Quotes and Illustrations GHI

 

 Galilee

Josephus, however, pictures Galilee as consisting mainly of Torah-true Jews and does not hint at all that Galilee spawned its own sort of assimilated Judaism. Eric M. Meyers & James F. Strange, Archaeology, The Rabbis & Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), p. 38.

“…they supported a dense population of over thirty Jewish fishing-villages, estimated by Josephus Flavius at some 100,000 people!”  Baruch Sapir/Dov Neeman,  Capernaum (Kfar-Nachum), History and Legacy, Art and Arachitecture (Haarlem, Holland, Joh. Enschede en Zonen 1967), p. 6.

[Galilee] There were only two towns of any note, Sepphoris and Tiberias, both of which owed their existence to Herod Antipas and probably had not more than a handful of Jews among their inhabitants.  When a revolt broke out in AD 66 Sepphoris remained loyal to Rome while Tiberias was only half-hearted in support of the Jews…Jesus never went to either of them. Walsh, Michael, Roots of Christianity, (London: Grafton Books, London, 1986), p. 38.

Gambling

A security guard at an Atlantic City casino thought he had seen it all.  Then one day a man who kept feeding a slot machine keeled over from a heart attack.  His wife literally stepped over his body to continue playing the machine.  Her reasoning was that her husband had “invested” so much money in the slot machine that it would be a shame to have it all go to some other player. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 136.

Dr. James Dobson…points out that Americans spend more money on gambling than we do on groceries. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 136.

Wherever legalized gambling goes, law enforcement reports a great increase in crime. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 141.

Atlantic City- Many, many buildings are burned out, torn down, boarded up.  It is now called the “Slum by the Sea,” with casinos, of course…By 1985, nearly 90 percent of the city’s businesses had vanished. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 142.

Former FBI Director William Webster said he knew of no place with legalized gambling that did not eventually have organized crime. Not one. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 142.

Estimates of the number of people who are diagnosed with a gambling addiction are difficult to find.  It appears to range anywhere from 2 to 5 percent of the population in the US. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 123.

[Gambling] Unfortunately this disorder does not respond well to treatment, and as many as two-thirds of those who begin treatment for a gambling disorder discontinue their treatment prematurely. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion , p. 123.

So you want to win the lottery?

“Charles Riddle won a big lottery in 1975.  After getting divorced and facing several lawsuits, he was arrested for selling cocaine.

“William ‘Bud’ Post won $16.2 million in 1988.  He was sued by a former girlfriend who wanted the money, and his brother hired a hit man, hoping to murder him and inherit his fortune. After a year, he was $1 million in debt and then went to jail for shooting a gun over a bill collector’s head. Post called winning the money a ‘nightmare.’ He died in 2006 after declaring bankruptcy.

“Jeffrey Dampier won $20 million in 1996 and bought homes for his relatives. Several years later, his sister-in-law and her boyfriend kidnapped him and murdered him to get the money.

“Billie Bob Harrel Jr., won $31 million in 1997.  Harrel used the money to purchase a ranch, several homes, and cars for himself and his family. His spending and lending spiraled out of control, and not long after, he divorced. Just twenty months after winning, Harrell killed himself with a shotgun.

“Jack Whittaker won $315 million in 2002.  His life after the win involved arrests, shattered relationships, lawsuits, and the death of loved ones, including one from a drug overdose. Whittaker’s ex-wife later said she wished she’d ‘torn up the ticket.’

“Callie Rogers won $3 million in 2003. Sixteen-year-old Rogers, one of England’s youngest winners, spent the money on fancy cars, gifts, lavish vacations, and plastic surgery. An ex-boyfriend got her hooked on cocaine, and she attempted suicide twice.

“Keith Gough won about $18 million in 2005. He used the money to buy racehorses, and he divorced his wife.  It wasn’t long before his life started falling apart: he was conned by a girlfriend, he developed cirrhosis of the liver from alcoholism, and he died in 2010. He told a newspaper, ‘My life was brilliant but the Lottery ruined everything. My dreams turned to dust…What’s the point of having money when it sends you to bed crying?’

“Abraham Shakespeare won $31 million in 2006. Shakespeare went missing in 2009 after spending most of the money. A few months later, his body was found under a slab of concrete.

Randy Alcorn, Happiness (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2015), p. 82.

Gender

In her influential book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler argues that gender is not a fixed attribute but a fluid, free-floating variable that shifts according to personal preference. Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), p. 64.

The National Geographic Magazine in The Gender Issue, Jan. 2017, lists a grand total of 21 different gender descriptions that are now devised.

The sense of mismatch between physical sex and psychological gender is called gender dysphoria.  Most people assume that it must have some biochemical basis, perhaps a hormonal cause. To date however, no clear scientific evidence has been uncovered. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 31.

They deny that gender identity is rooted in biology. Their argument is that gender is completely independent of the body. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 31.

…cardiologist Paula Johnson says, “Every cell has a sex – and what that means is that men and women are different down to the cellular and molecular level. It means that we’re different across all our organs, from our brains to our hearts, our lungs, our joints.”  In other words, no matter what your gender philosophy, when you are ill and the doctors put you on the operating table, they still need to know your original biological sex in order to give you the best possible health care. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 196.

Many schools have adopted the policy that parents may not even be informed which gender their children adopt at school. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 199.

In 2016 the New York City Human Rights Commission released a list of thirty-one terms of gender expression – and androgynous, genderqueer, non-binary, pangender, bi-gendered, gender fluid, third sex, two spirit, and so on – which employers must use or face exorbitant fines of up to $250,000. ..Logically, there could be an infinite number of genders. Why?  Because it is a concept that refers solely to inner feelings, with no reference to any physical trait. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 201.

People who still hold a modernist mindset claim that sexual orientation is natural. But postmodernists claim that nothing is natural – that sexuality is a social construction…A 2015 Fusion survey found that the majority of millennials believe gender is fluid. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 202.

A few years ago, Facebook announced that its users could now choose from fifty different genders. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p.  203.

The body has become a morally neutral piece of matter that can be manipulated for whatever purpose the self may impose on it… Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 204.

If postmodernism is correct – that the body itself is a social construct – then it becomes impossible to argue for rights based on the sheer fact of being female. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 211.

By rejecting the biological basis of gender identity, SOGI laws empower the state to define everyone’s identity. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 214.

Every forward movement of the secular moral revolution is hailed as an advance for freedom from the oppressive moral rules of the past. But in reality, every step empowers the state. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 254.

General Revelation

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush aflame with God.
But only those who see take off their shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries!

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Copernicus wrote…” [the world] has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all.”…Galileo wrote, “God is known…by Nature in works and by doctrine in his revealed word.”  …Pasteur confessed, “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.”  Or Isaac Newton: “When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light.  This did not happen by chance.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 150.

Immanuel Kant wrote: “Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the starry heavens without and the Moral Law within.” Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (NY: Free Press, 2006). p. 57.

Generation(s)

Greatest (GI generation) born before 1928
Silent (children of the depression) Born 1928-45
Boomer (war babies) born 1946-1964
Gen X (Baby Busters) born 1965-1980
Millennial (Gen Y) born 1981-or later
Gen Z (Internet gen.) born 1990 onward

Genetic Code

Even Dawkins says – “The genetic code is truly digital, in exactly the same sense as computer codes.  This is not some vague analogy, it is the literal truth.” Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 191.

Instead of creating information, chance events tend to scramble information…As a result, virtually all origin-of-life researchers today have abandoned theories based on chance. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 194.

Every cell in your body contains more information than the entire thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity,  p. 196.

The structure of DNA is precisely parallel to the structure of languages and computer programs. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 199.

Gentleness

Carl Sandburg described Abraham Lincoln as a man of “velvet steel.”  That is a good description of gentleness. Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 872.

Gift

We know a place in England still existing, where a dole of bread is served to every passerby who chooses to ask for it. Whoever the traveller may be, he has but to knock at the door of St. Cross Hospital, and there is the dole of bread for him. Jesus Christ so loveth sinners that he has built a St. Cross Hospital, so that whenever a sinner is hungry, he has but to knock and have his wants supplied. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Giving

John D. Rockefeller was the world’s first billionaire. It is said that for many years, he lived on crackers and milk because of stomach troubles caused by worrying about his wealth. He rarely had a good night’s sleep, and guards stood constantly at his door. Wealthy—but miserable! When he began to share his wealth with others in great philanthropic endeavors, his health improved considerably and he lived to be an old man. Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), electronic edition.

The measure of a life is not its duration but its donation. – Corrie Ten Boom

Global Warming

The fact that the temperature of the planet has not increased for seventeen years is not important in itself.  The fact that the Sun has entered a deep sleep is very important.  David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2014), p. 7.

The demonstrated relationship between solar activity and climate predicts a severe cooling out to at least the year 2040… David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short , p. 11.

In theory, the poles should be more sensitive to atmospheric warming because of their very dry atmosphere, which would allow carbon dioxide to have a greater effect relative to water vapor….The Arctic has warmed slightly, and the Antarctic has cooled slightly. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short,  p. 13.

The hottest year in the climate record of the lower forty-eight states remains 1934. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short,  p. 14.

Climatologists refer to the twentieth century as the Modern Warm Period.  It was preceded by the Little Ice Age, from 1350 to 1900. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short , p. 15.

Thus an estimate of solar cycle length can be used to predict climate over the following solar cycle. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short , p. 21.

The world will be much cooler by 2020, though, and with an average period between major volcanic eruptions of forty-five years, the chance of any individual year after 2020 witnessing a mass famine event will be about 2 percent. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short ,  p. 41.

Glory, Man’s

Thomas Gray penned his famous “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,”…

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike the inevitable hour,

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Quoted in Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 894.

God

The man whispered:
God, speak to me
And a meadowlark sang
But the man did not hear.

So the man yelled
God speak to me!
And the thunder rolled across the sky.
But the man did not listen.

The man looked around and said,
“God let me see you”
And a star shone brightly.
But the man did not notice.

And the man shouted
“God show me a miracle”
And a life was born.
But the man did not know.

So the man cried out in despair
“Touch me God and let me know that you are here!”
Whereupon God reached down and touched the man
But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.

Don’t miss out on a blessing
because it isn’t packaged the way you expect.

Erik Rees tells an old story of a boy who wanted to go and see God. “Knowing it would be a long trip, he packed his suitcase with Twinkies and root beer.  After traveling a few blocks, he came upon an elderly man feeding pigeons in the park.  Needing a break from his journey, the boy sat down on the bench near the man and opened his suitcase for a little refreshment.  That’s when he noticed that the man looked hungry.  He offered him a Twinkie, and the man gratefully accepted it, smiling.  The little boy loved the smile and wanted to see it again, so he offered the man a root beer.  He was not disappointed.  They sat there all afternoon, neither of them speaking a word but thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.  As it grew dark, the boy realized that he needed to go home.  He took a few steps and then, turning around, he ran back to give the man a big hug.  He’d never seen a bigger smile.  When he got home, his mom asked him what he’d been doing that made him so happy.  The boy answered, “I had lunch with God today.  He’s got the best smile I’ve ever seen.”  Meanwhile, at the elderly man’s home, his son asked, “What’s made you so happy?”  The old man replied, “I met God today.  You know, he’s much younger than I expected.” Erik Rees, Only You Can Be You (New York, Howard Books, 2009), p. 188.

God, Belief In

A solid majority of Americans and Christians, and many more (some 88 or 90 percent, depending on the poll you favor) believe in God. Alvin Plantinga, Where The Conflict Really Lies, Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 53.

God, Existence Of

The existence of God explains why there is something rather than nothing; it explains the intelligibility and order in the universe; it explains the continuing existence of the universe; it explains the beginning of the universe; it explains the inherently mathematical nature of the universe; it explains the existence of the laws of nature’ it explains the beauty in the universe and the relationship between mathematical beauty and truth, it explains the existence of information; it explains the existence of free will and the ability to recognize good and evil; it explains religious experience; it explains the fine-tuning in the astrophysics of the universe that allows for conscious life; and it explains why thoughts have the capacity to produce true beliefs. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. xxviii.

God, Government Of

As William Penn said, “Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.”  David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, (Nashville, WND Books, 2005), p. 176.

God, in search of

If I had to make a statement about God, one that is fundamental in Judaism, it would be that God is in search of man.  It is the fundamental statement about God in Judaism. – Abraham Joshua Heschel.

God, Knowledge Of

Following Marcel and Kierkegaard one may argue that the most powerful form of knowledge is not empirical, but an encounter or personal acquaintance with the divine. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. 158.

God, Person Of

A genuinely personal God requires distinct “Persons,” because that alone makes it possible for love and communication to exist within the Godhead itself. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 387.

Christianity is completely consonant with human experience…The whole range of human personality is accounted for only by the Christian worldview, because it begins with a personal God. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 395.

God, Presence Of

I know the Immovable comes down;

I know the Invisible appears to me;

I know that he who is far outside the whole creation

Takes me within Himself and hides me in His arms. – St. Symeon

Gold

One of the world’s largest depositories was stored underneath the World Trade Center, owned by a group of commercial banks. The bomb detonated close to the vault, but it withstood the explosion, as did the towers. Seven weeks after the September 11th attacks, $230 million in precious metals were removed from basement vaults of 4 WTC, which included 3,800 100-Troy-ounce registered gold bars and 30,000 1,000-ounce bars.  – Wikipedia

One of the world’s largest depositories of precious metals was stored underneath the World Trade Center.  It was owned by a group of commercial banks.  Several days after the 9/11 destruction, $230 million in precious metals was removed from basement vaults of the center. http://americanfreepress.net/?p=298  August 27, 2011.

Good for Evil

Dr. David Jeremiah tells the story of once stopping at McDonalds.  While in line the woman behind his car became irate, insisting that he had cut her off.  She screamed at him, honked the horn and made ugly gestures.  When Dr. Jeremiah got to the window he instructed the clerk to include the woman’s bill in his own.  He waited at a distance to see that the woman was dumbfounded that he had done such a thing.  This is a picture of returning evil with good.  Dr. David Jeremiah, TV broadcast Feb. 12, 2012.

Google

Google’s trust and authority algorithms work by assigning trust to a domain and a page within that domain based on the sites linking to each one. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), p. 168.

In the place of few experts we have many amateurs – leaving us with what one author has termed “the cult of the amateur.” Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion , p. 171.

The systematic theologies of the future will be crowd sourced, with any one of us contributing, any one of us changing the words of the greatest theologian.  In the end it is not truth that will prevail, but consensus. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion , p. 171.

New digital technologies function as a great leveler, reducing the authority of the expert and elevating the authority of the amateur. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion , p. 172.

Author Stephen Baker uses the phrase the Numerati to describe this whole new class of people – mathematicians and computer scientists who are hired by companies to collect and to mine through all of this personal data. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 179.

Google is by far the largest Internet business.  Google has more than one billion users.  Google dominates both search and search advertising.  Google handles more than two billion Internet searches per day.  Google’s tentacles extend to every major type of content, every major hardware platform, every nook and cranny of the Web, and every corner of the globe.  Google has indexed over one trillion Web pages.  If you spent one minute scanning each page indexed by Google, then you would need more than 38,000 years to scan them all.  Gmail’s data repository is equivalent to about 1.74 billion music CDs.  If you printed the information Google processes each day, then you would need to cut down 1.2 million trees.  The most popular You Tube video has been viewed over 200 million times.  Google has the most online advertisers (well over one million), and virtually all Web publishers are its clients.  Google Translate handles 57 languages covering most of the world’s populations.  Google You Tube is the world’s largest video-sharing site with 43% of the market- more than ten times the nearest competitor.  Google has over 500 products and services covering almost every imaginable type of information…According to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, ‘Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information created.  We [now] create five exabytes every two days.’”  An Exabyte is one quintillion (10⁴⁸)  bytes.  It is hard to visualize such a large number.  One Exabyte is roughly 20,000 times the amount of information contained in all of the books ever written.  It would take 50,000 years to watch a one-exabyte DVD-quality video. Scott Cleland with Ira Brodsky, Search & Destroy, Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. (St Louis MO: 2011), pp. 147-148.

The Digital Road To Serfdom. Googelism is based on the following radical ideas:

Innovation without permission:  If you are developing innovative solutions, then you shouldn’t need others’ permission to use their property or violate their privacy.  This “permisssionless” approach is fundamentally opposed to individualism (which recognizes that every person has certain inviolable rights) and democracy (which grants every person a say in matters that affect them).

