts of child abuse. This criminal pseudo-science, also sponsored by the Rockefeller foundations, was the pretext needed to begin changing American laws and culture on marriage, rape, family, and more, explains Reisman, who wrote several books on Kinsey and pornography. Kinsey’s research involving rape and sexual abuse of children also served as the foundation for sexualizing young students in public schools with grotesque “sex education” programs that groom children for sexual exploitation and abuse.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- A New York gun restriction bill sponsored by James Sanders Jr. (D) 10th Senate District, is in committee. It’s called Senate Bill S7065 and if passed, “would require a purchaser of any firearm, rifle or shotgun to submit to a mental health evaluation.”
This law would put an additional burden on citizens and firearms retailers by creating more barriers to exercising the 2nd Amendment. Governor Cuomo and State Democrats desperately hope to sign into law, S7065, putting doctors in the position of determining whether or not New York residents would be allowed to own guns. The most dangerous portion of the Bill reads:
“Section 3 amends section 7.09 of the mental hygiene law by adding a new subdivision (1) to require the commissioner of mental health to establish within the office of mental health an administrative process for the mental health evaluation of any individual prior to such individual’s purchase of any firearm, rifle or shotgun. The commissioner shall promulgate regulations which shall include, but not be limited to, provisions relating to mental health professionals approved to perform the evaluation; the process for evaluation; and the development of a standardized form to be used by mental health professionals performing such evaluation to approve or deny an individual for purchase of a firearm, rifle or shotgun.”
Already frustrated with their lack of ability to restrict gun-ownership, the American Medical Association has made it publicly clear that they will do whatever necessary to prevent people from having guns. Besides, what “mental health professional” (yet to be defined) would want to clear someone, knowing that they could be held responsible should that person commit a crime with a gun? The answer is…none. Facilitators of this evaluation would be much more likely to deny than approve due to fear of their own culpability.
Dr. David Barbe said, “In emergency rooms across the country, the carnage of gun violence has become a too routine experience. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we urge lawmakers to act,”
According to CNN Health, “The country’s largest physicians group voted to support nearly a dozen policies including:”
A call for banning all assault-type weapons, bump stocks and related devices, high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets.
Opposing the arming of teachers in schools and keeping schools gun-free zones.
Requiring all gun owners to complete a gun safety course and register all firearms.
Increasing the federal legal age limit for all firearms and ammunition from 18 to 21.
Opposing federal laws that allow “concealed carry” permits to cross state lines.
Supporting laws that prohibit individuals who are under domestic violence restraining orders or who are convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence crime or stalking from possessing or purchasing firearms.
Requiring that domestic violence restraining orders and gun violence restraining orders be entered into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Allowing family members and partners and law enforcement officials to petition courts for gun removal from individuals considered at high risk for violence.
The question is, how can Doctors be trusted with this level of responsibility knowing how politically-biased many of them are on the topic of guns? This is exactly what gun-grabbing legislators in New York want; an organization, already deeply intertwined in the most intimate portion of our lives, to carry out the actions of gun-restriction. Maybe Republicans should appoint the Catholic Clergy to determine the necessity of abortions.
Knowing that 93% of inmates surveyed in prison avoid background checks altogether how likely is it that they will follow Democrat orders and schedule their own mental health evaluation? This law would put an additional burden and risks on citizens and firearms retailers by making them susceptible to any number of system failures and politically-biased mental health reviews while making them vulnerable to unnecessary felony violations in the process.
Rather than work on mental health issues in New York, Democrat legislators continue to avoid any attempts at fixing the problems that cause human violence and use the issue of mental health as an excuse to attack lawful gun owners and limit their ability to purchase firearms.
At the same time, New York Democrats are setting criminals loose in our communities, the new mental health gun proposal would further ensure New York residents would be left unarmed and helpless when they come face to face with Cuomo’s newly-freed law-breakers. What could possibly go wrong?
Dan Wos is a nationally recognized 2nd Amendment advocate and Author of the “GOOD GUN BAD GUY” series. He speaks at events, is a contributing writer for many publications and can be found on radio stations across the country. Dan has been a guest on the Sean Hannity Show, NRATV and several others. Speaking on behalf of gun-rights, Dan exposes the strategies of the anti-gun crowd and explains their mission to disarm law-abiding American gun-owners.
TRUMP WINS! SUPER MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WANT MILITARY TO CRUSH RIOTS!!!
★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★
TRUMP WINS! A new POLL shows the vast majority of Americans support his call to deploy the United States military to crush the riots that the leftist mainstream media has championed. In this video, we’re going to look at the results of the poll, how those results completely repudiate the cheerleading from the Marxist media, and why these riots are red pilling more Americans like nothing else; you’re going to absolutely love this!
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Four Iranian Christian converts have been summoned to begin their five-year jail sentences for leading house-churches, for which they were convicted of “acting against national security”.
Hossein Kadivar, Khalil Dehghanpour, Kamal Naamanian and Mohammed Vafadar were summoned on Thursday 28 May and told they must submit themselves at Tehran’s Evin Prison by tomorrow.
The four men were sentenced in October 2019, alongside five others from the same house-church network in the northern city of Rasht: Abdolreza Ali Haghnejad, Shahrooz Eslamdoost, Babak Hosseinzadeh, Mehdi Khatibi and Behnam Akhlaghi.
Those five are already serving their sentences, having been detained since July last year, when they were unable to pay the high bail demanded from them after they insisted on being defended by their own lawyer.
The nine Christians were arrested in a series of raids on their homes and house-churches in January and February 2019.
Hossein and Khalil were detained following a raid on the house-church meeting they were leading on 29 January; Abdolreza was arrested on 10 February during a raid on his home; Kamal, Mohammed and Shahrooz were arrested at a house-church gathering on 15 February; Babak and Mehdi were arrested at two separate house-churches on 23 February; and Behnam was summoned to the offices of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (Sepah) that same day.
They were each helping to lead services in the absence of their imprisoned pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, alongside whom they will now all be incarcerated in Evin Prison.
Two of them – Abdolreza and Kamal – had been arrested before for their Christian activities.
Seven of them – all except Abdolreza and Shahrooz – were released on bail in March 2019, after depositing the equivalent of $13,000 each. Abdolreza and Shahrooz were detained.
Then in July 2019, Abdolreza, Shahrooz, Behnam, Babak and Mehdi had their bail increased tenfold after insisting upon being defended by their own lawyer.
Judge Mohammed Moghisheh, who has earned the nickname the “Judge of Death” for his harsh treatment of prisoners of conscience, rejected their choice of lawyer and demanded they were defended by a lawyer of the court’s choosing.
When they refused, the judge increased their bail amount to the equivalent of $130,000 each, and, being unable and unprepared to pay such an amount, they were transferred to Ward 4 of Tehran’s Evin Prison, where they have remained.
The other four decided to defend themselves and were therefore released on their pre-existing bail (the equivalent of $13,000 each) until their next hearing, when the judge accused them of promoting Zionism and said the Bible had been falsified.
On 13 October, all nine men were sentenced to five years in prison, after a hearing on 23 September.
