What the Bible says about Jesus

The True Light "In him, (the Lord Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world,…the world didn’t recognize him." John 1:4,9.
The Good Seed and the Weeds The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seeds in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. Matthew 13:24,25.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Army forces ROTC cadets to wear high heels

Cadet Command says it is not to blame

heels3
Great strides, so to speak, are being made in the US military’s jihad against sexual assault.


Army ROTC cadets are complaining on message boards that they were pressured to walk in high heels on Monday for an Arizona State University campus event designed to raise awareness of sexual violence against women.
The Army openly encouraged participating in April’s “Walk A Mile in Her Shoes” events in 2014, but now it appears as though ROTC candidates at ASU were faced with a volunteer event that became mandatory.
This, to put it charitably, is freakin insane.
heels1
This doesn’t appear to be some sort of rogue action. According to cadets commenting on the subject the order comes from the top: MG Peggy Combs, commanding general of US Army Cadet Command. And it is highly coercive:
heels2
A ding on an evaluation that you don’t support the command’s EO program is a guarantee that you won’t get promoted while on active duty. As a cadet it will probably prevent you from being selected to go on active duty rather than receiving a 90-day active duty for training billet and moved into the Guard or Reserve. It has also against Army Regulations to require soldiers to buy items of clothing for wear while on duty.

I contacted the US Army Cadet Command and asked them about this. I received a response from the command public affairs officer, Mister Mike Johnson. According to Mr. Johnson, ROTC detachments were directed to participate in university activities that focus on reducing sexual assault. No instructions were given on how they were to participate. Participation by cadets was not mandatory and no directive was given to penalize absent cadets. According to Mr. Johnson, only 15 or so cadets at Temple participated as the walk was held during class hours. The Army did not require the purchase of high heels and is looking into that question.

Clearly, the message Cadet Command tells me it sent is not the message that was received in the field. And unless there is a widespread conspiracy to lie about what happened, the Cadet Command needs to examine what the hell is going on and take a serious look at who it has running ROTC “battalions”. However, even in its best light this is a problematic exercise. Do ROTC cadets, in uniform, wearing red high heels really demonstrate anything about sexual assault? What lesson are these young men and women supposed to take away from this?How about pride in wearing the US Army uniform? How about the number of men that are coming forward with complaints of sexual assault ? Don’t men count?

More to the point, this is what we are training future commissioned officers: wearing heels lets you understand women. Can you think of anything more superficial?

Thursday, April 23, 2015

THE SECOND COMING

Note from the blogger: I found this poem in the Prologue page of an ebook I ordered today titled: Slouching towards Gomorrah" by Robert Bork.
I found it very "à propos".

 William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
     

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.


    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. 


    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



The Second Coming was written in 1919 in the aftermath
of the first World War. The above version of the poem is
as it was published in the edition of Michael Robartes and
the Dancer
dated 1920 (there are numerous other
versions of the poem). The preface and notes in the book
contain some philosphy attributed to Robartes.
This printing of the poem has a page break between lines 17 and 18 making the stanza division unclear.

Following the two most similar drafts given in the Parkinson and
Brannen edited edition of the manuscripts, I have put a
stanza break there. (Interestingly, both of those drafts
have thirty centuries instead of twenty.) The earlier drafts
also have references to the French and Irish Revolutions
as well as to Germany and Russia.


Several of the lines in the version above differ from those
found in subsequent versions. In listing it as one of the
hundred most anthologized poems in the English
language, the text given by Harmon (1998) has changes
including: line 13 (": somewhere in sands of the desert"),
line 17 ("Reel" instead of "Wind"), and no break
between the second and third stanza.


  • Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the
    Dancer.
    Chruchtown, Dundrum, Ireland: The Chuala
    Press, 1920. (as found in the photo-lithography edition
    printed Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1970.)
  • Yeats, William Butler. "Michael Robartes and the
    Dancer" Manuscript Materials.
    Thomas Parkinson and
    Anne Brannen, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
    Press, 1994.
  • Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems.
    New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
  • Wednesday, April 22, 2015

    Lawlessness and Global Transformation: Understanding the Times–Jan Markel and guest Michelle Bachman



    Folks,I highly recommend that you listen to this broadcast of Jan Markel with Michelle Bachman about the rapidity with which Obamaa’s dealings with Iran is bringing us to the brink of WWIII It is rare to hear someone in her position to speak so freely and clearly from a prophecy perspective, about the things taking place in our world right now.--S.T. Lloyd
    http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/understanding-the-times/custom-player

    summary of jan markel broadcast Jan Markel Broadcast
    Audio Player
    06:09
    57:00
    PART I HERE

