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antoine-roquentin · 6 years ago

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The operation against Mayo — which was reported at the time but until now was not known to have been carried out by American mercenaries — marked a pivot point in the war in Yemen, a brutal conflict that has seen children starved, villages bombed, and epidemics of cholera roll through the civilian population. The bombing was the first salvo in a string of unsolved assassinations that killed more than two dozen of the group’s leaders.

The company that hired the soldiers and carried out the attack is Spear Operations Group, incorporated in Delaware and founded by Abraham Golan, a charismatic Hungarian Israeli security contractor who lives outside of Pittsburgh. He led the team’s strike against Mayo.

“There was a targeted assassination program in Yemen,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I was running it. We did it. It was sanctioned by the UAE within the coalition.”

The UAE and Saudi Arabia lead an alliance of nine countries in Yemen, fighting what is largely a proxy war against Iran. The US is helping the Saudi-UAE side by providing weapons, intelligence, and other support.

The press office of the UAE’s US Embassy, as well as its US public affairs company, Harbour Group, did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails.

The revelations that a Middle East monarchy hired Americans to carry out assassinations comes at a moment when the world is focused on the alleged murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia, an autocratic regime that has close ties to both the US and the UAE. (The Saudi Embassy in the US did not respond to a request for comment. Riyadh has denied it killed Khashoggi, though news reports suggest it is considering blaming his death on a botched interrogation.)

Golan said that during his company’s months-long engagement in Yemen, his team was responsible for a number of the war’s high-profile assassinations, though he declined to specify which ones. He argued that the US needs an assassination program similar to the model he deployed. “I just want there to be a debate,” he said. “Maybe I’m a monster. Maybe I should be in jail. Maybe I’m a bad guy. But I’m right.”

Spear Operations Group’s private assassination mission marks the confluence of three developments transforming the way war is conducted worldwide:

Modern counterterrorism combat has shifted away from traditional military objectives — such as destroying airfields, gun emplacements, or barracks — to killing specific individuals, largely reshaping war into organized assassinations.

War has become increasingly privatized, with many nations outsourcing most military support services to private contractors, leaving frontline combat as virtually the only function that the US and many other militaries have not contracted out to for-profit ventures.

The long US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have relied heavily on elite special forces, producing tens of thousands of highly trained American commandos who can demand high private-sector salaries for defense contracting or outright mercenary work.

With Spear Operations Group’s mission in Yemen, these trends converged into a new and incendiary business: militarized contract killing, carried out by skilled American fighters.

Experts said it is almost inconceivable that the United States would not have known that the UAE — whose military the US has trained and armed at virtually every level — had hired an American company staffed by American veterans to conduct an assassination program in a war it closely monitors.

One of the mercenaries, according to three sources familiar with the operation, used to work with the CIA’s “ground branch,” the agency’s equivalent of the military’s special forces. Another was a special forces sergeant in the Maryland Army National Guard. And yet another, according to four people who knew him, was still in the Navy Reserve as a SEAL and had a top-secret clearance. He was a veteran of SEAL Team 6, or DEVGRU, the sources told BuzzFeed News. The New York Times once described that elite unit, famous for killing Osama bin Laden, as a “global manhunting machine with limited outside oversight.”

The CIA said it had no information about the mercenary assassination program, and the Navy's Special Warfare Command declined to comment. A former CIA official who has worked in the UAE initially told BuzzFeed News there was no way that Americans would be allowed to participate in such a program. But after checking, he called back: “There were guys that were basically doing what you said.” He was astonished, he said, by what he learned: “What vetting procedures are there to make sure the guy you just smoked is really a bad guy?” The mercenaries, he said, were “almost like a murder squad.”

Whether Spear’s mercenary operation violates US law is surprisingly unclear. On the one hand, US law makes it illegal to “conspire to kill, kidnap, maim” someone in another country. Companies that provide military services to foreign nations are supposed to be regulated by the State Department, which says it has never granted any company the authority to supply combat troops or mercenaries to another country.

Yet, as BuzzFeed News has previously reported, the US doesn’t ban mercenaries. And with some exceptions, it is perfectly legal to serve in foreign militaries, whether one is motivated by idealism or money. With no legal consequences, Americans have served in the Israel Defense Forces, the French Foreign Legion, and even a militia fighting ISIS in Syria. Spear Operations Group, according to three sources, arranged for the UAE to give military rank to the Americans involved in the mission, which might provide them legal cover.

Despite operating in a legal and political gray zone, Golan heralds his brand of targeted assassinations as a precision counterterrorism strategy with fewer civilian casualties. But the Mayo operation shows that this new form of warfare carries many of the same old problems. The commandos’ plans went awry, and the intelligence proved flawed. And their strike was far from surgical: The explosive they attached to the door was designed to kill not one person but everyone in the office.

Aside from moral objections, for-profit targeted assassinations add new dilemmas to modern warfare. Private mercenaries operate outside the US military’s chain of command, so if they make mistakes or commit war crimes, there is no clear system for holding them accountable. If the mercenaries had killed a civilian in the street, who would have even investigated?

The Mayo mission exposes an even more central problem: the choice of targets. Golan insists that he killed only terrorists identified by the government of the UAE, an ally of the US. But who is a terrorist and who is a politician? What is a new form of warfare and what is just old-fashioned murder for hire? Who has the right to choose who lives and who dies — not only in the wars of a secretive monarchy like the UAE, but also those of a democracy such as the US?

BuzzFeed News has pieced together the inside story of the company’s attack on Al-Islah’s headquarters, revealing what mercenary warfare looks like now — and what it could become.

The deal that brought American mercenaries to the streets of Aden was hashed out over a lunch in Abu Dhabi, at an Italian restaurant in the officers’ club of a UAE military base. Golan and a chiseled former US Navy SEAL named Isaac Gilmore had flown in from the US to make their pitch. It did not, as Gilmore recalled, begin well.

Their host was Mohammed Dahlan, the fearsome former security chief for the Palestinian Authority. In a well-tailored suit, he eyed his mercenary guests coldly and told Golan that in another context they’d be trying to kill each other.

Indeed, they made an unlikely pair. Golan, who says he was born in Hungary to Jewish parents, maintains long-standing connections in Israel for his security business, according to several sources, and he says he lived there for several years. Golan once partied in London with former Mossad chief Danny Yatom, according to a 2008 Mother Jones article, and his specialty was “providing security for energy clients in Africa.” One of his contracts, according to three sources, was to protect ships drilling in Nigeria’s offshore oil fields from sabotage and terrorism.

Golan, who sports a full beard and smokes Marlboro Red cigarettes, radiates enthusiasm. A good salesman is how one former CIA official described him. Golan himself, who is well-read and often cites philosophers and novelists, quotes André Malraux: “Man is not what he thinks he is but what he hides.”

Golan says he was educated in France, joined the French Foreign Legion, and has traveled around the world, often fighting or carrying out security contracts. In Belgrade, he says, he got to know the infamous paramilitary fighter and gangster Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, who was assassinated in 2001. “I have a lot of respect for Arkan,” he told BuzzFeed News.

BuzzFeed News was unable to verify parts of Golan’s biography, including his military service, but Gilmore and another US special operations veteran who has been with him in the field said it’s clear he has soldiering experience. He is considered competent, ruthless, and calculating, said the former CIA official. He’s “prone to exaggeration,” said another former CIA officer, but “for crazy shit he’s the kind of guy you hire.”

Dahlan, who did not respond to multiple messages sent through associates, grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza, and during the 1980s intifada he became a major political player. In the ’90s he was named the Palestinian Authority’s head of security in Gaza, overseeing a harsh crackdown on Hamas in 1995 and 1996. He later met President George W. Bush and developed strong ties to the CIA, meeting the agency’s director, George Tenet, several times. Dahlan was once touted as a possible leader of the Palestinian Authority, but in 2007 he fell from grace, accused by the Palestinian Authority of corruption and by Hamas of cooperating with the CIA and Israel.

A man without a country, he fled to the UAE. There he reportedly remade himself as a key adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, or MBZ, known as the true ruler of Abu Dhabi. The former CIA officer who knows Dahlan said, “The UAE took him in as their pit bull.”

Now, over lunch in the officers’ club, the pit bull challenged his visitors to tell him what was so special about fighters from America. Why were they any better than Emirati soldiers?

Golan replied with bravado. Wanting Dahlan to know that he could shoot, train, run, and fight better than anyone in the UAE’s military, Golan said: Give me your best man and I’ll beat him. Anyone.

The Palestinian gestured to an attentive young female aide sitting nearby. She’s my best man, Dahlan said.

The joke released the tension, and the men settled down. Get the spaghetti, recommended Dahlan.

The UAE, with vast wealth but only about 1 million citizens, relies on migrant workers from all over the world to do everything from cleaning its toilets to teaching its university students. Its military is no different, paying lavish sums to eager US defense companies and former generals. The US Department of Defense has approved at least $27 billion in arms sales and defense services to the UAE since 2009.

Retired US Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal once signed up to sit on the board of a UAE military company. Former Navy SEAL and Vice Admiral Robert Harward runs the UAE division of Lockheed Martin. The security executive Erik Prince, now entangled in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference, set up shop there for a time, helping the UAE hire Colombian mercenaries.

And as BuzzFeed News reported earlier this year, the country embeds foreigners in its military and gave the rank of major general to an American lieutenant colonel, Stephen Toumajan, placing him in command of a branch of its armed forces.

The UAE is hardly alone in using defense contractors; in fact, it is the US that helped pioneer the worldwide move toward privatizing the military. The Pentagon pays companies to carry out many traditional functions, from feeding soldiers to maintaining weapons to guarding convoys.

The US draws the line at combat; it does not hire mercenaries to carry out attacks or engage directly in warfare. But that line can get blurry. Private firms provide heavily armed security details to protect diplomats in war zones or intelligence officers in the field. Such contractors can engage in firefights, as they did in Benghazi, Libya, when two contractors died in 2012 defending a CIA post. But, officially, the mission was protection, not warfare.

Outside the US, hiring mercenaries to conduct combat missions is rare, though it has happened. In Nigeria, a strike force reportedly led by longtime South African mercenary Eeben Barlow moved successfully against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in 2015. A company Barlow founded, Executive Outcomes, was credited with crushing the bloody RUF rebel force in war-torn Sierra Leone in the 1990s.

But over spaghetti with Dahlan, Golan and Gilmore were offering an extraordinary form of mercenary service. This was not providing security details, nor was it even traditional military fighting or counterinsurgency warfare. It was, both Golan and Gilmore say, targeted killing.

Gilmore said he doesn’t remember anyone using the word “assassinations” specifically. But it was clear from that first meeting, he said, that this was not about capturing or detaining Al-Islah’s leadership. “It was very specific that we were targeting,” said Gilmore. Golan said he was explicitly told to help “disrupt and destruct” Al-Islah, which he calls a “political branch of a terrorist organization.”

He and Gilmore promised they could pull together a team with the right skillset, and quickly.

In the weeks after that lunch, they settled on terms. The team would receive $1.5 million a month, Golan and Gilmore told BuzzFeed News. They’d earn bonuses for successful kills — Golan and Gilmore declined to say how much — but they would carry out their first operation at half price to prove what they could do. Later, Spear would also train UAE soldiers in commando tactics.

Golan and Gilmore had another condition: They wanted to be incorporated into the UAE Armed Forces. And they wanted their weapons — and their target list — to come from uniformed military officers. That was “for juridical reasons,” Golan said. “Because if the shit hits the fan,” he explained, the UAE uniform and dog tags would mark “the difference between a mercenary and a military man.”

Dahlan and the UAE government signed off on the deal, Golan and Gilmore said, and Spear Operations Group got to work.

Back in the US, Golan and Gilmore started rounding up ex-soldiers for the first, proof-of-concept job. Spear Operations Group is a small company — nothing like the security behemoths such as Garda World Security or Constellis — but it had a huge supply of talent to choose from.

A little-known consequence of the war on terror, and in particular the 17 combined years of US warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the number of special operations forces has more than doubled since 9/11, from 33,000 to 70,000. That’s a vast pool of crack soldiers selected, trained, and combat-tested by the most elite units of the US military, such as the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers. Some special operations reservists are known to engage in for-profit soldiering, said a high-level SEAL officer who asked not to be named. “I know a number of them who do this sort of thing,” he said. If the soldiers are not on active duty, he added, they are not obligated to report what they’re doing.

But the options for special operations veterans and reservists aren’t what they were in the early years of the Iraq War. Private security work, mostly protecting US government officials in hostile environments, lacks the excitement of actual combat and is more “like driving Miss Daisy with an M4” rifle, as one former contractor put it. It also doesn’t pay what it used to. While starting rates for elite veterans on high-end security jobs used to be $700 or $800 a day, contractors said, now those rates have dropped to about $500 a day. Golan and Gilmore said they were offering their American fighters $25,000 a month — about $830 a day — plus bonuses, a generous sum in almost any market.

dahlan is a real slick fucker. last i read he was going to replace abbas as head of the PLO under MBS’ decision-making, cause he’s beloved by the gulf states. apparently that didn’t work out. murdering people is what he does best though, so of course he’s pick up work in his area of expertise.

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Children Are Sleeping on Mats in Overcrowded Border Facilities (NYT) Migrant children are being forced to sleep on gym mats with foil sheets and go for days without showering as the Border Patrol struggles to handle thousands of young Central Americans who are surging across the southwestern border, some of them as young as a year old. Children are arriving in groups and alone, some of them clutching phone numbers of relatives scrawled on little pieces of paper, according to two court-appointed lawyers who are monitoring conditions at facilities along the border. Many of the children interviewed by the lawyers in recent days said they had not been allowed outdoors for days on end, confined to an overcrowded tent. “It’s an urgent situation. These children are caught up in a crisis,” said Leecia Welch, a lawyer who visited a holding facility for migrant children in Donna, Texas, that was built to house 250 people but which last week was holding about 1,000. More than 9,400 minors—ranging from young children to teenagers—arrived along the border without parents in February, a nearly threefold increase over last year at the same time, presenting the Biden administration with an urgent humanitarian challenge as it opens the door to children and gradually welcomes in families fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.

Automakers embrace electric vehicles. But what about buyers? (AP) The world’s major automakers have made something abundantly clear: They believe electric vehicles will dominate their industry in the years ahead. Yet for that to happen, they’ll need to sell the idea to people like Steve Bock. When Bock recently replaced his family’s 2013 Honda Pilot SUV, he considered—and then dismissed—the idea of buying an electric vehicle. An EV with enough room to carry his two dogs would cost too much, he decided. And he’d worry about driving long distances with too few charging stations. “I would consider it if the prices would come down,” Bock said, though leaving open the possibility of buying an electric vehicle next time. Opinion polls show that a substantial majority of Americans are aligned with Bock. An EV might be on their shopping list if it cost less, if more charging stations existed and if a wider variety of models were available. In other words, the time isn’t right. For now, EVs make up less than 2% of U.S. new-vehicle sales and about 3% worldwide.

A global minimum tax on multinationals? (Washington Post) Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is working with her counterparts worldwide to forge an agreement on a global minimum tax on multinational corporations, as the White House looks for revenue to help pay for President Biden’s domestic agenda. The effort, which would involve a fraught and challenging global negotiation of tax laws, could prove one of Yellen’s biggest policy legacies if it succeeds. It also could prove central to Biden’s presidency. The $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation signed into law last week was financed completely by additional federal borrowing. But the administration is expected to raise taxes at least partly to pay for its other big-ticket spending priorities, such as the massive infrastructure and jobs package being discussed by White House officials and congressional Democrats.

Stimulus payments are already arriving (Vox) Stimulus checks have begun to arrive in Americans’ bank accounts—just days after President Joe Biden authorized them by signing the American Rescue Plan into law. The speed with which eligible Americans are receiving their third and largest stimulus checks to date during the coronavirus pandemic—less than two months into Biden’s presidency—is a political victory for a president who was unable to garner bipartisan support for his bill, but was still able to swiftly pass a sweeping relief package along party lines. As Vox’s Emily Stewart explains, most Americans will be eligible for $1,400 stimulus checks: The full checks will go out to single people making up to $75,000 and couples making up to $150,000, and phase out at $80,000 and $160,000, based on 2019 or 2020 tax returns, depending on when people last filed their taxes. Previous checks phased out at higher income levels, meaning some people who got checks in previous rounds won’t get them this time. However, the legislation includes checks for adult dependents, such as college students and people with disabilities, for the first time.