Their appeals were rejected following a hearing on 25 February 2020.
“ONLY ONE RAINBOW MATTERS”: MARS/SKITTLES RELEASES RAINBOW-LESS “PRIDE PACKS” TO RECOGNIZE HOMOSEXUAL PRIDE MONTH~
The new packaging on the gray Skittles tells you that they have removed all color because the LGBTQ+ Pride Flag is the ‘only rainbow that matters’. Oh really?
CANDY GIANT MARS WRIGLEY WILL SELL GRAY SKITTLES IN JUNE TO BENEFIT GLAAD
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Mars, Inc., which owns the candy brand Skittles, has announced that it is releasing rainbow-less “Pride Packs” in the United States in recognition of Pride Month, and part of the proceeds will be donated to the homosexual advocacy group GLAAD. Some Christians have pushed back against the company’s “only one rainbow matters during Pride” slogan, noting that the only rainbow that does matter is the one in the Book of Genesis.
“Skittles is passionate about showing its support for the LGBTQ+ community,” Hank Izzo, vice president of marketing for Mars Wrigley U.S., said in a statement.
“We believe that giving up our rainbow means so much more than just removing the colors from our Skittles packs and we’re excited to do our part in making a difference for the LGBTQ+ community through our partnership with GLAAD, not only in June, but all year long.”
Skittles is known for its rainbow-colored candies, but the limited-edition Pride Packs will be grey and the packaging will read, “Only one rainbow matters during Pride.”
The packs, which are a part of the “Give the Rainbow” campaign, will be sold in CVS and select Walmart stores. $1 of every purchase will be donated to the homosexual advocacy group GLAAD, which says that the funding will be used to “support [their] news and campaigns program, which tells culture-changing stories of LGBTQ+ people and issues across the media year-round.”
The Pride Packs were also announced on social media, where many remarked that while there is indeed only one rainbow that matters, it is God’s rainbow, which came as a covenant after He flooded the Earth due to the rampant sin of mankind.
“The only rainbow that matters is not for LGBTQ; it’s what God put out after He flooded the earth as a promise He would not do it again,” one commenter wrote. “But think, why did God flood the earth in the first place?”
“You’re right. Only one rainbow matters. “I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the Earth.” Genesis 9:13,” another posted.
“Well, won’t be buying any of your candy. Now or ever. Stick with making candy, not political stuff,” a third remarked.
Photo Credit: Shayla./Pexels
As previously reported, while a common argument among those who struggle with homosexual feelings is that they were “born this way,” the Bible teaches that all are born with the Adamic sin nature, having various inherent feelings and inclinations that are contrary to the law of God, and being utterly incapable of changing by themselves.
“All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way,” Isaiah 53:6 reads, “and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
It is why Jesus came: to “save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
Scripture outlines that Jesus came to be the propitiation for men’s sins (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10), a doctrine in Christianity known as substitutionary atonement, and to save men from the wrath of God for their violations against His law (Romans 4:25, Romans 5:9, Romans 5:16), a doctrine known as justification.
The Bible also teaches about regeneration, as in addition to sparing guilty men from eternal punishment, Christ sent his Holy Spirit to make those who would repent and believe the gospel new creatures in the here and now, with new desires and an ability to do what is pleasing in the sight of God by His indwelling and empowerment (Ezekiel 11:19, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Titus 3:5).
Jesus said that men must be born again, and be transformed by the Spirit from being in Adam to being in Christ, or they cannot see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3-8).
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee: Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” Jesus told Nicodemus.
“How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus asked, not understanding that the rebirth Jesus was speaking of was a spiritual rebirth and not a physical one.
“Jesus answered, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee: Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee: Ye must be born again.’”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
NEW BOOKLET:Public School or Homeschool?—How Public Schools Are Corrupting Children’s Values by Maria Kneas and Berit Kjos is our newest Lighthouse Trails Booklet.* The Booklet is 18 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies. Quantity discounts are available. Our Booklets are designed to give away to others or for your own personal use. Below is the content of the booklet. To order copies of Public School or Homeschool?—How Public Schools Are Corrupting Children’s Values, click here.
Editor’s Notes: Lighthouse Trails began preparations for this booklet prior to the current “coronavirus pandemic.” With this and other recent events, we believe the release of this booklet is providentially timed.
**Some of the information in this booklet is of a very sensitive nature, and some readers may find it difficult and uncomfortable to read.
Public School or Homeschool?—How Public Schools Are Corrupting Children’s Values
By Maria Kneas and Berit Kjos
Part One—True-Life Examples at America’s Public Schools
By Maria Kneas
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
Children spend about six hours every weekday—which is about half of their waking hours—in school. Some of those remaining waking hours are spent doing homework. Thus, it is safe to say that children’s school experience is one of the most, if not the most, major influences in their lives. So, it stands to reason that parents should be aware of what their children’s school is teaching them. This booklet you are about to read capsulates how America’s public schools are using deceptive and dangerous tactics to change the values and behaviors of children in their care. And thus, the question every parent should ask—public school or homeschool?
For generations, American children have been taught humanist beliefs and values in public schools. Christian morals have been undermined by values clarification and other techniques. This has caused a radical change in the beliefs and moral values of children in this country.1
The psychological brainwashing techniques used on our children have resulted in children accepting alternative values as opposed to having them reach those decisions rationally. In a 1993 Forbes magazine article titled “Indoctrinating the Children,” Dr. Thomas Sowell recognized this was taking place:
The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on American school children.2
In stark contrast, Dr. Chester M. Pierce, once a professor of Educational Psychiatry at Harvard University, stated that American children are “insane” because they are loyal to America, to their parents, and to their belief in God. He said it is the job of teachers to heal these “sick children” by turning them into the “international children of the future.”3
Dr. Paul Brandwein, a leading child psychologist, evidently agrees with Dr. Pierce. In his book, The Social Sciences, Dr. Brandwein said, “Every child who believes in God is mentally ill.”4 This must have a practical impact on our education system because government schools have psychologists.