Information should be free: The online world creates a fresh opportunity to abolish private property.  Radicals want to establish an “information commons” based on the “economics of abundance.”  Opponents call it a “something for nothing” entitlement that destroys striving, competition, and choice.

Publicacy: Everyone should have equal access to information.  This Web 2.0 ideal seeks to create a more egalitarian Internet by replacing user privacy, private property, and data security with radical forms of openness, transparency, and accessibility.

Technological determinism: If it’s technically possible, then it should be done, because inevitably it will be done.  This principle is destructive because it places the development and application of technology above all other values.

Google knows best: Google is trustworthy and morally superior because it is the only company guided by its “Don’t be evil” motto.  This principle is destructive because it establishes a double standard that exempts Google form the laws, rules, norms, and standards of accountability that apply to everyone else. Scott Cleland with Ira Brodsky, Search & Destroy, Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. (St Louis MO: 2011), pp. 196-197.

Google believes its search engine, once perfected, would rival the mind of the Creator

Google’s mission is to achieve omniscience.

Google has an omnivorous appetite for data and market share.

Google seeks omnipresence on the Web and beyond.

Google’s repertoire of products and information types is omnifarious.

Google is scaling its infrastructure, databases, and software to achieve omnipotence.

Scott Cleland with Ira Brodsky, Search & Destroy, Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. (St Louis MO:  2011), p. 238.

Chicago-based think tank the Heartland Institute profiled the company in a July 2013 paper aptly entitled “Google Spy,” citing the top ten reasons why privacy is hardly the company’s middle name.  Among the findings: Google maintains the largest behavioral profile data bank on individuals in the entire world, and Google executives are among some of the most politically connected people in Big Business. Cheryl K. Chumley, Police State USA (New York: WND Books, 2014), p. 33.

Google may talk a good game about privacy, but private data are the mortal enemy of its system of the world. George Gilder, Life After Google (Washington DC: Regnery Gateway, 1918), p. 22.

As the years passed Google digitized nearly all of the available books in the world (2005), the entire tapestry of the world’s languages and translations (2010), the topography of the planet (Google Maps and Google Earth, 2007), down to the surfaces and structures on individual streets (StreetView) and their traffic (Waze, 2016)… George Gilder, Life After Google, p. 27.

Gospel

Some time ago I read a book that told the story of how England went from being a largely Christian country that sent missionaries around the world to becoming the largely post-Christian, atheistic country it is today.  I remember the author made the remark that during the transition period, the gospel was still preached, but it was so bedecked with flowers that no one could see it.  Edwin W. Lutzer, The Cross In The Shadow Of The Crescent (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers), p. 110.

Such preaching, by making indifference impossible, sets the hearers in one of two camps.  It is calculated to produce a revival or a riot. – Arthur Wallis

One reason that Scripture urges us to mind our own business and to keep a good reputation with outsiders is the gospel itself creates enough trouble of its own. – Michael Brown

It has been said of the Baby Busters, those born between 1963 and 1977, and the first generation to grow up in a postmodern context, that they lack even the memory of a hope-giving Gospel. David S. Dockery, ed., The Challenge of Postmodernism, an Evangelical engagement (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), p. 365.

The gospel is far greater than most of us imagine.  It isn’t just good news for us – it’s good news for animals, plants, stars, and planets.  It’s good news for the sky above and the earth below. Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), p. 125.

Good News. That is the original meaning of the Old English word gospel. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2014), p. 2.

In many churches, the good news has subtly changed into good advice… N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good, p. 4.

The usual heaven and hell scheme, however popular, distorts the Bible’s good news. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good, p. 5.

Good news creates a new situation and calls for new decisions…Something had happened because of which everything was now different. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good, p. 12.

Gossip

Lead your life so you won’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

GOSSIP TOWN

Have you ever heard of Gossip Town On the shores of Falsehood Bay, Where old Dame Rumor in rustling gown Is going the livelong day?

The principal street is called “They Say.”  “I’ve Heard” is the public well; And the breezes that blow from Falsehood Bay Are laden with “Don’t you tell.”

Just back of the park in “Slander’s Row;”  Twas there that Good Name died, Pierced by a shaft from Jealousy’s bow In the hands of Envious Pride.

It isn’t far to Gossip Town For the people who want to go; The Idleness Train will take you down in just an hour or so.

But the people who go to Gossip Town All reap of the seed they sow; And this you will find as they have found If ever you chance to go.  Anonymous

Spurgeon advised in Lectures to My Students that when people come to a pastor with gossip, he should say, “Well, all this is very important, and I need to give it my full attention – but my memory isn’t so good and I have a lot to think about. Can you write it all down for me?” Spurgeon says this will take care of it, because they won’t want to write down their gossip. David Guzik, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible, Commentary on 1 Timothy. http://www.studylight.org/com/guz/view.cgi?bk=53&ch=2. 1997-2003, Commentary on 1 Timothy, 5:19-20.

Giving

Matt 6:1-4: sound no trumpet before you – He who gives Zedaqah in secret is greater than Moses. (B. BB 9b) Samuel Tobias Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament, The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Hoboken, NJ & NY: Katav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ and Anti-Defamation League of  B’Nai B’rith, New York, 1987), p. 113.

Every year before Thanksgiving Day, the Butterball Turkey Talk Line receives hundreds of calls from people seeking advice on how to thaw, prepare, and roast their holiday turkey.  One year, a woman called to ask if the turkey in her freezer was still good to eat.  The Butterball Turkey expert asked how long the bird had been in the woman’s freezer.  The caller replied: “Twenty-three years.”  The turkey expert told her that after more than two decades in the Deepfreeze, the turkey would probably have a distinct “freezer taste,” and he recommended the woman discard it and buy a new turkey at the market. “That’s what I was thinking,” the woman said.  “Well, we’ll just donate the old turkey to the church.”  Michael Youssef, 15 Secrets to a Wonderful Life (New York, Boston , Nashville: Faith Words, 2008), pp. 15-16.

God

Erik Rees tells an old story of a boy who wanted to go and see God. “Knowing it would be a long trip, he packed his suitcase with Twinkies and root beer.  After traveling a few blocks, he came upon an elderly man feeding pigeons in the park.  Needing a break from his journey, the boy sat down on the bench near the man and opened his suitcase for a little refreshment.  That’s when he noticed that the man looked hungry.  He offered him a Twinkie, and the man gratefully accepted it, smiling.  The little boy loved the smile and wanted to see ti again, so he offered the man a root beer.  He was not disappointed.  They sat there all afternoon, neither of them speaking a word but thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.  As it grew dark, the boy realized that he needed to go home.  He took a few steps and then, turning around, he ran back to give the man a big hug.  He’d never seen a bigger smile.  When he got home, his mom asked him what he’d been doing that made him so happy.  The boy answered, “I had lunch with God today.  He’s got the best smile I’ve ever seen.”  Meanwhile, at the elderly man’s home, his son asked, “What’s made you so happy?”  The old man replied, “I met God today.  You know, he’s much younger than I expected.” Erik Rees, Only You Can Be You (New York, Howard Books, 2009), p. 188.

Government

William Penn said it all: “If man is not governed by God, he will be ruled by tyrants.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 24.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” [Edward R. Murrow] John W. Whitehead, A Government Of Wolves, The Emerging American Police State (New York: Select Books, Inc., 2013), p. viii.

Years ago William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, observed that America may be the first country in which fascism comes to power through democratic elections. John W. Whitehead, A Government Of Wolves, The Emerging American Police State, p. 6.

At least 50,000 – but more like 70,000-no-knock raids are carried out each year, usually conducted by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers prepared for war. John W. Whitehead, A Government Of Wolves, The Emerging American Police State,  p. 65.

In such a society, we are all petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law.  In fact, attorney Harvey Silvergate estimates that the average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws… John W. Whitehead, A Government Of Wolves, The Emerging American Police State, p. 176.

Grace

Standing in grace means that:

I don’t have to prove I am worthy of God’s love

God is my friend

The door of access is permanently open to Him

I am free from the “score sheet” – the account is settled in Jesus

I spend more time praising God and less time hating myself

I am able:

To believe, and consent to be loved while unworthy (this is the great secret)

To refuse to make “resolutions” and “vows;” for that is to trust in the flesh

To expect to be blessed, though realizing more and more lack of worth

To testify of God’s goodness, at all times

To be certain of God’s future favor; yet to be ever more tender in conscience toward him

To rely on God’s chastening hand as a mark of his kindness

A man under grace, if like Paul, has no burdens regarding himself; but many about others

David Guzik commentary on Romans. https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/romans-5/

It has been said, “The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.” Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p.  883.

Lee Strobel tells the true story of God’s grace being shown to mortals.  It happened during the reign of terror in Cambodia and the story was related by Christopher LaPel, who grew up in Phnom Pehn. Strobel describes, “a stranger with a shadowy past. A monster of unthinkable depravity – and a personal transformation so improbable that it seemingly stretches the concept of grace to its breaking point.”

LaPel tells how the dreaded death prison of the Khmer Rouge in the awful regime of Pol Pot was known as S-21.  In charge of that grim death factory was Kaing Guek Eav, who was better known as Comrade Dutch (pronounced Doik).  Dutch subjected his prisoners to all types of inhumane punishments, mostly leading to their deaths.  Even small children were not spared.  All told 14,000 prisoners entered S-21 and only seven were known to have survived.  When the Khmer Rouge was overthrown Dutch fled and was presumed dead.

LaPel tells how in his Cambodian church sometime later a stranger appeared whose name was Hang Pin.  He was a scrawny man whose ears stuck out.  In time Hang became greatly interested in Christianity, finally believing in Jesus and being baptized.  It seemed that everything drastically changed in his life.  He first won his children to Christ and then established a church himself.  He was always hungry for more Bible teaching.  Later he even worked for the Christian ministry World Vision.

All this ended when a photojournalist by the name of Nic Dunlop tracked Dutch down and positively identified him as Hang Pin.  Part of the identification was the ears that stuck out.  LaPel was stunned, realizing that the pastor he had loved and tutored had murdered even some of his own family.  Hang Pin (Dutch) was arrested and confessed all his crimes openly.  He then pled for mercy. In deep repentance, he asked for mercy.  Even LaPel found himself forgiving Dutch.  He soon began to spend a mandatory life sentence in prison.  Dutch would later say, “It is okay.  They have my body.  Jesus has my soul.”  He went on to a life of sharing the gospel with the guards and others at the prison. Lee Strobel, The Case For Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), pp. 94-102.

Grace Before Meals

You say grace before meals.

All right.

But I say grace before the play and the opera,

And grace before I open a book,

And grace before sketching, painting,

Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;

And grace before I dip the pen in the ink. – G. K. Chesterton

Gratitude

G. K. Chesterton called it [gratitude] the mother of all virtues. Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999), p. 137.

Greeks, their influence

[Quote from the seers] Cursed be the man who rears a pig and cursed be those who instruct their sons in Greek wisdom. Paul Johnson,  A History of the Jews (NY: Harper & Roe, 1987), p. 101.

The Macedonian phalanx.  It was sixteen, sometimes thirty-two, ranks deep, each man was equipped with the sarissa, or twenty-one-foot long spear, carried in both hands, the first five ranks holding theirs horizontally, so that the front of the phalanx was a glittering forest of metal points.  Paul Johnson, Civilizations of the Holy Land  (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1979), p. 87.

There was no real possibility of Jews ad Greeks getting on together.  The conflict between them has rightly been called one of the great cultural epics of mankind. Paul Johnson, Civilizations of the Holy Land p. 99.

The Jews were the only indigenous people of the Hellenistic empire with a really mature literature, in size and range rivaling Greece’s own, and who were still producing books in huge quantities. Paul Johnson, Civilizations of the Holy Land, p. 99.

There can be little doubt that the greatest single contribution of Hellenistic culture to early Judaism and the early church was the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek for the use of Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt who were no longer able to read Hebrew… Russell, D.S., From Early Judaism to Early Church, (London, SCM Press Ltd., 1986), p. 19.

Perhaps the most important factor distinguishing Greek armies form those of the surrounding empires is that the men in the ranks were neither mercenaries nor slaves but citizen-soldiers (known as hoplites). Rodney Stark, How The West Won (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2015), p. 15.

But there was a darker side that eventually played a substantial role in the downfall of Greek civilization: for all the brilliance of the Greek philosophers, they did not rise above the moral limitations of the ancient world. Rodney Stark, How The West Won p. 29.

Grudge

An add in the newspaper read, “For sale.  New wedding dress never used.  Will trade for a 38 caliber pistol.” unknown

Guilt

If you speak about guilt they think you’re talking about a psychological problem that requires therapy, not about true moral guilt that requires forgiveness. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 119.

“‘Peanut Butter Binge’ and ‘Chocolate Decadence’ are sinful; lying is not.  The measure of sin is caloric.” David Wells, Quoted in John Hannah, Our Legacy, The History of Christian Doctrine (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 2001), Introduction.

Happiness

The missionary Albert Schweitzer was probably too busy doctoring sick natives in the Congo to think much about the simple life.  At one point, he dismissed happiness as “nothing more than good health and a poor memory.” David Yount, Spiritual Simplicity (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 81.

Healing

Gianna Jessen who was 26 years old in 2003 survived an attempted abortion at 7 ½ months.  She was left in a saline solution in the womb for 18 hours.  As a result she was born with Cerebral Palsy.  She later asked God to heal her by taking the Palsy away.  In her wonderful and uplifting testimony she says that he healed her by taking away her desire to be healed.  Jesus is the perfect doctor to heal us of our sin.  He is always available; he always makes a perfect diagnosis; He provides a complete cure; and He even pays the bills.  David Guzik, Commentary on Mark, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/mark, 1997-2003, vs. 2:15-17.

A God without power to heal a sick heathen’s body is a poor recommendation of his ability to save his soul” [John G Lake] Michael L. Brown, Whatever Happened to the Power of God, (Destiny Image Publishers, PO Box 310, Shippenburg, PA 17257, 1991), p. 77.

Medical studies are confirming that those who attend church regularly and act consistently with their faith are better off, both physically and mentally.  Consider a few recent findings…Alcohol abuse is highest among those with little or no religious commitment.  One study found that nearly 89 percent of alcoholics said they lost interest in religion during their youth…In 80 percent of criminal offenses, alcohol or drugs were implicated…Harvard professor Richard Freeman discovered that regular church attendance is the primary factor in preventing African-American urban young people from turning to drugs or crime….Several studies have found that high levels of religious commitment correlate with lower levels of depression and stress…Persons who do not attend church are four times more likely to commit suicide than are frequent church attenders. Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999). pp. 311-313.

Matt 8:14-15  He touched her – Curing illness by touching is well known.  In rabbinic literature it is recorded that R. Johanan had such power. (M. Shab. 7.2) Samuel Tobias Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament, The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Hoboken, NJ & NY: Katav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ and Anti-Defamation League of  B’Nai B’rith, New York, 1987), p. 62.

I read a study done on people who needed arthroscopic knee surgery.  Their knees were worn down and they needed the joint to be cleaned out.  On some of the patients, the doctors received family permission to only pretend to do the surgery as part of this study.  Instead of actually cleaning out the knee and performing the full surgery, they simply put the patient under anesthesia and made three tiny incisions around the knee as if they had done something.

When those patients woke up, they thought their surgery had been performed.  It’s interesting that after two years, the patients who’d had the fake surgery reported just as much relief from the pain as the patients who’d actually had the surgery.

You may think that the patients who did not get the surgery were feeling no pain because their minds had been tricked.  That wasn’t the case.  When the doctors examined their knees over time, they could see improvements, even without the surgery.  Their conclusion was that when the brain expected the knee to get better, it did, even without surgery.  Just thinking that the knee was healed actually helped the body to heal. Joel Olsteen, You Can You Will, 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner (New York, Boston, Nashville; Faith Words, 2014), p. 80-81.

…Just this last week, one of the well-known faith healers of America was found dead in his hotel in San Francisco. The coroner’s report on the cause of death has just been published: It was acute alcoholism. That is a rather tragic commentary upon the fakery and hypocrisy involved in much of the so-called “faith healing” of our day. Ray Stedman, Commentary on Acts 9”32. http://www.raystedman.org/new-testament/acts.

Health

[David Larson] Eventually Larson began doing his own research and founded the national Institute for Healthcare Research…which has published scores of studies confirming that religious belief (which in America generally means Christianity) actually correlates with better mental health.  It is now widely accepted that religious people have lower rates of depression, suicide, family instability, drug and alcohol abuse, and other social pathologies.  Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 59.