    Tuesday, April 21, 2015

    Op-Ed: Attack Now – Russian Interference Leaves Israel No Choice

    Soon it will be too late, if it is not too late already...
    Published: Friday, April 17, 2015 8:54 AM



    The Obama Doctrine – scorn your friends, reward your enemies – has finally reaped the whirlwind, namely Russia and its pledge to provide Iran with an array of the most advanced “defensive” missiles on earth. This leaves Israel with no choice except to act BEFORE those missiles are deployed. 

    Israel must attack to remove those nukes before it’s too late.
    If it was difficult to successfully strike Iran’s nuclear facilities today, tomorrow will be near impossible. So the scientific experts tell us.

    The S-300 Surface-to-Air Missile System would provide Iran with an impenetrable shield.
    It’s been explained that the S-300 Surface-to-Air Missile System would provide Iran with an impenetrable shield.


    If anything, Russia’s move has clarified the situation. Israel’s duty to defend itself has never been more urgent and an attack scaled to wipe out Iran’s nuclear emplacements would likewise be a favor to any number of Sunni states that tremble from Iran’s Shiite encroachments throughout the Arab world.

    Read this for one newsman’s heroic efforts to stop a worldwide caliphate, reminding readers that “The Koran Has Arrived And It Has Come To Devour The Bible.”

    Jordan’s King Abdullah II told Fox News’ Bret Baier that somebody better do something, quick, seeing Iran on the prowl throughout the Middle East and beyond:  “You’ve got to connect all these dots together. All these issues are areas of instability,” declared Abdullah in connection to Iran’s heavy footprints throughout the region.
    He cited Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan and his own country as being at risk.
    Abdullah did not directly call for help from the United States or Israel, but the hint was unmistakable.

    On seeking a deal to stop or stall Iran’s nuclear program, America’s infantile negotiators, led by John Kerry were no match for the ayatollahs. These were children bargaining with grown men. The ayatollahs trifled with Obama’s “best and brightest” during the negotiations and scorned them as laughable losers after the negotiations.
    The result was no deal at all. Iran gets to keep arming itself with no one to stop it from growing bolder.
    Certainly the United States, under Obama, cannot be counted on to come to the rescue. Thus, a vacuum waiting to be filled.

    Enter Vladimir Putin, who saw the perfect opening, an opening he’s been waiting for along the decades to replace America as the dominant world power in the Middle East. He can’t be blamed. Russia does what Russia does because it is Russia. But the United States has no excuse for being so lame.

    Putin and the ayatollahs must be dancing at finding Obama and Kerry so easily duped, 
    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Putin to voice his displeasure. Apparently Netanyahu was assured that these missiles for Iran are weapons meant only for defense – which is terrible enough since the system could destroy (Israeli) jets trying to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    But as noted in a recent column here, during the Cuban Missile Crisis Putin’s ancestor Nikita Khrushchev gave similar assurances to John F. Kennedy. No worries. Those missiles are only defensive. Until it turned out differently and the United States was ready to go to war – world war! – to get those Soviet arms removed from Cuba, be they defensive or offensive or both.

    Israel finds itself in the same perilous spot as regards Iran. There is no choice but to take action now.

    Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. The new thriller from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a heroic editor’s singlehanded war on terror and against media bias. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

    SHOCKING DOCUMENTARY 3- False spirits invade the church - KUNDALINI WARNING - Andrew Strom -Part 3


    Wide is the gate - Volume 2 - Caryl Matrisciana


    Saturday, April 18, 2015

    Worthy is the Lamb - Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir


    American Jewry’s Moment of Decision



     
    clintonnetanyahu_0 
    This week in two meetings with prominent American Jews, President Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet. Either the Jews of America will rise to the challenge or they will allow Obama to marginalize them. 
    It is their choice, and now is the time for them to decide.

    In the first meeting, Obama met with centrist Jewish leaders from major Jewish organizations like the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC. Major donors to these groups, like to almost every other major Jewish organization in America, are largely Democrats.

    According to The Washington Post, the purpose of the meeting was “to defuse antagonism toward [Obama] and to convince [Jewish leaders] that he shares their concerns about the safety of Israel and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.”

    That is, the main goal of the meeting was to silence Jewish criticism of Obama’s deal with Iran.