Roughly 4 in 5 Manhattan Office Workers Will Not Return Full-Time, Survey Says (NBC New York) Manhattan’s largest employers are starting to plan for the post-COVID future of work, and it seems most of them are giving up on the traditional way of doing things. Just 22 percent of the island’s large employers will require all workers to return to the office full-time when they do eventually go back, according to a Partnership for New York City survey. Some 66 percent said they would adopt a hybrid model of days in the office and days at home, another 9 percent said they would not require workers to return to the office at all, and 4 percent said it would ultimately be role-dependent. Whatever model they choose, employers don’t seem to be in much of a rush either. Survey respondents said they expect just 45 percent of Manhattan’s roughly 1 million office workers to be back to the office by this September.

Here’s looking at you, England (Wired) The future coming at you: For the last two years police and internet companies across the UK have been quietly building and testing surveillance technology that could log and store the web browsing of every single person in the country. The tests, which are being run by two unnamed internet service providers, the Home Office, and the National Crime Agency, are being conducted under controversial surveillance laws introduced at the end of 2016. If successful, data collection systems could be rolled out nationally, creating one of the most powerful and controversial surveillance tools used by any democratic nation.

Europe’s vaccine mess (NYT) The number of new Covid-19 cases is declining, often sharply, in countries that have vaccinated a large share of residents. That’s the situation in Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Britain. Cases are also declining in the U.S. And on the other end of the spectrum is the European continent, where vaccine rollout has been slow, and new cases are surging. Europe—the first place where the coronavirus caused widespread death—is facing the prospect of being one of the last places to emerge from its grip. My colleague Jason Horowitz writes from Rome: “Governments are putting exhausted populations under lockdown. Street protests are turning violent. A year after the virus began spreading in Europe, things feel unnervingly the same.” As Eyck Freymann and Elettra Ardissino write in Foreign Policy: “Spring in the European Union is going to be dismal.” Bild, a German newspaper, recently ran the headline “Liebe Briten, We Beneiden You!”—a mixture of German and English that means “Dear Brits, We Envy You!” Wolfgang Münchau of Eurointelligence has said that Europe’s vaccination program rivals the continent’s budget austerity of recent years as “the E.U.’s worst policy error during my lifetime.” Over the summer, the U.S. was struggling more than any other country to contain Covid. Today, Europe appears to be in much worse shape.

Beijing haze (Reuters) China’s worst sandstorm in a decade caused mass disruptions on Monday as swaths of the country were engulfed in a thick, orange haze of dust and sand, forcing authorities to cancel hundreds of flights, shutter roads and schools, and suspend outdoor activities. In Beijing, poor visibility paralyzed traffic as residents posted photos of skyscrapers seemingly disappearing into the fog and compared images of the eerie haze to scenes in the dystopian 1982 film “Blade Runner.”

North Korea warns US not to ‘cause a stink’ before Seoul meeting (AP) In North Korea’s first comments directed at the Biden administration, Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister on Tuesday warned the United States to “refrain from causing a stink” if it wants to “sleep in peace” for the next four years. Kim Yo Jong’s statement was issued as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Asia to talk with U.S. allies Japan and South Korea about North Korea and other regional issues. They have meetings in Tokyo on Tuesday before speaking to officials in Seoul on Wednesday. “We take this opportunity to warn the new U.S. administration trying hard to give off (gun) powder smell in our land,” she said. “If it wants to sleep in peace for coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.”

As Israelis head back to elections, there’s a new twist: Democrats in Washington (Washington Post) Israeli voters, trapped for two years in a vote-rinse-repeat cycle of toss-up elections, are about to go to the polls for a fourth time with at least one new factor to consider: Their next prime minister—even if it is their old prime minister—will have to deal with Democrats. Since the last campaign, the Republicans in Washington that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held in a bear hug for more than a decade are out. The Democrats he largely alienated are ascendant. In Israel, however, the Netanyahu era has shifted the center of Israeli politics sharply to right not just in tone but on substance, bringing once-fringe positions into the mainstream and posing a challenge for any reset in relations with the Democrats. Even centrist parties have supported recent calls for Israel to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and all but one of Netanyahu’s main election challengers have renounced the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like him, they are deeply skeptical of President Biden’s diplomatic outreach to Iran. Netanyahu, who is battling corruption charges in an ongoing criminal trial, is scrambling to extend his record 14 years in office by reaching even further to the right for new partners. He recently embraced the remnants of the banned Kahanist party, a Jewish extremist group that called for stripping Israel’s Arab citizens of their voting rights. His next coalition, should he prevail, would probably be the most conservative of any of the candidates’.

After a decade of war, the plight of Syrian refugees is only getting worse (Washington Post) Ten years ago, protesters clamoring for political reform in Syria took to the streets, hoping for change. Instead, there has only been ruin and chaos. The past decade has shattered the nation and scattered its people. More than half of the population was forced to flee. “The United Nations stopped counting the dead in 2016 at 400,000. Six million Syrians fled their homeland, escaping across its borders into neighboring countries,” wrote my colleague Liz Sly. “Five million are still stranded, barely surviving in substandard conditions. A million climbed into flimsy boats to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.” Even as foreign humanitarian aid dwindles, millions still languish in limbo in countries bordering Syria, living on the margins of the societies hosting them but too afraid of the grim fate that may await should they try to return. Conditions are only getting worse. “Poverty and food insecurity are on the rise, school enrollment and access to health care are shrinking, and the COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out much of the informal work that refugees rely on,” noted a recent report from the U.N.’s refugee agency. “People are at a breaking point,” UNHCR senior communications adviser Rula Amin told CBS News. While “the attention of the world has shifted from the Syria crisis and people tend to think that maybe it has become easier, with every passing year, it becomes more difficult, not easier for Syrian refugees.”

#headlines #news

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dfroza · 4 years ago

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to Love, or not to Love

and we are encouraged to Love.

we see this illuminated in the closing chapter of the book of Hebrews for Today’s reading of the Scriptures:

Let love continue among you. Don’t forget to extend your hospitality to all—even to strangers—for as you know, some have unknowingly shown kindness to heavenly messengers in this way. Remember those imprisoned for their beliefs as if you were their cellmate; and care for any who suffer harsh treatment, as you are all one body.

Hold marriage in high esteem, all of you, and keep the marriage bed pure because God will judge those who commit sexual sins.

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have because He has said, “I will never leave you; I will always be by your side.” Because of this promise, we may boldly say,

The Lord is my help—

I won’t be afraid of anything.

How can anyone harm me?

Listen to your leaders, who have spoken God’s word to you. Notice the fruits of their lives and mirror their faith.

Jesus the Anointed One is always the same: yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried away by diverse and strange ways of believing or worshiping. It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about what you can eat (which do no good even for those who observe them). We approach an altar from which those who stand before the altar in the tent have no right to eat. In the past, the bodies of those animals whose blood was carried into the sanctuary by the high priest to take away sin were all burned outside the camp. (In the same way, Jesus suffered and bled outside the city walls of Jerusalem to sanctify the people.)

Let’s then go out to Him and resolve to bear the insult and abuse that He endured. For as long as we are here, we do not live in any permanent city, but are looking for the city that is to come.

Through Jesus, then, let us keep offering to God our own sacrifice, the praise of lips that confess His name without ceasing. Let’s not neglect what is good and share what we have, for these sacrifices also please God.

Listen to your leaders and submit to their authority over the community, for they are on constant watch to protect your souls and someday they must give account. Give them reason to be joyful and not to regret their duty, for that will be of no good to you.

Pray for us, for we have no doubt that our consciences are clean and that we seek to live honestly in all things. But please pray for me that I may be restored to you even more quickly.

Now may the God of peace, who brought the great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, back from the dead through the blood of the new everlasting covenant, perfect you in every good work as you work God’s will. May God do in you only those things that are pleasing in His sight through Jesus the Anointed, our Liberating King, to whom we give glory always and forever. Amen.

Please, brothers and sisters, pay attention to this word of exhortation, for I have written only a few words to you.

I want to tell you that our brother Timothy has been set free; and if he arrives soon, he will come with me when I see you next.

Give my greetings to your leaders and to all of God’s people. Those of Italy greet you.

May grace always be with you.

The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 13 (The Voice)

and sex is certainly a sacred bond shared between husband & wife that was formed by our Creator. sex is meant for the marital bond where 2 bodies become as “One” thus making it impure outside of this. and the decision to change the temporal physical body won’t matter in the eternal since it is impossible to change the gender that is chosen at the genesis spark of conception. for each child is born as either male or female, and each person will die the same gender as they were conceived and born, as recognized by our Creator. people may disagree with the purity of sexuality in Light of Love’s truth, yet it will never change the truth of the One who made us, and who made the heavens and garden earth.

“Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband.”

The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 13:4 (The Message)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 19th chapter of First Chronicles that documents an ancient battle even though King David had first intended to show kindness:

Some time after this Nahash king of the Ammonites died and his son succeeded him as king. David said, “I’d like to show some kindness to Hanun son of Nahash—treat him as well and as kindly as his father treated me.” So David sent condolences about his father’s death.

But when David’s servants arrived in Ammonite country and came to Hanun to bring condolences, the Ammonite leaders warned Hanun, “Do you for a minute suppose that David is honoring your father by sending you comforters? Don’t you know that he’s sent these men to scout out the city and size it up so that he can capture it?”

So Hanun seized David’s men, shaved them clean, cut off their robes halfway up their buttocks, and sent them packing.

When this was all reported to David, he sent someone to meet them, for they were seriously humiliated. The king told them, “Stay in Jericho until your beards grow out; only then come back.”

When it dawned on the Ammonites that as far as David was concerned, they stank to high heaven, they hired, at a cost of a thousand talents of silver (thirty-seven and a half tons!), chariots and horsemen from the Arameans of Naharaim, Maacah, and Zobah—thirty-two thousand chariots and drivers; plus the king of Maacah with his troops who came and set up camp at Medeba; the Ammonites, too, were mobilized from their cities and got ready for battle.

When David heard this, he dispatched Joab with his strongest fighters in full force.

The Ammonites marched out and spread out in battle formation at the city gate; the kings who had come as allies took up a position in the open fields. When Joab saw that he had two fronts to fight, before and behind, he took his pick of the best of Israel and deployed them to confront the Arameans. The rest of the army he put under the command of Abishai, his brother, and deployed them to deal with the Ammonites. Then he said, “If the Arameans are too much for me, you help me; and if the Ammonites prove too much for you, I’ll come and help you. Courage! We’ll fight might and main for our people and for the cities of our God. And God will do whatever he sees needs doing!”

But when Joab and his soldiers moved in to fight the Arameans, they ran off in full retreat. Then the Ammonites, seeing the Arameans run for dear life, took to their heels and ran from Abishai into the city.

So Joab withdrew from the Ammonites and returned to Jerusalem.

When the Arameans saw how badly they’d been beaten by Israel, they picked up the pieces and regrouped; they sent for the Arameans who were across the river; Shophach, commander of Hadadezer’s army, led them.

When all this was reported to David, he mustered all Israel, crossed the Jordan, advanced, and prepared to fight. The Arameans went into battle formation, ready for David, and the fight was on. But the Arameans again scattered before Israel. David killed seven thousand chariot drivers and forty thousand infantry. He also killed Shophach, the army commander. When all the kings who were vassals of Hadadezer saw that they had been routed by Israel, they made peace with David and served him. The Arameans were afraid to help the Ammonites ever again.

The Book of 1st Chronicles, Chapter 19 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for monday, january 18 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible, along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

A post by John Parsons about this week’s Torah reading:

Shavuah tov, chaverim. Our Torah reading for this week (Exod. 10:1-13:16) begins with God commanding Moses “to go” (i.e., bo: בּא) before the Pharaoh to announce further apocalyptic judgments upon Egypt. The purpose of this power encounter was to vindicate God’s justice and great glory (deliverance/salvation) by overthrowing the tyranny of unjust human oppression. Pharaoh’s nightmare of “one little lamb” outweighing all the firstborn of Egypt was about to be fulfilled....

Recall that last week’s Torah (i.e., parashat Va’era) retold how Pharaoh defiantly refused to listen to Moses’ pleas for Israel’s freedom, despite seven devastating makkot (plagues) that came upon Egypt in God’s Name (יהוה). In this week’s portion (i.e., parashat Bo), the battle between the LORD and Pharaoh comes to a dramatic conclusion. The last three of the ten plagues are unleashed upon Egypt: a swarm of locusts devoured all the crops and greenery; a palpable darkness enveloped the land for three days and nights; and all the firstborn of Egypt were killed precisely at the stroke of midnight of the 15th of the month of Nisan... In this connection note that the word בּא (“go”) and פרעה (“Pharoah”) added together equal the gematria of משׁיח (“mashiach”), providing a hint of the Messianic redemption that was foreshadowed in Egypt. Every jot and tittle, chaverim!

Before the final plague, God instructed the Jewish people to establish a new calendar based on the sighting of the new moon of spring. On the tenth day of that month, God told the people to acquire a “Passover offering” to Him, namely an unblemished lamb (or goat), one for each household. On the 14th of that month (“between the evenings”) the animal would be slaughtered and its blood sprinkled on the doorposts and lintel of every Israelite home, so that God would “pass over” these dwellings when He came to kill the Egyptian firstborn that night. The roasted meat of the offering was to be eaten that night with unleavened bread (matzah) and bitter herbs (maror). God then commanded the Israelites to observe a seven-day “festival of matzah” to commemorate the Exodus for all subsequent generations.

Because of this, our corporate identity begins with a shared consciousness of time from a Divine perspective. The mo’edim (festivals of the LORD) all are reckoned based on the sacred calendar given to the redeemed Israelite nation. As it is also written in the Book of Psalms: “He made the moon for the appointed times” / עָשָׂה יָרֵחַ לְמוֹעֲדִים (Psalm 104:19). Undoubtedly Yeshua followed this calendar, as did His first followers (Gal. 4:4).

Just before the dreadful final plague befell, God instructed the Israelites to ask their Egyptian neighbors for gold, silver and jewelry, thereby plundering Egypt of its wealth (this was regarded as “uncollected wages” for hundreds of years of forced labor and bondage - not to mention for the services of Joseph, whose ingenuity brought the world’s wealth to Egypt in the first place). Moses then instructed the people to prepare the Passover sacrifice, that is, the korban Pesach (קָרְבָּן פֶּסַה) - the Passover lamb - and to smear its blood on the two sides and top of the doorway, resembling the shape of the Hebrew letter Chet (ח). This Hebrew letter, signifying the number eight, is connected with the word חי (chai), short for chayim (חַיִּים), "life." The blood of the lamb (דַּם הַשֶּׂה) not only saves from the judgment of death, but also is a symbol of divine life given for our redemption. The “life is in the blood.”

The dreadful final plague - the death of the firstborn - at last broke Pharaoh’s resistance and he not only allowed the Israelites to depart without any conditions, he urged them to go. Because they left in great haste there was no time for their dough to rise. The Torah states that there were 600,000 adult men who left Egypt, along with the women, children, and a “mixed multitude” of other Egyptian slaves who tagged along.

The Israelites were commanded to consecrate all the firstborn to God and to commemorate the anniversary of the Exodus each year by celebrating the LORD’s Passover in conjunction with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. During this time they were to remove all leaven from their homes for seven days, eat matzah, and retell the story of their redemption to their children. The portion ends with the commandment to wear tefillin (phylacteries) on the arm and head as a reminder of how the LORD saved the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt. [Hebrew for Christians]

https://hebrew4christians.com/

1.17.21 • Facebook

From an email sent by Glenn Jackson about rebirth:

January 18th

* Shall this body, this curious workmanship of Heaven, so wonderfully and fearfully made, always lie in ruins and never be repaired. This we know: that it is not a thing impossible with God to raise the dead. He that could first form our bodies out of nothing, is certainly able to form them anew and repair the wastes of time. The Omniscient God knows how to collect, distinguish, and compound all those scattered and mingled seeds of our mortal bodies. Matter we know is capable of prodigious alterations and refinements; and there it will appear in the highest perfection. The bodies of the saints will be formed glorious, incorruptible, without the seeds of sickness or death. The glorified body of Christ, which is undoubtedly matter carried to the highest perfection that matter is capable of, will be the pattern after which they shall be formed. Then will the body be able to bear up under the exceeding great and eternal weight of glory; it will no longer be a clog or encumbrance to the soul, but a proper instrument and assistant in all the exalted services and enjoyments of the heavenly state.

...."But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you".... Romans 8:11 KJV

...."make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship".... Romans 12:1 The Amplified Translation

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

January 18, 2021

A Better and an Enduring Substance

“For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” (Hebrews 10:36)

Christians have certain heavenly possessions, and this knowledge helps put our earthly possessions and welfare in proper perspective. Evidently, some to whom this was written had been imprisoned, and others impoverished for their faith. “For ye...took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance” (v. 34). Peter called it “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4).

