Archive for the 'War & Warfare' Category



Today in History: Christians Save Western Civilization From Islam

BY PGF
1 year, 5 months ago

The Source includes quotes from observers during the era.

Precisely one hundred years after the death of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in 632 — a century which had seen the conquest of thousands of square miles of formerly Christian lands, including Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain — the scimitar of Islam found itself in the heart of Europe, facing that continent’s chief military power, the Franks.

The Muslim hordes, which reportedly numbered 80,000 men, had ravaged most of southwestern France, slaughtering and enslaving countless victims. On Oct. 10, somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, they met and clashed with 30,000 Frankish infantrymen under the leadership of Charles Martel. An anonymous medieval Arab chronicler describes the battle as follows:

[…]

Entirely consisting of wild headlong charges, the Muslim attack proved ineffective, for “the men of the north stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved, as they slew the Arab with the sword. The Austrasians [eastern Franks], vast of limb, and iron of hand, hewed on bravely in the thick of the fight,” writes one chronicler. The Franks refused to break ranks and allow successive horsemen to gallop through the gaps, which Arab cavalry tactics relied on. Instead, they tightened their ranks and, “drawn up in a band around their chief [Charles], the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts [of the foe].”

[…]

The aftermath “was, as all cavalry battles, a gory mess, strewn with thousands of wounded or dying horses, abandoned plunder, and dead and wounded Arabs. Few of the wounded were taken prisoner — given their previous record of murder and pillage.” The oldest sources give astronomical numbers of slain Muslims, with only a small fraction of slain Franks. Whatever the true numbers, significantly fewer numbers of Franks than Muslims fell in that battle. Even Arab chronicles refer to the engagement as the “Pavement of Martyrs,” suggesting that the earth was littered with Muslim corpses.

Boers, Beans, Bullets, and Bear Soup – Part 1 and 2

BY PGF
1 year, 5 months ago

At SurvivalBlog, this is an excellent two-part post. A very brief history of the Boer Wars is offered then it’s almost exclusively weapons, ammo, purposes in use, and personal firearms considerations. Great stuff, tons of data, with much to consider and debate.

Part One

Part Two

Excerpt from Part Two:

Around here, .30-06 is more common than .308 Win.  The second most popular in my neighborhood is 6.5 Creedmoor (6.5CM), then 6.5×55, and lastly a wildcat for the AR platform, the 6.5 Timberwolf. Ideally, we would be best off to standardized on .308 Winchester. Yet .30-06 is still king in these woods. It is time tested and found to be the best all around cartridge CONUS, good for mouse to moose, and the occasional Griz, because it can shoot the heaviest .308 caliber bullets with a 1:10 twist rate barrel.

The .30-06 can also punch out a flat shooting 175 grain bullet at 2,800fps with H4831sc, H4350 powder, or other similar powders. It is appreciable flatter shooting than .308 Winchester, and far flatter than .308 Winchester’s military version, 7.62×51 NATO.  Yet we do pay the price in terms of a punishing level of recoil. Therefore, my ideal long range rifle would be the 6.5×55 cartridge in a modern action capable of 60,000psi with 29 inch bull barrel attached, however that rifle is only a dream rifle.

Chasing Ghosts

BY PGF
1 year, 5 months ago
Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast by Bill Buppert

Episode 1: “Terms of Endearment”

This charter episode will discuss the intent and get started with the basics to create a framework of common understanding. This episode will discuss the National Defense Strategy, generations of warfare, civil war and the regional conflict complexes that emerge from larger wars and conflicts. Irregular warfare (IW) is rather complex and tends to be muddier, more nuanced and subject to interpretative misconceptions and we’ll lay the groundwork for understanding these in both the larger and smaller contexts.”

History, Leaders, Warfare, Weapons, Strategy, and Tactics, what’s not to like!?!

This podcast, happily, doesn’t cover current events or the news, but we gained a much greater understanding of what’s shaping up in Europe now, because of the definitions and history provided by Mr. Buppert. Americans don’t realize it yet but a regional war has already started in Europe. History books always tell you there were two sides to a war. That’s an oversimplified position based on the post-war moral view of the winner. However, Mr. Buppert’s description of regional conflict being a multiparty and rather messy affair is spot on.