For years, the National Education Association (NEA) has been promoting sex education with the goal of radically changing how students think about sex.5 Sometimes, the results are drastic enough to make the news. One such case was reported in an article in October 2019 stating that an Austin, Texas school district will teach children as early as sixth grade about oral and anal sex, and this includes role playing. The children will also pretend to have sex when they are drunk and will pretend to put a condom on somebody. In addition, the homosexual and transgender agenda will be integrated into the children’s lives. The article explains:
As detailed by Texas Values, the curriculum discourages gender-specific language like “mother” and “father” because it “can limit [children’s] understanding of gender into binaries,” [it] encourages children to attend LGBT “pride” rallies and explore other ways to become LGBT “allies.”6
A 16-year-old girl at a Colorado high school was required to role play getting raped in front of her classmates. She was also required to read out loud a poem which has such an indecent attitude towards sex that I cannot describe it here in this booklet. That poem is full of four-letter words. The girl was traumatized by having to do these things in front of her classmates.7
The NEA has also been promoting “death education,” with a goal to change thinking about death as radically as they were able to change thinking about sex. Do you remember that shooting at Columbine? Prior to that horrific shooting by two teens, for years that school had been teaching death education.8
Some schools even have a “suicide talking day.” On that day, students write suicide notes. They write their own obituaries and discuss what they will look like in their caskets. One student said that before “suicide talking day,” she never considered the possibility of suicide. After that day, she began to contemplate it. She thought it would “liberate her spirit” so that it would no longer be “enslaved to her body.” In addition, it would help with the problem of global overpopulation. She said that the suicide training made her “brave enough” to commit suicide.9
In 2019, a 13-year-old girl in Kansas was asked to indicate which students she would kill if she wanted to kill five students in her class. She pointed at four of them and at herself. While pointing, her hand was in the shape of a “finger gun” (the index finger pointing and the thumb raised). Because of that, her teacher took her to the principal. That girl was handcuffed, arrested, and taken to a juvenile detention center. The girl was charged with committing a felony.10
Public schools are also promoting occultism. There is a reading series called “Impressions” that is used in the second and third grades of some public schools. It teaches the students how to cast spells. One of the exercises is to pretend that some children have had a magician cast a spell on them. In order to help the children, it is necessary to reverse that spell. The students are told to write the spell that the magician used and then write another spell to reverse it. Then they are told to chant their spells. By making them chant the spells, the teacher is requiring them to do role playing. They are taking on the role of a sorcerer or a witch.11
Some public schools teach reincarnation. This is contrary to Scripture. The Bible says that we die once (as opposed to being recycled), and then we are judged (Hebrews 9:27). One student said that death was portrayed as being glamorous and living was portrayed as being hard. She said students were taught that reincarnation would solve their problems, because they would return in a better life form and eventually they would “become like God.”12
This teaching makes death look like a helpful friend, instead of an enemy. Therefore, it could make some vulnerable students become more likely to commit suicide or murder.
Seventh grade students in California were required to study Islam for three weeks. This included mandatory role playing. The students had to pretend they were Muslims. They prayed to Allah, chanted praises to Allah, and adopted Muslim names. They played a game that simulated a jihad (a holy war against enemies of Islam), and they planned a pilgrimage to Mecca. Students were encouraged to dress like Muslims and to use Muslim phrases. They were required to memorize Muslim prayers. During Ramadan, they had to fast at lunchtime. Teachers told the students that, while they were taking this intensive course about Islam, they would “become Muslims.” The textbook about Islam did not mention Islamic conquest or Islamic violence against Jews. The Muslim religion was only shown in a good light.13 You can be sure you will not find a public school in this country that would permit Christianity in the same scenario.
Some public schools have After School Satan Clubs. These are being promoted by the Satanic Temple. As of October 2016, there were clubs in Washington D.C., Arizona, Missouri, Washington, Utah, Florida, California, and Georgia. In addition, the Satanic Temple in Portland, Oregon got permission to have a club at an elementary school there.14
Part Two—Understanding Values Clarification and How It Destroys Values and Behavior
By Berit Kjos
Wisdom resteth in the heart of him that hath understanding: but that which is in the midst of fools is made known. Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people. (Proverbs 14:33-34)
Should schools teach values? They inevitably do. So, the essential question is: Whose values?
Years ago, history books presented honorable heroes who modeled faith, courage, honesty, and integrity. Elementary readers introduced children to memorable characters who demonstrated genuine love, not a fleeting loving feeling, but the deep, laying-down-your-life kind of love that is so often ridiculed today.
A daring curriculum replaced those former virtues, while carefully combing through textbooks for any trace of biblical bent. Curriculum change agents made sure literature was free from “biased” words like wife, husband, or marriage and hunted for books that emphasized what they considered reality and relevance by modeling adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty, and drug abuse.
Called “values clarification,” this “progressive” program challenges our children to defend or deny all the cherished goals and guidelines of earlier days. It insists that the only true values are those a child chooses himself in response to his immediate needs, desires, and circumstances. It tells him, “Do your own thing!” The result is a growing social chaos among people who, like Israel during the time of the Judges, do what is “right in [their] own eyes” (Judges 17:6 and Judges 21:25).
A mother from Kenosha, Wisconsin felt the painful effects of what her children were learning in school:
By the time my first two children had reached third grade, I realized something was wrong. The child I took to school in the morning was not the child I picked up after school in the afternoon. If this change had been a positive change, reflecting academic progress, I would have been delighted. However, the change I noticed was in their value system. They seemed to be desensitized to the morals I had been trying to instill in them as their mother, and I thought that I had failed. . . .
I failed because I had assumed the schools my children were attending were like the schools I had attended.
I found instead that the thrust of schools had turned from education to indoctrination. I found the values I instilled in my children were not reinforced or respected by the schools, but were systematically challenged in the classroom.15
Spreading like cancer, this values transformation extends from the very core of our educational system to all its parts. In the name of progress, it promotes a self-centered kind of freedom from commitment and self-control.
Junior and senior high school students in Michigan were told to relax and “fantasize” in order to design a device for birth control “they would enjoy using.” They were to discuss the criteria used for planning and the advantages of one design over another. Finally, they compared their design with existing contraceptives.16 This scenario took place over thirty years ago; you can imagine how much worse it is today.
What do students learn from this kind of exercise? The answer lies in the common goals of the humanist NEA, the New Age movement, and Planned Parenthood—three social forces that have surged forward together, dead-set on accomplishing their purpose. All three of these groups saw the need to break free of “traditional” and “religious” authority that hampers the desires of young people for sexual expression and activity according to whatever proclivity and lifestyle they desire. As Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger put it, sex is the “radiant force” enabling mankind to “attain the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world, which will light up the only path to an earthly paradise.”17
Such hedonistic philosophy cannot bring fulfillment. Instead, it stirs insatiable cravings. Luring children into this sensuous, self-centered lifestyle is Satan’s most effective way of turning them away from God. If they embrace sin, they cannot see God’s glory (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Back to “Nature”
Humanism inflamed the intellectual community because it mirrored what they already believed. Likewise, Darwin’s theory of evolution became an instant hit because he put a plausible “scientific” framework around a myth that had already found acceptance—thus validating it. This explains why “creative” scientists could produce a full-bodied drawing of their mythological missing link from fractions of bones and get away with it. Though admittedly false, the familiar monkey-to-man line-up may remain in textbooks—as if true—until evolutionists find better “proof” for their popular beliefs. The probabilities of chance-evolution have been likened to that of a tornado sweeping through a scrap yard and accidentally forming a Boeing jet.
Far more than an attempt to explain origins, evolution has become a social philosophy—the way to view all of life. Evolutionists see man simply as a higher form of animal. Since we train animals to serve society, why not use psychological techniques like behavior modification in the classroom? Why not “free” children to exercise their natural instincts, satisfy their evolving animal nature, and thereby fulfill their human potential?