Herbert Benson of Harvard, who claims no religious faith, is famous for his catchy saying that we are all “wired for God.”  Our bodies simply function better, he says, when we believe in God. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 60.

Much of what we call “harmless” is poison in a jar with a medicinal label. Jamie Buckingham, Risky Living, Keys to Inner Healing (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1976),  p. 130.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, each year, prescribed medications cause hundreds of thousands of injuries and deaths, making prescription drug mortality a leading cause of death in the United States and generating billions of dollars in additional healthcare costs.  A 1989 study reported that 2,216,000 hospitalized patients in the United States had serious adverse drug reactions, and 106,000 had fatal reactions.  Adverse events from prescription drug use result in more than 4 million annual visits to emergency departments, doctors’ offices, or other outpatient settings, and 117,000 hospitalizations each year…A recent review of studies form around the world concluded that 17 percent of hospitalized patients experience an adverse drug reaction. Nicholas Frudenberg, Lethal But Legal, Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 54.

At the 2011 Philip Morris annual meeting in New York City, CAI [Corporate Accountability International] released its Alternative Annual Report: Philip Morris International Exposed…The alternative report described…the price paid for profits…One tobacco-related death every six seconds worldwide, 5.4 million people every year; An average loss of fifteen years of life for each smoker; Healthcare costs that averaged $74 for each person in the world; Healthcare expenses and productivity losses that cost the world economy $7.39 for every dollar of PMI revenue. Nicholas Frudenberg, Lethal But Legal, Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health, p. 214.

Heaven

We will discover that everything done in the present world in the power of Jesus’ own resurrection will be celebrated and included, appropriately transformed. N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope, Rethinking Heaven, he Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper, Collins, 2008), p. 294.

Is it too much to say that, according to these verses, the unique contributions of each nation to the life of the present earth will enrich the life of the new earth:  Shall we then perhaps inherit the best products of culture and art which this earth has produced?  Hendrikus Berkhof suggests that whatever has contributed to “the liberation of human existence,” will be retained and added to on the new earth. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), p. 286.

As human beings, whom God made to be both physical and spiritual, we are not designed to live in a non-physical realm – indeed, we are incapable of even imagining such a place (or, rather non-place). Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), p. 16.

The great redemptive promises of God will find their ultimate fulfillment on the New Earth, not in the present Heaven. Randy Alcorn, Heaven , p. 44.

Heaven and the New Earth will be essentially the same place. Randy Alcorn, Heaven , p. 45.

Many religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, characterize the afterlife as vague and intangible.  Christianity specifically refutes this notion.  Biblical Christianity doesn’t give up on humanity or the earth. Randy Alcorn, Heaven , p. 77.

We won’t go to Heaven and leave earth behind.  Rather, God will bring Heaven and Earth together into the same dimension, with no wall of separation… Randy Alcorn, Heaven , p. 88.

God’s plan of the ages is “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (Eph. 1:10). Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 102.

[Bruce Milne on Rev. 21:24-26] “Nothing of ultimate worth from the long history of the nations will be omitted from the heavenly community.  Everything which authentically reflects the God of truth, all that is of abiding worth from within the national stories and the cultural inheritance of the world’s peoples, will find its place in the New Jerusalem.” Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 213.

If we serve faithfully on the present Earth, God will give us permanent management positions on the New Earth. Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 200.

“If you’re not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.”  It wasn’t Mark Twain who said that.  It was Martin Luther. Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 423.

[John Newton] “When I get to heaven, I shall see three wonders there.  The first wonder will be to see many there whom I did not expect to see; the second wonder will be to miss many people who I did expect to see; the third and greatest of all will be to find myself there.” Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 456.

Almost all of earth’s inhabitants have some impression of heaven. Derek Prince, War in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2003), p. 13.

As I pointed out in chapter 1, in Scripture at least three different areas are called “heaven.”  First the visible heaven above us.  Next comes the mid-heaven described in Revelation 8:13; 14:6; and 19:17.  Finally, the third heaven is the highest of all and is the sacred place of God. Dwelling, the place that Solomon refers to in 2 Chronicles 2:6 as the “heaven of heavens…” Derek Prince, War in Heaven,  p. 13.

“Inside my Father’s family there is plenty of room.  If this was not the case, I would have told you.  I am going to prepare a place just for you” (Jn. 14:2 – Hebrew Heritage Bible by Brad Young, (2009).

Hebrew Language

Matt 5:17-20 “an iota,”  – R. Alexander the Reader: ‘If all the world were gathered together to destroy the yod, which is the smallest letter in the Law, they would not succeed.’ (Cant. R. 5.11;cf. Lev. R. 19) Samuel Tobias Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament, The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Hoboken, NJ & NY: Katav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ and Anti-Defamation League of  B’Nai B’rith, New York, 1987), p. 88.

It was on this seemingly irrelevant fact that the sages based their understanding that any knowledge of what preceded the beginning is unattainable by investigation. Why? Because the shape of beth is such that it is closed on three sides and open only in the forward direction…The Bible begins with a letter that is bounded on all sides except the forward, so the events that occur after “the beginning” are those that are accessible to human investigation.  Similarly, those that preceded the beginning, that is the creation, are not open to investigation. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), pp. 56-57.

In Hebrew, there is a word that means ladder: S-L-M.  And there’s another word that is the word that follows ladder – or put differently, the word that ladder leads phonetically toward.  The word is: SH-L-M.  This word means totality, completion, and peace.  The idea is that the ladder, the route upwards, musts lead to completion… Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Business Secrets From The Bible, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2014, p. 111.

[Engraved Torah – Exo. 32:16] The Torah uses the Hebrew word for engraved: ChaRuT.  What you may not know is that this word has two meanings…The second meaning of ChaRT is freedom…The more we restrict our freedom by setting rules and limitations on ourselves, the freer we are to actually be productive. Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Business Secrets From The Bible, p. 129.

Hebrew, Relation to Greek Thought

If Israelite thinking can be characterized, it is obvious first to call it dynamic, vigorous, passionate, and sometimes quite explosive in kind; correspondingly Greek thinking is static, peaceful, moderate, and harmonious in kind. Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared With Greek (New York: W.W. Norton Company, Inc., 1960), p. 27.

The Israelites, on the other hand had no interest in the ‘photographic’ appearance of things or persons.  In the entire Old Testament we do not find a single description of an objective ‘photographic’ appearance. Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared With Greek , p. 74.

It is striking in this description that it is not the appearance of the ark that is described but its construction.  What interests the Israelite, therefore, is how the ark was built and made.  Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared With Greek, p. 75.

For the Israelites…that is beautiful, first of all, which accomplishes its definition and fulfils its purpose; when a thing is as it should be, it is beautiful.  Accordingly ‘beautiful’ and ‘good’ are synonyms.  The most regular word for beautiful is tobh, which we ordinarily translate ‘good.’  Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared With Greek (New York: W.W. Norton Company, Inc., 1960), p. 87.

Hell

A man can’t be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own stream.  – C. S. Lewis.

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. – C. S. Lewis.

As William Craig observes, God doesn’t send people to hell; rather, they freely choose to ignore and resist God’s initiating grace in their lives so that they end up condemning themselves. Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2005), p. 213.

Herod

Herod’s father, Antipater, was not descended from a Jewish family either, but was an Idumean, a member of a tribe whose ancestry has been traced by some historians to Esau’s marriage to a daughter of Ishmael, the father of the Arabs. Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection (NY: Bantam Books, Inc., 1976), p. 21.

He (Herod) permitted himself one small, but very public, act of defiance of the law.  When the Temple was completed he raised over its gate the statue of an eagle.  Such was the feeling of outrage that two rabbis incited a crowd to pull it down. But Herod’s reputation was so powerful that they waited until he was dying before they did so. The king clung on to life just long enough to order the arrest and execution of the ring leaders.  Walsh, Michael, Roots of Christianity, (London: Grafton Books, London, 1986), p. 28.

Herod Family

The Emperor Augustus put Archelaus in charge of Judea, Samaria and Idumea, though with the lesser title of ethnarch rather than that of king; Antipas was given Galilee and Peraea with the title of tetrarch; and also with the title of tetrarch, a third son, Philip, was given charge of an area to the north and east of the Sea of Galilee.  Philip was by far the best ruler of the three.  Walsh, Michael, Roots of Christianity, (London: Grafton Books, London, 1986), p. 29.

Antipas was a great builder, but unfortunately for him his new city, Tiberias, was constructed over ancient Jewish burial grounds.  That made it impossible for orthodox Jews to live there without incurring ritual impurity, so the town had to be colonized forcibly by foreigners and by those who were less religiously observant.  Walsh, Michael, Roots of Christianity, p. 29.

Antipas went to Rome in AD 39 to petition the Emperor Caligula for a royal title.  This was refused, and Antipas was banished to Lyons where he died the same year, possibly executed on the orders of the emperor. Walsh, Michael, Roots of Christianity, p. 30.

History, Christian

The idea that a single generation can reject wholesale all of Christian history and start over again is doomed to theological shallowness. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 302.

Those who attempt to jettison the past are likely to simply sanction their own current prejudices and preconditions as unquestioned truth. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 302.

In short, among the Reformers, the principle that the Bible is the final authority was not intended to deny other forms of religious authority. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 303.

Holiness

None of us has been employed as a slave trader or held the robes of those throwing rocks at a martyr. We confuse calmness with holiness.  It’s been observed in surveys that the average person believes he is better than the average person. We are blind to our own blindness. David Jeremiah, Captured by Grace (Nashville: Integrity Publishers, 2006), p. 69.

Hollywood

Many of the “stars” idolized by millions of Americans are, according to experts, so troubled as to border on being mentally ill. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), pp. 75-76.

Holocaust

These trains carrying Jews were given priority over everything else.  When a ban on all other uses of railways was imposed in July 1942, during the 266-division offensive in Russia, the SS still ran a daily train carrying 5,000 Jews to Treblinka and a twice-weekly one of 5,000 to Belzec….Study of the train factor indicates, perhaps better than anything else, the importance of his Jewish policy in Hitler’s overall scheme, and the extent to which ordinary Germans helped him to push it to its conclusion.  Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (NY: Harper & Roe, 1987), p. 490.

The administration of the Third reich was often chaotic but its central principle was clear enough: all key decisions emanated from Hitler.  This applied particularly to Jewish policy, which was the center of his preoccupations and the dynamic of his entire career. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 492.

There were about 8,861,800 Jews in the countries of Europe directly or indirectly under Nazi control.  Of these it is calculated that the Nazis killed 5,933,900, or 67 per cent.  In Poland, which had by far the largest number, 3,300,000, over 90 per cent, were killed.  Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 497.

Using Zyklon-B gas crystals, the five Auschwitz chambers could murder 60,000 men, women and children every twenty-four hours. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 498.

Goebbles wrote in his diary, 13 December 1942: ‘I believe both the British and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff-raff.’ Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 503.

During the first seven months after the end of the war there were 350 anti-Semitic murders in Poland.  Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews,  p. 513.

The First World War made the Zionist state possible.  The Second World War made it essential. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 517.

Zion:  The Holocaust and the new Zion were organically connected.  The murder of six million Jews was a prime causative factor in the creation of the state of Israel.  This was in accordance with an ancient and powerful dynamic of Jewish history: redemption through suffering.  Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 519.

Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is called:
The Spirit of God – 1 Cor. 3:16
The Spirit of Jehovah – Isa. 12:2
The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah – Isa. 61:1
The Spirit of the Living God –  2 Cor. 3:3
The Spirit of Christ – Rom. 8:9
The Spirit of Jesus Christ – Phil. 1:19
The Spirit of Jesus – Acts 16:6-7
The Spirit of promise – Eph. 1:13
The Spirit of holiness – Rom. 1:4
The Spirit of judgment – Isa. 4:4
The Spirit of burning – Isa. 4:3-4
The Spirit of truth – Jn. 14:17
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding – Isa. 11:2
The Spirit of counsel and might – 11:2
The Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord – 11:2
The Spirit of life – Rom. 8:2
The Spirit of grace – Heb 10:29
The Spirit of grace and supplication – Zech. 12:10
The Spirit of glory – 1 Pet. 4:14       – R. A. Torrey

If we are open to them, we all receive what Peter Berger calls “signals of transcendence,” whether in worship services or in ordinary daily events.  Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. 159.

The Holy Spirit is not an “it” or something impersonal.  Neither is the Holy Spirit a “she,” much to the chagrin of our politically correct world.  The Holy Spirit is a “he” (Jn. 14:17), because he is the presence of Jesus in the believer’s life.  Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (Jn. 14:18).

The Bible commands us to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).  This is another way of saying “Be filled with Jesus.”  When we are saved, the Holy Spirit comes to live within our lives forever (Jn. 14:16).  Jesus forever, what a wonderful promise!  Clearly, we are to be filled with the Spirit, or filled with Jesus.  Most of the wonderful works we see in the New Testament are wrought by people who are filled with the Spirit. We need to be filled again and again, because truthfully we all leak like old rusty buckets.

How can we be filled with the Spirit?  The Bible has a wonderful answer for us: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Lk. 11:9-10).  This passage is speaking clearly about the gift of the Holy Spirit (v. 13).  The wonderful promise is that everyone who asks, seeks or knocks will receive.

So here in this verse we have the key or the combination for the spiritual life.  Here is the combination: “go right to ‘ask,’ then back to ‘seek,’ then right again to ‘knock.’”  Then the heavenly door will be opened. We are not to just ask once and quit.  We are to ask repeatedly every day like the woman before the unjust judge (Lk. 18:1-7).  God is just and he is quick to answer his children.  We are not to seek just one time, but every day and every hour like the man who sought after the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45-46).  We are to seek first and foremost the Kingdom of God (Matt. 6:33).  We are not to knock once but to keep on knocking every day and every hour on the door of the heavenly kingdom.  We are to knock desperately like the man who needed some bread for a night guest.  He knocked and knocked until the neighbor, who had already retired with his children, finally arose and gave him the bread he needed (Lk. 11:5-8).

It is one thing to have the Holy Spirit living in us and quite another thing for the Spirit to have us.  I remember an old song: “I want more of Jesus, more and more and more.  I want more of Jesus than I ever had before.  I want more of his great love, so rich and full and free.  I want more of Jesus, so I’ll give him more of me.”  When we get more of Jesus by the filling of the Holy Spirit the “me” in our hearts will be diminished.  We will no longer be a part of the “Me Generation.”  But we will be part of the chosen people, the a royal priesthood, the holy nation, the special possession of God, that we may declare the praises of the one who has called us out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Pet. 2:9).
J. G.

Home

The main impact of the Industrial Revolution was to take work out of the home.  This apparently simple change- in the physical location of work- set off a process that led to a sharp decline in the social significance accorded the home, drastically altering the roles of both men and women. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 329.

Homosexuality

President Obama said he’s “proud” of Jason Collins, the NBA player who disclosed that he’s gay this week, and said he called him to tell him so. “I had a chance to talk to him yesterday,” Mr. Obama said. “He seems like a terrific young man. I told him I couldn’t be prouder of him.”  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/30/obama-proud-openly-gay-basketball-player/

Gay unions throughout the world – These countries have civil unions or gay marriages: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal South Africa and Sweden.  The Colorado Springs Gazette, Mar. 6, 2004.

In its “Fact Sheet on Gay Lesbian Bisexual Issues,” the American Psychiatric Association clearly states: “to date there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality.” The Colorado Springs Gazette, Jul. 18, 2006.

A widely cited 1978 study by Alan P. Bell and Martin S. Wineburg reported that 43 percent of homosexuals had more than five hundred sex partners during their lifetime. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, (Nashville, WND Books, 2005), p. 21.

[The most exhaustive study on sex in America, conducted under the auspices of the University of Chicago in the early 1990’s] A much smaller percentage of men and women are homosexual than we’ve been led to believe. The researchers report, “About 1.4 percent of the women said they thought of themselves as homosexual or bisexual and about 2.8 percent of the men identified themselves in this way.” D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 151.

Instances of persecution for opposing homosexuality:

An assistant professor of theatre and dance at a Texas university sued the school for religious discrimination, alleging she was punished for refusing to attend a series of gay-themed theatrical productions. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), p.  74.

A New Jersey high school teacher was investigated after she allegedly posted a message on her private Facebook page that she opposed homosexuality because of her Christian faith. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks, p. 75.

A tenured California college professor was the focus of a four-month investigation after he wrote a letter to the local newspaper critical of the school’s plans for a new degree in LGBT studies. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks, p. 86.

A former Teacher of the Year in Mount Dora, Florida, was suspended and his job threatened after he voiced his objection to gay marriage on his private Facebook page. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks, p. 87.