    So far, Obama seems to have accomplished that goal.

    Although, according to a source who spoke to The Algemeiner, the atmosphere at the meeting was “ungiving, very stern and tense.” Since the meeting took place, none of the leaders who participated has openly criticized Obama’s policies regarding Iran. Their silence comes despite the fact that, according to the participants who spoke with The Algemeiner, Obama did not allay the concerns they expressed regarding the dangers his nuclear deal with Iran constitute for Israel.

    The second meeting of the day was a far friendlier affair. According to The Algemeiner, participants included supporters of the anti-Israel organization J Street, including Alexandra Stanton, Lou Susman, and Victor Kovner. Other outspoken leftist Jews, including Haim Saban and former AIPAC presidents Amy Friedkin and Howard Friedman, also attended.

    As The Algemeiner reported, participants in this meeting were much less concerned about Obama’s deal with Iran. At least one participant, described as more “centrist” than other participants gushed at the president, saying, “You are doing the right thing [with Iran]. We are behind you 100 percent.”


    Participants in the second meeting also were excited at the prospect of Obama making good on his threat to act against Israel at the UN Security Council. Indeed, they lobbied him to abandon Israel at the international forum. A participant told The Algemeiner that one of his colleagues told Obama, “If you decide to go against Israel at the UN, let us know first and we’ll do the legwork for you, in the [Jewish] community…so you’re not going to come in cold.”


    The purpose then of Obama’s second meeting with American Jews was not to silence dissent, but to mobilize his supporters to weaken community opposition to his hostile policies toward Israel, both in regard to Iran and in regard to the Palestinians.


    And here, too, the meeting was largely successful.


    An indication of the success of Obama’s efforts to rally his Jewish supporters in favor of his anti-Israel policies came on Wednesday, when the Jewish arm of the Democratic Party, the National Jewish Democratic Council, issued a stunning press release. In it, the NJDC condemned Sen. Marco Rubio for supporting Israel. On Monday, Rubio announced that he is running for president.

    Rubio’s pro-Israel crime involved his plan get the Senate to condition approval of Obama’s nuclear deal with the ayatollahs on Iran’s recognizing Israel’s right to exist. According to the NJDC, Rubio’s plan, “has no purpose other than to politicize the US-Israel relationship at a time when the Jewish state needs our steadfast support. It is shameful that Sen. Rubio would further politicize this issue to advance his own political goals.”

    If the NJDC is truly steadfast in its support for Israel, it is hard to understand what its members are so upset about.

    As far as Israelis are concerned, Rubio’s plan is aligned with the widest political consensus imaginable.


    The Israeli Left, led by Labor Party leader Yitzhak Herzog, supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that sanctions against Iran should be dropped only after Iran recognizes Israel’s right to exist.

    As to America, it is hard to understand how anyone in the American mainstream could oppose conditioning Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons on its abandonment of its aim to destroy Israel.

    Obama himself has always insisted that protecting Israel’s security is a paramount goal of his presidency.

    Both in his meetings with Jewish leaders and in his interview earlier this month with The New York Times’s Tom Friedman, Obama claims to have been deeply hurt by accusations that he doesn’t care about Israel’s security and said that he would consider it a personal failure if Israel were weaker when he leaves office.

    Yet, by refusing to condition a nuclear deal that as Obama himself acknowledges will reduce Iran’s breakout time for military nuclear capabilities to zero on Iran’s eschewal of the goal of Israel’s destruction, the NJDC, like Obama himself, is not protecting Israel or supporting it. Like Obama, the NJDC is indirectly legitimizing Iran’s goal of destroying Israel.

    By attacking Rubio for promoting a position that is intuitively reasonable, and in line with a very low common-denominator of support for Israel, the NJDC revealed that, from its perspective, the only way for Republicans not to “politicize” support for Israel is by joining Democrats in opposing Israel.


    A new poll released this week by Bloomberg reinforces the growing sense that Israel has become a partisan issue. Today more and more Democrats view support for Israel as a Republican position. Whereas two thirds of Republicans support Israel even if its positions are at odds with those of the administration, three quarters of Democrats support the administration against Israel. Polls in recent years indicate that Republican support for Israel is nearly unanimous, while less than half of Democrats support the Jewish state.

    It appears that Obama’s charm offensive among American Jews over the past two weeks on the one hand, and the NJDC’s statement that empties the term “pro-Israel” of all meaning on the other, are aimed at removing the issue of Israel from the political debate at least until Obama achieves his goal of signing a nuclear deal with Iran by June 30.