If you don’t follow this podcast, though he isn’t covering current events, I suspect you will not understand the war that’s now breaking out in Europe. You must discover the modes of war in terms of the larger human interaction of conflict. Also, when whites war, for some reason beyond me, they all start fighting each other. This war will likely go “global.” If you simply follow the “news” about the fighting, you will be dumber than doing nothing at all.

Instead of writing a review, which we’re tempted to do, it’s enough to say that we enjoyed it and learned plenty, even from this simple introduction. Looking forward to the next installment. Listen to the podcast, or die in ignorance!

National Guard struggles as troops leave at faster pace

BY PGF
1 year, 5 months ago

It’s not only the Guard, as the article goes on to explain. This is all by design. They must purge the ranks of Americans and Patriots first.

Source:

Soldiers are leaving the Army National Guard at a faster rate than they are enlisting, fueling concerns that in the coming years units around the country may not meet military requirements for overseas and other deployments.

For individual states, which rely on their Guard members for a wide range of missions, it means some are falling short of their troop totals this year, while others may fare better. But the losses comes as many are facing an active hurricane season, fires in the West and continued demand for units overseas, including combat tours in Syria and training missions in Europe for nations worried about threats from Russia.

According to officials, the number of soldiers retiring or leaving the Guard each month in the past year has exceeded those coming in, for a total annual loss of about 7,500 service members. The problem is a combination of recruiting shortfalls and an increase in the number of soldiers who are opting not to reenlist when their tour is up.

The losses reflect a broader personnel predicament across the U.S. military, as all the armed services struggled this year to meet recruiting goals. And they underscore the need for sweeping reforms in how the military recruits and retains citizen soldiers and airmen who must juggle their regular full-time jobs with their military duties.

The article claims several reasons for poor recruiting and retention numbers but what the propagandists will never tell you is that the purge has now entered the middle and lower enlisted ranks. They’ll be done soon, then, if this Revolution follows typical protocol, well, you know. Sadly some ignorant “conservatives” and naive patriots will call for a draft or rebuilding, not fully grasping that what’s being done here is very real. America isn’t special, and the dirt isn’t magic.

Fed up with 4-H focus on DEI, local group forms an alternative

BY PGF
1 year, 5 months ago

Only the Revolution is sacred; all else must be subsumed.

Source:

One family in Southeast Kansas took a hard look at what was happening in the 4-H program they’d been a part of most of their lives and decided to take a stand.

Charla King, her husband Ross King, and three of their five children (two are too young) are — or rather were — very active in the Cherokee County 4-H chapter.  But disheartened by the stands the national chapter seemed to be taking, and after being roundly ignored by the national group and essentially blown off by the state organization, the Kings are starting an alternative organization.  They’re calling it “Heritage Youth of America.”

[…]

Being devout Christians as well, the Kings did a bit more digging, finding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Critical Race Theory, and other social justice issues taking prominence at the national level and scattered across the website.

The final straw, King said, was when she found out that at a 4-H camp over the summer, a biological boy was housed in a girls’ dorm.

Animal Husbandry and family and small farming are growing increasingly important. While we admire them for trying to start an organization with traditional values, staying local with trusted associates is the only way to go. You don’t need another centralized organization; you need friends with morals and skills in your immediate area.

There’s more at the Source.

Via Instapundit

Masters of Deceit: The Government’s Propaganda of Fear, Mind Control & Brain Warfare

BY PGF
1 year, 5 months ago

The Rutherford Institute

“It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That’s the way to soften up a democracy.”― J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit

The U.S. government has become a master of deceit.

It’s all documented, too.

This is a government that lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; and wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad.

Worse, this is a government that has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

With every passing day, it becomes painfully clear that this is not a government that can be trusted with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.

[…]

Just recently, for example, the Pentagon was compelled to order a sweeping review of clandestine U.S. psychological warfare operations (psy ops) conducted through social media platforms. The investigation comes in response to reports suggesting that the U.S. military has been creating bogus personas with AI-generated profile pictures and fictitious media sites on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to manipulate social media users.

Psychological warfare, as the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group explained in a recruiting video released earlier this year, enables the government to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

We’ve argued this before, but about NSA spying on foreign nationals and countries. What the DoD is doing here is legitimate in the national security interest as it stands today. The problems are not this program or the US spying on enemies or potential enemies; there are two problems with this. There is no declared war, and the DoD has been permanently funded to wartime levels for 80 years now under continuing resolutions. It’s silly to argue against this spying while funding the spies like we’re at war. Will all of this be turned against us, surely, and probably already is? But as it stands right now, this is a legitimate use of the funds allocated by Congress for this purpose. We were warned against a standing army, and congress used to have power over that.