Ironically, despite the claims that people are “born gay: and that homosexuality is “natural: and legitimate, the 1973 reversal of the American Psychiatric Association’s position on homosexuality had nothing to do with advances in scientific research to support the biology of homosexuality.  In fact, prior to this time, the APA had listed homosexuality in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, believing that homosexuals needed treatment.  Its about-face was actually the result of strong political pressure from gay activists (the National Gay Task Force) to “legitimize: what was once considered a disorder.  In fact, even in 1979, sex researchers Masters and Johnson said that homosexuals are “homosexually oriented by learned preferences,” and, as late as 1985, declared the “genetic theory of homosexuality: to be “generally discarded today.” Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks., p. 95.

The actual percentage of those who are consistently sexually attracted to the same sex is more like 2 to 3 percent. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks , p. 95.

What if people have tendencies toward pedophilia, cannibalism, racism, rape, or substance abuse?  Should we affirm this or seek to correct it?  Tendencies don’t necessarily tell us how we ought to live.  Indeed, gene therapy attempts to correct genetically transmitted diseases, and if homosexuality is strictly genetic…Should we affirm this or seek to correct it?  Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks , p. 96.

[Kinsey’s skewed data] For instance, 25 percent of his 5,300 male subjects were prison inmates, many of whom were sex offenders; 44 percent of these inmates had engaged in homosexual practices while in prison; some groups, such as church attendees, were hardly represented at all.  In fact, psychologist Abraham Maslow warned Kinsey about the misleading analysis, but Kinsey didn’t listen to him. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks , p. 96.

The scientific support for people being “born gay: is seriously lacking. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks , p. 106.

Homosexuality is not the result of genetic necessity but results largely from dysfunctional same-sex relationships in one’s youth (or, in the case of lesbianism, bad experiences with males who were abusive or violent). Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks , p. 106.

To make matters worse, the American Psychological Association (in its Psychological Bulletin) no longer views pedophilia as harmful. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks , p. 115.

We should take note that the push toward gay marriage moves us in the direction of pedophilia, and this should make us cautious about gay marriage and gay adoption. Paul Copan, When God Goes To Starbucks , p. 117.

There cannot more be gay marriage than there can be a rounded square or a triangular cube. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2017), p. 101.

Indeed, over 350 studies from over a dozen nations confirm the importance of a household with both parents present. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 118.

Kids have rights.  And among them is the right to not be tossed into the middle of a social experiment that tinkers with the most fundamental characteristics of the family. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 120.

Although infidelity occurs among straight couples, among gay couples it is part of the lifestyle. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 120.

A study by the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service, published in 2003, found that the average gay relationship lasts less than two years. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender p. 120.

Over 80 percent of gay men have had over fifty sexual partners in their lifetime, with close to 30 percent estimating that they’ve been with more than a thousand. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender p. 121.

Just as one example, a 2008 study published in the medical journal BMC Psychiatry found that the suicide rate is 200 percent higher for men who’ve been involved in sexual relationships with other men. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 127.

Faith Under Fire In America – For example one effect of America’s opioid crisis is the increasing number of children in foster care. Over 400,000 are in the foster system, with more than 100,000 waiting to be adopted.  Yet, at this crucial time, CBN News revealed that legal challenges from the ACLU in several states could make it impossible for faith-based adoption agencies to obtain licenses.  They are claiming “discrimination,” since these groups opt to place children with a mother and father – rather than LGBT couples (who are able to adopt through other agencies). CBN News, Frontlines, June 2018, p. 4.

In a 2014 Pew Research Center study, 51 percent of evangelical millennials said same-sex behavior is morally acceptable. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 11.

Secular culture presents a “gay script: that many find very compelling. It is a script that says anyone who experiences same-sex desire has discovered their authentic self, and that they will be most fulfilled by openly affirming it as their true identity. This script is played out in countless films, novels, articles, songs and TV shows. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 166.

A 2009 report by the American Psychological Association recognized that some people with homoerotic desires are actually happier when they restrain those desires. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 169.

According to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, 9.8% of Washington D.C. identifies as LGBT, the highest of any US state. Gallup estimated that 4.5% of the US population identifies as LGBT in 2017. AOL News, June 17, 2019.

…the homosexual issue is about a lot more than gay rights.  It’s about deconstructing the moral order of society, and the people behind it know that.  They really are moral nihilists at heart. Charles Colson with Anne Morse, My Final Word (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), p. 144.

Recent polls by Gallup show that the general public now believes 23 percent of the population is gay.  A crosstab for millennials shows that they think the percentage is even higher…the centers for Disease Control issued a survey that demonstrated the most accurate number is no more than 1.6 percent of adults. Austin Ruse, Fake Science; Exposing the Left’s Skewed statistics, fuzzy facts, and dodgy data (Washington: Regenery, 2017), p. 34.

The truth of the matter is that science does not demonstrate a gay gene.  Science and real-world experience show that homosexuality is utterly changeable.  Science shows a strong correlation between being gay and abuse in childhood, including sexual abuse. Austin Ruse, Fake Science; Exposing the Left’s Skewed statistics, fuzzy facts, and dodgy data, p. 57.

Children raised by lesbians were almost four times more likely to be on public assistance and 3.5 times more likely to be unemployed.  Children raised by lesbians had a higher propensity for criminal behavior, and the average criminality of children raised by gay men was even higher.  Children raised by gays were three times more likely to have been touched sexually by a parent or other adults – and those raised by lesbians were eleven times more likely to have experienced this king of sexual abuse.  Children raised by gay men reported being forced into sex against their will at three times the rate of children raised by their biological parents, and children raised by lesbians were four times as likely to have been forced into sex.  Children raised by gays were three times more likely to have a sexually transmitted disease; children raised by lesbians were 2.5 times more likely.  Children raised by lesbians reported the lowest level of safety in the home, followed by children raised by gays. Austin Ruse, Fake Science; Exposing the Left’s Skewed statistics, fuzzy facts, and dodgy data, p. 110.

What most people don’t know is that even the very concept of a “homosexual” was invented no more than 150 years ago. Austin Ruse, Fake Science; Exposing the Left’s Skewed statistics, fuzzy facts, and dodgy data, p. 35.

Homosexuality & Aids

Dr. Daisy Stern of Kiryat Arba [in Israel], the initiator of the medical statistical study presented to the Health Ministry, quotes European researcher Francois Hamers. Hamers is an advocate of surveillance of sexually transmitted infections at a continental level, because of their sharp increase in many European countries.
The 22 percent increase of HIV diagnoses in 2002, for instance, was “largely driven by the UK,” Hamers writes, but “increasing trends were also noted recently in most other countries…Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and especially Ireland, where the rise has been even more striking than in the UK.” Except for Belgium, these countries were the sites of large international gay pride events.
Similarly, Stern writes, a study in Rome found that new HIV infections increased between 2000-2003 – right after “half a million gays and lesbians reveled there in a week-long homo-lesbian extravaganza.”
Furthermore:  In Germany, new HIV diagnoses among men who engaged in homosexual activity almost doubled from 2001 to 2004 – more than twice the increase of previous years.
“If one correlates the figures of new incidence of HIV in the various years and localities where EuroPride, WorldPride, and such events occurred,” Dr. Stern writes in her six-page study, “there is no doubt that the correlation with new cases of positive HIV… is striking. Add to that the dramatic rise in associated sexually transmitted diseases, the increase in high risk behavior, the use of recreational drugs, the mobility from country to country, and the fact that Israel, of all ‘European’ countries, has the largest relative rise in new HIV cases, and the recipe for an absolute disaster [is clear].” Israel, Arutz 7, July 24, 2006.

A widely cited 1978 study by Alan P. Bell and Martin S. Wineburg reported that 43 percent of homosexuals had more than five hundred sex partners during their lifetime. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, (Nashville: WND Books, 2005), p. 21.

In February 1988 some 175 leading activists representing homosexual groups from across the nation held a war conference in Warrenton, Virginia, to map out their movement’s future.  Shortly thereafter, activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen put into book form the comprehensive public relations plan they had been advocating with their gay-rights peers for several years.  David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 23.

…according to the most recent report from the CDC, homosexual men account for 83 percent of the estimated new HIV diagnoses among all males aged thirteen and older and 67 percent of the total new diagnoses in the United States. Austin Ruse, Fake Science; Exposing the Left’s Skewed statistics, fuzzy facts, and dodgy data (Washington: Regenery, 2017), p. 102.

Hookup Culture

What could be better than sex without strings? Yet, in fact, many of them- both men and women- are not enjoying it at all. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy (New York: Basic Books, 22013), p. 2.

Many students today are graduating college either unhappy or ambivalent about their sex lives, and unable to imagine a more fulfilling alternative. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy,  p. 4.

The hookup has become normative, and hookup culture a monolithic culture form which students find little chance of escape. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy , p. 5.

Is this really the great triumph of feminism?…Anyone who argues against hookup culture…is conservative, antifeminist, and anti-sexual revolution.  Anyone who argues for a resurgence of dating and romance is merely nostalgic. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 10.

41 percent of students who expressed sadness and even despair about hooking up. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 12.

A hookup includes some form of sexual intimacy, anything from kissing to oral, vaginal, or anal sex and everything in between…A hookup is intended to be purely physical in nature and involves both parties shutting down any communication or connection that might lead to emotional attachment. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 25.

Emotional entanglement is not only not part of the deal, it is verboten, going against the very nature of a hookup.  Men and women learn to shut down emotionally in order to “safely” turn on physically. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 30.

Out of 164 college men who wrote short essays about their hookup experiences, 63 of them (39 percent) expressed extreme regret, shame, and frustration with themselves about it. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 110.

The men who felt rather “blah” about hooking up amounted to 73 out of 143 respondents (45 percent) – almost half. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 111.

Many men were just as stressed out by hookup culture as the women….There are many men out there at colleges and universities across America who are sad, ashamed, and/or ambivalent about hooking up and the sex they are having; who wish for long-term relationships, dating, love and romance. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 112.

Hookup culture has taught college students that they should skip the romance and go straight to sex. Donna Freitas, The End of Sex: How hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, p. 165.

A survey by the Institute for American Values found that 40 percent of college women engage in “hooking up,” purely physical encounters with no expectation of any personal relationship. Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), p. 62.

Hookup partners are referred to as “friends with benefits” but that’s a euphemism because they are not really even friends…a New York Times article. “You just keep it purely sexual, and that way people don’t have mixed expectations, and no one gets hurt.” Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning, p. 62.

In the hookup culture, partners are referred to as “friends with benefits.”  But that is a euphemism because they are not really even friends. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 28.

Hope

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde

Hugging

Hugging is healthy.  It helps the body’s immune system.  It cures depression.  It reduces stress.  It’s invigorating.  It’s rejuvenating.  It has no unpleasant side effects.

Hugging is all natural, organic, naturally sweet, and is 100% wholesome.  It contains no pesticides, no preservatives, and no artificial ingredients.

There are no moveable parts, no batteries to wear out, no periodic checkups, no insurance requirements, and no monthly payments.  It is inflation proof, non-fattening, theft-proof, non-taxable, non-polluting, and is, of course, fully returnable. Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt & David L. Weaver-Zercher, The Amish Way (San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2010), p. 120.

Humanism

The first notable Humanist of whom there is reliable record was Protagoras, a Greek teacher and philosopher of the fifth century B.C., to whom Plato devoted an entire dialogue.  Protagoras formulated the famous dictum “Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.” Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (NY: The Continuum Pub. Co., 1990), p. 31.

“I think, therefore I am.” With this, Descartes unleashed the revolutionary idea that the human mind, not God, is the source of certainty; human experience is the fixed point around which everything else revolves.  Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999). p. 119.

The ironic fact here is that humanism, which began with Man’s being central, eventually had no real meaning for people. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?  The Rise and decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 1976), p. 86.

Man always tries to sneak a humanistic element into salvation. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The 20^th Century (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p. 51.

Hence, even in Hell, a man cannot be consistent to his non-Christian presuppositions. Francis A. Schaeffer, Trilogy, The Three Essential Books in One Volume (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), p. 113.

The Humanist Manifestos I and II (1933 and 1973).  The Humanist Society is made up of a relatively small group of people (some of whom, however, have been influential – John Dewey, Sir Julian Huxley, Jacques Monod, B.F. Skinner, etc.). Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Wheaton: Crossway, 1981), p. 24.

The humanist push for “freedom,” but having no Christian consensus to contain it, that “freedom” leads to chaos or to slavery under the state (or under an elite). Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, p. 29.

[Carl Sagan – to 140 million viewers] “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, p. 44.

Law in this country has become situational law, using the term Fletcher used for his ethics. Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, p. 48.

The Supreme Court has declared it to be a religion.  The 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins specifically defines secular humanism as a religion equivalent of theistic and other nontheistic religions….Ironically it is the humanist religion which the government and courts in the US favor over all others! Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, p. 54.

Humanity

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. – C. S. Lewis

Yet, the unfolding revelation of Scripture makes it clear that God had in mind for the Adamic race a destiny higher than that of the angels…This is one main reason why Satan opposes our race with such intense hatred.  He sees us as those who will supplant him and enter into a destiny that he failed to achieve. Derek Prince, War in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2003), p. 70.

The Adamic race was created to rule the entire globe – Derek Prince, War in Heaven, p. 89.

Adam was created with a special likeness to God that was spiritual, moral and intellectual.  Externally his physical form mirrored the form of the Creator. Derek Prince, War in Heaven,  p. 13.

Humility

When the inventor of chloroform, Sir James Simpson, was dying, a friend said to him, “You will soon be resting on his bosom.”  Simpson humbly replied, “I don’t know as I can do that, but I think I have hold of the hem of his garment.” Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 164.

In Detroit in the 1930s, three young men boarded a bus and attempted to pick a fight with a passenger sitting alone in the back. They threw one insult after another, but the man said nothing in response. Eventually the bus came to the man’s stop. He stood, pulled a business card from his pocket, and handed ti to one of the men before stepping off the bus and going on his way. It read: Joe Louis. Boxer.  The three young men had tried to pick a fight with the future heavyweight boxing champion of the world, a title Joe Louis held from 1937 to 1949. Dr. David Jeremiah, A Life beyond Amazing (Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2017), p. 153.

Hunger

Roughly 1 of 4 children in developing countries is underweight.  Some 350 to 400 million children are hungry. About 1 in 7 worldwide- 854 million people- do not have enough food to sustain them. Approximately 25,000 people die each day of hunger or its related causes- about 9 million people per year. Richard Stearns, The Hole In Our Gospel (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2009, 2010), p. 135.

Hurry

It was Virginia Brasier who wrote the Time of the Mad Atom 

This is the age of the half read page,
And the quick hash and the mad dash,
And the bright night, With the nerves tight,
The plain hop, And the brief stop,
The lamp stand, In a short span,
The bog shot, And a good spot,
And the brain strain, And the heart pain,
And the cat naps, Till the spring snaps-
And the fun’s done, And then Comes taps.

Hypocrisy

We have phony rich people (with interest-only mortgages and piles of debt), phony beauty (with plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures), phony athletes (with performance enhancing drugs), phony celebrities (via reality TV and You-Tube), phony genius students (with grade inflation), a phony national economy (with $11 trillion of government debt), phony feelings of being special among children (with parenting and education focused on self-esteem), and phony friends (with the social networking explosion). David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 81.

Even more frustrating than the fact that evil is real, mighty, and tempting is the fact that it thrives so well in the disguise of the good, that it can draw its nutriment from the life of the holy. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Thunder in the Soul, ed. Robert Erlewine (Walden, NY, Plough Publishing, 2021), p. 40.

Hypocrite

A Hypocrite is one who complains of sex, nudity and violence on his VCR. – Zig Zigler

Idea

People, not physical things, are a nation’s true resources.  Consider this: how much is a handful of sand worth?  Two pennies?  One cent?  Not even that.  Yet it’s possible to turn a handful of sand into microchips.  Somebody became a billionaire and created jobs for millions of people by acting on that idea.

People using their God-given gifts within a free society produce wealth.  It’s not a matter of resources.  Some of the poorest countries on earth have incredible natural riches: countries such as Sierra Leone, Congo, and Mozambique.  Some very wealthy nations, such as Switzerland, Singapore, and Japan have few resources.  What makes the difference?  Why have some countries become rich while others remain poor Loren Cunningham, The Book That Transforms Nations: The Power of the Bible To Change Any Country (Seattle: YWAM Publishing, 2007), p.  147.