Humanist goals have not changed since Darwin’s days. In fact, the educators who signed the Humanist Manifesto II in 1973 stressed a “natural” and evolutionary way of life:
In the area of sexuality, we believe that intolerant attitudes, often cultivated by orthodox religions and puritanical cultures, unduly repress sexual conduct. The right to birth control, abortion, and divorce should be recognized . . . Moral education for children and adults is an important way of developing awareness and sexual maturity.18
Even before the signing of the revised manifesto, two innovative humanists, William Glasser and Sidney Simon, showed the way to implement it. Published in 1969, Dr. Glasser’s book, Schools Without Failure, presented a “daring new program”19: The class, led by the teacher, would become a counseling group. Somehow, by airing uncomfortable circumstances and feelings each day, this encounter group was supposed to teach social responsibility and solve behavioral problems. Consider the effect of this suggestion by Dr. Glasser:
Children will often become very personal, talking about subjects that ordinarily are considered private. . . . The teacher should keep in mind that in class meetings, free discussion seems to be beneficial and that adult anxieties are often excessive. Nevertheless, a child who discusses drunken brawls at home might quietly be asked to talk about something that has more relationship to school.
Changing the subject in this way is sometimes unwise, however because it is just those drunken brawls at home that have the most relationship to his school progress.20
Professor Sidney Simon went a step further. His book, Values Clarification—A Handbook of Practical Strategies for Teachers and Students, is packed with classroom exercises which filtered into textbooks and public schools. A popular strategy called values voting is “a simple and very rapid means by which every student in the class can make a public affirmation on a variety of values issues.”21
The teacher simply asks a question. The students respond affirmatively by raising their hands. They give a negative reply by pointing their thumbs down. If undecided, they fold their arms. To pass, they do nothing. After the teacher has asked about ten questions, the class discusses the answers. Each child is forced to take a public stand—even if he passes. Imagine the effect of this kind of peer pressure on a child who feels insecure.
The teacher asks, “How many of you:
. . . think there are times when cheating is justified?”
. . . regularly attend religious services and enjoy it?”
. . . think that women should stay home and be primarily wives and mothers?”
. . . would like to have a secret lover?”22
Simon recommends this list for all ages. For secondary students, he adds questions such as: “How many of you think sex education instruction in the schools should include techniques for lovemaking, contraception?” and “How many of you think you will continue to practice religion, just like your parents?23
Clarifying Values Clarification
Parents and teachers across the nation have agonized over the emotional damage caused by the psychological manipulations of values clarification. In response to their outcry, the Department of Education held hearings in seven locations across the country to implement the Protection of Pupil Rights (Hatch) Amendment of 1978 (modified in 2001). Hundreds of parents testified at the hearings held in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Phoenix, Orlando, Concord (New Hampshire), and Washington, D.C. An amazing book written by Phyllis Schlafly in 1988 titled Child Abuse in the Classroom reported violations from the official transcripts of the proceedings. They fell into these categories:
Bias against Christian values. A mother from Oregon, whose son became “very confused as to the rightness or wrongness of stealing,” shared this testimony:
Young children are expected to fill in sentences such as, “the trouble with being honest is ______.” They are asked, what would be the hardest thing for you to do: “steal, cheat, or lie?”
This question was discussed in the third grade: “How many of you ever wanted to beat up your parents?”24
Bias toward humanist/New Age values. A first-grade lesson in “sex equality” shows the cruel pressure to conform.
The students each had two naked dolls, one male, the other female. They were asked to dress the dolls in work clothing to show that both genders could work at any job. . . . there were no dresses. All clothing was male-oriented. Then the teacher had the students sit in a circle while she pulled out objects from a sack, like a pancake turner or a tape measure. She asked, “Who uses this, mom or dad?”
If the students did not answer the way she had wanted, she would say, “Well, who else uses this?” Finally one little boy raised his hand and said, “I don’t care. Men ought to be doctors and ladies nurses.”
The teacher then asked how many of the students agreed with him. By the tone of her voice, they knew no one should raise a hand, so no one did. The little boy was so humiliated by the peer pressure and class manipulation . . . that he started to cry.25
Striving with religious zeal to convert children to “moral relativism” or “situational ethics,” humanist educators argue that anything other than “value-free” teaching is religion. To them, only values that fit man’s desires are valid. For if man is his own god, he has divine authority to choose his own rights and wrongs. Frequent changes in terminology block the kind of “clarification” that exposes the mental manipulation. Programs might be called “values education,” “self-awareness,” “decision-making,” “self-acceptance,” or “interpersonal relationship skills.”
Values clarification is neutral, argues Simon, since every value is as valid as any other. To him, the only wrong position is one that believes in absolute values—and therefore opposes his belief that all values are relative.26
Parents from New Jersey “could not find . . . in any of the hypothetical situations, a single portrayal of parents in a positive manner. Parents were shown to be overreaching, nagging, unfair, and overcritical of their children’s friends.” No wonder many children are confused about values, question their faith, and resist their parents.27
Another popular technique described in Child Abuse in the Classroom makes home problems the focus of classroom discussion:
Earlier this year, my fifth grader came home from school telling me about a new classroom activity called Magic Circle. . . . He told me the children sit in a circle and tell each other positive and negative things about each other. The teacher is not a trained psychologist, and this type of group therapy can be harmful to a child if done improperly.
I also resent the probing questions asked by the teacher in this setting:
“How many of you have unemployed parents?”
“How many of you have divorced parents?”
“If any of you are abused sexually, I want you to tell me, because by law I have to report it.”
One mother summarized her feelings, “I consider this curriculum an invasion of family privacy, a subtle effort to erode all authority and undermine the traditional values that have made this nation great.28
Many of the ways schools gain private information about the home life of its students are so subtle they escape notice. Often personal projects are hidden in curriculum that appears unrelated, such as physical education, English, or history. A teacher in the Lansing, Michigan school district observed:
Students are all treated as in need or as having problems. Children are being pre-tested, then subjected to an affective [relating to feelings] values program as treatment for the disturbed child; then the child is post-tested to see what measurement of change has been produced by the affective values program.
No parent has ever been notified or allowed to view the materials, nor have they ever consented to psychological diagnosis or treatment by an unlicensed psychologist or a psychiatrist. The children have even been promised that their parents won’t be allowed to see their answers, “so be honest.”29
Peer pressure is used for conforming children to group standards—or to the values of the more popular students.
Common Core
In 2013, I wrote a booklet titled A “Common Core” For a Global Community: What’s in Store for the Education of Today’s Children?. In that booklet, I stated:
I came across a headline that illustrates the corrupt values and shameless propaganda behind UNESCO’s Common Core indoctrination. The headline read: “Students Asked to ‘Argue That Jews Are Evil’ and Prove Nazi Loyalty in Assignment Linked to Common Core.” In other words, traditional values are out! Shocking propaganda is in! . . .
The goal of education has changed! Our public schools no longer teach the kind of literacy, history, math, and morality we once considered essential to responsible citizenship. The new agenda infiltrating our schools is designed to train a new generation of postmodern “progressive” students to believe whatever might serve a pre-determined “common good.”
If their educators succeed, tomorrow’s students will have neither the facts nor the freedom needed for independent thinking. Their “common core” will be based on a global collective agenda, not on Western democracy or Christian values. Like Nazi youth, they will be taught to react, not think, when nudged to do the unthinkable.30
If you want to gain some understanding about Common Core, I encourage every parent who has a child in public school to order the booklet. It’s also available to read for free on my publisher’s blog.
