Loneliness on a new level

 There are manty distresing things going on these days, and mnnot only in the world but in my own personal life, which makes it hard to arrive at conclusions and solutions about anything.  For me for sure but I think for many of us.  I continu to be distressed by the political situation in particular, meaning the fact that lfeft and right can't talk to each other specifically.

we hear different sets of facts.  Althoughn I can demonstrate in a few dcases that the media have been putting out false facts and that liberals still believe their fversion of those situations, I'm not up on the whole range of issues so I can't make the case for more than a few.  Not to mention the fact that liberals don't want to discuss uany of this anyway.  Even if I propose a discussion I get a no from them.  And other consrvatives say thesame thing.  

But surely there must be a way.  RTo To the expent that it is a matter ofof errors of fact on one side or the other such things ought to be resolvable.  If emotions run high it should be possible for us to learn to tone them donewn for the samekke of discussion.  I don't think of the average liberal as having any nefarious motives, I just think of them as believing false information.  To some extent I think they have the same view of us on the right, but I'm not entirely sure of that since what they think we are accepting is some pretty horrible stuff like white supremacy and fascism and that sort of thing, which are pretty personal things.  But that is something that it would be good to try and sort out.  How long can we go on with half the country believe ing one set of supposed facts and the anot other side a completely different set?

I can prove a few things about how the media have distorted the facts about Trump and about George Floyed and I think also about Black liives matter and that sort of thing.  It's etedious going even with those few things but I do think it worth it to try to get sdiscussions boing on any issue at all.  Even if it takes days or weeks to get through a particular minor issue to a point wehere we have a better understanding of the actual facts on both sides that should be worth it.  I don't know how to begin to try to bring this about because as I said I encounter a complete lack of openness to such discussions from my libedral friends and acquaintancxes.

An even tone, a willingness just to listen and not talk until the right moment if that ever arrives, brief comments to begin with and so on.  Why isn't this a possible mode of discussion for us these days?  I hear the conservative side of thing from many talk show hosts and they are pretty good at including lengthy sound bites of the opposition but I'm always frustrated that the conversation remains one sidesd and that we can't get liberals in on it with us.   What good does it do for a bunch of us to think even the truth about a situation if the truth stays only in our own group?  And yes it is possible that it's not always the truth and we do tneed the input of the other dside.  I very psessimistic about that of course but it has to be allowed as a possibility.  

I understand that there is a strong hatred of Trump by some people, not only on the left but even the right to some extent, and I have to admit to not really understanding it.  It's not that I think Trump is perfection by any means but he offers us a true vision that most conservatives do agree with, but the liberals I know think he's just a power mad fascistic feolonious rapist or some such and while that just takes my breath away with its bizarre falseness I have to acknowledge tghat it's there and bpeople believe it and I don't know what to do about it.  and just going on with the conservative mesasge as the conservative talk shows do isn't going to deal with any of that.  And that is what needs to be dealt with above all.

I'm suffering a lot these days from a sense of isolation and loneliness that seems to be to exceed the normal situation of my life.  There is some personal cause for this but a lot of it is the political situation, the sense of this encoroaching totalitarianism that can't be stopp[ed and largely because we can't talk to the other side about it.  They think we are the totalitarians.  YHikes.  What do you do with that level of falseness?  How do we deal with that?  it is necessary to keep on with the soconcservaitve point of viesw, that can't be dropped, but at the same timed if it isn't etting across to the other side we're just talking in an cho chamber.  Something has to be done.

My typing in this is terrible.  

My eyes are getting wrose.

Anyway as I started to say I'm gefeeling a level of what, disconnection, alienation, loneliness, that seems new to me and is at times even frightening.  I pray and the Lord is there. His peace comes over me whan I speak to Him but still this world is getting to me.   And I keep searching my head for solutions.  And praying about it when I think about it which isn't often enough.  he is always the source of all the answers, how ridiculous of any of us to forget that but I do.

I'm suffering from this sense of isolation and loneliness in a new way it seems to me, and I'm sure I'm not alone, in fact I know I'm not, I have aliberal freind sho admits to having similar feelings.   Someone I can't discuss politics with although recently we might have made alittle headway there, I'm not sure.   But we are both sufering from this state of affairs.  Since the COVID sthing started at least.  

I wish I could read emails but I can't.  I wish I had wsays of being in touch with more people but thanks to my failning eyesight I just can't.  I cdon'at have a solution to any of this for myslef at least.  But as long as I can still type even if I can't read it maybe I can keep up the subject, keep it on the table at least.

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.