    This makes sense, because as Obama apparently sees things, there are two forces that can scuttle his deal, and they are intimately linked – major Jewish donors, and Hillary Clinton.


    On Wednesday the White House reversed its previous position and announced that it would support a Senate bill to require Obama to bring his deal with Iran before the Senate for approval.


    Obama’s reversal was not a major concession.

    The Senate bill ignored the constitutional provision requiring two thirds of senators to approve international treaties. Under the current Senate bill, two thirds of senators will have to oppose Obama’s radical deal with Iran in order to scuttle it.

    All that Obama now requires to secure his deal is to maintain the support of 34 Democratic senators.


    And the only one who can endanger that support is Clinton.

    As the NJDC showed, Obama has successfully brought about a situation where, for Democrats, supporting Israel means opposing Obama and supporting Republicans. If substantive arguments haven’t sufficed to convince them to fall in line, the Justice Department’s highly questionable decision to indict Sen. Robert Menendez – Obama’s most outspoken Democratic foreign policy critic – on shaky corruption charges just as his confrontation with the Senate over his Iran policy was coming to a head, no doubt has forced at least some Democrats to toe his line.


    By mobilizing his Jewish supporters to silence opposition to his policies among American Jews, while making it difficult for more mainstream Jewish leaders to openly criticize him, Obama hopes to neutralize the issue of his hostility toward Israel among Jewish Democrats.


    To date, Hillary, who was herself a full partner in Obama’s moves to marginalize Israel supporters during her stint as secretary of state, has said as little as possible about his foreign policy. As a result, she has given no reason for Democratic senators to consider parting ways with the president on Iran.



    So far, Clinton’s only move to put distance between herself and her anti-Israel former boss was to allow Malcolm Hoenlein from the Conference of Presidents to issue a statement late last month in his name claiming that Clinton told him that she thinks the US and Israel should bury the hatchet. Clinton, for her part, neither confirmed nor denied Hoenlein’s statement.


    Almost simultaneous with Clinton’s announcement Sunday that she is running for president, came a statement from her campaign that she seeks to raise the whopping sum of $2.5 billion in order to secure her election.


    There is no way that Clinton can hope to raise that sum without securing the support of major Jewish donors. While some major Jewish donors do not care about whether or not the US supports Israel, as an unnamed Jewish Clinton supporter told JTA this week, Clinton will also need to win the support of donors who do support Israel.


    In the source’s words, “Some of the most prominent Jewish Democratic donors are very concerned about the relationship the president has had with Netanyahu and the Iran deal.”


    If these Jewish donors band together and condition their support for Clinton on her issuing a clear statement opposing Obama’s deal with Iran and opposing any plan to abandon US support for Israel at the UN Security Council, they will accomplish three vital things.


    First, they will loosen Obama’s control over otherwise pro-Israel Democratic senators and other pro-Israel groups in the Democratic Party, including the NJDC. In so doing they will reopen the possibility that Congress will scuttle Obama’s deal with the mullahs.


    Second, they will take a major step toward rebuilding Democratic support for Israel that Obama has worked so hard to diminish.

    Finally, they will reestablish their political significance in American politics. By supporting Obama, even as he has abandoned the US alliance with Israel, Jewish Democrats have lost their political leverage and power. That power is contingent upon their refusal to abandon Israel.

    During the next two months, Obama will be focused on closing his deal with Iran, and Clinton will be avidly seeking to lock up the Democratic nomination for president by building an impregnable fortress of campaign funds. If the American Jewish community uses this critical period to leverage Clinton’s financial requirements to convince her to oppose Obama’s deal that paves the way for a nuclear armed Iran, then they will reassert their relevance in American politics and they will restore support for Israel to its pre-Obama position as a bipartisan position.

    If they fail to do so, then Obama’s bid to transform Israel into a partisan issue will succeed. If a Republican wins the White House in 2016, he will face an anti-Israel Democratic opposition. And if Clinton wins the White House, she will have no reason to support Israel.

    Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

    Monday, April 13, 2015

    The Scope of the Apostasy… The Delusion pt 1

    Reblogged from Pastor Bill Randles blog via servehiminthewaiting.com


    Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,  That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;( 2 Thess 2:1-3)

    When I read that the President of the United States, Barak Hussein Obama ordered the installation of a gender neutral restroom in the White House, like others I was disgusted and even demoralized. The White House has long been a symbol to many, for it has long represented many Judeo Christian ideals such as servant leadership, human freedom, compassionate use of force, and Government under law and order.