Part Three—What Can Parents Do?
By Maria Kneas
The scenarios we have described in this booklet are just a fraction of what has been happening in public schools. Children, from the moment they walk through the school doors in kindergarten (and even preschool), are being transformed and their values corrupted with ideologies that promote and encourage homosexuality, evolution, atheism, transgenderism, suicide, abortion, rebellion against parents, sexual promiscuity, occultism, and New age meditation (partly through the mindfulness programs now in most public schools). Are we saying that every public school teacher is part of this agenda? No, there are Christian teachers in the schools who are trying to have a truly positive and godly influence on children, but, for most of them, their hands are tied in just how much they can share; if they don’t go along with the curriculum and school districts’ plans, they’ll be out of a job.
How can such things happen here in America? It’s being done incrementally, in small continual steps, over a long period of time as this booklet shows. It’s part of the anti-biblical, anti-Christian agenda of modern “progressive” education. This was promoted by John Dewey (the “father” of modern education), and it continues to be promoted by the National Education Association.
When incrementalism is combined with values clarification, sex education, death education, and in more recent years, occultism, the result is a deadly onslaught against the faith and morals of children from Christian homes. It also puts incredible stress and confusion on children as they experience daily the vast contrast and conflict between home life and school life. Values clarification denies the reality of good and evil, and it gets school children to make immoral decisions. Those immoral decisions often involve sex and death. This is a pressure that no child should have to undergo.
Hitler said, “He alone who owns the youth gains the future,” and he developed the Hitler Youth in order to indoctrinate the children into complying with his agenda. The communists did the same thing with the Young Pioneers. Today’s progressives also know that in order to take over our culture, they have to change the thinking of our children. The apostle Peter warned us:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
We need to be vigilant to protect our children from being devoured by those who are out to destroy their faith and their morals.
The most obvious way to avoid exposing your children to the corruption in our public schools is to homeschool them. Instead of handing over your children for six or seven hours a day to teachers, curriculums, and administrations who have purposed in their hearts to alter their values, Christian parents can be the ones who are the greatest influencers of their children’s lives.
Thus far, we still live in a country where parents are legally allowed to homeschool. Some parents may feel they are not qualified to homeschool, but there are many excellent Christian resources available, both online and in print. There are also organizations that help homeschoolers and their parents. Plus, many communities have very active homeschool groups, which provide group activities and support for parents. Interestingly, during the 2020 “coronavirus pandemic,” schools worldwide were shut down, forcing children to school at home. Parents were now having to do what many had feared they would never know how to do. One article describes one such family from Australia:
Arianwen Harris used to joke that homeschooling was her “worst nightmare.” “I’ve never wanted to homeschool . . . I just never thought it was something that I would be capable of doing.”31
Now, this family has decided to continue homeschooling even after the schools re-open seeing how her children are thriving since being home taught.
When you stop and think about it, the widespread attempt to undermine the faith and morals of our children is actually a form of persecution. It’s not as obvious as slaughtering people and burning churches, but the goal is the same—to wipe out Christianity and replace it with something else. In my book How to Prepare for Hard Times and Persecution, I discuss these things while offering helpful biblical antidotes.
For families where homeschooling is simply not an option, parents can send their children to private Christian schools. But beware, and do your homework—even some private Christian schools have bought into the cultural lies permeating our society today. Churches can deceive people, and so can schools.
Some say that children from Christian homes should attend public school so they can be a light and a witness to their unbelieving classmates. That’s certainly something to consider. But for that to work, parents would need to devote possibly as many active participative hours in a week with their child as he or she is spending at school. That would be roughly thirty hours a week (four plus hours a day) teaching, praying with, and counteracting the influence of the secular school with no guarantee that the schools won’t win your child to their side. The facts speak differently with story after story of children from Christian homes either forsaking the faith of their parents or at least being severely traumatized by the deluge of ungodly teaching and influence found in the public schools.
What we have shared with you in this booklet is heavy and certainly could be cause for despair. And apart from God, we have every reason to be discouraged. But God is greater than the social, political, and spiritual forces corrupting our world, and we know that our Redeemer lives. Someday, we will live in a Holy land with our King. He has promised this to those who name the name of Jesus Christ. In the meantime, let us remember that in the light of His sufficiency, we can face unafraid the future of our children, and we can pray daily for His wisdom and His guidance in the way in which we should go.
And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. (Isaiah 58:11)
In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge. (Proverbs 14: 26)
Above all, we need to pray, and keep on praying. And we need to keep reading the Bible and be serious about basing our lives and our practical decisions on what the Bible says. Remember that, as parents, it is ultimately our responsibility to see that our children are brought up in the ways of the Lord; when fostered with truth and grace, the homeschooling experience may be the most loving option for our children.
A Few Resources for Homeschool Families
While we are providing the following resources, please always do your own research and use discernment no matter what resources you are using. As the Bible tells us, we are to be bereans (Acts 17:10-11) and to test all things to make sure they line up with God’s Word.
There are many different homeschool curriculums available today. Some have been around for a long time and have proven to be trustworthy, effective, and easy to use (e.g., Abeka, BJU Press, Switched on Schoolhouse by Alpha Omega Publications, LIFEPAC by Alpha Omega Publications, and A.C.E. (Accelerated Christian Education). There are some free programs available as well. (Regarding a very popular homeschool program, Classical Conversations, we have some strong concerns about it.32)
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) defends the rights of parents to “direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms.” They have e-newsletters and their website gives information about homeschool laws by state (https://hslda.org/content). The site also has curriculum reviews, which are helpful when choosing a curriculum.
Homeschool.com has a list of homeschool support groups, listed state by state (and also includes other countries): https://www.homeschool.com/supportgroups/united-states. You can also find local homeschool support groups through social media such as Facebook.
A few helpful books on homeschooling are 102 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum (Duffy), What Your Child Needs to Know and When (Sampson) and Educating the Wholehearted Child (Clarkson). Disclaimer: By listing these books, we are not necessarily giving an endorsement. As with everything, use discernment, and weigh everything you read with Scripture. An excellent resource is Berit Kjos’ book, How to Protect Your Child From the New Age and Spiritual Deception, which offers many practical and biblical ideas.
If you are going to homeschool your children, we commend you. Pray for discernment so you can spot curriculum or materials that do not line up with God’s Word. Just because a curriculum is advertised as Christian homeschool curriculum does not necessarily mean it has biblical standards. Today, there are curriculums that promote all kinds of false and dangerous teachings (e.g., legalism, Calvinism, New age meditation practices such as mindfulness and centering prayer, and Word-Faith). If you are not sure how to recognize false teachings, we encourage you to read some of the Lighthouse Trails topical booklets. They are inexpensive and cover a vast array of vital issues. Before you choose your homeschool curriculum, research, ask questions, find reviews, and most of all, pray.
To order copies of Public School or Homeschool?—How Public Schools Are Corrupting Children’s Values, click here.
Endnotes
Berit Kjos, How To Protect Your Child From The New Age & Spiritual Deception (Eureka, MT: Lighthouse Trails Publishing, 2013), pp. 53-66.