Ideal

“There are two things, the actual and the ideal.  To be mature is to see the ideal and live with the actual.  To fail is to accept the actual and reject the ideal, and to accept only that which is ideal and refuse the actual is to be immature.  Do not criticize the actual because you have seen the ideal.  Do not reject the ideal because you see the actual.  Maturity is to live with the actual but hold on to the ideal.”  – Derek Prince (prophetic word given in Ft. Lauderdale Florida).

Idolatry

[Sociologist Robert Bellah] tells of Sheila Larson, a young nurse who describes her faith as “Sheilaism.”  She says, “I believe in God.  I’m not a religious fanatic.  I can’t remember the last time I went to church.  My faith has carried me a long way.  It’s Sheilaism.  Just my own little voice. Donald W. McCullough, The Trivilization of God: The Dangerous Illusion of a manageable Deity (Colo. Springs, Nav Press, 1995), p. 22.

We will be tempted, therefore, to create for ourselves gods who will not threaten us with transcendence, gods who will be manifestly useful in a world of confusing voices, and gods who will conform to the contours of our individualistic desires. Donald W. McCullough, The Trivilization of God: The Dangerous Illusion of a manageable Deity (Colo. Springs: Nav Press, 1995), p. 24.

[Sallie McFague in her book which won the 1988 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence, Models of God- Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age] What we need today is a “holistic view of reality,” and thus she proposes new models of God as Mother, Lover, and Friend.  Who God really is, in other words, shouldn’t concern us; what matters is finding an image of God that will be useful. Donald W. McCullough, The Trivilization of God: The Dangerous Illusion of a manageable Deity, p. 30.

As psychologist David Powlison says, “idolatry is by far the most frequently discussed problem in the Scriptures.” Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2015), p. 37.

Pearcey gives us some principles in dealing with idolatry:

Principle #1, Identify the idol…An idol is anything in the created order that is put in the place of God. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 42.

Principle #2, Identify the Idol’s Reductionism…Romans 1 tells us that idolatry leads to a “debased” worldview, which opens the door to oppression, injustice, and all the other evils listed at the end of the chapter. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 44

Principle #3, Test the Idol: Does it contradict what we know about the world? Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 46

At some point, every idol-based worldview contradicts reality. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 48

Principle # 4, Test the Idol: Does it contradict itself? Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 48

Principle#5, Replace the Idol: Make the case for Christianity. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 50.

Enlightenment rationalists made a god of reason; Romantics deified the imagination; nationalists idealize the nation; Marxists offer an economic version of sin and salvation…The history of philosophy is largely a history of setting up God surrogates.  It is a history of idol-making. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 61.

The lesson is that idol-based ideologies are invariably dehumanizing, and if unchecked they lead to repression, coercion, oppression, war, and violence. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 135.

The first tablet of our self-delivered Decalogue declares that we shall have no other gods besides ourselves, and the second, as a consequence, declares that each must love his own will above all else. Donald De Marco and Benjamin D. Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 18.

Normally, the Greco-Roman gods had no love for humans. When they did express love, it was usually erotic lust…People back then normally could not and did not look to the gods for compassion and aid. Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2017), p. 41.

Indeed, the gods of the Greeks and Romans seemed to be just as lustful and untrustworthy as humans were. Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity, p. 42.

Image

“Genesis 1:26 reveals that there are two different aspects of the similarity between God and man.  First, he was made in God’s image (tselem) and second, he was made in God’s likeness (dmut).  The word image (tslem) describes external form.  It is the normal Hebrew word for shadow, and it is translated “shade” or “shadow” many times in the Old Testament.  Interestingly enough, in a verbal form it recurs in the modern Hebrew word for “to have your photograph taken.”  Through more than 3,500 years, the Hebrew language has always used this word to refer to outward visible form.

Man represents God both inwardly and outwardly.  In outward appearance, he looks like God.  Some people have an idea of God as a kind of vague blurred mist.  They cannot envisage him with any definite external form.  But the Bible reveals that God has a right hand, a left hand, he has ears and eyes, he has feet, he sits, he walks, he stands, he has a back, he has a front.  In all these respects, he is just like you and me.  The contrary however, is the real truth: It is not that God is like you and me, it is that you and I are like God. Derek Prince, War in Heaven, God’s Epic Battle with Evil, (Grand Rapids, MI, Chosen Books, 2003), pp. 82-83.

He was made in God’s image (tselem) and second, he was made in God’s likeness (dmut).  The word image (tselem) describes external form.  It is the normal Hebrew word for shadow, and is translated “shade” or “shadow” many times in the Old Testament…Though more than 3,500 years, the Hebrew language has always used this word to refer to outward visible form. Derek Prince, War in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2003), p. 82.

Now let us examine dmut, the other Hebrew word used in Genesis 1:26 to describe man’s resemblance to God.  Dmut is a more general term than tselem.  It does not refer primarily to outward appearance, but to man’s whole person. Derek Prince, War in Heaven , p. 84.

I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand – Oliver Wendell Holmes. Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999). p. 117.

Together image and dust express the polarity of the nature of man.  He is formed of the most inferior stuff in the most superior image.  Fritz A. Rothschild, Between God and Man, An Interpretation of Judaism, from the writings of Abraham J. Heschel (NY: The Free Press, NY, 1959), p. 235.

In more recent times, Princeton professor and Darwinist Peter Singer has used Darwinism to assert that “the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.” Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 190.

The Finnish Green Party activist Pentti Linkola…goes so far as to say that he has more sympathy for threatened insect species than for children dying of hunger in Africa. Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, The New Tolerance: How a cultural movement threatens to destroy you, your faith, and your children (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1998), p. 65.

According to Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, The New Tolerance: How a cultural movement threatens to destroy you, your faith, and your children, p. 65.

“The need for religion appears to be hard-wired in the human animal,” writes philosopher John Gray (an atheist). Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 42.

[Image of God] That meaning is “shadow.” Man is indeed intended to present a likeness of God. But the likeness is not physical. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), p. 152.

Yod is the first letter in the Hebrew name of God and is also used as an abbreviation of God’s name. By the addition of this extra yod, we have been told that in the forming of mankind, God touched mankind in a way that was unique [apparently he speaks of yeyatzer]. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), p. 152.

People are the consciousness of God in the world, the closest thing to him in the physical realm, and a more vivid reminder than anything else in creation of his existence, His mystery, and his creative power.  If man really is fashioned, more than anything else, in the image of God, then clearly it follows that there is nothing on earth so near to God as a human being.  The conclusion is inescapable, that to be in the presence of even the meanest, lowest, most repulsive specimen of humanity in the world is still to be closer to God than when looking up into a starry sky or at a beautiful sunset. Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage (Sisters, OR: Multnoma Press, 1985), p. 50.

Muretus was a wandering scholar of the middle ages. He was poor. In an Italian town he took ill and was taken to a hospital for waifs and strays. The doctors were discussing his case in Latin, never dreaming he could understand. They suggested that since he was such a worthless wanderer they might use him for medical experiments. He looked up and answered them in their own learned tongue, “Call no man worthless for whom Christ died!”  William Barclay, William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible. http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-1.html. 1956-1959, vs. 1:46-56.

Imagination

I love Harriet’s outlook on aging [Harriet Doerr].  “One of the best things about aging is being able to watch imagination overtake memory.” Mark Batterson, Wild Goose Chase, Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God (Colorado Springs: Multinoma Books, 2008), p. 80.

Immorality

Private immorality has public consequences. Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999). p. xi.

[Immortality] God possesses by nature and that he then shares, as a gift of grace rather than an innate possession, with his people. N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope, Rethinking Heaven, he Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper, Collins, 2008), p. 161.

The concept of the immortality of the soul was developed in the mystery religions of ancient Greece, and was given philosophical expression in the writings of Plato (427-437 BC). Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), p. 86.

The scriptures do not use the expression “the immortality of the soul.” Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future, p. 88.

The scriptures do not teach the continued existence of the soul by virtue of its inherent indestructibility. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future, p. 90.

Impossibilities

“The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” – Western Union executive, 1876.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are not possible.” – Lord Kelvin, 1895.

“Airplanes have no military value.” – Professor Marshal Foch, 1912.

“The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented by new discoveries is exceedingly remote.” – Albert Abraham Michelson, 1903.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, 1943.

In the 1870s, an annual church conference was held at Westfield College in Illinois.  During the conference, the president of the college prophetically said, “We are approaching a time of great inventions.  For example, I believe the day is not far off when men will fly through the air like birds.”  One bishop present accused him of heresy. “The Bible tells us that flight is reserved for the angels!”  The bishop’s last name: Wright.  His two sons, Orville and Wilbur, recorded the first successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. Mark Batterson, Wild Goose Chase, Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God (Colorado Springs: Multinoma Books, 2008), p. 78.

Incarnation

Now the virginity of Mary was hidden from the prince of this world, as was also her offspring, and the death of the Lord; three mysteries of renown, which were wrought in silence by God. Alexander Roberts & James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh:, T&T Clark; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.,1988),  Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians,  p. 57.

So the incarnation makes perfectly good sense from the point of view of physics. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (NY: Doubleday, 2007), p. 3.

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. – C. S. Lewis”

[J.I. Packer] “By incarnation the Son became more than he was before, and a human element became integral to the ongoing life of the Triune God. Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), p. 175.

[Emil Brunner] “The Son of God in whom we are able to believe must be such a One that it is possible to mistake him for an ordinary man.” William Barclay, Commentary on 2 John 1:1. 1956-1959.  “http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/view.cgi?bk=62&ch=1”.

 

[George MacDonald. 1824–1905] That Holy Thing

They all were looking for a king

To slay their foes and lift them high:

Thou cam’st, a little baby thing

That made a woman cry.     http://www.bartleby.com/101/770.html

Income

In another rather amazing catch by Wyatt Emerich of the Clevland Current, using the “benefits calculators: of various welfare programs, he comes to the rather persuasive conclusion that “a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year.”  David Harsanyi, Obama’s Four Horsemen (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 28.

Infanticide

[Ancient letter of one Hilarion to his pregnant wife]  “if – may you have good luck! – you should give birth; if it is a boy, keep it; if it is a girl, throw it out.” Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2017), p. 26.

Philosopher Seneca describing infanticide] “Unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children who at birth are weak or abnormal.” Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity, 2017), p. 27.

When new converts of Christianity stopped practicing infanticide, especially female infanticide, the number of Christians grew exponentially. Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity, 2017), p. 193.

The clear implication is that because the wicked do not know God, who created humanity in his own image, they think nothing of murdering children and destroying what God forms in the womb. Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity, p.58.

The Roman Law of the Twelve Tables…which may date in its earliest form to the fifth century BC, required fathers to put to death any child who was deformed. Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity, p. 57.

Influence

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito. – American Saying. Richard Stearns, The Hole In Our Gospel (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2009, 2010), p. 250.

Information

Wikipedia, according to the Foreign Ministry [of Israel], is the eighth largest web site in the world, with some 60 million visitors a day, or some 14,000 hits a second.  Jerusalem Post, Dec. 9, 2007.

Researchers say the amount of new words, sounds, pictures and numbers produced and stored on paper, film or computer disks has almost doubled in three years…The supply of new material saved in a single year, 2002, would fill half a million libraries the size of the Library of Congress – the world’s largest collection of books and papers- if it were converted to print…Our intent was to quantify people’s feeling of being overwhelmed by information…The computer revolution which has made it possible to capture and save vast quantities of information… Experts figure that in recent decades the number of scientific papers published has been doubling every three years.  In just one field, global climate data, the volume of recorded information is expected to zoom from 2 billion gigabytes in 2000 to 15 billion gigabytes in 2010…  Less that one-tenth of 1 percent of it ended up on paper.  The volume of printed information grew by 36 percent from 1999 to 2002, the last year of the study, but electronic records ballooned by 80 percent. Knight Ridder Newspapers, Washington, Feb. 22, 2004, as reported in the Colorado Springs Gazette.

[1996] – More information has been generated in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000 years.

– One weekday edition of the New York Times includes more information than the average person encountered in his entire lifetime in 17th century England.

– Over 4,000 books are published every day.

According to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, “Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information created.  We [now] create five exabytes every two days.”  An Exabyte is one quintillion (10⁴⁸⁾ bytes.  It is hard to visualize such a large number.  One Exabyte is roughly 20,000 times the amount of information contained in all of the books ever written.  It would take 50,000 years to watch a one-exabyte DVD-quality video. Scott Cleland with Ira Brodsky, Search & Destroy, Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. (St Louis, MO: 2011), p. 148.

One research company reported in 2012 that Walmart stores around the nation processes a collective 1 million credit card purchases each hour, and that the retail giant stores enough data in its warehouse to surpass the amount of information found in all the books at the Library of Congress – by 170 times. Cheryl K. Chumley, Police State USA (New York: WND Books, 2014), p. 30.

Information, And Creation

J. A. Wheeler likens the universe, all existence, to the expression of an idea, to the manifestation of information.  This has the ring of quantum mechanics. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York: The Free Press, 2001), p. 153.

If Wheeler and the others are correct, information may be the fundamental substrate of our universe, a substrate made visible when expressed as the energy and material and space of the universe.  In a strong sense, our universe may be the manifestation of information. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York: The Free Press, 2001), p. 154.

[Scientist Edward Fredkin] According to his theory of digital physics, information is more fundamental than matter and energy…And he believes that the behavior of those bits, and thus of the entire universe, is governed by single programming rule – “the cause and prime mover of everything,” he calls it. Robert Wright, Three Scientists and Their Gods, Looking For Meaning in an Age of Information (New York:Times Books, 1988), p. 5.

[Scientist Edward Fredkin] An electron, in Fredkin’s universe, is nothing more than a pattern of information, and an orbiting electron is nothing more than that pattern moving….What I believe is that there’s an information process, and the bits, when they’re in certain configurations, behave like the thing we call the electron, or the hydrogen atom, or whatever.” Robert Wright, Three Scientists and Their Gods, Looking For Meaning in an Age of Information, p. 24.

Apparently, information not only has structure; it is a prerequisite for the creation of structure. Robert Wright, Three Scientists and Their Gods, Looking For Meaning in an Age of Information, p. 94.

We thus see that information is extremely close to the idea of the world being created by the word of God. – J. G.

Innocence

Innocence is not mere ignorance.  Without shrewdness, innocence is naiveté; shrewdness without innocence is cynicism…Matt. 10:16. Gregory Spencer, Awakening The Quieter Virtues (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2010), p. 49.

Intellectuals

So many in the scientific community have been corrupted by a self-loathing for Western civilization, what the French philosopher Julien Benda in 1927 termed “the treason of the intellectuals.” David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2014), p. x.

Intellectuals, and Violence

It is a curious fact that violence has always exercised a strong appeal to some intellectuals.  It goes hand in hand with the desire for radical, absolutist solutions.  How else can we explain the taste for violence in Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell and so many other nominal pacifists? Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (Harper & Row, 1988), p. 318.

Mussolini had an astonishing number of intellectual followers, by no means all of them Italian…Hitler consistently was most successful on the campus… Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 319.

Many intellectuals were drawn into the higher echelons of the Nazi Party and participated in the more gruesome excesses of the SS. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 319.

Otto Ohlendodrf, who commanded “D” Battalion, for instance, had degrees from three universities and a doctorate in jurisprudence.  Stalin, too, had legions of intellectual admirers in his time, as did such post-war men of violence as Castro, Nasser and Mao Tse-tung.  Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 319.

One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is – beware intellectuals. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 342.

Intellectuals converted

C.  S. Lewis slowly embraced Christianity, influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J.R.R. Tolkien, and by the book, The Everlasting Man, by G. K. Chesterton.  Mortimer Adler converted late in life. Longtime professor at the University of Chicago and writer, he recognized the limitations of logic and the limitlessness of faith. In 1984, he made that leap of faith and worshiped the God “on whose grace and love I now joyfully rely.”

As Chuck Colson was facing arrest for his part in the Watergate scandal, his close friend, Raytheon Company chairman of the board Thomas L. Phillips, gave him a copy of “Mere Christianity,” by C. S. Lewis. That book convinced him of the reality and grace of Christ, and today he leads a great prison ministry across America. Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, converted from Hinduism to Christianity after exploring that faith in high school and college. He delved into the works of historic Christian writers and debated their philosophies with friends and preachers. Frank Morrison was a lawyer and engineer who set out to disprove the resurrection of Christ, but in the process, he committed his life to the Savior and subsequently wrote the famous book, Who Moved the Stone. Lee Strobel, likewise, was a skeptic. As an investigative reporter and legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, he began a two-year search for evidence regarding the credibility of Christianity after his wife’s sudden conversion. You guessed it – he became a Christian.

Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist and author who, in his youth, was a left-wing intellectual enchanted with Marxist communism. All that changed after an interview with Mother Teresa. One of his books: Jesus Rediscovered.

Francis Collins, physician and geneticist, is the current director of the National Institutes of Health and former director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute. He came to faith as he pondered the intricacies of life. He wrote the book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.  Marvin Olasky was of Russian descent and former member of the Communist Party. He was converted by reading the works of Puritan writers like Jonathan Edwards and Cotton and Increase Mather. He taught in the journalism department of the University of Texas, and is now known as the godfather of compassionate conservatism.

The list is endless. Christianity is “The Faith That Makes Sense,” as Dennis McCallum has written. Have you taken the time to sort it all out? http://m.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2011/jul/29/faith_raymond_smith_073011_146432/?features&faith/news/2011/jul/29/faith_raymond_smith_073011_146432/?features&faith

Inquisition

In less than twelve years the Inquisition condemned about 13,000 conversos, men and women, for the secret practice of Judaism.  The inquisition sought all kinds of victims, but secret Jews were among the chief ones.  In its whole existence it numbered a total of about 341,000 victims.  Of these, more than 32,000 were killed by burning… Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (NY: Harper & Roe, 1987), p. 226.

Almost any innocent act could bring down the wrath of the Inquisition.  Simply a regard for personal cleanliness, or special culinary tastes could get one accused of Judaism and cost him his life.   The failure to wear one’s best clothes on Sunday, failure to eat port, the lighting of candles on Friday, changing linens for Sabbath, or calling children by Old Testament names, could consign one of the flames…The inquisition used the most cruel forms of torture to induce a confession…A man might leave the Inquisition without being burned, the proverb ran, but he was certain to be singed. Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition (NY & London: W.W. Norton & Co.,1964),  p. 107.

The commonest modes were the pulley or strappado, and the water-torment of aselli.  In the former, the victim’s wrists were tied behind his back and attached to a pulley, by means of which he was hoisted from the floor.  If this did not prove sufficient to make him speak, weights were attached to the feet…The water torture was more ingenious, and more fiendish.  The prisoner was fastened almost naked on a sort of trestle with sharp-edged rungs and kept in position with an iron band, his head lower than his feet, and his limbs bound to the side-pieces with agonizing tightness.  The mouth was then forced open and a strip of linen inserted into the gullet.  Through this, water was poured from a jar (jarra), obstructing the throat and nostrils and producing a state of semi-suffocation.  This process was repeated time after time, as many as eight jarras sometimes being applied.  Meanwhile, the cords round the sufferer’s limbs were continually tightened until it seemed as though every vein in his body was at bursting-point. Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition, p. 95.

No other reason was necessary for a man to be condemned to the stake than that he was of Jewish blood. Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition, p. 60.

Large numbers were burned – as many as fifty persons sometimes in one day. (Roth 51)…from its foundation down to 1808, the total number of heretics burned in person in Spain alone totaled 31,912, those burned in effigy 17,659…(another estimate is 28,540) (Roth 123)…It was not until 1615 that the process of deportation was completed.  The number of the exiles has been estimated variously between 300,000 and 3,000,000.  it probably lies much nearer the first of those figures. …Spain was rid at last of that section of her children who, in the ninth and tenth centuries, had raised Spanish culture to its greatest heights. Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition, p. 161.

The Marranos [Jewish Christians] had always provided a majority of the victims; and, as soon as they disappeared from the scene, the work of the Inquisition became negligible. Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition, p. 252.

Insanity

Insanity, Albert Einstein supposedly said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that standard, the state of Israel has been stark raving mad for almost 60 years. Over and over again, Israel has tried to buy the love of its enemies by conceding territory. And over and over again, Israel has suffered the consequences of its foolhardy appeasement. Israel’s latest bout of hopeful insanity By Benjamin Shapiro Worldnetdaily.com

Internet

As a system increases in size and the interconnections strengthen, the probability that instabilities will occur increases. – Eugene Wigner

All large complex dynamic systems may be expected to show the property of being stable up to a critical level of connectance, and then, as connectance increases, to go suddenly unstable. [British cyberneticist W. Ross Ashby]. David H. Davidow, Overconnected, The Promise and Threat of the Internet, (Harrison, NY: Delphinium Books, 2011), p. 20.

The Internet is a mighty leveler of playing fields (Matt Drudge’s one-man site gets more readers than CBS News’s or Newsweek’s with their thousands of employees). David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 255.

By the year 2000, more than 50 percent of households had at least one computer, and 42 percent of them were connected to the Internet. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), p. 57.

Along the way though a subtle transformation also occurred within us.  We began to think of ourselves in computer terms.  We spoke of information as if life and the universe itself…is a collection of data.  We began to think of our brains as central processing units…increasing using the terms we had learned from the computing world to discuss biological functions.  We exported our memories to hard drives, eventually trusting the data on the disk more than we trusted our own minds. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 58.

Meanwhile the text has continued to suffer, with studies showing that, at best, Internet users skim text rather than read it.  In fact, “skimming” is now the dominant metaphor for reading. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 59.

The Internet dwarfs even the printing press in its impact on human culture, in its rate of adoption, in its immediate impact. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 60.

A 2010 study by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research sampled the habits of 1,605 young adults.  The researchers found that one-third of women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four check Facebook when they first wake up, before they even head to the bathroom: 21 percent check it in the middle of the night; 39 percent of them declare that they are addicted to Facebook. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion , p. 74.

We live in an age in which words have become a cheap commodity, and much of our communication has become unbearably light, frustratingly anti-intellectual, and devoid of substance. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 76.

The same study of young people that compared Facebook habits to bathroom habits found that over half of young women (57 percent), say they spend more time talking to people online than face-to-face.  A study from the University of Stanford found that for every hour we spend on our computers, traditional face-to-face interaction falls by nearly thirty minutes. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 76.

[John Stott] Truth becomes hard if it is not softened by love; love becomes soft if it is not strengthened by truth. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 82.

[2008 Council of Research Excellence working with Nielsen in a study of 476 Americans]  Adults ages forty-five to fifty-four accumulate the greatest amount of screen time, totaling nine hours and thirty-four minutes per day.  The average daily screen time for eighteen-year-olds is slightly less at eight and a half hours…Those who are age sixty-five and older average well over seven hours per day of TV time. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 90.

Nielsen has come up with a new name for this group based on their common behaviors: Generation C. The C stands for “connected,” and the group comprises Americans between eighteen and thirty-four who are defined by their digital connectivity…By 2015, and estimated 82 percent of households will have Internet connections. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 36.

Internet addiction is probably the most common and fastest-growing addiction of our modern time. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 132.

A national study conducted by a team from Stanford University’s School of Medicine estimates that nearly one in eight Americans suffer from at least one sign of problematic Internet use; many think it is higher than this. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 137.

In South Korea, they call it netiquette and have instigated a program nationwide to train their schoolchildren in how to show etiquette on the Internet. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 160.

As with food fasting, digital fasting breaks the habitual patterns that we fall into so easily. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion p. 162.

The digital world has robbed our Godspace in another important way.  It has made us informationally rich, but as a consequence, spiritually poor. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 189.

Intermediate State

This intermediate state, in fact, is more or less a constant feature of resurrection belief both Jewish and Christian. N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope, Rethinking Heaven, he Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper, Collins, 2008), p. 162.

All the Christian departed are in substantially the same state, that of restful happiness. N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope, Rethinking Heaven, he Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper, Collins, 2008), p. 171.

Invisible

The physicist Marcus Chown states that only about 98 percent of our universe is visible.  The rest is made up of dark material that does not emit light or light that has not yet reached us.

Islam

The 9/11 attacks formented a deep-seated malcontentedness in millions of Muslims…It’s of more than casual interest that almost all the Christophanies today are appearances to Muslims.  Jesus is appearing to Muslim housewives, businessmen and even influential imams.  A study conducted at Fuller Seminary found that more than one-fourth of Muslim-background believers surveyed stated that dreams and visions were pivotal in drawing them to Christ…One of the most vigorous evangelistic, church-planting movements in the world is in Iran…Something shifted in the spiritual world on 9/11…Ideologies that are weak at their core often resort to violence for their propagation.  Charisma Sept 2011, “The Day That Changed the Church”…David Shibley, p. 31.

The West is hard put to name a single Muslim distinguished in any field of human endeavor. David P. Goldman, How Civilizations Die (And why Islam is dying Too), (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2011), p. 147.

During the past century, a Jew was 5,000 times more likely to win the Nobel than a Muslim. David P. Goldman, How Civilizations Die (And why Islam is dying Too), p. 147.

According to the World bank estimate, the total exports of the Arab world other than fossil fuels amount to less than those of Finland, a country of five million inhabitants [Bernard Lewis] David P. Goldman, How Civilizations Die (And why Islam is dying Too),  p. 258.

In 2008 only 133 patents were filed in Muslim-majority lands, about a tenth of the number in Israel. David P. Goldman, How Civilizations Die (And why Islam is dying Too), p. 258.

[Islam’s abuses]  An epidemic of “honor killings” – at least five thousand per year according to the United Nations, but many more that go unreported – in which fathers, brothers, or mothers brutally murder their own daughter of sister merely for being seen in public with a male or similar “offense.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 187.

Islam – They were saying in effect; “If you insult my faith by saying it’s violent, I’ll kill you.” Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), p. 403.

No one is going to search for the laws of nature if even suggesting they exist makes him or her subject to the death penalty.  A conference of seventeen Arab university presidents was held in Kuwait in 1983.  The major topic of discussion was “Is science Islamic?”  The Saudi delegation argued that science is not, being intrinsically secular and, hence, automatically against Islamic beliefs. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (NY: Doubleday, 2007), p. 113.

A Muslim does not have a “personal relationship with Allah,” in the sense that a Christian speaks of having a personal relationship with God. Emir Fethi Caner & Ergun Mehemet Caner, More Than A Prophet, An Insider’s Response to Muslim Beliefs About Jesus & Christianity, (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2003), p. 30.

Ironically, Muslims extend more respect to Jesus as a high prophet than do most liberal “Christians.” Emir Fethi Caner & Ergun Mehemet Caner, More Than A Prophet, An Insider’s Response to Muslim Beliefs About Jesus & Christianity, p. 49.

Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees per capita in the world, while most of the Arabic world still wallows in ignorance.  About one-third of Arab men and half of Arab women are illiterate. Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), p. 174.

[Winston Churchill] – “Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.” Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Washington: Regnery, 2012), p. 54.

Islam had little consideration for science.  In 640, the Arabs sacked the Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria and deliberately burned down its 900-year-old library.  Its books were considered dispensable. “They will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous,” the Arab leader, Caliph Omar, said.  Books found in Persia were destroyed for the same reason. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me , p. 55.

There have been a mere handful of innovative Islamic scholars throughout the entire fourteen centuries of Islamic history.  The notable exceptions, such as the Persian Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (c. 980-1037), and the Spanish-born Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes (1126-98), were looked upon with suspicion in the Islamic world. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, pp. 55-56.

The only field in which Islam made a major contribution to science, at least for a time, was astronomy.  This stemmed from the Koran’s obligation that Muslims observe the lunar calendar. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 57.

Islam also made a contribution to mathematics.  Words such as “algebra” and “algorithm” have Arabic origins…However, its contribution did not include the so-called “Arabic numerals,” which are actually of Hindu origin. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 57.

Five pillars of Islam…These duties are to be performed.  They do not require, nor do they promote moral development. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me,  p. 68.

The fact that Islam is more a political ideology than a religion also explains why theology is not popular in Islam. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 70.

Until the end of the eleventh century, half the Christians in the world lived under Islamic rule. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me,   p. 99.

Islam, and churches

Some people today have become advocates of what is called Chrislam – that is, the bringing together of Christianity and Islam.  These people say that because the Quran mentions Jesus and shares some elements in common with the Bible, Islam has common ground with Christianity.  They maintain that Christian and Muslims worship the same God, so in the interest of unity, we must give deference to both religions.  The Insider Movement, different in emphasis but still problematic, teaches it is possible to be a Christian and remain a Muslim at the same time. Edwin W. Lutzer, The Cross In The Shadow Of The Crescent (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers), p. 122.

According to mainstream Islamic law, all churches on lands that Muslims took by force were to be destroyed or converted to mosques. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 32.

According to one medieval Muslim historian, over the two-year course of a particularly ruthless Christian persecution campaign, some 30,000 churches were burned or pillaged in Egypt and Syria alone. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 37.

In October 2011, ten years after the United States invaded and “liberated” Afghanistan at a cost of more than 1,700 US lives and $440 billion in taxpayer dollars, the state Department reported that the nation’s last Christian church was destroyed in March 2010 in compliance with a court order.  This is unsurprising considering that the US installed Afghan government regularly upholds anti-Christian measures. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 47.

[Islam] Christian churches have been treated as hostages to guarantee good (that is, submissive) Christian behavior, an arrangement that is enshrined in the ominous conclusion of Omar’s Conditions. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 56.

[Testimony of a Muslim convert in 2016] My name is Yousef. May the peace of the Lord Jesus be on you, the people of God.  I share with you how I left the darkness of Islam and came into the light of Christ.  When I left Iraq and came to America as a refugee, I left the terrible killing Muslims do in the name of religion.  I met in America my sponsor and friend Noel, who is a member of Shadow Mountain Arabaic church. He took good care of me, and he told me that God loves me and he gave his Son for me.  As a Muslim, this sounded very strange to me.  So I asked, “Who is this Son?”  Noel said, “This is the Lord Jesus Christ.”  I said, “Does God have a Son?”

He answered, “Yes, he is Issa the Son of Mary, and we call him Jesus.”  He gave me the Bible.  I started reading it and studying it.  Because I knew the Quran, I started discerning big differences between the two books – the love in Christianity, and the hatred and killing in Islam.

Then the Lord Jesus himself appeared to me, and with his light he illuminated by dark way.  I believed in him and asked him to save me.  After that I started faithfully attending all the church services.

I am getting baptized today in obedience to the Lord’s command.  I thank God for his daily dealings with me and my family.  And I today declare with joy, saying with Joshua, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  To him be all glory, amen. David Jeremiah, People Are Asking…Is This The End? (Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2016), pp. 55-56.

Islam and the Dhimmi Status

The Moroccan jurist al-Maghili taught that “the fact that one individual (or one group) among them has broken the statute [dhimmi status] is enough to invalidate it for all of them.” Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 173.

As Lewis puts it (without seeming to fully appreciate the implications), Arabs inherited “the knowledge and skills of the ancient Middle East, of Greece and of Persia.” Rodney Stark, How The West Won (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2015). p. 295.

It was the Judeo-Christian/Greek culture of Byzantium, combined with the remarkable learning of heretical Christian groups such as the Copts and the Nestorians, plus extensive knowledge from Zoroastrian (Mazdean) Persia and the great mathematical achievements of the Hindus (keep in mind the early and extensive Muslim conquests in India).  This legacy of learning, including much that had originated with the ancient Greeks, was translated into Arabic, and portions of it were somewhat assimilated into Muslim culture.  But even after having been translated, this learning continued to be sustained primarily by the dhimmi populations living under Muslim regimes. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 295.

For example, as scholar Samuel H. Moffett observed, the “earliest scientific book in the language of Islam: was a “treatise on medicine by a Syrian Christian priest in Alexandria, translated into Arabic by a Persian Jewish physician.”  As in this example, not only did dhimmis originate most “Arab” science and learning, but they even did most of the translating into Arabic. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 295.

The highly acclaimed Muslim architecture also turns out to have been mainly a dhimmi achievement, adapted from Persian and Byzantine origins. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 295.

But when Caliph Abd al-Malik had the shrine built in the seventh century [Dome of the Rock], he employed Byzantine architects and craftsmen, which is why it so closely resembled the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  In fact, many famous Muslim mosques were originally built as Christian churches and converted by merely adding external minarets and redecorating the interiors. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 296.

Many of the Muslim world’s most famous scholars were Persians, not Arabs.  That includes Avicenna, whom the Encyclopedia Britannica ranks as “the most influential of all Muslim philosopher-scientists,” as well as Omar Khayyam, al-Biruni, and Razi. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 296.

Bakht-Ishu and ibn Ishaq, leading figures in “Muslim” medical knowledge, were Nestorian Christians.  Masha’allah ibn Athari, the famous astronomer-astrologer, was a Jew. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 296.

