A Sane Approach to Demon Possession, Exorcism, etc

and Clicked on the wrong thing on a menu and totally messed things up.  I was watching this Lutheran theologian talking about demon possession and hoped I'd caught the URL but as usual it looks like I didn't or didn't get all of it, I can't see any of it here so have no idea.  

I wants to find a sane Protestant point of view about demon activity ahnd possession and I ran across him, A Dr. Gordon Cooper on a podcast titled Just And Sinner, the and being the ampersand which I can't find at the moment on mykeyboard.  It's been hard to track through his series for some reason, no doubt because I can't see to click on the right things, and when this oneof his series on demons came up I was very happy because I'd seen the previous one.  It just appeared out thof the ether as I was poking around You Tube and now I can't get it back having just lost it with that fateful click on that menu.  He's pretty good on the subject.  I didn't want any more Catholics and I don't want to hear from the Chraismatics on the subject.  Had enough of all that.  The problem is that the saner Protestants pretty much ignore the topic so I was very happy to find this guyu who is willing ort talk about it and takes it seriously while clearly rejecting the Catholics and Charismatics.

He is very aware that we are in a time when demonic activity is going to increase as the Church has lost its power in the culture and morality of a saner sort is alos out the window therse days, and of course he is quite right.  He thinks we should be prepared to encounter much more activity from the demonic realms.  I guess the devil doesn't like my knowing anything about him so he's making my usual difficulties even more difficult to keep me from finding him.  

Here

s another attempt at the URL 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5yjZJPnIdo&t=118

QWell, it doesn't work, for me anyway.  But I did find out this time that the title of this video, perhaps of the whole series is A Lutheran Approach to Exorcism.

Forgot what day it is

 Woopsie/.  I'm not doing Christmas this year but I suppose on a blog I ought at least to show some awareness of the date and wish all one and a half of my readers a a very 

Merry Christmas.          

Yousef takes a Turn Into Dangerous Territory

 Ouch.  Still listening to Yousef and for the most part finding his comments very good and courageous, for instance the admission that Islam is a religion of war.  Finally someone has the guts to say that, not a religion of Peace, no way, a religion of war, entirely war, all about killing everybody who isn't a Muslim.  

Then unfortunately it seems he thinks all religions are the problem and the solution to him is a secular Constitution that keeps them in check, at least that's one way he put it in an interview for Jerusalme Post.  No God above the Israeli Constitution in that case.  Which I suppose is his view also of the United States Constitution.  

He talks a lot about delusion, which I suppose he got from Buddhism, one of the concepts he's taken from various religions to put together his own personal philosophy of life.  But this is a delusion on his part.    Eventually it becomes clear that although he is being identified as a Christian he is really not at all a Christian and disagrees with much of Christian doctrine.

He seems to know that Islam is unique in its murderous objectives and yet he finds fault with all the other religions as well.  Pretty clearly, judging from more recent videos, he doesn't believe in God at all and simply chooses ideas he likes from any particular religion or philosophy and brings them together as if they could be united in one worldview.  He likes many teachings of jesus and often describes himself as dying to this or that in his own life, which clearly he gort from the teachings of Jesus, he likes loving your enemy etc.  

 In a couple of videos he tells a sort of parable of his own making about the shepherd and the sheep thta of course echoes the teachings of the bible, which so contradicts those teachings I found myself rather shaken with a sort of fear as I heard him tell it.  More than offense, though offensive it is, if you think of it as an answer to Christ Himself as it must be, and that is what makes it scary too, that he would make up a story that contradicts a major theme of God's own word.  In the Bibgle the good shephered is the trustworthy caretaker of the sheep, the sheep are God's wo-own flock and the shephered is ultimately God Himself.  Jesus refers to Himself as the shephered, the true shpehered who loves the sheep and protects them while the hireling shephered leaves them to the wolves.     Thy rod and thy staff tghey comfort me.  The rod protects against the wolves and the staff draws the sheep near to the shephered that's a line from the twenty third psalm The Lord is My Shephered.  

But Youself makes the shpehered the enemy of the hseep.  He's their worst enemy he says, and that is because ultimately they will be slaughtered for food, so all the love and protection is just a sham.  I guess he's making some point about not trusting authorities, oworldly aughotieis perhaps, although I'm reallynot at all sure what point he wants to make here.  But he's picture the phephered as the opposite of the Bible's view of the shpehered, as the enemy of the sheep.  Perhaps this is because he thinks of the sheep in terms of being raised for slaughter rather than the more common use of them for their wool, which I'm sjure is the context of the biblical referensest to the imagery.  he jumps to conclusions but in so doing he doesn't seem to fmind offending an entire religion and the God who inspired the Bible.

Wrongly.  he's wrong.  Let's make that clera.  

That little parable of his so unnerved me I started thinking of him as an antichrist, and he mayh well be.  He does a terrifica job of calling out Hamas and Islam and his own story is very compelling in many ways as a road to knowledge that his own people don't have and he wants to give them.  Knowledge that leads to an appreciation of humanity and a rejection of the narrowminded murderous focus of Islam, and a liberty that the Palestinians are in no position to understand without an education fo the sort he's been privileged to have.  Too bad he didn't really become a Christian because that would bw the worldview that would finally put together this puzzle of the nature of truth that he has been dedicated to learning throughout his life.  Too bad he didn't take it that far.  I reather doubt he still could but mayhbe it's not impossible.  At the moment he souns like thn antichrist to me when he gets into this thoughts about the human condition and religion.