Thomas Sowell, “Indoctrinating the Children” (Forbes, February 1, 1993), p. 65.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
The promotional poster for the Enneagram documentary by Zondervan; used in accordance with the U.S. Fair Use Act for the purpose of critique, analysis, and review.
LTRP Note: The news release below regarding the Christian publisher, Zondervan, is posted for informational and research purposes. Lighthouse Trails warned about the Enneagram in our booklet, The Enneagram—An Enlightening Tool or an Enticing Deception?(written by Lois Putnam), which we released last Fall. Obviously, when one of the largest evangelical publishers releases a film (their first film ever) on the Enneagram, it’s clear this is a fast-growing trend within evangelicalism. We believe the Enneagram (as is Lectio Divina) is a gateway “tool” to further integrate the occultic contemplative prayer movement into the church, a movement that has so significantly influenced millions of Christians.
News Release from Zondervan Publishers
Zondervan announces the first-ever Enneagram film, NINE: THE ENNEAGRAM DOCUMENTARY, will debut in North American theaters fall 2020, featuring internationally renowned Enneagram expert and bestselling author Christopher L. Heuertz.
The documentary, produced in association with Sandoval Studios, marks Zondervan’s first foray in producing a film. Zondervan sees film as a way to broaden key messages from its authors to reach a wider audience and is actively exploring this format. Click here to continue reading.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
LTRP Note: While New Age meditative practices (including “mindfulness” meditation) have integrated into all facets of our Western society, including the church, for some time, there has been an even stronger push for them since coronavirus began. Purveyors of eastern-style meditation are using the elevated levels of stress that the “pandemic” has caused to sell the idea that we need meditation practices to help alleviate that stress. The following letter to the editor gives one example (see links below for other examples).
Dear Lighthouse Trails:
I’m sending you this on the off chance you were not aware of Kaiser’s increasing mystical bent. A search for references to Kaiser or Kaiser Permanente on your site came up empty.
This morning I found email from Kaiser Permanente in my regular inbox. This isn’t unusual because my mother-in-law has been enrolled with them for some time, and Kaiser sends her several emails after each of her cancer treatments. Since she “doesn’t do the Internet,” my wife has directed Kaiser’s email to our account. I usually just drop them in a folder without reading them since they contain no info that her doctor hasn’t already given her. But among the messages today is a link to Kaiser’s “Emotional Wellness Tools,” which includes various apps for “mental health and emotional wellness.” It seems Kaiser has taken note of “these stressful times” and has taken it upon themselves to be guardians of much more than physical health.
On one page of their website, we read:
“Everyone needs support for total health — mind, body, and spirit. These wellness apps can help you navigate life’s challenges, and make small changes to improve your sleep, mood, relationships, and more. It’s self-care made easy, designed to help you live well and thrive.”
There’s an app called “Calm” which features “More than 100 guided meditations” and other “mindfulness tools.” Another app is called “myStrength” (sic) which includes more “Mindfulness and meditation activities” as well as “Tailored programs for managing depression, stress, anxiety, and more.”
Got that? And MORE! From a mainstream healthcare provider!! I’m glad my mother-in-law isn’t computer literate, or she might be exposed to this poison.
We are living in a virtual ashram. The only antidote is the Gospel; God’s offer of eternal life as a free gift, received by simply believing in Christ as one’s Savior.
Thank you for your attention.
Charles F.
Other examples of pushing meditation because of coronavirus (posted for informational and research purposes and not as an endorsement of content or source):
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
From Roger Oakland and Caryl Matrisciana’s book, The Evolution Conspiracy.
There is a clear but complex marriage between physical evolution and transcendental evolution. Ironically, while forcing out creationism, many scientists and educators push for an equally religious alternative. They cling to the Eastern concept that the next stage of man’s evolution will arrive in spiritual terms. Many “prophesy” a development—a quantum leap from biological evolution into a sort of “mystical emergence.”
Fritjof Capra, an American physics professor and author of The Tao of Physics, is a prominent advocate of New Age thought who says:
The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible, dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process.1
After so much indoctrination in and exposure to the unproven ideas of evolutionary thinking, growing numbers of people are now accepting the concept of this “cosmic process” as the most natural thing in the world. Natural, but deadly—for this blending of physical and spiritual evolution thickens into a hot spiritual porridge made up of a variety of assorted cereals. Mystical alchemy, charading as spiritual evolution, combines with speculation about physical evolution. This fuses with “Eastern maya,” the belief that the physical (the real, what we see) is merging with the not-yet-physical (maya) and that the mind is able to create reality (shamanism, witchcraft). This opens the door to every form of New Age deception.
The New Age movement is a hybrid of spiritually eclectic pagan consciousness that embraces every idolatry named in the Bible. Though it poses as a spiritually tolerant mindset, it is extremely intolerant of biblical Christianity.
The philosophies under its umbrella are numerous. A general summary would be any mental techniques involving altered states of consciousness through deep-breathing relaxation exercises, guided imagery, and visualization. It may also include the application of dietary or mystical folklore promising power.
Interwoven into its philosophy are a proliferation of Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. It includes guru movements, psychotherapy cults, aberrational Christian movements, blatant satanism, witchcraft, the practice of nature worship—and the list goes on. Beliefs and practices that used to be considered overtly heathen, rooted in pantheistic evolution and confined to the streets of India or the Far East, are now common practice in tens of millions of homes across North America and Europe.
Finding the Higher Self
The road to one’s “higher self” can be long and bumpy, and those who travel it may partake of a good deal of New Age healing along the way. Many New Age/New Spirituality magazines advertise a myriad of these therapies and techniques. Such materials are often given away at health food stores throughout America and promote transcendental meditation, Yoga, Reiki (energy healing), astrology, visualization, and numerous other occultic practices.
Many modern health practitioners, including doctors and psychologists, have fallen under the spell of “holistic” medicine, a discipline in which the human body, mind, and spirit are recognized as a part of the cosmos at large. When one part of the body is ill, the healer will claim that the “spirit” must be treated by drawing on the manipulation of cosmic forces, powers, and energies. There are countless examples in the news of how New Age practices have entered the medical arena. One news article states:
Once a practice that appealed mostly to mystics and occult followers, meditation now is reaching the USA’s mainstream. . . . The medical establishment now recognizes the value of meditation and other mind-over-body states in dealing with stress-related illnesses.2
What’s more, Yoga, Eastern mediation, visualization, and other forms of hypnosis are designed to train the use of occult “energy” to escape from reality, pacify stress, and nullify ills. These notions are based on the unbiblical premise that mankind has the authority to alleviate all suffering through mind-altering techniques.
The Deceptive Promise of Godhood
The basic idea of man progressing from simple to complex, from mortality to godhood, is the underlying notion in New Age thinking. . . . The delusion that man is “literally taking control of his own evolution” is ludicrous in light of events reported daily. To imagine that we can draw from resources within ourselves as we “realize our godhood” is clear deception. The Bible says that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). Solutions of goodness cannot come from man’s imagining that his heart is evolving to a higher state of purity when it is only God who can put a clean heart inside of man:
Create in me a clean heart, 0 God; and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)
Humanism based on a foundation that rejects God is gaining spiritual momentum among millions today who believe that within man is the potential of “God power.” A new generation is turning back to paganism rooted in evolutionism, which promotes this religious theory.