Consider mathematics. The so-called Arabic numerals were entirely of Hindu origin. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 296.

The scholar Mark Dickens pointed out that the Nestorians “soon acquired a reputation with the Arabs for being excellent accountants, architects, astrologers, bankers, doctors, merchants, philosophers, scientists, scribes and teachers. In fact, prior to the ninth century, nearly all the learned scholars in the [Islamic area] were Nestorian Christians.” Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 297.

Islam, Deception

The two doctrines that encourage this insidious form of religiously sanctioned deception are called Kitman and Taqiyya.  The first is a command to deliberately conceal one’ beliefs…Shia Muslims are commanded to purposefully hide what they truly believe in order to mislead outsiders as to the true nature of their religion…Taqiyya is virtually the same…Nine-tenths of (the Islamic) religion is Taqiyya (dissimulation), hence one who does not dissimulate had no religion (Al-Jafi vol. 9 p. 110). Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible (US: Top Executive Media, 2008), p. 74.

For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, “We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.” Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 75.

In the Muslim mind, Hudna is an Arabic term for a truce meant to produce a period of calm with an enemy in order to gain concessions, regroup, rearm, and re-attack at the appropriate time. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 117.

Muslims today all clearly understand “Hudaibiya” to be a code-word, which in brief means, “kiss the hand of your enemy until you have the opportunity to cut it off,” or as the common Arabic saying goes “kiss the dog’s mouth until you get what you need from him.” Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, pp. 120-121.

[Americans] They say what they mean and they mean what they say, and have no idea that they are dealing with people skilled in saying what they don’t mean and meaning what they have never said. Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils Of Islam (NY: St Martin’s Press, 2009), p. 204.

Few politicians or journalists are willing to admit that significant parts of the West’s Islamic communities view their host societies as the enemy. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Washington: Regnery, 2012), p. 152.

In his novel Night, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel conveys an important message; when people say they want to kill you, believe them. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me), p. 157.

[Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister] Islam also invests immense political value in immigration, viewing it, like Muhammad’s hijra, as part of a Muslim’s duty to spread Islam to foreign lands and ultimately conquer them…he told Turkish immigrants that “assimilation is a crime against humanity.” Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me,  p. 162.

This process of  “creeping Sharia” is a non-violent infiltration of our institutions, a stealth jihad. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 165.

“If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly,” Ronald Reagan declared in his 1982 speech to the British Parliament. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 193.

As Winston Churchill said, “Never give in, never, never, never- in nothing, great or small, large or petty- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 216.

Islam, Influence in US

They [Saudis] sit on 22 percent of the world’s proven reserves, an estimated 260 billion barrels.. A shift from oil will not eliminate the nation’s influence, as Saudi Arabia also sits on the fourth-largest reserves of natural gas. Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby, The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests In The Middle East (NY: Harper Collins, 2010), p. 104.

The Saudis have had us over a barrel from the moment of the first gusher. Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby, The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests In The Middle East, p.  67.

According to the US Department of Education, between 1986 and 2007, donors from Arab countries made more than 100 contributions, worth in excess of $320 million, to American universities. Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby, The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests In The Middle East, p. 307.

Who would have thought that Sharia would come to Harvard University, which in 2007 regulated “women-only” gym hours. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008), p. 79.

Mohammed disliked the black race immensely and referred to them as “raisin heads” several times in the Hadith (1:662; 9:256).  Throughout the Hadith blacks are also referred to as abeds, which means “black” in Arabic, and is also synonymous with the words “slave” or “filth.” Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 82.

[Not eating pork] In an effort not to offend Muslims the Bank of Halifax and NatWest were the first to ban piggy banks from their premises. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 141.

In February 2012, after meetings between FBI Director Robert Mueller and representatives from several American-Islamist organizations …it was announced that the FBI had purged hundreds of counterterrorism training documents that were used to educate federal agents about the Islamist threat.  The FBIs Islamist friends were permitted to review the materials and helped deem that more than seven hundred documents and three hundred presentations should be eliminated due to “anti-Muslim” language. Erick Stakelbeck, The Brotherhood, America’s Next Great Enemy (Washington: Regnery, 2013), p. 52.

Islam, Jihad

What makes Islam different from other religions is its call to kill and subjugate all other members of other faiths. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008), p. 20.

When you examine the history of Islam and the commandments of the Koran that endorse jihad as a military tool, it becomes clear that the term jihad refers mostly to war against nonbelievers. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 23.

[In their fourteen hundred years of rampage] Muslims had killed 270 million people across the globe: 120 million Africans, 60 million Christians, 80 million Hindus, and 10 million Buddhists. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 36.

From 1979 to 1989, Ayatolla Knomeini set Iran back one hundred years…Shia ruthlessness sacrificed thousands of Iranian students and children who were sent to their deaths clearing mine fields during the Iranian-Iraq war…Khomeini’s concept of suicide bombers set a precedent for this inhumane method of “warfare.” Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 42.

In June 2007 eight [Muslim] doctors were discovered plotting to blow up civilians in England using car bombs. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It,, p. 54.

As a warrior, Prophet Mohammed set the example that continues to inspire jihad.  He ordered twenty-seven military campaigns and led none personally. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 68.

Our refusal to acknowledge their true motivations renders us cowardly and foolish in their eyes…Our reluctance to offend the offenders denies us the clarity, understanding, and determination required to confront, oppose, and ultimately prevail against our enemies. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008), p. 71.

Although there are no accurate statistics on the Muslim population of the EU countries, it is estimated that between 15 and 20 million Muslims now call Europe home and make up four to five percent of its total population…France has the largest proportion of Muslims (seven to ten percent of its total population), followed by the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Italy.  Given continued immigration and Muslim fertility rates, the National Intelligence Council projects that Europe’s Muslim population will double by 2025. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 143.

[Sayeed Abdul A’la Maududi, founder of the Jamaat e-Islami] The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam.  Any nation or power that gets in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 169.

[Sheik Saleh Al-Fawzan…member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, says] Slavery is part of Islam and whoever wants it abolished is an infidel. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 187.

The standard party-line peace-offering that “Jihad simply means inner struggle” is unheard of outside of the West.  This definition is nowhere to be found. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible (US: Top Executive Media, 2008), p. 116.

Muslims in the West regularly refer to Islam as the “religion of peace.”  Yet of the roughly 400 recognized terrorist groups in the world, over 90 percent are Islamist groups. Over 90 percent of the current world-fighting involves Islamist terror movements. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, pp. 136-137.

Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, who is revered as a paragon of Muslim tolerance by modern revisionist historians – “Those who were brought alive [having surrendered] were ordered beheaded, after which a tower of skulls was erected in the camp.”  While Islam’s adventures in India, are rarely ever discussed today, the estimated number of the slain in India alone was eighty million. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 164.

Over the past two decades, the Saudis have decapitated at least 1,100 people for alleged crimes ranging from drug running to witchcraft and apostasy, Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 165.

Only Islam has such a long-standing historical tradition of beheading, with even, specific commandments recorded in its “holy book” to “strike off the necks” (Qur’an 47:4). Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 168.

Allah was so disgusted by the Jews that he cursed them and literally transformed many of them into “apes and swine” assigning them the lowest “rank” among humankind (Qur’an 2:65; 7:166; 5:60). Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 170.

Consider the words of Hasssan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah: “If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 172.

Today Islam and the Muslim world is undeniably the single-most anti-Semitic force on earth. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 173.

The only nations that are ever mentioned by name in connection with Christ’s judgment are Muslim nations. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 215.

Who can fight a man who wishes for his own death more than he wishes for that of others? Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils Of Islam (NY: St Martin’s Press, 2009), p. 183.

Islam, Messiah

The shock to me was that, while a character identical to my Mahdi was seen throughout the pages of the Bible, this character was not called “the Mahdi”, but rather the Antichrist.”…Chia Muslims refer to him as Sahib Al-Zaman “The Lord of the Age.”  This is exactly what the Bible calls Satan…(2 Cor. 4:4). Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible (US: Top Executive Media, 2008), p. 52.

In Islam, Jesus comes back as a radical Muslim to lead the Muslim armies, to abolish Christianity and to slaughter the Jews. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 54.

Doctrinally, Islam and the Antichrist spirit are in perfect agreement because both deny the Trinity and the Divine Sonship of Christ. (cf. 1 Jn. 2:22-23) Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 59.

Even the most moderate and ecumenical Muslim thinkers believe in the coming Mahdi to rule the world by military force. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 93.

All the precursors to the Antichrist have been Gentiles.  Why should that change with this final Antichrist? Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 102.

The antichrist is the leader of a Gentile coalition that is made up specifically of Muslim nations that will attack Israel.  Or perhaps you think that the Muslims of the earth will unite under the leadership of a Jew? Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 102.

According to Islam, the Mahdi will usher in the last seven years before judgment which will be the Seven Years of Peace Islam promises to establish, yet in Islamic Eschatology, he also kills all the Jewish men everywhere in the world.  How is this peace? Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 125.

The Mahdi, during the seven years of peace proclaimed in Islam, will use the seized property and wealth of the nations that he defeats to distribute among his followers.  One of the most popular traditions regarding the Mahdi is that “He will give away wealth profusely.” [Dan. 11:24] Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible,  p. 130.

After the Muslims have conquered Jerusalem, the Mahdi is said to use the Temple mount as his seat of authority from which he will rule over the whole earth. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 138.

Often on the forehead the bands worn read: “No god but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger.”  Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 376.

To sum up, the “Name of the Beast: along with variations of the name of Allah, is worn as a sign of submission on the right arm or foreheads.  Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 377.

Islam has taken the biblical Antichrist and has made him its Messiah.  Yet Islam has taken the Biblical Messiah and has made him the Antichrist. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 181.

Islam, Missions to

The Spirit of God is moving in a powerful way – indeed, in a way that we think is unprecedented – as hundreds of thousands of Muslims are turning their lives over to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jerry Trousdale, Miraculous Movements (Nashville, Dallas: Thomas Nelson, 2012), p. 13.

Former sheikhs, imams, and militant Islamists making up 20 percent or more of the new Christian leaders in Muslim regions. Jerry Trousdale, Miraculous Movements, p. 25.

Inside Islam disillusionment and discouragement are widespread and closely related to the Quranic teachings, Islamic cultural pressures, social mores, and so forth. Jerry Trousdale, Miraculous Movements, p. 71. 

But many peaceful Muslims worry privately that something is terribly wrong with a violent Islamic worldview. Jerry Trousdale, Miraculous Movements, p. 72.

Of the former Muslim leaders who are now making disciples and planting churches, about 40 percent reported a dream or vision of Jesus that prompted them to begin a search to know more about Isa al Masih (Jesus the Messiah). Jerry Trousdale, Miraculous Movements, p. 133.

The reports indicated that, depending on the region, a minimum of 50 percent (in the most extreme and violent Muslim areas) and a maximum of 70 percent of all the new churches planted among Muslims happened in part because of signs and wonders (typically miracles of healing and deliverance) that accelerated and facilitated the process of disciple-making. Jerry Trousdale, Miraculous Movements, p. 135.

Islam, Persecution of Christians

The facts speak for themselves.  In 1900, at the height of the Golden Age, 20 percent of the Middle East was still Christian, whereas today less than 2 percent is, and the Christian population is rapidly dwindling. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 14.

But in reality- whether we are ready to recognize it or not- is that as the Muslim world reclaims its Islamic identity, distinctly Islamic practices from centuries past are returning, including Muslim persecution of Christians.  Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 17.

Islam, Persecution of its Converts to Christianity

The late Majid Khadduri, “internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law and jurisprudence,” wrote in his War and Peace in the Law of Islam, “Both jurists and theologians agree that apostasy constitutes a violation of the law punishable both in this world and the next.  Not only is the person denied salvation in the next world, but he is also liable to capital punishment by the state.” Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 97.

[Kadduri] All the commentators agree that a believer who turns back from his religion (irtadda) openly or secretly, must be killed if he persists in disbelief.” Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 97.

More than any other religion, Christianity is Islam’s historical enemy.  Converting to Christianity is seen as something of a double betrayal. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 109.

A 2010 Pew Research Center poll found that 84 percent of Egyptian Muslims believe those who leave Islam should be killed. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 122.

Islam, Persecution of Jews

In the Arab-Moslem territories…the Jewish condition was easier as a rule.  Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (NY: Harper & Roe, 1987), p. 175.

A common Muslim fundamentalist slogan – La Tu’adu Filisteen Illa Bil-Islam “we can never re-take Palestine unless we revert to Islam [completely].” Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible (US: Top Executive Media, 2008), p. 38.

Islam, Slavery

As the number of tax-paying dhimmis dropped, slavery became crucial to the Caliphate’s economy. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Washington: Regnery, 2012), p. 100.

Most of the key elements of the Caliphate, from its finances to its economy to its military to its governmental administration, relied on slavery. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 102.

Persian philosopher Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-74) remarked that “the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Sanji [blacks].” Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 103.

In Niger, almost 8 percent of the population is estimated to be slaves. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 105.

It’s unlikely slavery will disappear form the Islamic world in our lifetimes, if ever.  It’s an intrinsic part of Islam sanctioned by Muhammad himself. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 106.

In 2008, Belgian police liberated fourteen girls kept as slaves for eight months by an Arab royal family. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 107.

While a Muslim is not permitted to earn money by letting other men have sex with his slave, the Koran allows him to have sex with her as much as he likes (suras 23:5-6, 33:50, 70:29-30), Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 109.

Salwa al-Mutairi, a female political activist and former parliamentary candidate for Kuwait’s government, is pushing for the legalization of enslaving and selling non-Muslim women for sexual purposes. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 187.

Islam, The Conditions of Omar

[This list of conditions supposedly reflect an appeal made by conquered Christians]

When you came to our countries, we asked you for safety for ourselves and the people of our community, upon which we imposed the following conditions on ourselves for you: [Ibn Qayyim’s book] – The conquered Christians appear to be speaking:

Not to build a church in our city- nor a monastery, convent, or monk’s cell in the surrounding areas- and not to repair those that fall in ruins or are in Muslim quarters;

Not to prevent Muslims from lodging in our churches, by day or night, and to keep their doors wide open for [Muslim] passerby and travelers;

Not to harbor in them [churches, monasteries] or our homes a spy, nor conceal any deceits from Muslims;

Not to clang our cymbals except lightly and from the innermost recesses of our churches;

Not to display a cross on them [churches], nor raise our voices during prayer or readings in our churches anywhere near Muslims;

Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the markets of the Muslims;

Not to congregate in the open for Easter or Palm Sunday, nor lift our voices [in lamentation] for our dead nor show our firelights with them near the market places of the Muslims;

Not to bring near to them [Muslims] pigs or alcohol;

Not to display any signs of polytheism, nor make our religion appealing, nor call or proselytize anyone to it;

Not to take anything of [or, “be involved with”] the slave conquered by the Muslims;

Not to prevent any of our relatives who wish to enter into Islam;

To distinguish ourselves whether we are and not to resemble Muslims in dress – whether in headgear, turbans, sandals, hair-parting, or modes of transportation;

Not to speak like them [Muslims], nor adopt their surnames;

To clip our foreheads and not part our forelocks;

To tighten our sunanir [a type of belt] around our waists and not to engrave our signet rings in Arabic nor ride on saddles;

Not to possess or bear any arms whatsoever, nor gird ourselves with swords;

To honor the Muslims, show them the way, and rise up from our seats if they wish to sit down;

Not to come upon them in their homes, nor teach our children the Koran;

None of us shall do business with a Muslim unless the Muslim commands it;

To host every traveling Muslim for three days and feed him adequately;

We guarantee all this to you upon ourselves, our descendants, our spouses, and our neighbors, and if we change or contradict these conditions imposed upon ourselves in order to receive safety, we forfeit our dhimma [covenant], and we become liable to the same treatment you inflict upon the people who resist and cause sedition.  Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), pp. 25-27.

Islam, the Koran

Statements in the Koran have to be read according to the doctrine of “abrogation,” which was developed early in Islamic jurisprudence to deal with the Koran’s many contradictory statements…  Muslims believe that wherever verses contradict each other, the verse from later in Muhammad’s career cancels out the verse from earlier. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 19.

As it happens, the few verses that speak tolerantly of Christians are from early in Muhammad’s career, when he had no political power, whereas the hostile verses that name Christians “infidel” enemies occur towards the end, near the height of his career. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 19.

To this day, mainstream Islamic jurisprudence holds that the Sword Verses have “abrogated, cancelled, and replaced 124 verses that called for tolerance, compassion, and peace.  Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 20.