The Great Insanity of Our Suicidal Political Policies

 This is the most insane thing of all going on now.  A civiolized country does not let criminals do whatever they want without restraint, and that includes people who shouot slogans inciting criminal behavior and lauding criminal behavior such as the loud demonstrations for Hamas we've been seing in the universities and the streets.  This is the big insanity of the day.  It's the same as Biden's being allowed to write laws that overturn our Constitutional standards and commit the treasonaous act of letting "migrants" come into the country unrestrained.  He should have been impeached already.  And the so called protestors who are not protesting acording to Constitutional principles but according to the lawlessness of the times should be imprisoned and in many cases deportexcdd. No civilized country shouild ever put up with these things and yet is t is happenening.  

Thew The Right Side is Clear but Humanity is Blind

It IS a complicated situation and yes I SHOULD keep my mo7uth shut because I'm hardly in a position to know anything beyond what I hear in the news and podcasts and so on, BUT I'm foolish enough apparfently to think I can take a position on it anyway.    By now perhaps, after hearing a few dozen more posdcasts than I'd heard when I first so humbly said I am not in a position to have an opinion.  Oh well.  

Just heard a few Piers Morgan interviews, debates really between the two sides, and was very disappointed in Mosab Yousef but very happy with Douglas Murray.  Yousef has a view I much appreciate but he goes off on tangents and loses me and no doubt most of his audience, especially when he gets to ranting angrily about those tangential things such as his own idea of what human identity is.  Hde did that on Morgan's show and missed a lot of opportunities to make the points that needed to be made.  

But the show with Douglass Murray was far more to the point, the many points.  His opponent was a name I couldn't hear well enough, Jake Udall?  Close or on the money?  I don't know.  But I love Murray and found Udall to be the usual emotion driven fact challeneged leftist Palestinian defender.  

Nevertheless Murray should, in my opinion, have answered the constgant accusation of Israel that they are indiscriminately killing civilizans.  Yousef has from time to time done a good job on that one but he missed it this time, and so did Murray.  Murray did say that those deaths are the fault of Hamas and that's the whole point but it needed to be driven home and he didn't do that.  

Israel is not committing genocide, they are defending themselves.  Hamas are committing genocide and most of the Palestinian civilians support them.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank was forced on them and must be maintained for their own security.  How nice it would be if Hamas disappeared and the whole ideology of hatred of the Jews disappeared and then there could be peace in the region.  Otherwise that is never going to happen.  Ever.

The charge of colonialism is ridiculous when Israel was legally established and had fairly bought any land they acquired from others already there.  Besides which a colony is an offshoot of an established nation, which of course the Jews don't have anywhere else in the world.  The whole point of their being in the land of Palestine is to have such a home base.    I could afrgue for their biblical right to the land which I regard as ultimately their  legitimacy but in this fallen world you have to start with the case for more proximate claims.

The deaths in Gaza are the fault of Hamas and nobody else.  Period.  

The lack of a Palestinian state is the doing of the Palestinians thesmelves and not Israel.

Etc.

Nboody has a solution to this problem because Islam is devoted to the murder of Jews and theJewish state and that's on their books and there is no doing waaway with that under the current public opinion that believes the Palestinian propaganda and blames everything on Israel.  

I daydream a lot about this sort of thing and one of my daydreams is that the Church is the solution.  Well, it's the solution oto everything but it hardly ever takes that God given role in this world as it should.  Salt and light, ha!

If the Church united behind Israel for all the right reasons, which they could discover by just learning more about the situation, they sholuld all stand up, WE should all stand up and declare it plainlty, even in the teeth of ridiculous and ammalevolent Arab opinion and UN opinion and all the rest of it.  Stand up and declare that righteousness is on the soide of Israel.  As Yousef does when he hasn't let his tangential rantings get the better of him.  He's not a Christian but he is enomored of Jesus teacings and likes to make use of them in this cause.  But I'd rather the Church did it.

Bombard the world with righteous enunciations of Islam, argue forecefully that there is a better view of things and that the Palestinians should give up Islam as their worse t enemy.  That IS their worst enemy.  Islam is the enemy.  Of all the Arab nations based on it for that matter.  Hammer the teachings of Christ into the heads of the Palestinians with ceaseless propaganda campaigns.  Wake them up.  They don't need to become Christians so much as they enneed to see th e falseness of Islam and how it is keeping them enslaved to poverty and abuse by their leaders and ignorance and so on.  Information blitze.  

Oh well.