These possessions are attainable; they are not in question; they are ours, given to us by the One whose name is “Truth” (John 14:6) and whose Word is trustworthy. We “know” (Hebrews 10:34) this beyond all doubt.

Furthermore, these possessions are valuable. We must “cast not away therefore [our] confidence, which hath great recompense of reward” (v. 35). With this assurance, we are able to bear up under any suffering or persecution that comes our way (see also Romans 8:18).

Knowledge of these possessions is prescriptive, for it helps us cope with longstanding troubles. In our text, we “have need of patience” to get through them and do “the will of God.” “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (James 5:7-8).

Lastly, realization of these possessions is imminent. “For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Hebrews 10:37). “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). JDM

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aclayjar · 5 years ago

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There are two different perspectives we can use when examining the doctrine of the Bible. The first of these is the human perspective; who wrote it, why they wrote it, and when they write it. The second of these perspectives provides a more God-ward focused view; why did he give it to us, and what is its purpose. The Human Perspective The Bible is not a single book. Rather it is a collection of a number of writings produced over a long period of time; by a number of distinct individuals; with diverse cultural backgrounds. In the Bible used by most Protestants today there are 66 different books in the Bible; 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. But those, at least in the Old Testament, are not reflective of how they were originally written. The books of Samuel and Kings, for instance, probably had the same author and were written as a single account. But they were broken up because of the size limitations for scrolls. Two Collections The writings in the Bible are broken up into two distinct collections; the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament corresponds to, but is not identical with, the Jewish Scriptures. The Jewish Bible has a different ordering and divisions that the Protestant Old Testament. There are also other Jewish writings that are a part of the Roman Catholic Old Testament. These difference are mostly based on different document sources and traditions. We use the term Old Testament to refer to the writings focused on the covenant established between Israel and God on Mt. Sinai. It is worth noting that the term ‘Old Testament’ can be offensive to Jews who see there only being a single covenant. The New Testament writings are those of the new covenant between Christ and his Church. This covenant was established by his atonement on the cross. These writings are distinctly Christian and are not accepted by Jewish readers as being from God. Kinds of Writings The Bible is a diverse collection of literature, from history to poetry to instruction to apocalyptic. Some of the books in the Bible contain only one type of literature while others contain multiple types, sometimes interwoven together. Complicating this for modern readers is that Hebrew poetry is different than what we are accustomed to. And their view of history is also very different. Authors While some of the writings in the Bible, especially the New Testament, have known authors, or at least traditional authors, many of them are anonymous. In the New Testament, the gospels are anonymous with traditional authors; Hebrews has an unknown author; and some others, like 2 Peter, have disputed authorship. It is even worse in the Old Testament. Who wrote the first five books, the Torah? Traditional scholarship claims that Moses wrote the Torah. But more modern scholarship disputes that. They view the Torah as a collection of verbal and written traditions that were finally collected into their current form around 2500 years ago. In a similar fashion, nearly every book in the Old Testament has both traditional and modern theories as to the authors. Ultimately we do not know who wrote the vast majority of the Old Testament. Dates Dating the writings of the Bible is just as challenging. The New Testament is the easier of the two, with most scholars convinced it was completed in the second half of the first century. Many of these writings have fairly reliable and uncontested dates. The Old Testament is the more challenging collection. When was the Torah written? It really depends on who the author or editor was. If it was written by Moses, then the date is during his lifetime, about 1400 B.C. give or take a hundred years. But if it is a collection of different traditions joined together by a later editor(s), then it is impossible to know. The traditions could go all the way back to, or before, Moses, reaching their final form 2500 years ago. Most of the rest of the Old Testament faces the same issue. But I believe we can safely say that it was completed prior to about 300 B.C. Accuracy This really relates to the historical sections of the Bible; is it an accurate portrayal of the actual events that it records. This is of primary concern to a modern audience that expects its history to be factually based and unbiased; although in reality it always has some bias. Unfortunately, at least from our perspective, ancient historians were less concerned with accuracy and bias and more concerned with telling a story. That is not to say they fabricated their accounts. It is just that telling a story was more important that dry sterile facts. That was something neither the authors nor their audience cared about until recent times. So, if you read the Bible’s historical accounts thinking they are like the history you read in school, you will be disappointed. Canonization There were many more writings in both the Jewish and Christian communities than what we have in the Bible today. How did we come to accept the books in the Bible as being from God while rejecting others? For both testaments this was a long process without clearly defined rules. Ultimately it came down to what Jews, for the Old Testament, and Christians, for the New Testament, considered as being inspired by God; from reputable sources; widely accepted; and of value to their community. Standard collections, or canons, were eventually, and independently, accepted by both communities and today are what we call the Bible. If you are interested in reading more about this topic you might look at a couple of my earlier blog posts. One concerns the Reliability of the New Testament. The other deals with the Canonization of the New Testament. The Divine Perspective Before looking at the Bible from the divine perspective, there are some assumptions that need to be expressed. The first of these is that God exists; if he does not then the Bible is nothing more than ancient writings of a religious nature. The second assumption is that God wanted us to know something about himself and his purpose in creation. If he wanted to inform us, then something like the Bible would be expected. If not, then the Bible is undoubtedly of human origin and of limited value. Inspiration At the heart of the divine perspective is inspiration. Is the Bible given to us by God? If so, how did he communicate it to the human authors who actually penned the words we have today? The Bible itself, in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, claims to be inspired, or God breathed. But it does not tell us in what way this inspiration occurred. There are a number of different theories as to what inspiration actually is. And how you understand inspiration will impact many, if not all, of the other doctrines you hold to. Dictation One of the theories of inspiration is that God gave the specific words to the authors of the Bible. They were nothing more than a passive tool that God used. Every word, every expression, every stylistic inflection is all provided by God. If two different authors had been used to produce the same book, they would be identical. There are not many people who actually subscribe to this theory today. Verbal This theory is very similar to the dictation theory. The Holy Spirit’s influence over the author extends to the words that are selected and used. The difference between the two is that in verbal inspiration the Holy Spirit limits himself to the vocabulary of the human author. So if two distinct authors, especially if separated by time, write a book, while it will be exactly what God wants, they will be different. This is likely the most popular theory among evangelicals today. Dynamic In the dynamic theory, the Holy Spirit and the human author work together to produce the writing. The Holy Spirit provides the thoughts or concepts while the human author provides the words to express those thoughts. In this theory the human author’s personality comes through very clearly. And it does so in a way that would be unique to them. Illumination This theory limits the input of the Holy Spirit to influencing the human authors by heightening their spiritual sensitivity. The Holy Spirit gives the human author neither specific thoughts nor words. Rather it is similar to the influence of the Holy Spirit on any other believer. In this version of inspiration, the Bible is little different from any other ‘inspired’ work that Christians might use, like the writings of C. S. Lewis, John Calvin, or Augustine. Questions about Inspiration Given the variety of theories concerning inspiration, how do you know which is true of the Bible? One method is simply to choose based on popularity. And, if you are an evangelical, that would lead you either the verbal or dynamic theories; with the verbal most likely. But do we have to depend on popularity? I believe an examination of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, can be helpful here. These three are very similar, so much so that many believe that two of them (Matthew and Luke) use the third (Mark) as a source, adding other material as needed. It is clear when reading them that they are very closely related, and quite distinct from the gospel of John. Why do we have multiple gospels? Why not just one comprehensive gospel. One without the apparent inconsistencies among the Synoptics? A Look at Luke The introduction to the gospel attributed to Luke can help to answer those questions. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.Luke 1:1-4 NIV In this introduction Luke acknowledges that there are already in existence many other accounts of the life of Jesus. And Luke himself then chooses to produce yet another account, after a thorough research into the life of Jesus. So what can we learn from this: Luke himself chooses to write. He gives no indication that God directed him to do this. And Luke’s reason for writing is a personal one; so that an acquaintance of his would know the truth about Jesus life.Luke’s inspiration for writing did not preclude careful investigation. He does not just sit down and start writing. He is involved in what the final composition looks like.There are other ‘gospels’ already in circulation, likely including Mark. But Luke is not satisfied with them.From comparing Luke and Mark, it appears that Luke changes Mark’s account in some of its details; as well as adding a lot of content. Comparing Luke and Mark If the above conclusions are true, it is hard to see that both Mark and Luke are inspired by either the dictation or verbal theories. The difference in details, like the number of angels at the empty tomb, are hard to reconcile if the Holy Spirit gave them the words to say. On the other hand, if the Holy Spirit is guiding their thoughts, ensuring that the story he wants told is actually told, then the little details are not a problem. And the other differences can be attributed to the purpose for the author’s writing (Luke and John both share their reason) as well as the sources they drew from. The dynamic theory seems to best account for what is seen in the gospel accounts. Some Insight from Paul One other passage that supports dynamic inspiration comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church. In 1 Corinthians 7:10 Paul explicitly says that his instruction is from the Lord. But in both verse 12 and verse 25 he expresses that he is delivering to them, not the Lord’s command, but what Paul believes best. Paul would seem not to believe that his writing is either dictated to him from God or verbally inspired. Dynamic inspiration seems to cover this much better. Inerrancy A topic that is closely related to inspiration is inerrancy. Inerrancy generally is considered to mean that the Bible, as originally written, is free from error of any type in the topics that it covers. The topic of inerrancy is one that generates a lot of discussion. And for some it is almost a test of the faith. Can I be sure that what the Bible says is true; or are the contents of the Bible of questionable validity? Strict Inerrancy Strict inerrancy goes hand in hand with both dictation and verbal inspiration. If the Holy Spirit is supplying the words to the human authors, then it follows that, since God cannot lie (Heb. 6:18), it must all be true. How could an omniscient and truthful God produce a Bible that was not completely true in all regards; even concerning things that would be completely unknown to the authors, like creation? The debate over inerrancy is actually a relatively modern one. Historically it was assumed by most that the Bible was true, in its entirety. But with the advent of modern science and history many began to question the accuracy of at least some parts of the Bible. Coming out of this debate is a formal definition of inerrancy; a definition that is subscribed to by many, if not most, evangelicals. The Council on Biblical Inerrancy produced the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy in 1979 which includes the following as a part of its definition of inerrancy. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives. Science Interpreted by the Bible What this means is that if the Bible speaks about any subject, then it is authoritative. If the Bible says that the earth was covered by the waters of a flood and only Noah and his family survived, then that is exactly what happened. Allowance is made for phenomenological language; describing things as they appear such as the rising of the sun. Also for symbolic language like much of Revelation. But Bible is exactly what God wanted us to have and is completely true. With strict inerrancy, if questions are raised about creation, the flood, the exodus, the conquest of Canaan, or David’s kingdom; the Bible is always right, and any scientific or archeological findings that seem to contradict the Bible are inaccurate or incomplete. The plus side to strict inerrancy is that the conflict between science/history and the Bible is easy to resolve. God’s inspired and inerrant word cannot possibly be wrong. Soteriological Inerrancy There is a lessor form of inerrancy that is common among churches of the Wesleyan tradition such as the Methodists and Nazarenes. Soteriological inerrancy claims inerrancy for the Bible in matters that concern our salvation and relationship with God; but do not make that claim for matters of science or history. While strict inerrancy would insist that all of the Genesis stories about Abraham are correct and literal; soteriological inerrancy would accept that they could be legends, likely with a kernel of truth, that have come down to us from antiquity, and not historically accurate by today’s standards. But all of the accounts in the Bible, whether historically or scientifically accurate, contain truth that God wants us to have. Soteriological inerrancy is most compatible with the dynamic theory of inspiration. If God is inspiring the message, but not the very words, then obviously what is important is the message. That it is not accurate in all of the details is not important, so long as God’s message to us is delivered in a way that we can learn from. The passage in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that declares the inspiration of the Bible, expresses that its inspiration is to enable us to grow in maturity and completeness as believers. The inspiration of the Bible is not to teach us how the earth was formed or details in the life of the early patriarchs. A Danger to Soteriological Inerrancy While there is some appeal to soteriological inerrancy because it removes much of the tension between the Bible and science/history, it does open its adherents to the Slippery Slope challenge. Once you allow for some inaccuracy in the Bible, where do you draw the line? If you admit to the possibility that Adam was not a historical person, could acknowledging the same for Jesus be far behind? This is clearly a real danger. Not Inerrant The extreme opposite position of strict inerrancy would be those who deny any form of inerrancy for the Bible. For them, the Bible may have some form of inspiration like illumination; and it may have value for knowing God and be useful for living a godly life; but it is only a human book and subject to error as well as revision. The Bible may be a special book, but it is treated little different than other books that offer perceived value to the readers. This is a position that is popular among liberal churches that want to proclaim a gospel that is different than that proclaimed in the Bible. Questions about Inerrancy How important is the question of inerrancy in the life of the believer? I do believe that at least to some extent it is an important issue. If one does not believe that the Bible is true, then why bother to read it or seek to follow its instructions. What makes it any different that the Koran or the Book of Mormon? What makes it any better a guide to truth than thousands of other books you might find in a bookstore or online? Advantages to Strict Inerrancy On the other hand, if strict inerrancy it true, then absolute truth is found in the pages of the Bible and any conflicting source is in error. There are several advantages to this approach. There is no need to evaluate any competing claims that appear to be at odds with the Bible. The Bible is always correct. I may not understand what it is saying on a particular topic, but I can rest assured that ultimately it will be proven correct and I just need to depend on it and invest the time in it to properly understand its message. It is actually much easier to simply believe the Bible is true than to have to evaluate the truthfulness of each of its claims.It can protect me from heresy. Many of the heretical ideas that are portrayed as truth are based on non-biblical sources.Accepting anything other than strict inerrancy can lead to doubts about God’s truthfulness. If God has given us a book that is not truthful in all its parts, can we really depend on his nature, that he is who the Bible declares him to be? And that he really is working for my good? Concerns About How Inerrancy Is Used I do have some concerns however about how many people understand inerrancy. They lose sight of the fact that it is the Bible that is inerrant, rather than their own understanding of what it says. Our human interpretations of the Bible are not inerrant. The Bible is a product of a culture(s) that is long gone. It was written by men of that time for the people of that time. They had a different way of looking at the world around them and their place within it. A way that is foreign and often confusing to us today. But God used these men, inspiring them, to produce the Bible; a Bible that was meaningful and understandable to people of that culture. When we ignore their culture, interpreting the Bible according to our own cultural lens, we tend toward making the Bible say something that it was not intended to say. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening chapters of Genesis. The peoples of the nation’s surrounding Israel had a very different view of how the earth is shaped than we do today. Egypt in particular, a nation they had just spent 400 years in, would have been instrumental is framing how the Hebrews understood the earth. Ancient Near Eastern Cosmogony The peoples from Egypt to Mesopotamia understood the earth to be flat, floating on the waters of the deep, and resting on pillars that reached down to the foundation. Above them was a hard dome that held back the waters above, a dome with windows to allow the rain to come through. The dwelling of the gods was above the upper waters. And the sun, moon, and stars were deified bodies that were contained within the dome. That seems strange to us, but that is how it would appear to one with no science or ability to observe with anything beyond their 5 senses. In the Egyptian creation myths, Atum self creates out of the infinite waters, forms a bubble of atmosphere, raises up land, creates the sun, moon and stars, as other deities, and populates the land, sea and air by his word. He forms humanity from the dust in his image, and breathes breath into them. If that sounds somewhat familiar to you, it’s because it is. Accommodation When God inspires Moses to produce the creation account in the first chapter of Genesis, he seems to start with what they already believed about how the universe was produced, with little correction. But he did correct the theology of the Egyptian myths. God is self existent and transcends the creation. He, and he alone, was responsible for creation. And humanity had a special place and purpose in the creation. I believe this is what the first chapter of Genesis has to teach us. Not that the creation took 6 days and occurred in some specific order. Authority Ultimately the most important question we can ask concerning the Bible is the authority it will have in our lives. Regardless how we view inspiration and inerrancy, its authority in the life of the believer and its usefulness as a guide to spiritual truth is key. I might view the Bible as verbally inspired and inerrant; but if I do not accept its authority, it will have little value for me, apart from an intellectual journey. But if the Bible is authoritative, then just how it was inspired and its level of inerrancy is not important. And if I truly view the Bible as authoritative, then I should make every attempt to follow its instructions. I should invest time in learning and understanding its message for myself. And it should be my daily guide for life. Conclusion The Bible is a collection of writings produced by human authors who lived in a culture foreign to ours today, and written to that same culture. In many ways this makes the Bible challenging to understand. It was also not written to give us a systematic theology of God. Instead it contains historical narratives, laws to follow, corrective material, poetry, and apocalyptic writings. It requires effort for modern man to dig out the message of the Bible. At the same time, the Bible is inspired by God, and is our authoritative source for faith and practice as believers. It contains what God wants us to have, including the parts that may make little sense to us today. While the context, or culture, that the Bible was written in has changed, the content of the message has not. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is just as true for 21st century American believers as it was for 1st century believers. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." God's Self-Revelation If the Bible is God's revelation of himself to humanity, how come it is so often confusing and not more straightforward? Why does he not just tell us who he his; his purpose in creation; the significance of Jesus incarnation and atonement; and how the church should operate? I have no doubt that he could have produced that kind of a book. But he did not. Instead we have a collection of writings that theologians have debated and argued over for as long as we have had them. Could it be that he intentionally gave us something that would require some effort on our part to understand. And with that effort, helping us to grow in our faith? After all, the more we put into it, the more we are likely to derive from it. The remainder of the posts in this series will assume that the Bible is an authoritative guide to knowing God; his purpose; humanity and our condition; and living as believers. This is an unprovable assumption; but one that has been held as true in the lives of untold numbers of people, including my own. I also will be assuming dynamic inspiration and soteriological inerrancy. Other Posts in this Series Post History Original Post: December 16, 2017Updated: December 6, 2019

#bgbg2

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mattthevicar · 5 years ago

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Week 3: Luke Ch3 – Ch9 – Part A: Jesus lays out His plan for a NEW world

This week we begin a two-part look into how Jesus lays out His plan for a NEW world. Part A look at Jesus’ Baptism and early ministry (Ch3-Ch5), and Part B will look at Jesus’ agenda and how God confirms the mission of His Son (Ch6-Ch9).