It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from a behavioral program that tries to influence how people respond to paperwork to a government program that tries to shape the public’s views about other, more consequential matters. Thus, increasingly, governments around the world—including in the United States—are relying on “nudge units” to steer citizens in the direction the powers-that-be want them to go, while preserving the appearance of free will.

[…]

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being brainwashed—manipulated—into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward.

Read the whole thing.

Main Street v. Wall Street on ESG

BY PGF
1 year, 6 months ago

The headline is from this article. A better one would be the Reality of Real Profits v. Marxist Ideology Taking Over Wall Street.

The reality is real profits after expenses are what matters, or a business isn’t a going concern. A company must cover production costs, including salaries, and have some cash left (8 to 10 percent is the average target for an S&P 500 company) to reinvest for growth, new products, or expansion into new markets. You can’t structure a business around theoretical returns in feel-good social engineering.

In recent weeks there have been giant strides in the effort to challenge the legality of the “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) construct that has become a threatening obsession of the titans of Wall Street. Though ESG remains a unfamiliar acronym for most Americans, Main Street investors whose pension dollars are funding ESG investments are beginning to ask questions.

ESG is a social construct. The Left always projects.

While constituting competing frameworks, reporting systems, and scoring systems for environmental and social reporting for companies, the ESG construct lacks any quantifiable or worthwhile measurements. Put plainly, it is an entirely subjective scheme, created and funded by political, activists. Under the pretense of environmental protection and social diversity, these activists recognized that they had allies in the financial services and banking sectors who could be incentivized to do via the capital markets that which the activists knew they could never achieve using traditional market forces or democratic institutions. In short, voters would never agree to ruin their own economies, livelihoods and futures in the name of political ideology. To be successful, it necessarily needed to be stealthy and unchallenged.

And neither would shareholders vote to destroy real profits for green projects that have no chance of recouping investment costs, knowing that these schemes don’t make actual profits in free and open markets. By ‘traditional market forces,’ the article means, earn real money or die!

In recent travels, giant windmills stood throughout certain parts of the US west. Where is the study on ROI (Return on investment) for these hideously ugly and mostly idle steel versions of the Dutch windmills from the Middle Ages? Forget for the moment monetary ROI; the Left doesn’t care about that. Let’s talk about Kilowatt Hours of ROI. What is the breakeven for a windmill in terms of energy used to produce it vs. energy output over its installed productive years?

The things are gigantic, made from metals, with miles of wiring for each one, lubrication, transportation and installation, lifecycle maintenance, etc. At what point, having poured millions of kilowatt hours of carbon energy into its production, does a windmill pay for itself in carbon savings by kilowatt hours of energy output? We all know the answer; they take more to produce and maintain in the total lifecycle than they will ever deliver. We’re willing to be wrong about this; dear communist greenies, show us the math, please?

Therefore, if one doesn’t pay for itself in kilowatt hours of power produced, it can never pay for itself in real money!

That’s just one example under the E for Environmental. This is why the Green Energy New Deal is fake. Remember that to implement their Green New Deal completely, they’ll need you to suffer to the point where you’ll accept whatever they plan to implement if only you have enough food for your children. The S for Social is most assuredly destructive to capital investing. But we’re ranting, back to the article.

Recognizing this reality, attorneys general Jeff Landry and Todd Rokita of Louisiana and Indiana issued a letter earlier this month warning their states’ pension boards that ESG investing is likely a violation of fiduciary duty and potentially opens their investment staff and investment advisers to liability if they continue allocating funds to ESG-promoting asset managers such as BlackRock.

The Landry and Rokita letters follow another letter sent last month from them and seventeen other state AGs to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. That letter warns the asset management giant that BlackRock’s ESG investment policies appear to involve what they describe as, “rampant violations” of the sole interest rule, a well-established legal principle. The sole interest rule requires investment fiduciaries like BlackRock, to act to maximize financial returns, not to promote social or political objectives.

Yet, it is clear that BlackRock and industry counterparts are doing precisely that. They are attempting to use the ESG pretext of “protecting the environment” to re-orient trillions of dollars of their clients’ capital toward what are unquestionably their own political and social objectives. This effort is borne out in the companies in which they invest and the trends they curate and then fund. As is repeatedly touted in the literature of the most prolific ESG advocates, they believe that because their asset management partners, including BlackRock, manage such a substantial percentage of the total investment market, their ESG world view is above constraint of law, or beyond the reach of the institutions that have traditionally protected investors from dubious investment schemes.