Piers Morgan gets carried away with all the deaths in Gaza and loses sight of tghe fact that they are the inevitable produce of a war that is legimate and of the evil lies and manipulations of the media by the Palestinians.  He gets all carried away with the idea of proportionality as if that ever figured in any war ever before the forces of evil made it a factor to be used as a weapon against Israel.  That's the whole point of it.  Nobody wants babies killed bu that's the fault of Hamas and that needs to be shown to the world without letting up.  If the whole world did what they should do and condemned Hamas, or indeed Islam itself, instead of Israel, the whole thing would have a solution in no time.

But we're on course for the End now aren't we, and that just isn't going to happen.  Evil is going to grow worse and worlse all the way through the Great Tribulation and Armageddom and then Jesus will return and that will be the whoonly way the thing ends.  Because houmanity is lind, blind fallen corrupted untable to choose righteousness.

The only way we have of knowing the truth in this world is God's own revelation to us through His Word both the Bible and His Son Jesus Christ.  That's it.  And even many of us who have that great privilege of knowing these things midss it.  But it's there and even if no perfect  in most of our presentations it's there and it's the truth and if enough of us say it it would make THE difference.

They try to say that Israel's attack on gaza is the same as terrorism.  good grief the world has gone mad.  We US attacks on Dreesden terrorism?  Was there a question of proportionality inovlved in that?  how about Hiroshima?  No, war is war and it's aimed, in the hands of the US anyway, at peace, not conquest, and the ame is true of israel's attachks on Gaza. AWar is not terrorism, at least not a defenseive war which is what I'm talking about.  The making of equalivalences between good and evil is today's biggest confusion.  Same for insrtance with peopel

'

s inability to tell the differnece between the death pena to a criminal murderer and the killing of innocent babies in the womb, or the murder committed by the murderer himself.

------------------------

People can't tell the difference between innocent and guilty.  I pointed out to a friend that the Bible syas those who kill human beings are to be killed by human beings in return because human beings bear the image of God.  Her answer was that therefore even the murderer should be allowed to live because he also bears the image of God.  Good grielf people ar econfused.  There is no right and wrong, no good versus evil, no innocent versus Guilty.  And ofcourse we see it in the prosecution of Trump who is innocent of ninety nine person of the charges against him as well as the accusations that are treated as charges that have never acrtually beeen brought against him such as the accusation of inciting insurrectgion which he did not do, and prosecuting all those peopole who were just standing around in the building as insurrectionists who happened to support Trump olitically, while real criminals are set free.  We're certainly set up for the End.Some deaths are ritghteous and som are criminal.  Some enforce justice, some take innocent lives.  The Palestiinian defenders are trying to claim that Israel is out to take innocent lives just becfuawe innocent lives are being taken.  Can't think straight.  Don't want to think straight.  Partian self interest.l

The hardest thing to accept about the fallen wrold is that there is no way to cure it with any righrteous reasoning or any blitz of truth, we just hav eot do our betst to minimize it and even those methods are being compromised these days.    even in the Millennium which is also the fallen world though Stan won't be around to make it as bad as it can possib ly be, even then it will deteriorate after the thousand years into a slough of uhnrighteousness such as we are now seeing at the end of this world.

Maybe if Mosab Yousef can curb his love of his own philosophical musings he could finally get back to the taksk at hand sand continue to offer some strong truths to the war in Palestine.  He appreciates the struggle for trtuth and the work of self discipline and of dying to self, maybe he can bring it to bear now on tghe problem of his liking his own musings on the nature of reality too much.

Oh well, I keep finding things to respond to.  Two pro Palestinian guess on Piers Morgan and thewn Douglass Murray came on for a while.  At the end one of the first two I don't know wtheir names, refused to answer Morgan's question whether October seventh was a terrorist attack.  I don't  know why he couldn't just say no because that's what he obviously believes.  he thinks it was justified by israel's supposed colonialit occupation and aggression  so it's not terrorism even tbhough it targeted women and children and civilizans in general and that is the main part of the definition of terrorism which Murray made clear.  It's the TARGETING of civilizans that makes it terrorism, but Israel is not targeting civilizians despite tthere being many civilizan casualties in the war on Gaza.   Why are these guys even allowed to speak at all.  Murray is right epopele who hodl such veiws whould be sent back where they came from  they do not belong in the West where they oppose our very foundations.  But Britain is supoipidly leftist and so ins the US getting there along with all the rest of Europe.  The world has gone stupidly and dangerously leftist and that's going to be the end of it all.

Evil for good and good for evil says Isaiah.  

https:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9dLBLCR4a0

JPost News, Son of Hamas: 'Time to expose Muhammad' (youtube.com)

The Green Prince Mosab Yousef Who Spied for Israel and Now Defends Her against Hamas

 The man's name that I wrote as "Jusef" in a previous post is really Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Palestinian Arab who grew up in the West Bank as the first son of one of the leaders of Hamas, not just leader but its actual founder.  He was of course indoctrinated in its tenets and worked for the movement himself.  Until at the age of eighteen he was in an Israeli prison and saw the brutality of Palestinian inmaes against other Palestinians, which raised doubt in his mind that bore fruit over time as the Israelis sought to recruit him to their cause.  Eventually they won him over and he worked for them as a spy for ten years and is now a staunch defender of Israel against Hamas escpailly in this latest war that started on October seventh with the sadistic slaughter of Israelis by Hamas.