I’ll use the same format as I did last week, where there is the “Main material” – which carries the key theme, the reading the text itself (very important), watching some videos, and then some key questions to encourage spiritual reflection.

Look out though also for the “Support material” – this is a walk ‘scene by scene’ through the text itself pausing to explore key points along the way. It really helps get inside the richness of Luke’s account and in deeper touch with the person of Jesus. You don’t have to do all this material in one go. Do it a bit each day over a number of days. It will pay a great reward.

Enjoy.

Matt

Main Material:

Introduction:

Let’s begin by watching a really helpful overview video of the whole section (Luke Ch3 -Ch 9) from the Bible Project. It helps to focus and set the scene:

youtube

The Key Point to pick up on as we think about Jesus’ plan:

Now, Jesus has grown up and become a ‘man on a mission.’ He sets about achieving three things:

Firstly, Jesus is setting out to fulfil Israel’s original calling from God (Genesis Ch12), “to be the salt, the light, the yeast, the blessing of God for the world,” something that Israel, sadly, had been unable to fulfil. But here is Jesus setting out to achieve the unachievable. And, as we shall see, He does do it, albeit by a means and a way that turns the ways of the world upside down.

Secondly, Jesus places ‘healing’ and ‘wholeness’ – of Body, Mind and Spirit (the Jewish word for which is ‘Shalom’) right at the very heart of His message both for the individual and for the world. He calls this ‘healed’ and ‘whole’ Creation - “God’s Kingdom,” and it’s a Kingdom that is inclusive and is life changing for all. (So, a bit later, we are going to have to look at something of what we understand “healing” and Jesus’ ‘healing’ miracles to be all about, because they can be pretty seriously misunderstood.)

And thirdly, going to the very centre of this life-changing and ‘healing’ experience is the profound claim that God’s words to Jesus at His baptism are in fact true for all people and for all Creation for all time: “you are my beloved son/my beloved daughter/my beloved Creation and world; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke Ch3 vs22)

A big vision, a big plan, and next up we need to examine two core characteristics as to how Jesus intends to achieve things.

Two core characteristics to help us understand how God goes about creating a NEW world:

1. Firstly, He creates from the inside out, rather than the outside in – through healing and love, rather than power and force.

We’ll see this played out time and time again like a golden thread and is central to Luke’s way of understanding both Jesus and the character of God.

Again and again Jesus’ nature is to come alongside, to call, inspire, heal and help us to wonder. Through His compassion and love He gives us worth, value and dignity. He restores our belief in humanity and gives us hope that love, not power is eternal and worth following in this world.

The symbol for this way of living and loving has always been the Cross, not just something then that happens to Jesus at the end of the Gospel, but instead, like the lettering of a seaside stick of rock, something that goes through every inch and millimetre of the heart of God and of His love for the world.

2. Second, He calls and welcomes everyone – but this comes with a challenge.

Time and again it seems to be those at the margins, those who didn’t think they mattered – the ‘poor,’ the outcast, the socially excluded, the marginalised who get Jesus and what He is about.*

Whereas, those who you would think would understand Him, the religious people, the priests, the Pharisees, the Teachers of the Law, those who upheld the establishment, they don’t get Him at all. To them Jesus is at best awkward, at worst a threat, someone who challenges their way of life and the status quo.

There is a phrase that I once was told, “Jesus came to comfort the disturbed, and to disturb the comfortable.” Notice how this works out again and again in the coming stories and how it will be the so-called ‘good’ people who will be the ones who have most to lose and who will shout Jesus down the most.

*N.B. From a Bible point of view the character of Mary Magdalene acts as a sort of icon for those on the margins. Traditionally thought of as someone who either had mental health issues, and often cast as a prostitute, more recently feminist historians and film makers have portrayed her as a woman who was labelled in this way by her community simply because she was someone who knew her own mind and broke the mould of stepping out as a woman into what, at the time, was considered to be a male only world – following a wandering first century Jewish preacher out on the road. Is it indeed this that Jesus saw in her and so invited her to be one of His closest disciples? Check out the film “Mary Magdalene” (2018 – out on DVD) and the film trailer below:

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Reading the Bible:

Now, we need to read the story for itself. Let us read through Luke Ch 3 to Ch 5.

Try not to skip this section if you can, it’s important.

(Further background information and thoughts can be found in the “Support material” at the end of this week’s blog – it also contains some great videos of the actual sites where Jesus’ plan unfolds – take the time to look them up.

A Christian understanding of “healing” and “wholeness” – the Jewish word “Shalom:”

The idea of “healing” goes to right to the heart of how Luke understands Jesus’ life, ministry and death. Understandably, as he’s often labelled as being a first century physician or doctor.

But what does “healing” actually mean in the Bible? Is it simply “cure, or is it more than that?”

There are whole books and many different answers depending on who you talk to. But a good place to start is actually to look up a key Hebrew word “Shalom.” We often translate it as “peace” but it means so much more than that.

To introduce and help explain something about how rich and powerful a concept it is in Jewish thinking, look up the Bible Project Word study on “Shalom” (see below):

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Spiritual Refection Questions:

We continue with not only trying to understand the Bible and how it works, but also to let the Bible try and ask questions of us. Here are this week’s questions:

Baptism called people to refocus, to re-commit themselves to God and to a new way of being. It goes to the heart of Jesus’ plan for a new world. How do we cope with change? Do we resist it? Embrace it? How about in our spiritual lives? Do we want God, but on our terms? What would it look like to live for God but on His terms? What would it look like to not only be baptised in the body but to begin again in the spirit? (maybe re-read the words of Luke ch3 vs1-22 with these thoughts in mind and hear vs 22 just for you.)

‘Healing’/wholeness goes right to the heart of Luke’s understanding of Jesus’ plan. Maybe imagine being at any one of the vivid healing stories we come across in this week’s Bible reading (the Man in the Synagogue – Luke 4, The Leper or the Paralysed Man – Luke 5) – read the story again, imagine being there. What did it feel like? What comes into your mind when you see someone’s life totally transformed – that they know God’s Shalom to be real?

Based on the first two questions above, faith is not just about believing in in God. It’s also about letting God in to change, shape and ‘heal’ us. What do we hold on to – hurts, pains, memories, that holds us back from letting go? Quiet often it is these things that are just as much in need of ‘healing’ as a broken leg, leprosy, or whatever. They can be like our own familiar and very personal ‘demons.’ What would it be like for Jesus to break in to our lives and seek to take them from us? We can never forget we have had them, and indeed what and who caused them. But what would it be like to watch Jesus being willing to take them to Himself so that we are set free? Try and sit with anything that comes to mind, however big or small. And even if you can’t offer it up, even in part today, maybe pray that as part of this journey one day we will be willing to give it up, to Him.

Music Video:

To finish off this “Main material” for this week’s session – check out the Rend Collective song (Live form Belfast) “I will be Undignified.” For anything that you’ve thought about as you’ve shared this session with God, for anything that you would long to be set free from that holds you back, for just the permission to turn up the volume, tap your finger or your foot, or dance around the kitchen – Enjoy:

youtube

Why not check out the Additional “Support” material HERE – as well as thoughts about key passages, there are various videos from key locations – Jesus’ baptism site, Nazareth Village, and Capernaum (where Jesus based His ministry). Well worth watching!

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buggie-hagen · 7 years ago

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Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Primary Text: Ezekiel 33:7-11

Grace and peace are yours from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,

On Labor Day, the day we are supposed to rest from our labors, our presiding bishop, the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, was compelled to make a statement regarding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, otherwise known as DACA. In it she sought to address the fears of the people who are to be affected by it. These young people are afraid they will be separated from their families. They are afraid their future is in jeopardy. They are afraid that they will be left stranded in a place they do not know. By going out of her way to respond to this current issue, Presiding Bishop Eaton was making a statement. That is, that we, as a Lutheran Christian community, are called to care about the vulnerable. And, not only are we called to care about those who are vulnerable, but we are called to come to their defense and aid when necessary. Unnecessarily dividing families from each other, especially the young adults who have no roots but in the United States, is contrary to who we are called to be as Christians. A system that shreds families apart needs to change. It needs to pay more attention to their human needs. A system that clouds the dreams of a young person and casts their future into uncertainty needs to change. It needs to be more compassionate when dealing with human beings. Often times, when we operate as a society, we tend to let the machine run its course. The problem with this is that the machine operates to the advantage of those it favors—leaving the ones it does not favor to be vulnerable, and unattended to. The machine dehumanizes people. Which, in turn, makes it easier for us to dehumanize and to disregard the needs and concerns of the vulnerable.

Now in our reading from Ezekiel, we have God wanting to reprimand the wrongs being done within the house of Israel. In this way, it is an inward approach to harmony in God’s community. In our passage today, God utters to Ezekiel, “So you, mortal, I have made a sentinel for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.”[1] What can be learned from this is that Ezekiel is called to be a sentinel, that is, God’s voice to the house of Israel. Notice, that it is God’s voice, and not ultimately Ezekiel’s that is to be spoken. A sentinel is not something I think we hear about or talk about much today. It is not typical of our everyday vocabulary. The word sentinel has a couple meanings to consider. The first is a person who acts as a sort of “look out.”[2] That is, “to watch, or to guard, as to ensure safety for others.”[3] The other meaning of the word sentinel is: “to warn people of impending judgment for their sin.”[4] When God is working through Ezekiel God expects Ezekiel to speak out, and to warn the house of Israel to turn from their ways to God’s way—the way of truth and life. And, that’s the thing about God, to truly be alive is to live in the realm of God. The world where we love our neighbor and do everything we can for our neighbor’s benefit is the world God is establishing on the earth. In this way, I believe our Ezekiel passage is just as applicable to the inward structures of our church as it is to communities beyond the structures of the Church. God’s kingdom is not just for the Church, but is meant for all the world—both people and the creation around us.

Perhaps one of the most challenges parts of our reading today is when God holds us accountable for bringing in the kingdom of heaven to earth. God warns that if God gives us a word from God’s mouth, to warn the wicked to turn from their way, and we do not warn them, God will see their blood on our hands. That’s basically a way of saying that God will be dismayed with the acts of the wicked. But, if we stand across the street as bystanders, God will be dismayed by our silence. In the Confession part of our liturgy today we confessed to God, “We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” I like it because it catches “sins of omission” and not only overt and obvious sins. That means, sins where we declined to take action, even though we had the means to stop something bad from happening.

The Fifth Commandment says, “You are never to kill.” Clearly, most of us sitting here today have not murdered someone with our own hands. However, Luther enlightens us to a further meaning of the commandment, “You are never to kill.” He says, “this commandment is violated not only when we do evil, but also when we have the opportunity to do good to our neighbors and to prevent, protect, and save them from suffering bodily harm or injury, but fail to do so.” Luther also teaches, “if you see anyone…in peril and do not save them, although you have the means and ways to do so, you have killed them. It will be of no help for you to use the excuse that you did not assist their deaths by word or deed, for you have withheld your love from them…of which their lives might have been saved.” (pause) St. Paul says, “we are to owe no one anything, except to love them.” Love is the one thing we should never hold back from others. I find here there is a certain connection that God wants us to make in that we are responsible to our neighbors. When Cain said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” it is clear that God expected him to love his brother—and not to kill him. This I think is part of what it means when the book of Ezekiel says, “but their blood I will require at your hand.” That is, we, as human beings, belong to one another. If one of us suffers, we all suffer. To unplug ourselves from loving our neighbor, we are withholding our love for them, and thereby, we are withholding God’s love for them, making their blood on our hands. Maybe not literally, but certainly figuratively.

Later on God commands Ezekiel to say, “As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.” Two points to take away from this. One is that this is God making an oath. It’s like God made us an unbreakable gift—God does not look on the downfall of the wicked with glee. Sometimes I wonder, when it comes to our own foes, if we are tempted to rejoice when bad things happen to them. This is not God’s attitude. A friend shared with me this insight from the Talmud—an oral tradition that complements the written tradition in the Jewish faith. In regard to the drowning of Pharoah and the oppressive rulers, “the angels were singing songs to God, “but the Holy One, Blessed be He, said: The work of My hands, the Egyptians, are drowning at sea, and you wish to say songs?” No, my friends, God does not want us to rejoice at the demise of anyone. For God cries, “turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?” No, it is not pleasure that God takes when sinners face the consequences of their action, but it is sadness God has.

“The wages of sin is death” takes on its full severity at the death of a sinner. But, our God has not abandoned us in our iniquity. For God so loved the world, that God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. So, when God admonishes us. When God sends prophets like Ezekiel to turn us from our ways, it comes from a compassionate heart. A heart that wants the best for us. Jesus is the mirror of the Father’s heart—gracious and kind. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. In the word and sacraments, God continually gives of God’s own self—all. No one is perfect. But, God is full of grace for us. God the Holy Spirit draws us in to God’s self, like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her brood, and there we receive the gifts of life, hope and salvation through faith, for Jesus’ sake. Apart from any of our own strivings or abilities. It is a gift.

And, so, with this grace to couch our lives in, we can now speak out for God. We can speak out for those made vulnerable by DACA. We can help politicians recognize the common humanity of the people behind the words of the law instead of seeing them as pawns in a larger game. We can speak up for those made vulnerable by these numerous current natural disasters. It is through us that God’s voice is made known. We are God’s sentinels—sent out to a world full of misery. A warning from God is not in the end rooted in condemnation, but is rooted in God’s unconditional love and compassion for us. Speaking up for others is part of God’s acts of reconciliation. It is a bringing in of the kingdom of heaven. Even the smallest thing we do matters. In Christ, we are strengthened to reconcile all the world to God’s self. Rich, middle class and poor, black, brown, and white, people of all genders, people of all sexual orientations. Through us God can fulfill God’s dream that the lion shall lie down with the lamb. And, that all will be well.

#sermons #preaching #1LWSermon

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socialismwithasmile · 8 years ago

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Just another ISO presentation

This is in the context of a multi-org anti-semitism/islamophobia solidarity event.

Hello,

I am here on behalf of the ISO. We decided to put this event together in response to the skyrocketing number of cases of both anti-Semitic and islamophobic violence that are sweeping the country. This has included A Sikh man shot in Kent Washington, a Muslim boy hung outside Seattle, four mosques burned and more than 140 bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers…

With all of that horrific shit going on it seems reasonable to ask: where is this coming from?

An easy answer seems to be the Trump Administration. Among them are those known for their islamophobic and anti-Semitic and even fascistic beliefs. Advisor to the President, Steve Bannon for example is alleged to have said that he “doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats’ and that he didn’t want [his] girls going to school with Jews” and then there is Senior Advisor Steven Miller who in university was not only personal friends with Richard Spencer but worked with notorious islamophobe David Horowitz’s Organization to design a so-called “Islamofascism Awareness Week” to be used at campuses nationwide.