John Randolph Price, originator of World Healing Day, in his book The Superbeings says:
A new species of man is coming forth to lead us out of darkness and into a new dimension scarcely dreamed of by ninety percent of this world. This will be the New Age of Enlightenment, and science and religion will join hands in spreading the truth that man is not the man we thought he was. I thank God that I live at this time and will be able to see the next great leap forward in man’s expanding consciousness.3
This “superconsciousness” is renamed “god consciousness within,” “the god-power,” or “the christ-within.” These are just some of the names given to man’s prideful claim that he is God and can do what only God is able to do. This spiritual mirage leads millions to what they think is soul-satisfying water. But as with any mirage, it is only an illusion.
If the “enlightened” human chooses to imagine he has the ability to control his immortality, Satan will impress upon him the means with which to do it. If the would-be reincarnationist wants to believe he has the ability to come back in another life, Satan will find a form of deception that will cause him to believe it. The same principle applies to the evolutionist who has been duped into believing he came from nothing and goes to nothing. Satan is like a chameleon and can change his color to suit the need of the moment. The apostle Peter understood this. His warning is clear:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
Jesus also spoke of the reality of the devil and his deadly plot:
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)
There are millions today who have chosen to reject our Creator’s grace through Jesus Christ. Countless others have not yet been presented with the choice. Tens of thousands are turning away from the traditional Judeo-Christian faith of their parents or grandparents and choosing this “new” spirituality instead. Disillusioned by materialism, churchism, secularism, and humanism, seekers of self-fulfillment are turning to this new evolutionary religiosity and embracing the lie that they can become gods, or at least have the power to control their lives and destiny. Assured of inward resources and psychic powers, they attempt to fill the spiritual vacuum they feel inside.
Every Man a God
The concept that man can evolve into higher states or godhood is fraudulent, scandalous, and a complete sham that should motivate Christians with a burning desire to fight the good fight.
The new enlightened age promise of spiritual control is the same lie perpetrated by Satan when he seduced Eve in the garden of Eden (Genesis.3:4,5). It was the same spirit of rebellion that resulted in Satan being cast out of the presence of God. Isaiah 14 recounts Satan’s story from God’s perspective. Lucifer, the “son of the morning,” with all his God-given beauty and authority, brought rebellion into the universe when in his heart he said “I will” and set his mind on ascribing God’s glory to himself.
Today this rebellion continues. Listen to some quotes by well-known religious leaders and writers who believe that man is God or that God is in all humanity.*
If you want to know the closest place to look for grace, it is within yourself. . . . To put it plainly, our unconscious is God. God within us. We were part of God all the time.4—M. Scott Peck (popular New Age writer)
One of the most important books I think I’ve read in my life was a book by Eric Butterworth. . . . Discover the Power Within You. And what Eric Butterworth said in that book is that Jesus didn’t come to teach us how divine he was, but came to teach that there is divinity within us.5—Oprah Winfrey
Quantum Spirituality bonds us to all creation as well as to other members of the human family. . . . This entails a radical doctrine of embodiment of God in the very substance of creation.6—Leonard Sweet (emergent church author)
[D]ivinity will no longer be only heavenly, other, out there, up there, beyond time and space, beyond body and death. It will also be right here, right now, in me, in the earth, in this river and this rock, in excrement and roses alike.7—Sue Monk Kidd (author of The Secret Life of Bees)
You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.8—Eugene Peterson (author of The Message)
. . . underneath each of us is a “golden Buddha,” a “golden Christ” or “a golden essence,” which is our real self.9—Jack Canfield (author of Chicken Soup for the Soul books)
For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. (#460)10—from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of every human being.11—Henri Nouwen (Catholic contemplative priest)
Because God is with you all the time, no place is any closer to God than the place where you are right now. The Bible says, “He rules everything and is everywhere and is in everything.”12—Rick Warren (said in The Purpose Driven Life)
“God” who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things.13—William Paul Young (in The Shack)
I am above all as well as in all.14—Sarah Young (said by “Jesus” in Jesus Calling)
Word-Faith leader Kenneth Copeland says, “We are partakers of the divine nature . . . you don’t have a God in you, you are one!”15 and “Adam is as much like a god as you could get, just the same as Jesus . . . he’s God manifested in the flesh.”16 “I say this and repeat it so it doesn’t upset you too bad . . . when I read in the Bible where He [Jesus] says, ‘I Am,’ I say, ‘Yes! I am too!”17
These statements declaring that man is God or is becoming God and that God is in all His creation fit into the spiritual evolution agenda all too well. Satan’s deception, that man is God or can become God, is now being taken dangerously further. As man schemed to build a unified government with spiritual aspirations in Babel, so again today he is attempting to manipulate mass consciousness. It is the hope of many world leaders that global unity and man-made “peace” will ultimately overcome what the Bible says about the coming end of the world and that we will be able to create a world-wide Utopia. It will be the long-awaited “Age of Aquarius” when man will realize his own divinity and a world ruler will bring “peace” to the whole planet. Even religious leaders are telling us we should take the book of Revelation as a warning and not as a prophecy and bring God’s “kingdom now” to the earth. But the book of Revelation will someday be fulfilled to the last detail when Jesus returns to a planet on the brink of destruction.
Satan’s Final Strategy
There is a school of thought which states that when the collective consciousness of the “spiritually attuned masses” attains a certain level of awareness, there will be a quantum leap into global spiritual oneness.
When this critical mass happens, it will form a spiritual basis for the coming new-world order. Growing numbers await the day when their efforts of spiritual consciousness will make the quantum leap into peace possible. This outlook plays right into the hands of Satan, who has one final strategy left in his battle for men’s souls. . . .
In his last ploy, Satan will lure men away from allegiance to their Creator. He will satisfy men with a false peace and ultimately usher in a false world leader, whom the Bible calls the Antichrist. This man will deceive the masses as they perceive him to be the global leadership they have all awaited. With accelerating speed, we see mankind being conditioned to just such a scenario. Today’s media reports detail extensively the trends of global political unity, man’s hope of a new-world order, and discussions of a global financial economy.
What’s more, mainline Christian denominations and ministries are moving toward religious ecumenism that embraces both a spiritual evolution of consciousness and evolutionary views on man and the world’s existence.