    The installation of a gender neutral bathroom is only the latest in a long line of ‘desecrations’ to the White House and various other U.S. institutions held in esteem by freedom lovers everywhere. The Obamas and the Clintons before them seemed to go out of their way to diminish our national symbols.In the case of the Clintons, the installation of  an obscene Christmas tree in the White House, or their renting out the Lincoln bedroom to the highest donors.

    The Obamas have used the White House as a backdrop for the honored reception of deserters from the military, sexual deviants, hostile Muslims, the praising of vicious dictators, and the snubbing of treasured allies to the US such as Benjamin Netanyahu. The ‘gender neutral’ bathroom is only the latest insult to the standards and propriety of millions of Americans.

    What is going on here? How are we to understand our times? What does the Word of God have to say about it?
    What we are witnessing is a genuine moral and spiritual revolution. Fortunately the Word of God has much to say about it. Obama, the Clintons and their ilk are partisans in the revolution, as are most of the world’s “intelligentsia”.

    The Scripture I cited above refers to it as the apostasy. The day of Christ is not at hand until the apostasy occurs… . The second Psalm also refers to it, when he predicts a ‘liberation movement’ led by ‘the Kings of the earth and their rulers’.
    Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?  The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,  Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.(Psalm 2:1-3)

    The Kings of the earth and their rulers, is an expression that refers to far more than the political leadership of the earth. Rather it refers to the broader ‘ruling elite’ in the culture, the intellectuals, the governors, the leaders in organized religion, the entertainment and opinion shapers, the media, and sciences, the arts and leaders in medicine, finance and education.
    We are told that they come to this ‘counsel together’, this unanimous consensus  which is anti-God and anti-Christ.  Where do they take this counsel? They have been imbibing to for about the last sixty to a hundred years in the places of higher learning. The counsel is against “the Lord and his Christ”, in other words it is hostile to the Judeo Christian revelation.

    We all now know the common experience of hard-working parents who send their child to higher education in hopes of a better life, only to be disappointed. The first semester he returns home hostile to the capitalistic system, by the second, he is pro gay. At the end of the third he is virulently against Israel, and by the fourth he doesn’t believe in God anymore!
    What happened? The second Psalm tells us what happened. The counsel is “against the Lord and His Christ”. 

    Then the Kings of the earth launch a liberation movement against the so called “Cords” and “Bonds” of the God of the Bible and His Christ. The moral and spiritual restrictions of the Christian religion have to be stripped away, such as the Christian definition of Marriage, man, woman, and sexuality. The Christian concept of absolute Truth also has to go, and all laws and customs which sprang out of it.

    The Clintons, the Obamas and all of our culture desecrators are partisans in this war on reality. They have to trash the constitution and the White House because they are tearing down the old order in the service of the Revolution, i.e. the apostasy.

    Too often the apostasy warned of is interpreted as a Christian apostasy, a departure from Doctrine and practice unique to the Christian church. But a study of Christian history will tell us that all along the way , the Christian history has had to contend with false doctrine, heretical teachers, and phony spiritualities. There has always been as much, if not more apostasy in the church as there has been a true church.

    This apostasy is something different. It is a World wide departure from revealed truth. There is a sense in which the Christian religion imparted to the world many benefits, which applied whether one is individually converted or not.

    The Judeo Christian revelation has given us all the superior Western civilization,with its emphasis on the value of the individual, political freedom, rule by law, stable two parents families, the value of hard work, the protection of children, the sanctity of all human life, civil rights, humility,the role of the male and female, the meaning of family, man-made in the Image of God etc..

    The most basic and universal truths about humanity are found in the first eleven chapters in Genesis. The creation and role of male and female, the family, children, Government, culture, in short everything that God wanted us to know as foundational to human life.
    What is happening , is the point by point repudiation of these once solid pillars. Who says you have to be a man? Who says marriage has to be between a man and a woman? Why should you want to have children? Brick by brick and pillar by pillar the old order is being assaulted and torn down by the Kings of the earth, their rulers and their willing but naive following.

    Obama’s gender neutral restroom is an affirmation of the “Vain Imagination” , that we humans, can redefine ourselves, and find meaning and beauty in this world without God and on our own terms.It isn’t really progressive, in fact it is a regression to the pre- Christian past. As we will see, this doesn’t end well, except for the true believers.

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