With these openly racist faces in the White House the white-nationalist and neo-Nazi scum that inhabits American far right has taken note of this change in tone by prominent members of the US government and they have been crawling out of the gutters, emboldened to commit a new wave of violence.

As a recent article in Jacobin Magazine put it:

“Although the alt-right remains on the fringes in the United States, it has come within proximity to real power and is trying to position itself as court philosopher. Figures like [the neo-Nazi] Richard Spencer see themselves as the Trump movement’s organic intellectuals, guiding the president’s followers, whom they characterize as a directionless ‘body without a head’”.

It would be easy to say that these are simply new and bad actors in American politics but the roots of these problems go back a long way and are deeply embedded in the US political system.

Islamophobia has long played a dual role in the US political machine, especially since 9/11, on the one hand it functions as a tool to dehumanize Muslims abroad and justify their slaughter by US troops in Iraq, Libya , Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and further abroad while on the other hand it divides working class Americans against each other here at home allowing for a particularly perverse kind of nationalism to take root. Take for example George Bush’s comments from 2006 when he remarked:

“Since the horror of 9/11, we’ve learned a great deal about the enemy. And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations…. This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization.”

This kind of rhetoric calls to memory the words of Marxist writer and psychologist Frantz Fanon who described how in order to justify their oppression colonial overlords depict their subjects as “impervious to ethics, representing not only the absence of values but also the negation of values”

This dual form of racism is no stranger to American Jews either. In the 20s and 30s according to the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations: “A typical Jewish worker… could easily belong to a Jewish labor union and/or a mutual aid organization… send their child to a socialist… after-school program and summer camp, live in cooperative housing, attend lectures by Yiddish and socialist speakers and vote for the Socialist Party.” However, decades of anti-Semitism and McCarthyism teamed up to paint these liberatory ideas, so popular among the Jewish community, as somehow “foreign” and “un-american” and those spreading them as merely “agents of a global judeo-bolshevik conspiracy”

On top of that this idea of conspiracy doubles as a foil against critques of the capitalist system as a whole. Any systemic problems with capitalism can be easily scapegoated against Jews leaving the American ruling class off the hook for their crimes while Jews get shafted and attacked by fellow members of the working class.

While the Jewish Labor movement might no longer be a target of the mainstream political establishment, racist islamophobic ideas have since 9/11 enjoyed broad cross-the-aisle political consensus in our government. Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton for example, when asked in a presidential debate about national security went on a long rant about how American Muslims need to be on the “front lines” of the fight against “terror” and after the Pulse nightclub shooting she called for a return to the spirit of 9/12. Ironically, we might have achieved just the tenor of racist paranoia that reigned supreme after 9/11 under the Trump government.

On the policy substance while republicans might have been behind the more heinous acts of islamophobic legislation it was the democrats who organized a congressional sit-in with the goal of forcing Republicans into voting on a so called “no-fly, no-buy” gun control measure. A ban that just like Trump’s immigration order would have overwhelmingly been targeted at Muslims, many of them innocent and unrelated to terrorist groups. On top of this, while he was president Obama continued to attack and imprison innocent Muslim civilians.

Along with this consensus against so called “Political Islam” has been a consensus on neo-liberal policies that have overwhelmingly enriched the 1% at the expense of ordinary working class people. These economic policies and the fallout of the global economic recession from 2008 have caused a sustained downturn in standards of living which has led to the very political polarization that has contributed to the rise of Trump and his brand of racist populism. The thing we of course realize as Socialists, is that the problem isn’t caused by Jews running the Banks or by Evil ‘Jihadis’ swarming our shores in the guise of refugees to kill our children, but in the way that these concerns have very strategically been used to turn us against each other and our own self interests. Take for example the story of Peter a former member of the Southern Poverty Law center recognized hate group: the III% organization.

Peter might have continued to share the racist views of his compatriots if it wasn’t for an encounter with a Muslim neighbor of his, through which they became close friends. This rocked Peter’s world and he shortly afterwards dropped out of the III% militia. In the statement, he drafted after leaving he said that:

“I came to understand that … the III% Movement … had been subtly maneuvered into shifting our attention and efforts towards ensuring that… Muslims were kept in check, and that groups like Black Lives Matter were resisted. It didn’t make any sense anymore. Those people want the same things we do. Better quality of life. Less government intrusion. More justice and accountability. The only difference is the way we were going about getting those things. We should be uniting the working class and poor people across the country, not dividing along racial and religious lines. That is precisely what the rich want. They want more division. More strife in the working class.”

The general sentiment of his comments ring shockingly true. Islamophobia, more than just a tool of imperialist aggression has, just like anti-Semitism been used to turn people who benefit from unity against each other. Ultimately the same people that have inflicted the economic damage that drove Peter to stand up against the US government in the first place are the ones now carrying out imperial invasions of Muslim countries and perpetuating Islamophobic stereotypes while neo-Nazis and anti-Semites blame the whole thing on a “Jewish conspiracy”. Only through unity and solidarity with each other’s struggles can we possibly hope to overcome this dark time. We must follow in the footsteps of people like Muslim activist Tarek El-Messidi who, when he saw that a local Jewish Burial ground had been attacked raised 80,000 dollars of donations from his local Muslim community to help repair the damage. Or in the footsteps of the president of Temple Bnai Israel in Victoria Texas who gave the keys of their synagogue to the local Muslim community so that they would have a place to pray after their mosque was set on fire. Whether you are Jewish, Muslim, or none of the above, we must all hold to the truth of the classic slogan, an injury to one is an injury to all.

#iso #anti-semitism #islamophobia #presentation #me #my writing #speech #campus activism #international socialist organisation #solidarity

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ahopkins1965 · 4 years ago

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Who Wrote Genesis?

Bible / Bible Study / Topical Studies / Who Wrote Genesis?

Hope Bolinger | Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer

Monday, August 10, 2020

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Most of the authorship of Scripture goes uncontested. We can, with a high percentage of certainty say that John wrote the Gospel of John and that Joshua wrote the Book of Joshua. But what about the first book of the Bible? Who wrote Genesis?

The majority of biblical scholars have attributed the authorship of Genesis to Moses, but this has not gone without contest, especially from documentary hypothesis theorists.

Genesis, or otherwise known as Bereshith, means “in the beginning.” In other words, this book talks about the beginning of the world, the beginning of God’s nation of Israel, and the beginning of the story of salvation for all mankind.

In this article, we’ll dive into who documented the beginning events of the world, the age of the Book of Genesis, and whether we can trust this book or not.

Who Wrote Genesis?

As stated before, most scholars attribute the authorship of Genesis – and the other first four books of the Old Testament known as the Pentateuch – to Moses. But how do we know this? How do we know that Moses, and not a series of authors as proposed in the JEDP theory linked above, wrote this book?

First, as this Answers in Genesis article explains, we have documentary witnesses. This means we have verses in the Bible that attribute the authorship to him such as Numbers 33:1-2.

Second, as mentioned in the Answers in Genesis article, not only does the Pentateuch confirm Moses’ authorship, but the rest of the Bible, including the New Testament does as well. This means thousands of years of Jewish tradition would have upheld this position.

For a group that revered Scriptures so much and paid meticulous attention to the text when copying it, if Moses had not written the books, the Jewish people likely would not have held to such a strong tradition by saying he did. Furthermore, we have testimony from Jesus himself that Moses wrote these books.

But this does bring forth the question: how would Moses know all of these things? How would he know about the events of Genesis and other events that happened hundreds (even thousands) of years before his time?

First, we cannot discount supernatural revelation. Scripture was divinely inspired.

Second, we also have evidence throughout Scripture, writes Don Stewart, of tradition being passed down – from specific prayers of Abraham to the bones of Joseph. Their culture worked quite differently than ours. They remembered details better, had a stronger oral tradition, had longer attention spans. Not to mention the events of Genesis ended about 300 years before Moses came into existence. Because of the strong oral tradition and duty of the Jewish people to preserve their roots, not much could have changed in the accounts throughout that time.

What Happens in Genesis?

It’s, of course, difficult to summarize all the events that happen in Genesis. After all, the book takes up 50 whole chapters in the Bible, so we’ll briefly summarize some of the major events that take place in the book.

Genesis follows humanity through creation and humanity’s descent into sin (Genesis 3). From there, we have the well-known story of the Great Flood, and the birth of the Israelite nation through Abraham.

We follow Abraham’s generations through Joseph and how Israel ended up in Egypt due to a massive famine.

From there, and after hundreds of years of slavery, we pick up the story in Exodus.

Photo credit: Flickr/faungg's photos

How Old Is Genesis?

This question means the date of the manuscript, not of when the events inside the book took place. After all, we don’t want to dive into the New Earth vs. Old Earth debate.

Of course, this question in itself can raise a number of disputes because people have not reached an agreement as to when Moses lived on earth. But most scholars place the compilation of the book somewhere between 1445 BC or 1290 BC.

Again, this entirely depends on which Pharaoh was in place when the ten plagues swept Egypt, and scholars have not solidly placed the contender for the throne.

In either case, we know the book is about 3,000 plus years old.

Is Genesis Trustworthy?

Of all the documents in the Bible, should we hold Genesis as the most suspect? After all, depending on when Genesis 1 occurred, even by conservative estimates, this would mean that Moses wrote down the events thousands of years after they occurred.

Surely translation errors must have seeped in. And if they did not, that would have taken a great deal of divine intervention.

So how can we trust Genesis?

We can answer this question in a number of ways.

First, we can analyze extra-biblical texts such as the works of the historian Josephus. Many of his writings confirm the events in Genesis, writes Dr. Lisle for the Biblical Science Institute. Considering he wrote these books thousands of years after the events, this bolsters the support for the veracity of Genesis.

Second, as mentioned in the Biblical Science Institute article, we can also find archaeological evidence that confirms the events that happen in the Pentateuch, such as the walls of Jericho.

There also appears to be evidence (Genesis 5:1) that Moses had used other documents to compile his book, such as the genealogies. This indicates that Scripture may not have been passed down solely via oral tradition. The Israelites were proud of their history and made sure to spend meticulous efforts on getting every detail right.

In fact, we have several accounts listed in Genesis. This was essentially a divine research project and history book.

Is Genesis Literal or Mythological?

Because we have more support for a written tradition of Genesis, does this mean we take everything in the book at face-value? Do we have any mythological areas to combat, especially in Genesis 1-11?

To answer this question, we need to go to 2 Timothy 3:16. The verse states that all Scripture is God-breathed, and this includes earlier sections of Genesis.

So did God create the world in a literal six days or a symbolic six days? What about the cases where Genesis appears to be borrowing from Ancient world mythology?

We could devote entire books to these questions, but after perusing this article from Apologetics.com, which I highly suggest reading, I would love to once again mention that Jesus did assert the authority found in Genesis. Along with other documentation mentioned in the book, such as the account of Terah, the account of Noah, etc. we also have other Scripture supporting these events as true and literal.

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Nastco

Favorite Verses in Genesis

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1:27 “So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Genesis 1:31 “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.”

Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

What’s the Verdict?

Many modern scholars like to attack the authorship of Genesis. They may point out the faultiness of oral tradition or try to assert that multiple authors compiled the manuscript over centuries, borrowing from mythology of other religions.

But because we have extra-biblical support for the authorship of Genesis and because various authors throughout the Bible do attribute the Pentateuch to Moses, we can assume Moses wrote Genesis.

Genesis has sparked a great deal of debate among scientists and scholars, ranging from the literal vs. figurative days of creation to the genealogical lines.

Nevertheless, we can know that the book is God-breathed, and like many concepts in Scripture, although we may not fully understand all of it, we know enough about the book to see how it fits into God’s greater plan for humanity and salvation.

Photo credit: ©Sparrowstock

Hope Bolinger is a literary agent at C.Y.L.E. and a graduate of Taylor University's professional writing program. More than 600 of her works have been featured in various publications ranging from Writer's Digest to Keys for Kids. She has worked for various publishing companies, magazines, newspapers, and literary agencies and has edited the work of authors such as Jerry B. Jenkins and Michelle Medlock Adams. Her column "Hope's Hacks," tips and tricks to avoid writer's block, reaches 6,000+ readers weekly and is featured monthly on Cyle Young's blog. Her modern-day Daniel, Blaze, (Illuminate YA) Den (releasing July 2020), Dear Hero (releasing September 2020), and Dear Henchman (releasing 2021) Find out more about her here.

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years ago

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Missed Classic 84: The Pesach Adventure (1993)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Happy Passover! For the last five years, we have had an annual tradition of a Christmas adventure, a special one-off look at a festive game for the holiday season. I love playing and documenting these games, but the truth is that Christmas is not a holiday that my family and I celebrate in the traditional way. While I was raised with Christmas, my wife was not, and we have decided together to not make it an integral part of my son’s upbringing. We still celebrate the Yuletide with my family, but his only idea of Santa Claus comes from watching Christmas episodes on Youtube Kids.

A few years back, my wife challenged me to find and play a Jewish-themed adventure game. At the time, I didn’t realize that it was such a tall order. Jews account for only 2% of the United States population today and so naturally there is a smaller audience for games about Jewish holidays. Now that we have made it to 1993, I can finally play the first known game about a Jewish festival: The Pesach Adventure! (“Pesach” is the Hebrew name for the holiday. Fun fact: English is rare in that it uses different words for Easter and Passover; using the Hebrew name makes it clear you are referring to the Jewish holiday.) Don’t get used to annual Passover games (or Hanukkah, Purim, Sukkot, or anything else) because this is the only game about a Jewish holiday that I know of until the modern era.

If you are unfamiliar with Passover, never fear! I’ll start today with a brief overview of the holiday and its history before jumping into the game itself. If you only want to hear about the gameplay, feel free to skip it. Passover is a beautiful holiday and one of the most important in Judaism, even if it has been overshadowed in the popular culture by a certain winter present-giving holiday.

“Let my people go!” – Moses

Passover 101

Many Jewish holidays can be defined by the expression, “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!” Passover is no exception. Trying to summarize the history and traditions of the holiday in a couple of paragraphs will be difficult, but I hope you can get the flavor. I apologize in advance for any errors, omissions, or if I seem to make light of any tenets that you hold dear.

In Judaism, one of the most important stories is the Exodus from Egypt. While the book of Genesis tells of the patriarchs and the mythic underpinnings of the world, Exodus begins with the Israelites in bondage in Egypt, before revealing the story of Moses and his encounter with God, leading to the miracles that allow the Israelites to flee captivity and begin to cross the desert towards Israel. (It will take forty years and three more books– Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy– for them to reach it, but that is a story for another day.) It is difficult to explain how central this story is in Judaism. Throughout their lives, Jews are asked to think of themselves as if they have personally been delivered from Egypt. This is not only to impart a sense of gratitude, but also an obligation to help those less fortunate and lift them out of their own personal enslavements. You are likely familiar with these stories already as they include the Ten Plagues, the Golden Calf, the Ten Commandments, and the occasionally funny notion that it took 40 years to cross 150 miles of desert.

Passover celebrates the first part of that story: God reveals himself to Moses who returns to Egypt to negotiate with an unnamed (and likely ahistorical) Pharaoh for the freedom of his people. Pharoah does not let them go willingly so God sends, through Moses, a series of increasingly punishing plagues beginning with blood (the contamination of the Nile), an infestation of frogs, and then of lice. Each plague is more terrible than the one before, but still Pharaoh’s heart is hardened and he does not relent. (In fact, his own magicians duplicate the plagues, which certainly would not have made things any easier for anyone.) Eventually they reach the worst plague of all: the death of the firstborn. God commands the Israelites to mark their doors with lamb’s blood so that the death would “pass over” them. For the Egyptians, it did not matter whether you were royalty or a slave; all firstborn sons must die. This drastic measure forces the Pharaoh to relent and free the Israelites, but they must leave so quickly they do not even have time to bake bread for the journey. Once they are gone, he has a change of heart and sends the army after them all the way to the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds, or any number of other translations). In that dramatic confrontation, Moses performs his most memorable miracle as he parts the sea and permits the Israelites to cross, before drowning the Egyptians that followed. It’s not a “fun” story. Later rabbinical commentary addresses this by saying that God himself mourned the death of so many Egyptians and chastised the angels for celebrating the deaths of “His children”.

Drown like an Egyptian?

One key facet of this narrative is that the Israelites had to carry unleavened bread with them, essentially crackers which would later become known as matzah. Once they were safely on their way, God revealed Himself at Sinai and started issuing rules. Lots and lots of rules. Several of those rules included commands to remember and honor the Passover (Exodus 12:14, 13:3) as well as the “feast of the unleavened bread” (Leviticus 23:5). Once the Temple was built in Jerusalem, Passover was honored yearly through a family meal consisting of a sacrificed lamb as well as matzah and bitter herbs (maror). Eating these “foods of affliction” connected these early Jews to the original Exodus and laid the foundation of our modern Passover Seder.