As I've listened to him through many interviews and talks he's given both in the past and now during this current conflict I've found him to be a very intriguing pesonality.  I binge on personalities I find intriguign .  At first he seems to be an unusually attractive gentle quitet humble character who is very likeable and it seemed to me almost angelic in his demeanor and thinking.  Later he's acquiringed a harder edge on him, in one talk at least using roufht langugage, crude language I don't like.  this after his living in America for years so I guess I can blame it on American culture.  

And he's acquired a philsophical turn tht I find to be false in most respects, a religious mix of many religions and philsophies that to my mind ends up predominantly New Age although with his own personal stamp on it.  Christ Consciousness for instance, Yoga for instance, Karma for instance.  For a while he was considered to be a Christian but his views are not orthodox and eventually he objected to the efforts of the orthodox to change his mind and stopped goinmg to church.   I don'tkinow if he even knows the orthodox salvation message.

But as a spokesman at this time for the iside of Israel he's mjuch needed it seems to me.  He has a powerfully passionate loyalty to Israel and a true understanding of the political and historical situation there.  He has come out speaking against the demonstrations in America on behalf of Hamas with a lot of anger and a grasp of the meaning of American freedom of Speech and our Constitution that I find impressive.

He aswers the charge that Israel is an apartheid state.  how could it be with a million and a half Arabs as part of its citizenry who all share equal civil rights with the Jews and all the other minorities?  They occupy all the offices of Israel.  Apartheid is a lie.  

To be continued

Ah well, I may yet add to this, or I may not, but I've continued watching videos of Mosab and although I haven't been able to capture the URLs I want to identify at least two of them I think are very good an informative:

An interview by Chris Cuomo, very thorough.

A talk he gave at a Jerusalem Post confeence.  This should be enough information to be able to search and find it.

And thank you, Mosab, for making it so clear in this last talk I mention above that the problem is Islam itself, because that is so often glossed over while political interests and other more worldly things are put in its place.  But no, as you make clear, it is never any of those things that is the rpbolem, the cause of the conflicts, it is Islam itself.  It is Islam that dictates the hatred of the jews and of all "infidenls" and all nonMuslims, it is Islam that is our enemy not the people of any particular trible.

He's particularly fiery at another one whose URL I can't get hold of.  I think the title starts with Son of Hamas and the host is something like Jordan Harbinger.  I hope it works.

This may or may not be the UROL to the Jordan harbinger show I mentioned

://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyqKTuqzKWs

Mosab seems to have rejected orthodox Christianity and therefore salvation through the death of Christ as well, which is sad and I cn only hope that eventually I might come to it.  He wants truth, and this is truth.  And in fact this is the only truth, the ultimate truth.  I hope he will eentually come to it.

Nevertheless he has some interesting ways of putting together his view of the world that sort of almost embrace a Chrstian view of things.  Sort of only.  He has a sense of the imperfection of the world and of all human beings which makes him tolerant andforgiving and generqaous toward everyone, which is wonderful.  And this without having any notion of the Fall or Original Sin which the Bible reveals to be the foujndation of all our ills and imperfections.   But he sees the imperfections and from that vantage point he can oppose the ridiculous utopian visions of the totalitarians whose self righteousness imagines an impossible perfection to which human beings can aspire.  No way is that ever going to happen and I'm glad to see that plain old common sense can see how ridiuclouis such ideas are.

He also appreciates the freedoms of the West, democracies such as Israel and the US, the Constitutuion ofthe US in particular, and that is also commendable.  He doesn't ave the most accurate historical context for these things, whicfh would come through the Christian perspedctive but he recognizes their importance and their potential as the only liberating forces in the political world.  Based on a recognition of impers=fection.  That.s what it's all about.  This is a flawed world, an imperfect world, a fallen world, and the whole point of the US Constitution as the framers saw it was to make provision against the tendensies to totalitarianism, to domination, in the human spirit in a fallen world.  That's the best we can do in a fallen world, preent the worldst in human nature from taking over.  And it works as long as we hold to the rules.   Unfortunately what is happening now is that the forces of totalitarianism are learning how to just ignore it and impose their will in spirte of it.  Yep, the Left.  

History of the Situation in Palestine by an Israeli Observer

Monday December 18  UPDATE:  It has been so encouraging, so hopeful, so comforting, to see the Arab voices I have been linking to in this and the previous post.  Jusef, I think that is his name but I can't read so I don't know for sure, what a wonderful human being, first son of t one of the founders of Hamas who finally fled from it after years of its violence and following his own conscience to help Israel, and in one interview I saw be identified as a Christian.  I hope that is true but it only came up in that one interview.  Sophia who was interviewed through Prager U, and J TV's interview with Mr. Achmad.   All names I could only partially digest.  I would nlove ot see the film based on Son of Hamas but I can't see my way through the pages at Amazon.  Even with the magnifier.  Maybe my eyes will be better on some other day and I can find it.  We'll see.  but it gives me such hope that people can follow their own God given conscience even when they've been raised and heavily indoctrinated in a sataonic evil violent murderous culture.  