Because of these, Islam’s ulema– its scholars, sheikhs, clerics, and muftis, past and present – have agreed that Islam is to be at perpetual war with the non-Muslim world until its inhabitants submit. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 21.

Christians are the “common denominator” infidels present in every Muslim country…Also, most Muslims see the hated West as “Christian,” so any time Western nations or Western culture offends Muslims- whether by military actions, offensive cartoons, You Tube videos, or papal speeches – Christians in Muslim countries are punished in retaliation. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 173.

Caliph Omar himself is said to have personally stipulated when finalizing his Conditions with Christians is that they should under no circumstance ever raise their hand to a Muslim- even in self-defense- otherwise they forfeit all “protection.” Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 175.

Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity’s founder, boasted a Christian population of 60 percent in 1990, but only 15 percent of those living there today are Christians. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 185.

At least 550 cases of abduction, rape, and forced conversion of Christian women have been documented in the last five years in Egypt. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 189.

[Abduction of Christian women in Pakistan] There are approximately seven hundred cases every year, a large number considering that Christians make up roughly 1 percent of the population. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 193.

According to other Muslim leaders, the West is already paying jizya, by way of welfare benefits. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 215.

In short, while the mainstream media may report a few facts from the most spectacular incidences of Christian persecution, they employ an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to uphold a narrative first forged by virulently anti-Western academics in the 1960s and 1970s: that Muslim violence and intolerance are products of anything and everything- poverty, political and historical grievances, or territorial disputes – except Islam. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 231.

If the mainstream media were to report honestly on the persecution of Christians under Islam, the obvious implications that Islam is dangerously hostile to all non-Muslims would be inescapable. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 232.

The return of the persecution of Christians under Islam is the most visible aspect of a larger and more dangerous phenomenon: the return of Islam as a global force. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 246.

[Martin Niemoller]  First they [the Nazis] came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.  Then they came for the socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t’ speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.  Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic.  Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 247.

Why would the Muslim authorities put such a tight lid on the volumes of the oldest Qur’ans found in Al-Masjid Al-Kabeer in Yemen?  Why are the copies of the Topkapi Manuscript, considered one of the oldest Qur’anic manuscripts, still sitting unexamined in the Topkapi Museum in Turkey:  What are they afraid of”  Why can’t the oldest Qur’anic manuscripts face the same kind of critical examination that the most ancient biblical manuscripts have endured for centuries? Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible (US: Top Executive Media, 2008), p. 69.

In twenty-three passages in the Islamic holy book it advocates war against the infidels; and in ten places it forbids Muslims from befriending non-Muslims. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Washington: Regnery, 2012), p.94.

Islam, Theology

Better than any other world religion, Islam is a perfectly tailored polemical response which stands firmly against the most crucial aspects of the nature of God as described in the Bible. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible (US: Top Executive Media, 2008), p. 57.

Just ask any Muslim, “what are your main objections to Christians” and their immediate response will be “Jesus is not the Son of God.  Neither is he God.  Neither is God our Father.  Neither did he die on the cross.” Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 61.

Dr. Arthur Jeffrey, professor of Islamic and Middle East studies at Columbia University and one of the world’s foremost scholars on Islam, wrote that the name, “Allah” and its feminine form “Allat,” were well known in pre-Islamic Arabia and were found in inscriptions uncovered in North Africa. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible, p. 385.

Islam, Treatment of Women

Woman in Islam are considered unclean, deemed inferior even to dirt. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008), p. 172.

In Pakistan it has been reported by the Institute of Medical Sciences that 90 percent of its female population has been beaten for such wrongdoings as giving birth to a daughter or cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 173.

In 1997, an attorney general in the Palestinian authority told an audience of women that, in his opinion, the honor killings of Palestinian women in Gaza and the West bank were close to 70 percent of all female deaths. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 176.

Female genital mutilation ensures that honor will be preserved because the girl will not have any sexual attraction to boys….[Indonesia] a 2003 survey by the Population Council shows that 96 percent of respondents acknowledged that their daughters had been mutilated by the age of fourteen. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 178.

Puntive actions are almost always taken against the female victim who is usually looked down upon in Islamic culture as “perpetrator of all crimes.” Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 179.

In Saudi Arabia and elsewhere it takes the testimony of two women to equal the testimony of one man…The symbol of the veil is so important that in 2002 in Mecca, religious officials allowed fifteen schoolgirls to perish in a fire rather than let them seek refuge outside without their head coverings. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 180.

Islam is the only religion on earth whose “prophet” and whose legal system sanctions, yes even encourages, the rape of women –specifically after conquering an enemy. Walid Shoebat with Joel Richardson, God’s War on Terror, Islam, Prophecy and the Bible (US: Top Executive Media, 2008), p. 113.

Muslims hate their women, and any group who hates their women can’t love anyone else. Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils Of Islam (NY: St Martin’s Press, 2009), p. 7.

Fear, of course, extends in the Muslim world to the way men treat their women.  It is, in many ways, the vilest and most hateful treatment the Muslim world visits on others. Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils Of Islam, p. 71.

Islamic custom attaches no value to childhood. Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils Of Islam, p. 120.

Islam was born into an environment that sanctioned the capture and rape of women, holding them- not the man committing the crime- responsible. Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils Of Islam, p. 129.

For fourteen centuries Muslim women have been the dirt of Islam that Muslim men have trod on and “planted” in their role as farmer. Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils Of Islam, p. 134.

On Monday, March 11, 2002, fifteen Saudi girls died as they attempted to flee from their school in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city…the keys were held by a male guard who refused the open the gates because the terrified girls were not wearing the correct Islamic dress including face veils and black robes…Saudi officers beat them back into the burning building…the religious police also beat passers-by and firemen who tried to save the girls. “It is sinful to approach them,” the officers warned the girls’ would-be saviors. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Washington: Regnery, 2012), p. 47.

Some Islamic states consider female rape victims to be adulterers liable to be stoned to death…At least half the women in prison in Pakistan are behind bars for the crime of being a rape victim. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, p. 59.

Islam, Understanding of Truth

[Ayatolla Khomeini] People say “Don’t lie!” But the principle is different when we serve the will of Allah.  He taught man to lie so that we can save ourselves at moments of difficulty and confuse our enemies. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2008), p. 48.

Taqiyya – The Islamic practice of “concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger. Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, p. 77.

Amir Taheri, author of numerous books on Islam and the Middle East, states that according to Islam, “Muslims have every right to lie and to deceive their adversaries, and a promise made to a non-Muslim can be broken whenever necessary.” Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, p. 149.

Muslims are permitted to say anything to preserve their lives- including recanting Islam and cursing Muhammad. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), p. 106.

Islam teaches Muslims to dissemble or publicly renounce their faith – not just when their lives are threatened, but even as a stratagem of war. Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, p. 109.

Consider life under Islam, which arose as a religion and cultural force several centuries after Christianity did. In 1485 Beyezid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire and caliph of Islam, outlawed the printing press. That ban remained in effect throughout the Muslim world for at least the next three centuries. Rodney Stark, How The West Won (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2015), p. 42.

Attempts at science, then, are not only foolish but also blasphemous, in that they imply limits to Allah’s power and authority. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 43.

[Robert Reilly] “The Arab world stands near the bottom of every measure of human development;…scientific inquiry is nearly moribund in the Islamic world;…Spain translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years…” Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 43.

Israel

Among the educated and high-minded classes in particular, Israel inspires an obsessional hatred of a type and scale that is directed at no other country. Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), p. 53.

History is turned on its head; facts and falsehoods, victims and victimizers are reversed; logic is suspended, and a fictional narrative is now widely accepted as incontrovertible truth. Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 53.

A British government handbook from 1920 noted, “The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arabic-speaking.  The bulk of the population are fellahin…In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race.” Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 59.

And these Arabs who came to live in Palestine regarded themselves mainly as Syrian.  In 1937, the British Peel Commission found that the Palestinian Arabs and their kinsmen in Syria “clung to the principle that Palestine was part of Syria and should never have been cut off from it.” Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 59.

In 1956, Ahmad Shuqairy, who eight years later would found the Palestine Liberation Organization, told the UN Security Council, “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 60.

Thus the “Palestinians” were a fictive entity.  According to Zuhair Mushin, who was the military commander of the PLO and a member of its executive council, this fiction was a tool to be used against Israel:  “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.  We are all part of one nation.  It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity….Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes.  The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.” Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 60.

Eugene W. Rostow, former U.S. under-secretary of state for political affairs and one of the framers of UN Resolution 242, has written: “Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947, when the British government resigned as the mandatory power.  This is incorrect.  A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles the trust property, or is dismissed…In Palestine the British Mandate ceased to be operative as to the territories of Israel and Jordan when those states were created and recognized by the international community.  But its rules apply still to the West bank and the Gaza Strip, which have not yet been allocated either to Israel or to Jordan or become an independent state.” Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 63.

The Arab average annual per-capita income in Israel is $600 per month…$14,400 for a family of four.  This compares with an average annual per-capita income of $9,400 for a family of four in Jordan, which roughly matches the average across the Arab world. George Gilder, The Israel Test (US: Richard Vigilante Books, 2009), p. 57.

[Stele of Meneptha c. 1224-16]  “Israel is destroyed.  It has no seed-corn.  It has become a widow for Egypt.”  This is the first surviving mention of Israel or the Israelites in history… Paul Johnson, Civilizations of the Holy Land (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1979), pp. 39-40.

Israel, Economy

The breakdown in international finance has infected almost every nation’s banking system, with two notable exceptions: neither Canada nor Israel has faced a single bank failure. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (NY: Twelve Hachette Book Group, 2009), p. 216.

Israel, Education

Today Israel has eight universities and twenty-seven colleges.  Four of them are in the top 150 worldwide universities and seven are in the top 100 Asia Pacific universities.  None of them are satellite campuses from abroad. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (NY: Twelve Hachette Book Group, 2009), p. 211.

A global 2008 survey by Scientist magazine named two Israeli institutions- the Weizmann Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem- as the top two “best places to work in academia” outside the United States. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 219.

Israel, Immigrants

[Russian immigrant excellence- quote from Sharansky]  “You had to be exceptional in your profession, whether it was chess, music, mathematics, medicine, or ballet….That was the only way to build some kind of protection for yourself, because you would always be starting from behind.” Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (NY: Twelve Hachette Book Group, 2009), p. 127.

Walk into an Israeli technology start-up or a big R&D center in Israel today and you’ll likely hear workers speaking Russian. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 128.

Immigrants are not averse to starting over.  They are, by definition, risk takers.  A nation of immigrants is a nation of entrepreneurs. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 129.

Beginning in the 1960s, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu demanded hard cash to allow Jews to leave the country.  Between 1968 and 1989, the Israeli government paid Ceausescu $1,124,794 for the freedom of 40,577 Jews.  That comes out to $2,772 per person. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 133.

One out of every three Soviet immigrants [was] a scientist, engineer, or technician… Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 165.

It is in large part thanks to these immigrants that Israel currently has more engineers and scientists per capita than any other country and produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation- 109 per 10,000 people. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 212.

Israel, Ingenuity

As the authors argue, Israel is not just a country but a comprehensive state of mind. Whereas Americans emphasize decorum and exhaustive preparation, Israelis put chutzpah first. “When an Israeli entrepreneur has a business idea, he will start it that week, one analyst put it.  Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation:The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (NY: Twelve Hachette Book Group, 2009), p. 1.

After the United States, Israel has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any other country in the world. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 13.

Chutzpah defined: “Gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts,’ presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.” Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 30.

Israel, Scientific & Economic Advancement

Tiny Israel…stands behind only the United States in technological contributions.  In per-capita innovation, Israel dwarfs all nations. George Gilder, The Israel Test (US: Richard Vigilante Books, 2009), p. 4.

With a gross domestic product of around $200.7 billion (2008), per-capita income of some $28,200, and close to a trillion dollars of market capitalization for its companies, Israel these days is rich, they say. George Gilder, The Israel Test, p. 8.

The company in Netanya, Israel, has invented an ingenious ultra-wideband device that enables anti-terrorist fighters and police to see through walls and identify armed men and other threats within. George Gilder, The Israel Test, p. 101.

Today, on a per-capita basis, Israel far leads the world in research and technological creativity.  Between the years 1991 and 2000, Israel’s annual venture-capital outlays, almost all private, rose nearly sixtyfold, from $58 million to $3.3 billion…Israel’s revenues in information technology rose from $1.6 billion in 1991 to $12.5 billion in 2000.  By 1999, Israel ranked second only to the United States in invested private equity capital as a share of GDP.  With 70 percent of its growth attributable to high-tech ventures, by this measure, Israel went in twenty years from last among all industrial countries to lead the world. George Gilder, The Israel Test, p. 109.

The United States was the only country that raised more venture capital in 2006 than Israel. George Gilder, The Israel Test, p. 110.

Most of Intel’s key products could be stamped Israel Inside.  So could leading routers from Cisco and Juniper Networks, leading disk-drive technologies from Seagate, leading FiOS broadband optics technologies from Verizon, leading Global Positioning Systems (GPS) navigators inside many automobiles, leading imagers in digital cameras, and leading solid state storage devices in iPods, cameras, and smartphones throughout the industry. George Gilder, The Israel Test, pp. 113-114.

From Intel’s Israeli design centers emerged several generations of the Pentium microprocessor and the Centrino low-power processor that integrated Wi-Fi wireless capabilities into portable PCs. George Gilder, The Israel Test, p. 120.

From putting Israel Inside the personal computer, Israeli engineers and inventors moved toward putting Israel “Inside the Internet” as well. George Gilder, The Israel Test, p. 120.

The von Neumann insight came to fruition in the works of Paul Baran and Leonard Kleinrock, which are regarded as the intellectual foundations of the Internet as a redundant system that could survive and circumvent major disruption. George Gilder, The Israel Test, p. 121.

Israel, Technology

It is impossible for major technology companies to ignore Israel, and most haven’t; almost half of the world’s top technology companies have bought start-ups or opened research and development centers in Israel.  Cisco alone has acquired nine Israeli companies and is looking to buy more. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (NY: Twelve Hachette Book Group, 2009), p. 16.

An American executive from eBay told us. “Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, eBay…the list goes on.  The best-kept secret is that we all live and die by the work of our Israeli teams… what we do in Israel is unlike what we do anywhere else in the world.” Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 17.

But until the 1970s computers were used predominantly by rocket scientists and big universities.  Some computers took up whole rooms or even buildings…All that began to change in 1980, when Intel’s Haifa team designed the 8088 chip, whose transistors could flip almost five million times per second (4.77 megahertz), and were small enough to allow for the creation of computers that would fit into homes and offices….IBM chose Israel’s 8088 chip as the brains for its first “personal computer,” or PC, launching a new era of computing.  It was also a major breakthrough for Intel. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle,  p. 33.

From then on, computing technology continued to get smaller and faster.  By 1986, Intel’s only foreign chip factory was producing the 386 chip.  Built in Jerusalem, its processing speed was 33 megahertz…it was almost seven times faster than the 8088. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 33.

[Struggles concerning the importance of clock speed] In time, the Israelis outlasted –and outargued- their U.S. supervisors…In March 2003, the new chip-code named Banias after a natural spring in Israel’s north-was released as the Centrino chip for laptops.  Its clock speed was only a bit more than half of the reigning 2.8 gigahertz Pentium chips for desktops, and it sold for more than twice the price.  But it gave laptop users the portability and speed they needed…As a result, the new Israeli-designed architecture, once derided within the company, was a runaway hit.  It became the anchor of Intel’s 13 percent sales growth from 2003 to 2005. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation:The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, pp. 37-38.

China’s third-largest social-networking Web site, which services twenty-five million of the country’s young Web surfers, is actually an Israeli start-up called Koolanoo, which means “all of us” in Hebrew.  It was founded by an Israeli whose family emigrated from Iraq. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation:The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 62.

Israel now leads the world in recycling waste water; over 70 percent is recycled, which is three times the percentage recycled in Spain, the country in second place. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation:The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 111.

Israel is the only country whose desert is receding. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 113.

Israelis have more cell phones per capita than anywhere else in the world. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 119.

Intel Israel was responsible for designing the chip in the first IBM personal computers, the first Pentium chips, and a new architecture that analysts agree saved Intel from a downward spiral during the 1990s…  In the southern Israeli town of Qiryat Gat, Intel built a $3.5 billion plant where Israelis designed chips with transistors so small that thirty million of them can fit on the head of a pin. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle,  p. 153.

As of 2005 Israel was the world’s tenth largest producer of nuclear patents. Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, p. 227.

 

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