Many years later (around 30 CE), these traditions were still being followed when a certain former carpenter sat down for a final meal with his friends. There is some debate whether the Christian “Last Supper” was an example of a Passover “Seder” or not. I have had some religious teachers say “yes!”, and that our traditions began even prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. Others draw a firmer line between the literal eating of a Passover meal (which would have included lamb) and the metaphorical Passover Seders that would come later. I could go on for some time, but suffice it to say that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all state that the Last Supper was a Passover meal, while John states that Passover came after Jesus’s death. I’ll leave working that out as an exercise for the reader.

After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, everything changed for Judaism. With no more Temple, there were no more sacrifices. Scholars wrestled with and codified Jewish laws and customs into several works. One of these was an early haggadah, instructions and prayers for the ritual Passover Seder, now emerging as something distinct from the previous sacrificial practice. Perhaps the most notable of these rabbinic works is the Babylonian Talmud. One of my rabbi friends called this the “New Testament of Judaism”; it is 2,711 pages of Hebrew and Aramic text that covered all aspects of Jewish life but also transformed it from a religion of literal animal sacrifices into one of metaphor that could spread throughout the world. One of the tractates (“Pesachim”) specifically deals with the traditions of Passover, the rules about leavened products (chametz), and many other customs that are still followed today.

And that is where we finally get to the modern holiday of Passover. While only the most observant still follow all of the rules to the letter, most Jewish families keep some aspects of the tradition. Prior to the holiday, a family is supposed to rid their households of chametz, bread products and things connected to them, to honor that original flight into the desert. In traditional homes, this is taken quite literally with a mad scramble to clean every crumb in the house. On the day of the holiday itself, the family gathers for a ritual meal. (Outside of Israel, for reasons that are too complicated to get into, the ritual meal is held on the first two days rather than just the first day.) Throughout the meal, the family follows a formula recorded in a haggadah which describes which prayers to give, what rituals to follow, and onward through the eating of the passover meal itself. There are many such haggadahs today, each following the same formulas but interjecting their own voice or explanations into the proceedings. At the center of the passover experience is the Seder Plate that includes all of the symbolic foods, including a shankbone to symbolize the sacrifice. During the meal, there is a point where a piece of matzah is broken and hidden for the children to find later. This is the afikoman, which will be important as we play the game, and the kids need to find it in order for the meal to end. It’s a fun activity after a long night of praying, eating, and retelling the story of the flight from Egypt.

Bob Newell circa 2016.

Building the Adventure

The story of The Pesach Adventure starts where you might expect: with a realization and a bit of free time. As we have already seen, by 1993 there was no shortage of Christmas-themed adventure games. I’ve played six of them already and am nowhere close to running out. And yet, in all this time there had never been (as much as I am aware) an adventure game about a Jewish holiday. The closest may be Game of the Maccabees (1983), an action game for the Commodore 64 and other systems which could (if you squint) be called a game about Hanukkah. In early 1993, Bob Newell, an MIT-trained electrical engineer, programmer, and interactive fiction enthusiast came to precisely the same realization. He was living in Bismarck, North Dakota at the time and as far from the center of American Jewish life as it is possible to be. And worse for him (although lucky for us), he was also ill and home sick from work for a couple of weeks with time on his hands.

Let me pause there because while we have already looked at a few tools for building “amateur” adventure games in the 1980s (most notably “The Quill”, used for A Spell of Christmas Ice, and “AdvSys” used for Elves ‘87), the state of the art by 1993 was considerably more advanced. The “Adventure Game Toolkit” (AGT) was getting long in the tooth, but newer options such as the “Text Adventure Development System” (TADS) were maturing (TADS2 was released in 1992) and “Inform” (released in 1993) was just around the corner. These systems were complete enough that a competent and professional-quality game could be written, tested, and released in weeks rather than months with little care needed by the developers to build their own engines or cross-platform compatibility. Sure, text adventures were long in the tooth already, but as Curses (1993) would soon reveal, there was still a market and a community for the next generation of interactive fiction. Newell, whether he realized it or not, was one of the pioneers in this new generation of game designers. He selected TADS2 as his environment and set out to plot and write his holiday-themed text adventure.

“Game of the Maccabees” just screams “Hanukkah”, doesn’t it?

Beginning as he was in late 1992 or early 1993, Newell had a choice of holidays to cover. Purim was the first possibility, falling that year in early March. That holiday features costumes for the kids and heavy drinking for adults (the religious commandment is to “drink on Purim until that person cannot distinguish between cursing Haman and blessing Mordechai”; Haman and Mordechai are the villain and hero of the Book of Esther respectively), but it is not a major holiday in quite the same way. Shavuot, a holiday celebrating the granting of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, fell in late May but that holiday is barely observed by all but the most religious. Passover in April, would be the ideal choice for a game both because it is celebrated even by most secular Jews, but also because it already included game elements: bedikas chametz, the search for hidden leavened products, and the seder-night search for the afikoman. Although Newell had been raised in New Jersey, he patterned his game not on his own upbringing but rather on Jewish life as presented in the works of Chaim Potok, a well-known author who beautifully (and sometimes tragically) depicted the lives of Jews living in New York.

With a plot and setting established, Newell set to work and completed the first pass of the game in an astounding two weeks, sharing it with a few “beta” testers and uploading the completed game to local BBSes in February 1993. He asked his players to share the wealth and “upload like a meshuggah!” to get it the broadest audience in time for Passover. The game was not freeware, but rather “charity-ware” where you were requested to donate $5 (around $9 in today’s world) to a tax-deductible charity of your choice. A walkthrough and teaching materials could be purchased from Newell’s company, Avi Gobbler Publishing, for the low, low price of $2 plus a self-addressed stamped envelope. Initial playtesting on the game wasn’t perfect; by his own admission he made the game too difficult for his target audience of schoolchildren. He formulated plans to expand the game for a 1994 release, but ultimately never completed the work.

“Courting Jane”, his first novel, is a Hawaiian time-travel Regency romance; several words that I never knew that I would use together in a sentence.

Newell relates that he received very little feedback on his game, except for one email from a young developer that was inspired to write interactive fiction of his own. That developer was Nathan Cull. While that name may be unfamiliar to most of you, he was an award-winning interactive fiction designer of the late 1990s. I already had an (ahem) “secret” plan to play his Frobozz Magic Support (1996) as part of an “Inspired by Infocom” series I hope to do following my Infocom marathon.

Following work on The Pesach Adventure, Newell’s career and other interests led him away from game development, although he continued to have a strong connection to Judaism as well as games in the abstract. For the former, I have to congratulate him for completing dav yomi twice! Each of those is a seven and a half-year cycle of Talmud study. In 2005, he founded The Checker Maven, a weekly newsletter devoted to checkers and draughts. In 2007, he briefly returned to gaming by creating GGZC, a front-end for playing interactive fiction on Linux. He has also studied and written about board games, Linux, Emacs, and other things. He runs a local Jane Austen society, was president of the Hawaii Chess Federation, and clearly manages to keep himself busy. After his retirement from electrical engineering, he wrote and published two novels, as well as a collection of short stories about checkers. He’s a fascinating individual and I am glad that I have been able to meet him as part of this series.

Time to play the game!

It’s educational. How hard can it be?

Playing the Game

It’s the night before Erev Pesach. Tomorrow night is Seder night, a time of year you always enjoy. You and Imma and the rest of the family have worked really hard to get the house clean- Pesach clean, Imma always calls it. You live in a good, observant home, and Abba and Imma have removed just about all of the chametz in preparation. Of course, you and your family always spend some time on this night searching the house for chametz that might have “escaped” Imma and Abba’s watchful eyes. Abba and Imma are full of tricks, and they’ve made a game out of this. It’s fun, though, and every year you look forward to this night.

Your job is to go through the house and grounds, making sure everything is in order for Pesach. You’ll need to say the right blessings, find the right objects, and remove the things that shouldn’t be kept around over Pesach. Good luck!

I don’t even finish the introduction before I start to worry: If this game is a treasure hunt, just with chametz instead of loot, I’ll be fine. But if I have to “say the right blessings”, I’ll be up a creek because frankly I don’t know them. I am less concerned that I may be called upon to make judgements about what is and is not Kosher for Passover since I am unafraid to use Google, but knowing the correct blessings may be another matter altogether.

My concern is amplified immediately because the first action of the game is to answer a trivia question asked by our Abba (father): what is the Hebrew name for the search for chametz? I have no idea so Google comes to the rescue with the term “bedikas chametz”. Fortunately, it is correct and we can start the game properly. (Insightful readers may observe that I knew this term only a couple of pages ago, but the introduction and research was done after playing the game so as to minimize spoilers.)

“Abba” is pretty much every Hebrew learner’s first word as it uses only the first two letters of the Aleph-Bet: אבא

We start the game in the dining room:

Dining Room

You are in the dining room. You can see that Imma has begun to prepare the large table for the Seder. There is a chandelier hanging over the table, and a buffet sideboard set up. Through the window, you can see into the back yard. A doorway to the south leads to the kitchen, and a doorway to the west leads to the living room.

Nu, was ?

Exploring the room, we quickly discover a flashlight under the table and a prayer book on the buffet. Inside the prayer book is a bracha (blessing) which I read for a further five points. With luck, that will be the extent of the blessings I was supposed to say. I head south to discover that the dining room is pitch black. I try to turn on the flashlight, but apparently I cannot do that because it’s too dark. What the heck? I have to head back to the dining room to turn it on before resuming my journey… to the kitchen.

Let me interrupt myself here because I did not fully realize what was going on. It initially seemed asinine that the kitchen (and every other room) would be dark and unexplorable without a flashlight. I live here! I know where the light switches are! The real life bedikas chametz isn’t just a weird type of spring cleaning, it is a “game” where the search is to be conducted by candlelight using a feather to dust the evil crumbs out of their hiding places, not to mention the deliberate bits of chametz that your parents hid around the house just to make sure you were paying attention. The fact that we have to use the flashlight makes perfect sense in that context and I suspect a player familiar with the tradition would have known that already. I’m not the target audience!

And since I interrupted my narrative once already, I’ll interrupt myself a second time to point out that the command prompt in this game is a bit strange: “Nu, was?” “Nu” is an interrogative word in Yiddish, sort of like “well?” or “so?”. I do not know what the “was” means in this case. In context it’s obviously something like “what’s next?” but I welcome any Yiddish speakers to elaborate.

Not having grown up hating matzah, I don’t mind it so much.

Kitchen

You are in the kitchen. There is a doorway leading north to the dining room, a stairway going down to the basement, and a sliding door leading east to the patio outside. There is an old refrigerator here, as well as a kitchen table, a cupboard, and a storage drawer. You can also see Imma’s stove here in the kitchen, and the big double sink. One side is for meat, the other for milk- this IS a good kosher home, you know- Imma takes pride in that.

I discover my first mini-puzzle in the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator are two boxes of matzah, one red and one blue. Reading the labels, I learn that the blue one is Kosher for Passover while the red one is not; it will have to go! But what do I do with the chametz that I find? The introduction didn’t say. I continue searching through the drawers and cupboard to locate a plastic sack; the game is kind enough to let me know immediately that it is the correct receptacle for our discoveries. There’s also a spoon in the sink, a broom in the drawer, and a nearly-empty pack of matches on the table. A pile of crumbs on the stove offers a surprising challenge, but I figure out that while I cannot sweep them directly into the sack, I can sweep them into the spoon and then dump them into the sack. I later learned that this use of the spoon (with a broom substituting for the feather) was also part of the ritual and would have been well-understood by the target audience. Even though I’ve now collected two bits of chametz, my score has not gone up any further. Am I doing something wrong?

It’s a little thing, but I love the detail that this is a traditional Kosher kitchen. A properly Kosher household would have needed two sets of nearly everything, one for preparing and serving dairy and one for preparing and serving meat. I’ve even been to homes with two dishwashers! Although I expect that many people are aware that pork and shellfish are not Kosher, those two examples make up only the tip of a huge set of rules and customs around what can be eaten when and which utensils you can use. It’s a nice detail and a reminder that interactive fiction can put you in someone else’s shoes. I’d better hurry up because Abba is already getting upset that the search is taking too long, and I’ve only explored two rooms!

Maintaining a kosher kitchen is much easier for vegetarians.

I won’t narrate every room with the same level of detail, but you can see the pattern already: as we traverse the house, we must carefully search through (and under) every object in every room to find all those little bits of chametz. Time pressure becomes the hardest part as Abba will stop the search after 100 turns. This means that I have to iterate over the house in multiple playthroughs to find everything then plot out the optimal path. More on that in a bit, but here’s what I find when I explore our household:

Beneath the kitchen is the basement with three rooms. There is an oil can at the bottom of the stairs. Off to the west is my bedroom (graham cracker crumbs!) while the furnace is to the east. Hidden in the furnace is a bag of beans. You might be surprised to learn that while beans are not leavened, it is tradition among many Jews that rice, corn, and similar foods are not kept on Passover because of the risk that they have been stored in (and contaminated by) facilities containing flour.

Outside the sliding-glass kitchen door is a patio and a small yard. A grill outside seems like a perfect place for crumbs to hide, but it is empty. Instead, I manage to nearly blow up the house by starting the gas and not being able to turn it off. Not very safe! A shed in the yard has a rusted door, but we would be poor adventurers if we didn’t know to use the oil can. Somehow there are cookie crumbs for me to clean on the lawn mower. I can also lose a point if I come back into the house without shutting the door; I end up starting over just in case that would prevent a win.

The living room is off to the west and its sofa, reclining chair, and table offer many places to search. We find cake on the table and a cracker under the sofa cushions, but there’s also a key that we can discover if we sit on our father’s favorite reclining chair. What could that be for?

The remainder of the first floor consists of a hallway leading out to a small yard and the street. Like any good Jewish household, there is a mezuzah on the front door. Heading outside, we learn that we are in Brooklyn! Other than spying a trash can outside and another chance to lose a point by not closing the door when we come back in, I discover nothing of interest.

Jewish households, even non-observant ones, often will have a mezuzah near the door.

Working our way upstairs, we find my two siblings’ rooms. My brother’s room has a locked closet containing a pile of scandalous… er… religious magazines, but he’s only using them to hide a box of cookies! Similarly, my younger sister has hidden a candybar in her bed, and not even a properly Kosher one. Into the sack for both!

In the bathroom, we find a piece of pie crust hidden in a butter dish in the shower.

The final room is my parents’ bedroom, a place where curious little ten-year olds probably shouldn’t go very often. Looking in the mirror on their dresser reveals a gum wrapper on the floor. Since the gum was packaged with flour (which we can see in the ingredients list), it is chametz and has to go!

As I stated above, all of that happened over several playthroughs because the 100-turn limit is shockingly limiting for a game that has tons of objects to “search”, “look in”, “look under”, and “move” in every room. I set myself the task of building a “script” to move around the house as efficiently as possible to collect every treasure, but even that requires a bit of cheating as we cannot read the labels or search things. I have to pick up the spoon, for example, before I look into the sink. The game knows it is there and let’s me do it, but wrecks the suspension of disbelief. Even by being as absolutely efficient as possible, it still leaves me with only a handful of turns at the end to solve the final puzzle: what am I supposed to do with this stuff once I collect it?

My first thought is to toss it in the trash outside, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to work. I end up Googling to discover that the typical ending of this ritual is to burn the chametz (usually the next morning), so I resume trying to work the grill. This is one of those embarrassing cases where the command was just “light grill”, but I spent more time that I care to admit trying to “light match”, “remove match from matchbook”, and that sort of thing. Once the grill is lit, I stick the sack on the flames and… lose.

Abba tells me that not only did I fail to find all of the chametz, I also burned something that I wasn’t supposed to. I search through every object that I found and none of them seem ambiguous as to their Kosher for Passover status. I eventually work out that it was the sack itself that I was not supposed to burn, but I can dump the contents out onto the grill easily enough. I still lose, but this time only with a message that I did not find the chametz, not that I burned something incorrectly. A little more mucking around and I realize that the sack was too full for the last couple of items. I have to modify my script to dump our findings on the grill the first time we pass as well, giving me enough room for the rest. Once I burn everything, I win!

I did it!