***

SSome of my URLs work and some don't, because I can't see to get the tholwhole thing copied in some cases.  One I want to mention since it doesn't seem to be working is the talk he gave at the University of Michigan followed by a q and a so maybe it can be found with that information.

**At <ocjogam je cpmde,ms tje [rp [a;estomoam [rptests as odoptoc amd es[ecoa;;u ca;;omg Osrae; am a[artjeod state/  Tjos giu jas giuts amd je lmpws wjat je os ta;lomg abpit/  O wosj O jad doscisvered jo, a ;pmg to,e agp/

At MichSome of Forgot to mention, that movie is titled The Greeen Prince, which was his code name as an Israeli spy.

Son of Hamas Co-Founder De

'Son of Hamas' Tackles University Antisemitism, Exposes Hamas 'Holy War' to Wipe Out Jews (youtube.com)

nounces Group at UN, Exposes 'Savage' Indoctrination of Palestinian Kids (youtube.com)

w.youtube.com/watch?v=pjOEJumoABg

UPDATE:  Son of Hamas Co-Founder Denounces Group at UN, Exposes 'Savage' Indoctrination of Palestinian Kids (youtube.com)Here's an interview wih the son of a  Ja,as ;eader"

on of Hamas Reveals Shocking Details About Hamas and the Israel-Palestine Conflict (youtube.com)

\\//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjOEJumoABg

 Free Palestine? No thanks! (The Israeli perspective) Français / Español / русский / Deutsch / عربي (youtube.com)

is URL seems to work to take you to that podcast with the Israeli man talking about the history of the Israel Palestine situation.

Added a fesw hours later:  I've very glad to have been able to post the URL to that talk because he is very good on the subject of the history of Israel.  He is, however, a liberal, as are both the Arabs I linked to in the previous post.  Overall I like their liberalism and don't see any diference between their beliefs and my own.  Certainly not on the subjects they are addresssing.  But this liberal ...  well, back up a big...

Thids video rolls over into another made by the same Israeli man and again I dn'tknow his name.  I don't know if he's said it anf I missed it or it's merely written somewhere below the video in which case I simply can't see it to read it.  Anyway, this is also a good video presentation of the historical situation so I was glad to see it turn up.  BUT he says a few things from his listeral point of view that annoy me, characterizing conservatives as fascists for instance.  Yikes that is REALLY annoying.  That is crazy ande false.   And as with most ordinary people he thinks the wars between the Protestants and Catholics were just religious wars of the usual sort that we don't need to bother to know more about, which provides another YHikes from me although in this case I can hardly blame him for an opiniohn that comes out of very vague politics and has no current life to it.

Then the video rolls over again this time to a video by Coleman Hughes, one of the current crop of black intellectuals, a very young guy who is probably not a conservative although I usually like a lot of his opinions.  It opens with his challeneging his guest for evading a question, in which he says it is clear thatg it was the Palestinian side that startecd the war in njineteen forty seven.  His guest, one of those reallyh really irritating ignorant liberals who have bought all the Palestinian propaganda, saying that the Jews started the war simply by being Zionists which is apparently an act of war to his mjuddled mind, by whicfh they dispolaced the native Palestinians from their homeland.  Oh groan.  Will we never get the facts straight.  Probably not.  There was never a Palestinian Arab people, EVER.  The Arabs in the region had scome there to work within the last few decades, they are wnot native to the region but ame from other Arab countries.  This is a malicious fiction that has turned them into native Palestinians.  

I'm listening to this guy, name I failed to get, bewing interviewed by Colleman Hughes, and I'm rapidly developing an ulcer.  As it were.  An ulcer of themind anyway.  Hi thinks the "Palestinians" are a real people who really did live on the liand before the Jews began settling it and then became a state, that they wree ousted from their homseland and that was the real beginning of the violence accoreding to him.  As the Israeli in the previous post I linked said, you can identify the origina of the Arabs by their hnames.  There is no such thing as a Palestinian name.  Their names show their origina in other states such as Syria or Egypt or wherever they came from THEY ARE NOT PALESTINIANS>  That is a fiction comjpletelyo invented out of whole cloth for the purpose of discrediting Israel.  Period.  STOP THE LIES.

Hughe also said something I think is wrong but I don't know for sure.  He said that Israel deported the Arabs they regarded as a fifth columen when the war started in forty seven, but I'd always heard that it was the Arab nameions that warned them to leave, and that was the origina of the refugees.  In any case they were certainly not native Palestinians being osusted by Israel.

This guy thinks it's racist to say that there is something about Muslime as such that makes it impossible for them to live in peace with other groups.  Well golly gee, how about their religious texts thaty tell them to kill everybody who doesn't agree with them or worship their god?  Golly gee the liberals are naive.  

s usual it seems that secular minds simply can't process information about religion and the Muslim side is driven by their religion.  they are not driven by all the po.l,itical interests the Left thingsks they should be driven by, that other groups are driven by.  It is NOT about land or political rules AT ALL, it is ONLY about what their religion tells them to do.  WBut this guy can't get that.

Sophia, the Arab Israeli in the previous post, thinks it is possible to be a peaceful Muslim.  I'll take her word for it that there is such a thing but what does she do  with the calls to murder the invidel in their own holy books?  What does she do with that?