Coupled with the changing views on evolution is the view by many that we need to remove the barriers that separate the world’s religions. In a 2014 NBC news article, it reported on the Roman Catholic head Pope Francis’ views on evolution:
Big Bang theory and evolution in nature “do not contradict” the idea of creation, Pope Francis has told an audience at the Vatican, saying God was not “a magician with a magic wand.” The Pope’s remarks on Monday to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences appeared to be a theological break from his predecessor Benedict XVI, a strong exponent of creationism.18
At the same time, the Pope has become a spokesperson for bringing all the religions together. In January 2016, the Pope issued a world-wide YouTube message, stating:
Many think differently, feel differently, seeking God or meeting God in different ways. In this crowd, in this range of religions, there is only one certainty that we have for all: we are all children of God.19
The Catholic News Agency reported:
[T]his month’s prayer requests focus on Francis’ desire for Interreligious Dialogue and Christian Unity. Francis offers his universal petition so that “sincere dialogue among men and women of different faiths may produce the fruits of peace and justice,” and expresses his evangelistic prayer that “by means of dialogue and fraternal charity and with the grace of the Holy Spirit, Christians may overcome divisions.”20
In 2014, Pope Francis demonstrated his views on “sincere dialogue” when he visited Turkey’s Islamic Blue Mosque “expressing reverence during a moment of prayer observed by the nation’s grand mufti, who led him on a tour of the Islamic facility.”21 An article on the event stated:
According to reports, Francis took off his shoes, folded his hands and bowed his head, standing silently next to Rahmi Yaran, who serves as the nation’s highest Islamic leader as grand mufti. The two faced Mecca as Yaran prayed with his palms raised. . . .
Francis held his first ecumenical meeting last March, greeting Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders, as well as those who ascribe to no faith at all. During the occasion, he praised the Muslim leaders that had come for the meeting, remarking that they were men who “adore the one, living, and merciful God and who call upon Him in prayer.” 22
Profoundly revolutionary are the new missionary goals of this blossoming ecumenical, evolutionary movement. It vehemently challenges age-old values, morals, and doctrines rooted in the Bible for which the apostles, prophets, and many others were willing to be martyred. Old ways of thinking, no matter how cherished and useful in the past, have no place within post-modern man’s massive religio-political trend.
Jeremy Rifkin, leading New Age spokesperson, summarized it well:
We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform with a set of preexisting cosmic rules. It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world, and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces. We no longer have to justify our behavior, for we are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible to nothing outside ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.23
The Kingdom, Here and Now
The idea that man can build his own kingdom of heaven on earth distorts the Christian’s biblical hope of the true heaven and breeds horrendous apostasy in the church. This condition is prophesied in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, which says that before the Antichrist, or false messiah, can assert himself as world leader of Satan’s kingdom on earth, there will be a “falling away” from the faith by the church. Millions of proclaiming Christians have become corrupted by the world’s agenda and are even now playing into the hands of the enemy in his quest to dupe men into believing that world consolidation will bring about a satisfying peace.
Reconstructionism, a movement significantly affecting the evangelical church, claims that Christ’s return is dependent upon a global political takeover by Christians who must establish His kingdom on earth before He can return. Advocates of Kingdom Now and Dominion Theology join in this dangerous perpetration of such heresy. Certain charismatics in mainline denominations fall into the same apostasy, adopting Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God theology which claim that a “raising” of Christian consciousness is necessary to restore God’s earthly kingdom.
How presumptuous to think that God needs the help of either Christians or nonbelievers to accomplish His destiny! The Christian’s citizenship is not here on Earth but in Heaven (Hebrews 11:8-10, 16). To conquer the world for God is not the ministry to which God called His church. To compromise the Great Commission is to do a corrupt disservice to the command of Christ.
Jesus said, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19,20).
The emerging church, a movement that began in the late 1990s and by some estimates claims over twenty million mostly young people,24 holds to the view that the kingdom of God is already here on Earth and that there will be no second return of Christ.
People who are deceived by these various movements will also be deceived when a world leader comes on the scene and proclaims himself to be the “Christ” that they were able to usher in due to their “important” political and social justice maneuvering.
Everywhere on Earth, Christians and other groups will praise him as a genius of global political peace. The Jews will gratefully acclaim him as the peacemaker, their long-awaited “Messiah.”
The evolutionists will see him as naturalistic emanation that formed from the cosmic universe, which at last scientifically proves that order can come out of chaos.
The Infinite Wisdom of God
As we analyze our society, it is easy to see we are being steeped in the concept that physical evolution is responsible for shaping the past and that spiritual evolution is able to create our future.
To accept the outrageous idea that godhood lies within man, not only as a personal evolutionary pilgrimage but on a grand scale, brings heavy warnings from God:
Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God . . . Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness. (Ezekiel 28:2,7)
History has proven that man’s godhood can never happen. Anytime that man attempts to rule the universe, he must fall as we see in the humbling process that befell King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:30-35. To believe that man can bring in an age of lasting peace apart from God is to believe the lie that out of chaos comes order. But method cannot come out of madness.
Method and order are the faithful characteristics of a God of love and are transparently seen in His creation. Method and order belong to a God with eternal intentions, who gracefully shows that every jot and tittle in the Bible have an ultimate purpose in revealing Him as Truth and Love. Method and order are part of the infinite wisdom of a God filled with the purpose of bringing mankind into a loving relationship with Him, through His Son, Jesus, who died as a remission for the sins of the world “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
(photo from bigstockphoto.com; used with permission)
Endnotes:
Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point (Toronto, CA: Bantam, 1982), pp. 77-78.
USA Weekend Sunday Supplement, July 24-26, 1987, p. 12.
John Randolph Price, The Superbeings (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1981), p. 17.
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 281.
The Oprah Winfrey Show # W265, “The New Age Movement,” Air Date: September 18, 1987.
Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic (Dayton, OH: Whaleprints for SpiritVenture Ministries, Inc., 1991, 1994), p. 125.
Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers Inc.,1992), p. 160.
Eugene Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: Nav Press, 1993, 2003), pp. 21-22.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc., 1993), p. 69.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1995), p. 229.
Henri Nouwen, Here and Now (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997 edition), p. 22.
Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here For? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), p. 88.
William P. Young, The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity (Newbury Park, CA: Windblown Media, 2007), p. 112.
Sarah Young, Jesus Calling (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004), p. 199.
Kenneth Copeland, “The Force of Love” cassette tape #02-0028.
Kenneth Copeland, “Following the Faith of Abraham” cassette tape, 1989.
Kenneth Copeland, “Believers Voice of Victory,” broadcast on TBN. July 9, 1987.
“Pope Francis: Evolution and Big Bang Theory Are Real” (NBC News, October 28, 2014, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-evolution-big-bang-theory-are-real-n235696).
The Pope Video—Inter-religious Dialogue—January 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq7us5Lf5IU.
Elise Harris, “In First Prayer Video, Pope Stresses Interfaith Unity: ‘We Are All Children of God’” (Catholic News Agency, January 7, 2016, http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/in-first-video-message-pope-francis-stresses-unity-we-are-all-children-of-god-39381/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email).
Heather Clark, “‘Pope Francis’ Bows Head in ‘Silent Adoration’ Beside Islamic Grand Mufti in Turkey’s Blue Mosque” (Christian News Network, November 29, 2014, http://christiannews.net/2014/11/29/pope-francis-bows-head-in-silent-adoration-beside-islamic-grand-mufti-in-turkeys-blue-mosque.
Ibid.
Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny (New York, NY: Viking Press 1983), p. 244.
Antonio Mora, “New Faithful Practice Away From Churches” (Chicago News, CBS Broadcasting, July 10, 2006, http://www.religionnewsblog.com/15295/Some-Say-20-Million-Participate-In-Emerging-Church-Movement).
As previously reported