Winning the first part of the game advances the story to the next day. Our family has celebrated the Passover Seder and we are getting close to the end where the kids have to search for the afikoman, the special piece of matzah that a subtle adult hid during the meal. Unfortunately, this is where I become stuck as I cannot find it. My two siblings, now implemented as roving NPCs that search the house on their own, never find it either. This whole bit unfortunately feels less like an endgame puzzle and more like an incomplete part of the game. Even though it’s now Passover and the meal is nearly at its conclusion, room descriptions have not been updated and many of the explorable items from earlier in the game are broken or not present.

I give up and decide to cheat. The TADS2 development system prevents easy cheating by encoding the text, so I cannot learn anything by using a hex editor like I did playing A Christmas Adventure. With that avenue closed, I look at various paths to decompile the game or otherwise learn its secrets. I’ve been playing with a DOS executable version but eventually discover that someone archived a .GAM version of the game which would have been playable on any system with a TADS2 interpreter. With that in hand, I manage to get an old TADS2 decompiler to work and voila! I have something close to the source to the game.

I discover the issue: the afikoman is placed in a random room at the start of the endgame. The other kids move around the house randomly and you have to try to find it before they stumble on it. Unfortunately, the routine appears to have a bug where sometimes the prize can be placed in an inaccessible room. I play the game over again and this time the ending is simple as the afikoman is just sitting on the floor in my bedroom. Just by luck, I get there before the other kids and win!

I won for real!

Time Played: 3 hr 55 min

Final Rating

We’ve reached the end of our first– and likely our last– Passover special. I hope that this has been an enjoyable and educational trip. The game itself isn’t perfect, but it is well-written and provides a look at an aspect of Judaism that I was unaware of. It’s also a fantastic little slice of life about an observant Brooklyn family on one of the year’s most important holidays. Interactive fiction has the power to take us many places and I love that Newell’s game took us to a place that so few games go.

That said, for a game targeted at ten-year olds, it doesn’t quite hit the mark. Mr. Newell says as much in his release notes:

News flash: beta testing, in addition to shaking out the usual bugs, revealed that the game as it now stands is both too simple- for an adult with adventure game experience- and too hard- for children with no such experience. A new, expanded version is in the works, with a much richer story line and environment. It won’t be done in time for Pesach 5753 but we hope to have it out for Pesach 5754.

That is a great summation of how I feel about the game. Solving the timing puzzle was challenging even today and there was surprisingly little slack. A more kid-focused game might have removed the time limit or made it easier to find all of the objects, but in the end I struggled more with the traditions around an unfamiliar holiday (or rather, an unfamiliar tradition in a familiar holiday) than I did with the search or optimization. Unfortunately, Newell did not come back to the game the following year.

Before I do the numerical score, let me remind everyone that these reviews are based on an adventure game ideal that is somewhat like the world’s most perfect Monkey Island game. A low score doesn’t mean that a game is bad or unappreciated, merely far from an arbitrary (and imaginary) benchmark. Since this is a holiday game, our normal PISSED rating scale just won’t do. Rather than crack out the EGGNOG, I’ll be using our new and suspiciously-similar “MENSCH” rating system. I’m sure you’ll see how it works very quickly.

The less said about this “suspiciously similar” Hanukkah tradition, the better.

Mental Challenges and Solutions – There are only two traditional adventure puzzles in this game, but there is a lot to be said for the slow searching and the determination of what products to keep or throw away. I struggled to work out the trick with the crumbs, broom, spoon, and sack, but perhaps that would have been more understandable to the target audience. For me, the most glaring issue remains the tight timing and the necessity to plot out every action carefully. That sort of puzzle was okay in 1980 with Zork and Colossal Cave, but by 1993 there were better ideas. I also have to deduct some for the hour that I wasted trying to search in vain for the afikomen. There is a lot here that is great, but I wish Newell had come back in 1994 to strike a better balance. My score: 2.

Engagement and Objects – The TADS2 interpreter is powerful and provided a near-Infocom level of functionality with very little overhead. I was shocked how easy the code was to read and understand! That said, the game lacked a bit of polish with commands like “search room” not working anywhere except the one room where you have to use it, plus rough edges around the flashlight, using the spoon, and figuring out how to turn on the grill. I also found bugs where the game would not completely reset state when you saved/restored the game, resulting in things like the flashlight not working. My score: 2.

Narrative and Neighborhood – Newell was right: bedikas chametz is a great topic for a short kid-focused adventure game and it is nice to play with low stakes. Even so, there isn’t much of a story here and no plot progression. That said, I love the setting, the design of the house, and all of the fantastic details that Newell littered throughout the prose. The game is elevated by these inclusions and I only wish that Newell had had more time to polish. My score: 3.

Sound and Graphics – As a text adventure, we have neither sound nor graphics. Sadly, we have the usual “penalty” here. My score: 0.

Circumstances and Emotion – The “atmosphere” category in our rating system continues to bedevil me, but I love so much about the game even as it frustrates me. It feels right, like a real lived-in space by a real Jewish family. I love learning that Abba has never quite gotten around to fixing the cracks on the stairwell, or that I selected the basement room for privacy but regret the long walk to the bathroom. Newell has a talent for prose details that are in evidence here and I may check out one of his novels to see how he matured over a few decades. My score: 4.

High-Concept Text – Although I love those details, the text is sparse at times and I was let down quite a bit when the rooms were not updated for the final afikomen search. It’s difficult to let that slide when the endgame should feel like a culmination of what came before, not as an incomplete epilogue. This category also factors in NPCs, but the two siblings are not sketched in anything more than the most basic way and exhibit no individual personality, especially relative to all that we learned about them by exploring their rooms. Again, I am positive that Newell could have improved this had he continued with a 1994 version. My score: 2.

Let’s add all of those up: (2+2+3+0+4+2)/.6 = 22 points! I will grant a bonus point for being a rare and beautiful look at an Orthodox Jewish family and for reminding us that interactive fiction can take us to unexpected places.

This score fits right along with some of our other holiday-themed games such as Crisis at Christmas and Elves ‘87, both of which share some fundamentals with this game in terms of being a largely amateur (as in non-professional, not poorly made) effort and built to a deadline. I am positive that Newell could have learned from this in later games, had he chosen to do so.

I’d like to thank Mr. Newell for his patience in providing commentary and background on a game he wrote on a lark twenty-seven years ago! Several of his books are available on Amazon, including Courting Jane, a time-travel romance featuring a modern day Hawaiian man courting Jane Austin; Hanai, a retelling of Austen’s Mansfield Park in contemporary Hawaii; and a short story collection.

If you enjoyed my commentary on the holiday, you are welcome to check out my now-defunct blog, Coat of Many Colors. I spent a few years writing about bible stories, mostly in Genesis, and the posts are all still there waiting to be read. I gave it up in 2015 thanks to a lack of readership, comments from well-meaning readers that made me uncomfortable, and a newly discovered hobby writing about and researching games. Check it out.

And finally, I hope all of you are staying safe in our current worldwide health crisis. It seems the world is now divided between people that are stuck at home with too much time on their hands, and people so busy that they are unable to think or breathe. I fall into the latter category as my wife and I balance homeschooling / child care against two full time jobs that are suddenly remote, and all without resorting to excessive use of “screen time”. I count my blessings, but my writing time and energy has been significantly curtailed. I have a few things half-baked which I will try to finish, but depending on timing I may need to either delay Space Quest V or delegate it to another reviewer. Expect a few more one-off posts like this as I burn off my backlog and we’ll see how the world fares in a few weeks.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-84-the-pesach-adventure-1993/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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mrlnsfrt · 5 years ago

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God With Us

The Context

In a very brief and oversimplified manner, I would like to attempt to set the stage for the birth of Jesus. If someone who listens or reads this happens to know more about the intertestamental period or about the Greco-Roman world in which Jesus lived I would welcome your input. So I will not be giving an exhaustive description of the context for the birth of Jesus but hopefully enough of a context to help us appreciate what the birth of Jesus means.

In the Old Testament, after Solomon dies, we see Israel go from bad to worse. Solomon’s son is not a good king, and 900 years before the birth of Jesus the kingdom is divided. Jerusalem becomes the capital of Judah, the southern Kingdom, which is led by Rehoboam. Its inhabitants are the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Simeon (and some Levi). Simeon and Judah later merge.

Jeroboam leads a revolt of the northern tribes to form the Kingdom of Israel. The nine tribes that make up Israel are Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, Dan, Menasseh, Ephraim, Reuben, and Gad (and some Levi). The capital of Israel is Samaria. (source)

Occasionally there is a good king who brings the people closer to God but the majority of the kings of both Judah and Israel turn their backs on God. As god’s children rebel and place themselves outside God’s protection they are overthrown by enemies.

Israel falls to the Assyrians in 721 BCE; Judah falls to the Babylonians in 597 BCE. (ibid)

Much happens during these 400 years. Among them, the Jews go from worshiping false gods to creating new laws and adding them to God’s laws. These were the traditions of men. Well-intentioned men, who wanted to keep the people from turning away from God like they had in the past.

The Pharisees had developed a system of 613 laws, 365 negative commands, and 248 positive laws. (source)

For example, in the Mosaic Law, one of the commandments is to keep the Sabbath holy, which means that Jews were not supposed to work on Saturdays. But to clarify this, the Jewish scholars created thirty-nine separate categories of what “work” means, and within those thirty-nine categories there are many sub-categories. So to follow the rule of not working on the Sabbath, there are literally thousands of sub-rules to follow, including how many steps you can take, and how many letters you can write on the Sabbath. (source)

So the religious leaders “succeeded” in keeping the Jews from worshiping other gods, but in the process, they also managed to obscure the character of God. By this, I mean that if God were to show up in the flesh and walk among them they would not recognize Him. They misunderstood the inspired writings, the law, and the prophets, the word of God. So if the word of God, all those laws and prophecies and guidelines and directions were to be made flesh, to be lived out completely and perfectly they would not recognize it.

Meanwhile, the non-Jews, the gentiles, the people who inhabited the Greco-Roman world of the time, are turning to philosophy searching for guidance and meaning in life. The pagan religions and mythology failed to provide the people with any kind of morals and humanity was hungering for guidance and searching for a meaningful life.

The Greek gods who were essentially the same as the Roman gods were just as morally corrupt as humans. In many cases, the gods behaved in even worse ways than humans, perhaps because they could get away with it. After all, who would hold a god accountable?

The point I wish to highlight form this is that the gods and pagan religions at the time failed to provide the people with moral guidelines. Greek and Roman philosophers took upon themselves to discover the answer to life’s big questions. The problem was clear to all, death and suffering, the problem was figuring out the cause and more importantly the solution to this problem.

Looking at this from a spiritual point of view, we can see that the earth was dark due to misunderstanding God. The only way for the gloomy shadows to be dispersed, for the world to be brought back to God, was to break Satan’s deceptive power. But God would not do this by force.

I love this quote from the book The Desire of Ages.

The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. Only by love is love awakened. - The Desire of Ages p22

I believe we can all agree that to know God is to love Him. When we rightly understand who God is we can’t help but love Him with all our hearts. The best way to understand the character of God is to have it manifested in contrast to the character of Satan. However, this work could only be done by one Being in the universe. Only Jesus who knew the height and depth of the love of God could make it known.

The only way

I realize it is not politically correct to say this but the Bible is clear that Jesus is the only way for the salvation of the whole world. Look at what Paul says in Hebrews 10.

4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.

5 Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:

“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. 6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. 7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come— In the volume of the book it is written of Me— To do Your will, O God.’ ” - Hebrews 10:4-7 NKJV

In John 14:6 we read

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. - John 14:6 NKJV

And Acts 4 records the following statement.

Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” - Acts 4:12 NKJV

Keeping the law was never a means of salvation. Even the Pharisees with all their rules and interpretations and regulations could never hope to be saved by their disciplined obedience. Though the Jews had the temple and the sacrificial system, it was never a means to salvation. The temple and the sacrificial system served a pedagogical role, to teach everyone about sin and salvation. The sacrificial system made it clear that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and that for us to live someone would have to die in our place. Someone as innocent as a lamb. There’s a lot more we can learn from the sanctuary/tabernacle/temple and its service but the main point I wish to highlight is that it all pointed to Jesus. What or better who really saves us is Jesus.

For example, the Bible is great! It is the inspired word of God. But it does not save us. It serves a very important role, it points us to Jesus. The law of God, it serves a very important role, it reveals the character of God and what sin is. Once we become aware of our sin, we also realize our need for a Savior. So everything in the Bible and God’s law and the prophecies and the narratives all help us better understand God, His great love for us, His will for us, and our desperate need of Him.

The more we know God the more we fall in love with Him and our love for Him compels us to live lives that bring honor and glory to His name. Not in order to receive anything, but rather because we have received everything. As John puts it

We love Him because He first loved us. - 1 John4:19 NKJV

Jesus’ decision to come to earth was a voluntary sacrifice. Jesus could very well have remained in heaven, at the Father’s side. He might have continued to enjoy the splendor of heaven, and the worship of the angels. But Jesus to step down from the throne of the universe, that He might bring light to the benighted, and life to the perishing.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend (or overcome) it. - John 1:1-5

If Jesus had appeared with the glory that was His with the Father before the world was, we could not have endured the light of His presence. Jesus’ glory would have destroyed us. In order to be with us without destroying us, the manifestation of His glory was shrouded. Jesus’ divinity was veiled with humanity,—the invisible glory in the visible human form. God with us.

Call to Action

If Jesus was willing to leave infinite glory and honor and power in order to be with us, to reveal to us the love and character of the Father, are we willing to reveal to others the love and character of God? Are we willing to be uncomfortable in order to care for someone?

I am not just talking about giving money to someone at a street corner. I am talking about being willing to be there for someone you know when they are going through a rough time. Are you willing to sit and listen? Are you willing to invest time and attention?

Are you willing to put down the phone and connect with your family members? Put down your phone and talk to grandma? Turn off the TV and intentionally engage your baby cousin?

Are you willing to be present and connect with those around you? To connect in a meaningful way?

“Only by love is love awakened.” (The Desire of Ages p22)

You don’t need to have a lot of money in order to love. The first step in sharing the gospel is to love the person you wish to share the gospel with. You don’t have to go on a mission trip, though mission trips can be great! You can begin with your family, your neighbors, classmate, and co-workers.

Jesus came and revealed the Father. Many people around you will not open a Bible anytime soon. Their interactions with you will be the best opportunity they have to come to know God. What is the image of God we portray to those around us? You don’t need to give lengthy theological expositions. Most people are not interested in those, at least not at first. First and foremost people need to know that God loves them, then they will become interested in what God wants for them.

So my challenge for you is to reveal God to those around you. Do it as Jesus did. Jesus managed to keep the commandments and live a faithful life, and He made it attractive. I have seen people trying to live a faithful life of obedience and devotion to God and many of those people make it seem extremely unattractive. Obedience to God’s will, done right, looks a lot like Jesus. So be like Jesus, be a light shining in the dark. Reveal to others the joy of living in a close and personal relationship with Jesus.