My religion is also the foundation of how I want to live my own life, buty my religion tells me to love my neighbor as myself, even to godo good to my enemies and to die to myself rather than seek to preserve myself and so on.  I find all this very hard to obey but nevertheless it is what I am called to.  There is not a shred of a call to any kind of violence inmy relgion.  But their is in Islam.  And in Roman Catholicism I might add, since they don't stick tot he Bible b ut traditions as well which often contradict the bible.  The average Catholic tries to follow Jesus, or at least a lot of them do.  But the hierarchy has a different agenda which is at present muted because they are not in power.

  Islam too behaves according to whether or not it is in power and when they are not they seem pretty benighn, but at the moment the world is on their side and their true colors are flying.

2023.07 Expand Background Checks 2 (youtube.com)

I keep listening and this is just hopeless.  Trhis supposed Palestinian is just promoting all the Palestinian propaganda and Coleman Hughes apparently has no way to object to the propagandistic version of history, accepts that the Palestinains were in fact ousted from their ho,meleand by the zionists.  This is the fundamental problem in this discussion.  This is hopeless and my stomach hurts listening to it.

The URL pasted just above the previous paragraph is in the wrong place because it belongs to a different video podcast by Hughts and for some reason I haven't been able to geet it to post beneath that paragraph.  

That URL goes to an interview he did with Benny Morris about the history of the same area.

This interview does give a somewhat different angle on events in the area.  For the first time I gather that the people who got called the Palestinians were the Arabs who were in fact living there while the Jewish state was getting started.  According to both Morris and the Israeli of the previous post there were some seven hundred thousand of them at the end of the secdond world war, now grown to seven mill9ions.  In the early part of the twentith century the Jewish population int e region was maybe ten percent of the whole according to Morris.  

I have to ponder his remarks more but I do want to respond to Hughes saying that the origin of America was ugly with racism and I guess also attacks on the native population.  Balderdash.  That makes me angry.  What racism?  Are you talking about the Plymouth Colony?  What are you talking about?  Get some perspective.

I do have to admit that I'm getting a clearer picture of the situation from Hughes' discussions than I'd had, however.  I'd thought tht "occupation" just meant being on the land at all which the Arabs regard as their own, but now I understand that it means what happened as a result of the six day war in which Iareal gained control over the West Bank, an n area I now have a clearer picture of as well than I'd had before.  They are in fact militarily occupying that piece of land, and as the discussions have unfolded it's clear that giving it up would be very risky for Israel so even if they might want to do that they really can't.  

In any case I'm seeing more problewms in this situation than I'd seen before, and now what I'd really like to see is a protracted sidiscussion between many people on both sides untkil I get a really clear picture of the whole thing.  

Well, a few posts ago I said this situation was too complicated for me to dare commenting on it and I should have listened to myself.  I'm stopping now after seeing way too many podcasts on this subject, though I know I'm going t o watch more.

C Couple of Lovely Arab Voices on the subject of COctober Seventh

 This is so frustrating.  I want to recommend a couple of interviews I just listened to on You Tube but both eyes and ears are defeating me.  I may yet try again to copy the URL for them but my eyes are particularly bad today so I probably won't be able to.

All I can do is describe them and not very satisfactoritytly.  One is an Arab woman named Sophia who is being interviewed by a blond woman and the word Prager U shows up on the first screen before the interview.  That's really all I kow.  The arab woman is young, early thirties I think.  The blond woman is interviewing her about having grown up in Israel and her opinions about the conflict between Jews and Arabs.  

She gives a very positive view of her life in Israel, says she had many opportunities wshe wouldn't have had an a purely Arab setting, encouraged to go to school for instance where she ended up with an engineering degree.  She denies the accusation of Israel as an apartheid state and says it is in the Arab towns where the most separation is the case between the Arabs and the Jews while in the Jewish towns Arabs are not segregated out.  

The other intereview is by a young man at a podcast called J TV or something like that.  The first name of the interviewee I couldn't make out but his last name is something like Achmad.  he's an Arab who grew up learning to hate Jews and all infidels and eventually followed his own conscience out of that hatred and now opposes the Islamic jihad he once embraced and supports the Israeli poing of view.   I didn't catch the name of the interviewer.

After posting this I put J TV Achmad into the search line at You tube and the interview I am talking about came up.  Hooray for that much.

And another hooray.  Also on the search line at You Tube I put in Prager U Sophia Arab Israeli and got that interview as well.  

Ah well, I do have a complaint about the Arab man who explains hatred of the Jews in terms of envy by Islamists and the Left and the Right.  The exammple of hatred of the Jews by the Right that he gives is our objection ... and I am on the Right so I do say "our" objection ... is to the liberal Jews for their commmunist influence and I do share that objection .  I t has nothing to do with envy, it's a complainjt about liberal Jews, not about jews as such.  conservative Jews, especially religionus Jews are on our side.  There is no complaint there.  In any case objections to the liberals who were a strong influence in the sixties in particular for Cultural Marxism whichch no w dominates our politics have nothing whatever to do with envy and the idea is absurd.  Cultural Marxism has been a massive destructive force in Amerca and the west and the Left hnow embraces it.  And yes it did come from the liberal Jews.  But that is by no means all Jews and the idea is absurd and the idea that it's envy is absurd.Ironically, you could say, it's this liberal influecne in the culture, or should I say Leftist, that is behind the preo Hamas protests on the college campuses.

Well, now I'm into responding to this guy.  Ir t wasn't envy for the politlcal left either although as applied to the supposed Oppressed class of the poor and disadvantaged it is likely envy that fuels it.  

Next point is that he says something absurd about how religion can change biology, givin gthe example of p[riests and monks who are celibate thus defying their beiology, but boy is that a problematic stew of an issue since it is most likely that enforced celbacy on the part of Romanist priests that powered the rampant sexual misconduct over the centuries with mistresses and even monks and nuns having liasons, but also the growth in gay priests and their own sexual misbehavior which is now the huge controversy we're been hearing about for the last few decades.

I do think he's right to point out that Nietsche was not saying that God is dead in a triumphant sort of way but perhaps even lamnting it.  I think he was objeserving it as the reason for the development of vatrious ills in society and he trumpeted the coming Antichrist in an ironic way.  And I'm glad Achma poijnted that out.

Lowry and McWhorter, Israel and George Floyd. Yeah a mishmash I guess

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk

I have no idea what that line above says, sorry, I can't read it.  I thought I was copying it from the address line at the top of the page I wanted to link here but after I copied it and posted it I found I was unable to click on it so I have no idea what it is or if it might take you to the page I hoped it would.  

the page I wanted to link is an Israeli guy talking about the history of the situation in Palestine.  I don't know his name and the only words I can make out of the tittle to the video at the top of the screen are "Free Palestine.  There are more wrods after that but I can't read them even with my wonderful new magnified r from the Services for the blind.

So I'leaving the top line in case it contains usful information.  If not maybe you can still find the video I have in mind with the information I've added.  I originally searched for history of the Israel situation and found thta one two or three down from the top.  I hope you can find it because he does a very good job of laying it all out.

I wanted to post something fairly comprehensive because I just heard Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter discussing the recent events there with two guys that were irritatingly liberal in their outlook and utterly historically obtuse.  As papparently so are Lowry and McWhorter.  Which is understandable ssince most people who aren't particularly interested in that part of the world just go by what they hear and what they hear is all filtered through the Leftt which is mired in "Palestinian" propaganda.  I would love it if Lowery and McWhorter got themselveas educated on this topic because they do a good job of exposing the trusth about things when they know what's really going on.

As they did in a recent podcast about the George Floyd incident.  a documentary came out recently titled the Fall of Minneapolis which shows veryconvincingly according to Lowry that Floyd did not die as a result of asphyxiation due to the actions of Derek Chauven but due to being overdoesed on meth and Fentanuyul.  I already knew the incident wasn't racist because of the similar dedath of a whity guy named Tony Timpa, but I didn't know that the police technique had nothing to do with it.    Their talk on this subject is titled the Truth About George Floyd's Death.  

The Israeli guy is wearing a light blue pullover knit shurt, just to help identify him better,and there are shifting scenes behind him.

The Jews are not occupying anyone else's land and they did not steal it.  This Israeli covers all that and more.  There was no Palestinian people in the nineteenth century, they were invented in the mid twentieth century for political leverage against Israeel.    theyh are poor because their leaders keep them poor and abuse them viciously.  And they are not to be distinguished from their leaders because they share the same ideology, the religion that commands the killing of Jews and other "infidels."  but particularly Jews.   This is a religious war, the poltical stuff is completely invented.  They couldn't care less about those issues the Left makes up on their behalf, they simply want to obey their "god" and kill the infidel.

The Meaning of Gaslighting

 OK I just heard one too many talk show hosts get it wrong about the meanjing of the term gaslighting.  No it is not just some specially egregious degree of lying.When

When the term started to be used frequently a few years ago I didn't know what it meant so I looked it up and found out that it comes from an old movie titled Gaslight.  I found the movie at Amazon and watched it.  Ingrid BBergman and Charles Boyer are the stars.  He marries her knowing that there is a fabulous treasure of gemstones hidden somewhere in her family home which he wants access to.  They move into the house and he explores the part of it where he suspects the jewels are hidden.  He goes out every night letting her think he is going somewhere else but doubles back ahnd enters the room he wants to explore for the treasure.  The whole point is that he doesn't want her to know he is looking for it.  

 this is back in the days before electricity and the house is lit by gas that runs through pipes from fixture to fixture in thevarious rooms.   When he turns on the light in the room he is exploring it causes the lights in the rest of the house to dim slightly and she notices that and wonders what could be causing it since she believes he has left the house and there is only herself and the housekeeper there.  The housekeeper is in on the plot by her husband and denies that the lights are going dim, as doeas her husband ewhen she tells him about it.  It is this deniial of an inconvenient truth that is the meaning of gaslighting.  He alsmost succeeds in driving her completely crazy with this particular denial of her

 perceptions but many others he has been concocking for the same purpose.