#Christmas #Jesus #God #love

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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States Quotes

Official Website: States Quotes

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• A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi… has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for. – Thurgood Marshall • A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States. – James Madison • A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. – Plato • After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey’s prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality. – John Henrik Clarke • All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State. – Albert Camus • And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you’re as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here’s a voucher, go sign up. – Mitch Daniels • And I just think that we’re at a point in our economic life here in our state – and – and, candidly, across the country, where increased taxes is just the wrong way to go. The people of our state are not convinced that state government, county government, local government has done all they can with the money we already give them, rather than the money that we have… – Chris Christie • And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians. – Kinky Friedman • Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations. No sirree. Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state. In fact, in a leader, it’s a lethal cocktail. – Graydon Carter • As a state we are so uniquely positioned in so many ways. Our geography, our placement in the country, and our history positions us to be the state that propels energy efficiency as an industry. – Jennifer Granholm • As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states – no more, no less. – Noam Chomsky • As Commander in Chief of the United States Military, I will never send our sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters to die in a foreign land without telling the truth about why they’re going there. – Howard Dean • As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. – Arthur Conan Doyle • As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day. – Sloane Crosley • As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there. – John Donne • As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, – as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, – and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. – John Adams

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'State', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_state').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_state img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State. – Thomas Jefferson • Bravo can’t be responsible for the mental state of every single person that comes onto their network. – Bethenny Frankel • But I contend that if we’re providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn’t we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States? – Tony Campolo • But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state. – John le Carre • Canada and the United States are also working at the World Trade Organization and in our own hemisphere with negotiations for a Trade Area of the Americas to try to help countries create a positive climate for investment and trade. – Paul Cellucci • Character is the only secure foundation of the state. – Calvin Coolidge • Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity. – Rachel Cusk • Children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States. – Hillary Clinton • Church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact – religion and politics should not be mingled. – Millard Fillmore • Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states. – Demosthenes • Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. – Winston Churchill • Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It’s so different but it’s so similar to the United States, to Miami. It’s like a doppelgaenger. It’s the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans. – Henry Louis Gates • Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep. – Quentin Crisp • Deep down, the Iraqi people want the United States out. And their self-determination should be respected. – Peter Camejo • Delaware State has established itself as an institution of excellence in its own right and attracts a diversity of students from various races, socio-economic status and locations. – Michael N. Castle • Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus’ psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state. – Umberto Eco • During my travels in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Europe and all over the United States, I have seen and heard the voices of people who want change. They want the stabilization of the economy, education and healthcare for all, renewable energy and an environmental vision with an eye on generations to come. – Michael Franti • Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion. – Thomas Jefferson • Even when I’m in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do. – Ellie Goulding • Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton. – Jimmy Carter • Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn’t. – Arthur Eddington • Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents. – Thomas Jefferson • Far less wealthy industrialized countries have committed to end child poverty, while the United States is sliding backwards. We can do better. We must demand that our leaders do better. – Marian Wright Edelman • Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be “old-time gospel preaching.” This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states. – Tony Campolo • For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. – Albert Camus • For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence. – Friedrich Durrenmatt • For ‘Power of 10,’ you can look at the methodology at CBS.com, it’s a company called Rasmussen Reports. We poll thousands and thousands of people for each question, a real cross section of the United States. – Drew Carey • Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It’s agriculture. It’s golf courses. It’s domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf. – Sylvia Earle • I am Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States of America. – Al Gore • I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein, but an opponent also, of the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqi children and an opponent of the United States’ apparent desire to plunge the Middle East into a new and devastating war. – George Galloway • I am neither frustrated nor planning anything other than being the best Secretary of State I could be. – Hillary Clinton • I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled. – Millard Fillmore • I beg you to speak of Woman as you do of the Negro, speak of her as a human being, as a citizen of the United States, as a half of the people in whose hands lies the destiny of this Nation. – Susan B. Anthony • I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute – where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote – where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference – and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. – John F. Kennedy • I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. – Al Smith • I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office – and by personal conviction – I am sworn to uphold that tradition. – Lyndon B. Johnson • I believe in the separation of church and state and would not use my authority to violate this principle in any way. – Jimmy Carter • I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn’t think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him. – Jimmy Carter • I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. – Barack Obama • I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren’t some fundamentalists breathing down his neck every time he wants to establish the state of Israel, every time he wants to do justice for the Palestinian people. – Tony Campolo • I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli. – George H. W. Bush • I do think voters do take into consideration – particularly early state voters – take into consideration a wide range of factors, including electability, and they know that part of electability is the total package that you’re presenting. – Elizabeth Edwards • I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. – Rick Santorum • I don’t have any affirmations, I don’t have any of that stuff. My natural state is to look at things as possibilities and as opportunities. – Michael J. Fox • I don’t think anyone really is interested in reading about my emotional state. It’s not even interesting to me. – Larry David • I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti. – Henry Louis Gates • I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state. – Dick Van Dyke • I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late ’40’s and early ’50’s was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival. – Angela Davis • I have lived in the United States for half of my life, my entire adult life. – Sheena Easton • I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I’m getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I’m just trying not to get into that sort of state again. – Stephen Fry • I have walked majestically with kings and queens and presidents and other heads of states. – John Henrik Clarke • I mean, what’s great about touring is that’s what you do. You’re in a constant state of motion and then you stop to do a show and you move onto the next city. All you have to do is do the show. That’s the only responsibility that you have. – Margaret Cho • I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief. – Fidel Castro • I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection… and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacifick temper of the mind, which were the characteristicks of the divine Author of our blessed religion ; without an humble imitation of whose example, in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. – George Washington • I said we are going to balance an $11 billion budget deficit in a $29 billion budget, so by percentage, the largest budget deficit in America, by percentage, larger than California, larger than New York, larger than Illinois. And we’re going to balance that without raising taxes on the people of the state of New Jersey. – Chris Christie • I started this charity, Fashion for Relief, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina happened. New Orleans was actually the first place I visited in the United States. It was one of my first big jobs, a shoot for British Elle. It was April 14, 1986. – Naomi Campbell • I think Hell exists on Earth. It’s a psychological state, or it can be a physical state. People who have severe mental illness are in Hell. People who have lost a loved one are in Hell. I think there are all kinds of different hells. It’s not a place you go to after you die. – Al Franken • I think it’s fair to say that diplomacy today requires much more of that if you’re the United States of America than it did 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. – Hillary Clinton • I think the time has come for the United States to do even-handed justice. – Tony Campolo • I think the United States and the secretary of State should be concerned about the poverty in this country – people without health insurance. The United States should stop being the empire and be concerned about other countries. You’ve got to be more worried about your own people. – Hugo Chavez • I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths. – Jimmy Carter • I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories. – John Henrik Clarke • I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country’s imperialist pretensions. – Hugo Chavez • If anybody ran a business like that they would be out of business quickly, and Barack Obama’s leadership is driving this business, the United States of America, toward a fiscal cliff. – Chris Christie • If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice. – Alan Dershowitz • Illegal immigration continues to be a major problem in the United States. We have people waiting to come here legally. And we should not be rewarding people who have come here illegally. – John Barrasso • I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. – Hillary Clinton • I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli! – George H. W. Bush • In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn’t have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out. – Dick Gephardt • In fact, looking at the darkest sides of the United States has only made me appreciate the things that we do right, the things that we do beautifully. We are, for all of our mistakes and all of our crimes, a remarkable place. – Junot Diaz • In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate – and fortunately on matters of national security, he was very often in the minority. – Dick Cheney • In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. – Noam Chomsky • In short, it is the position of the people of the United States, as expressed by their representatives in Congress, that Israel’s fight is our fight. And so shall it be until the last terrorist on earth is in a cell or a cemetery. – Tom DeLay • In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497. – Warren Buffett • In the late 1990s, some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80 percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous repression, that’s international terror, and we can go on and on. – Noam Chomsky • In the United States, the government is bailing out banks, intervening in the economy, yet in Latin America, the Right continues to talk about ‘free markets.’ It’s totally outdated; they don’t have arguments; they don’t have any sense. – Hugo Chavez • In the United States, the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans. – John Henrik Clarke • In the United States, there is a restaurant called The Outback Steakhouse, and I could survive in there for several weeks at least, sustaining myself on bloomin’ onions and, I’m sure, their legitimate and very Australian cuisine. In the real Outback? I give myself about 14 minutes. – Steve Carell • In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes. – John Kenneth Galbraith • Isil poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East – including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States. – Barack Obama • It is not a question of religion, or of creed, or of party; it is a question of declaring and maintaining the great American principle of eternal separation between Church and State. – Elihu Root • It is not differences of opinion; it is geographical lines, rivers, and mountains which divide State from State, and make different nations of mankind. – Jefferson Davis • It used to be you needed to have a very large sophisticated state before you could even have a nuclear weapon… Now the technology is widespread enough. It doesn’t take very many people to be able to cobble together a devastating attack, and all it takes is one. – Dick Cheney • It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States. – Jefferson Davis • It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state. – John Kenneth Galbraith • It’s sort of well-known that anytime any catastrophe happens anywhere in the world, they can count on the United States for help. – Morgan Freeman • It’s time for the people of the Empire State to strike back. – Andrew Cuomo • I’ve been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now and I never get tired of the view. – Steve Earle • I’ve been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family. – Jeff Foxworthy • I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth. – Jimmy Carter • I’ve written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy. – Alan Dershowitz • I’ve, we have in this state, like many other states, we’re experiencing an enormous budget deficit that we’re trying to grapple with. But we will have progress despite the deficits. – Jennifer Granholm • Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. – Ulysses S. Grant • Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about. – Barney Frank • Let’s make two things clear: Isil is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Isil’s victims have been Muslim. And Isil is certainly not a state. – Barack Obama • Marriage is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which one is most likely to find solid happiness. – Benjamin Franklin • Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state. – Tony Campolo • May peace rule the universe, may peace rule in kingdoms and empires, may peace rule in states and in the lands of the potentates, may peace rule in the house of friends and may peace also rule in the house of enemies. – Virchand Gandhi • Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d’etats, assassinations. – Hugo Chavez • Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I’m sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I’m a black man in America. – Herman Cain • My experiences in film and theatre in the States have been much more rigorous-in England there’s an environment of, Let’s try this. – Kim Cattrall • My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious. – Fidel Castro • My name became known because I was, one might say accidentally the target of state repression and because so many people throughout the country and other parts of the world organized around the demand for my freedom. – Angela Davis • Nevada’s one of the most conservative states in the Union, but you can do what you want in Vegas and nobody judges you. – Drew Carey • Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies. – Don DeLillo • New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call ‘a center’ or ‘the center of the universe,’ has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision. – Junot Diaz • New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it’s a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush. – Andrew Cuomo • No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith. – Anton Chekhov • No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. – James Madison • Now, in New Jersey, we have more government workers per square mile than any state in America. But since I’ve been governor we now have fewer people on the state payroll at any time since Christie Whitman left office in January 2001. That’s the right direction, Mr. President, not the wrong direction. – Chris Christie • Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn’t just by conquest. It’s through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants. – Amy Chua • One doesn’t become a soldier in a week – it takes training, study and discipline. There is no question that the finest Army in the world is found in the United States. – Daniel Inouye • One of my goals upon becoming Secretary of State was to take diplomacy out of capitals, out of government offices, into the media, into the streets of countries. – Hillary Clinton • One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies. – Terry Eagleton • One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits – a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. – Chris Christie • Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon. – Virginia Foxx • Our educational results lag behind other states, and other nations, but worse still, behind the potential of the kids and the devoted teachers in our classrooms. – Mitch Daniels • Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • Our state is in crisis. Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution. – Chris Christie • Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up. – Jay Carney • Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image. – Charles Dickens • Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves. – Jefferson Davis • Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. – William Shakespeare • State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome. – Noam Chomsky • States are not moral agents. – Noam Chomsky • Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history. – James Madison • Surveillance technologies now available – including the monitoring of virtually all digital information – have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place. – Al Gore • Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between church and state. – James K. Polk • Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between Church and State, and that in my action as President of the United States I recognized no distinction of creeds in my appointments office. – James K. Polk • The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. – Hugo Black • The ‘anti-globalisation movement’ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power. – Noam Chomsky • The civil Government, though bereft of every thing like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State. – James Madison • The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams • The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. – Henry Clay • The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act. – Andrew Cuomo • The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community. – James A. Garfield • The divorce between church and state should be absolute. – James A. Garfield • The Drafters of the Constitution were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe. – John M Swomley • The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It’s been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going. – Al Gore • The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is. – Dick Cheney • The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state. – John Kenneth Galbraith • The Israeli military plays more than a critical role in defending the citizens of the Jewish state. It also plays an important social, scientific and psychological role in preparing its young citizens for the challenging task of being Israelis in a difficult world. – Alan Dershowitz • The most powerful recent innovation in government is when states aggressively use community colleges for retraining. In Michigan, where large numbers of workers were displaced from the manufacturing industry, we created a wildly successful program: No Worker Left Behind. – Jennifer Granholm • The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state. – James Madison • The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again. – Henry Louis Gates • The only tactic liberals have is to try to intimidate people into thinking that the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party is not a racist movement, period! If it were, why would the straw polls keep showing that the black guy is winning? That’s a rhetorical question. Let me state it: The black guy keeps winning. – Herman Cain • The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer…form the great body of the people of the United States they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws. – Andrew Jackson • The political system is broken, the economy is broken and so is society. That is why people are so depressed about the state of our country. – David Cameron • The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that’s not equity, it’s just creating a society where you can’t ask anything of people. – Jacques Delors • The problem with touring isn’t the traveling and the shows, it’s the vegetal state you get into. – Julian Casablancas • The question is what will Mitt Romney do as president if his policy is simply to be hands off and let the government be made so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. In the 21st century global economy, no state alone has the ability to compete against China. – Jennifer Granholm • The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion. – Jonathan Swift • The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who holds to the original traditions of our nation. . . . To change these traditions . . . would be harmful to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. If we look at situations which have arisen in the past in Europe and other world areas, I think we will see the reason why it is wise to hold to our early traditions. – Eleanor Roosevelt • The Sierra Club in the United States has now really come out for population control and reduction. – Susan George • The time has come to return integrity, performance and dignity to New York and make it the Empire State once again. – Andrew Cuomo • The Union next to our liberties the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union. – John C. Calhoun • The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we – in a less final, less heroic way – be willing to give of ourselves. – Ronald Reagan • The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States. – Carlos Fuentes • The United States needed a civil war to unite properly. – Umberto Eco • The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes. – Dick Cheney • The way I see it, I’m not going to Washington to be the 60th Democratic senator. I’m going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota. – Al Franken • There are 10,000 local governments in the state of New York. Ten thousand! Town, village, lighting district, water district, sewer district, a special district to count the other districts in case you missed a district. – Andrew Cuomo • There is a hunger for the United States to be present again. – Hillary Clinton • There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. – Otto von Bismarck • There’s every reason to believe there will be further attacks attempted against the United States. For us to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back because we got bin Laden that we miss the next attack would be a terrible tragedy. – Dick Cheney • There’s no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there’s been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I’ve always believed in the separation of church and state. – Jimmy Carter • There’s something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow. – Roger Ebert • To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision. – Jane Campion • To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States. – George W. Bush • Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal. – Friedrich Durrenmatt • Unfenced by law, the unmarried lover can quit a bad relationship at any time. But you – the legally married person who wants to escape doomed love – may soon discover that a significant portion of your marriage contract belongs to the State, and that it sometimes takes a very long while for the State to grant you your leave. – Elizabeth Gilbert • War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means. – Carl von Clausewitz • We believe in a flexible union of free member states who share treaties and institutions and pursue together the ideal of co-operation. To represent and promote the values of European civilisation in the world. To advance our shared interests by using our collective power to open markets. And to build a strong economic base across the whole of Europe. – David Cameron • We don’t have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets. – Alan Dershowitz • We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States. – George Washington • We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we ‘cling’ to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual – we spend less money than we take in. – Mitch Daniels • We in the United States should be all the more thankful for the freedom and religious tolerance we enjoy. And we should always remember the lessons learned from the Holocaust, in hopes we stay vigilant against such inhumanity now and in the future. – Charlie Dent • We must make it clear that a platform of ‘I hate gay men and women’ is not a way to become president of the United States. – Jimmy Carter • We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. – Gouverneur Morris • We were trying to get all of the planes down out of the sky. And we watched as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed – something no one expected and anticipated. And you could sit there and see and be aware that thousands of people were at that moment being killed as a result of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States. – Dick Cheney • We’ve gotten a long way on missile defense. We know how to do it. We know how to take down incoming warheads, but we need to do a lot more work in order to be – to deploy a system that’ll defend the United States against those kinds of limited strikes that might be possible by a nuclear armed North Korea or Iran. – Dick Cheney • What I found when I became Secretary of State was a lot of doubts and a lot of concerns and fears from friends, allies, around the world. – Hillary Clinton • What the United States has to do is send a clear message to Iran that they will not be able to develop nuclear weapons. Why endure the difficulty of sanctions if they are not going to be able to develop nuclear weapons anyway? – Alan Dershowitz • When a population saves a lot, the funds are invested outside the country as well as inside. If the Japanese invest in the United States, it pushes their exchange rate down and makes their manufacturing more competitive. – Evan Davis • When I decide who to vote for as President, I ask myself who will be best for America and for the world. An important component of my answer involves my assessment of the candidate’s willingness and ability to protect Israel’s security, since I strongly believe that a strong Israel serves the interests of the United States and of world peace. – Alan Dershowitz • When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey’s avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state’s sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment. – John Henrik Clarke • When you listen to Christian radio stations – and there are thousands of them now in the United States – and when you listen to Christian television networks – and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country – they are all politically right. – Tony Campolo • Why should a city be mandated to do something by the federal government or state government without the money to do it? – Richard M. Daley • Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan… We will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • You can go into neighborhoods in the United States where people dress a certain way because they don’t want to be out of touch, where boys wear pants down to their knees, which nobody has compelled them to do but they pick up the cultural norms, or where girls are improperly dressed by my eyes, but that’s what they see in the media. – Hillary Clinton • You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life. – Bob Dylan • You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too. – John Kenneth Galbraith [clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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equitiesstocks · 5 years ago

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States Quotes

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