Of course it's about lies but the point of it is to make someone feel he or she is out of his mind by causing him to doubt his own perceptions/.

There you go.

Come soonb, Lord jesus

God said Jerusalem would become the center of world agitation at the very end and here we are, all of a sudden, seeing Israel surrounded by the most vicious hate from all directions of the blobe.  All of a sudden, completely unexpected.  Yes we've seen a rise in anti semitism over the last decade or so but nothing like this, a sudden gigantic emergence of virulent hatred directed qat Jews.  The source is no surprise, Islam is dedicated to eradicating Israel and the jews, it's on their books and taught to all tgheir children, but for the world to chime in as it has, including crowds in the US, THAT is shocking.

But God said Jerusalem would become a cup of trembling for the world at the lastand, here we are.  A stumbling stone for the nations.  All nations.  Led by Satan of course, who is the ruler of this fallen world and always busy stirring people up against God and whatever god is doing, and Israel is a major representative of God on this earth.  Christians should be as well, but we have no specific geography.  Israel is a piece of real estate, a place, a location, and the Jews are known as the people of the Old testament, chosen by God, so getting rid of them is a prime objective of God's arch enemy.  

Jan Markell has et another program on this theme this week.  Whatever questions I still have about the specifics of the Pre Trib Rapture scenario don't keep me from seeing the role of Israel in this end times countdown.  And it does make sense that Israel would be the focus of the Antichrist just waiting to be catapulted to center stage.  Yes I am sure of his identity but that isn't terribly important except that it changes the timing of things somewhat from the usual pre trib schedule.  A covenant with Israel is to launch the Seventieth Week of Daniel as prophesied inj Daniel ...9 I think, but I'm often getting the chapter wrong.This coventnat is n't mentioned in the Book of Revelation, only in Daneil, but the Antichrist is represented in revelation in Chapter Thirteen by the beast from the sea and it has emblems that identity it with the fourth besast of Daneil's vision so we know it's the same person.  

Jan's guests talk about how some churches avoid mentioning these things and suggest that it's just cowardice, fear of losing church members.  I hope not but it could be.  This is no time for Christians to be owards, if there eever could be such a time.  Aren't we told we are to lose our lives for His sake?  Clinging to any kind of worldly securty is disoedience.  The greats of the faith listen in Hebrews Eleven even lived in caves in order to protect their faith.  this is no time to be depending on worldlyh comforts.  Hey, I'm no paragon of courage, believe me, but I recognize my fear and am trying to pray against it and beg God to give me the strengrth to risk everythinjg.

I'm worn out.  I wish it were over.  The good for evil and evil for good fallen world is exhausting.  And it's all finally comning to the point of disintegration with no going back and a lot of us are falling apart.  A lot of unbelievers for sure.  

Should add to this a strong recommendation to listen to this week's Understanding the times radio show from Jan Markell's Olive Tree Views webside.  It's also at You tube at least for now.  It covers the history of the situation pretty well for those who know little about it.  There is a short section between the first and second parts of the show where the history of the idea of a Palestinian people is tra ced whowing that such a people never existed but was invented as a weapon against Israel inj the sixties.    Israel's existence on that land is legtimate from every possible point fo ivew from the biblical foundation going all the way back to Abraham to the fact that the land was not occupied by any people of any identity whatever and in fact was a wasteland according to mark twain who vicited the area in the late ninettenth century, and the fact that they purchased land where necessary as well.  That loand belongs to Israel, they are not occupying any body else's land.  This history has been bured under Leftist and Islamic lies.

As the radio show also makes clear, it needs to be understood that this is no ordinary pollitical conflict going on between Israel and the Palestinians or the whole Arab world for that matter, or the whole world for that matter by now, Islam itself prescribes the muder of the Jews and of all "infidenls"   this is no reaction to a supposed occupationm or any kind of pollitical oppression by anybody, this is engineered from the official supposedly sacred writings of Islam itself.  If Mustlims exist who do not follow all that , great, but that's because they either don't know about it or reject it, not because it isn't there if they ever decided to go back to their religious roots.  When they do they learn that they are ordered by what they supposed to be God himself to kill the Jews.  That is what makes all this so impregnable to reason.  There are no political solutions to this.  Two states would only give Islam more access to murdering Jews.  They HAVE two states, or did, in Gaza, but they didn't use it as a Paolestinain state in the sense of building it up to prosperty and success for the people, they gave it over too Hamas, they voted for Hamas, they show their allegiance to their religion and there is no way you will ever talk them out of that.  If God is telling them to take this position how are you going to get them to reject it?    But the Left continyues to spread the lies that it's just an ordinary political conflict, the have nots at the mercy of the haves, when they have had the means to become prosperous for a long timeand don't use it, they use it to try to destroy Israel because that is the whole meaning of their religion.   No sign the world is going to be waking up to this any time soon though.  \\

Well, I guess it makes sense that Satan gets his day in the end.  Not the VERY end at least, but the end of life on this fallen planet before He returns.

There is no earthly solution to any of this.  The only solution is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  That's all there is.  And it's a lot.  It's the whole point of v3eing here in this miserable world.