Dubious is the exact right word. One might be able to make a contrarian investment in the E, but the S and G exist enforced by law under the runaway woke interpretations of the 13th amendment and 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s not just the most prominent corporations that are involved. Every medium or small (publicly traded in stock) corporation has to sign on to the woke S and G or get shut down by government enforcement. Meanwhile, because of the E, nobody can get funding for projects that make much-needed electricity, such as new nuclear power or natural gas plants.

America is famous for wealth extraction and not just overseas. It’s what government and businesses have been doing to West Virginia through coal for decades. The coal leaves on a train to make power for the big cities, and with it goes the profits leaving one of the most mineral-rich states in the union in poverty. Now, much of that coal goes to our self-declared enemy, China. The Left plans this same thing for Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Dakota, Louisiana, and others by destroying the oil industry.

But don’t worry, they’ll take your tax money and put up a windmill, if perchance a breeze comes along, maybe you can have an hour of electricity. I was struck by the fact that there are no substations on large farms with 50 giant windmills or more. Every coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear plant that I’ve seen has electrical substations to concentrate and route the gathered electricity on high-tension wires to population centers. I’ve even seen a solar farm with a small substation. Maybe the windmills are magic?

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

BY PGF
1 year, 6 months ago

Revelation 6.

We thought to provide a note at TCJ about Revelation 6. We’ll attempt to simplify the complex by providing a gloss to prime the pump for those coming to the proper understanding of the New Covenant during the time the Church was birthed.

Keeping in mind that Job was probably the first book of the Bible written, perhaps the horse’s earliest use was in warfare (Job 39:19-25). The horse is an article of war; it symbolizes boldness and strength in battle. See Proverbs 21:31.

The very purpose of the sword brought to bear is that you might know there is a judgment (Job 19:29).

If you get Revelation 6 wrong, you can’t understand the book, and you miss the entire point of the end of the Old Covenant and the bringing in of the New Covenant in the blood sacrifice of the Lamb.

The New Testament is about the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets in Christ, the bringing in of the New Covenant, the birth of the Church – His body, and the judgment that comes upon that first-century generation for rejecting His Law – the Word made flesh.

Odd is how the Christian and even non-Christian world accept the destruction of Solomon’s temple and the judgment upon God’s people, and Babylonian captivity. But when Messiah was rejected, the Church birthed, and the second temple was destroyed, suddenly everybody has a problem.

Well, the problem is you. Get over it; God is sovereign and does as He pleases, and no amount of eschatological wishful thinking can change the facts. Revelation chapter six is about the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century (70AD), and neither can wild-eyed obfuscatory speculation about the future change that. Is chapter 6 a foreshadowing of a future global judgment, you decide? But, we will not ignore history or the correct interpretation of Scripture.

If you don’t understand Matthew 24, neither will Revelation make much sense among its fantastic imagery, hyperbolic and parabolic language, and prophetic legal decrees. Some background material is provided here, with study resources provided in part ten. Two further short notes on the subject are here and here.

As further background, in chapter 5 of Revelation, a sealed decree of God, a verdict in judgment, is held out in the right hand of He who is, the I Am. No creature in heaven or earth was able to take the scroll and open it. But, having defeated sin, death, hell, the devil, and the grave (the kingdom of death and hell), the sinless, thrice holy, resurrected Lamb of God is worthy (Revelation 5:1-7). Chapter six contains the opening of the first six seals of this multifold decree against those of that generation who rejected Jesus Christ. It’s important to note that Jerusalem also made war on the saints. In the fifth seal, the martyrs cried for vengeance. First, seal one.

Note: The right hand is that of power in Scripture; it’s why Christ is seated at the right of Power, and the position of being seated is that of being seated in judicial judgment (Luke 22:69). Jesus resides in the courts of heaven in judicial power over the affairs of men. Contrast that with Acts 7:55-56, where Steven sees Christ standing at the right side of God. Jesus was standing, to welcome His friend and faithful servant Steven home, and not seated in judgment. Having told the Pharisees that He would henceforth be seated in judgment against them in Luke 22 when they heard Steven say that he saw Jesus standing next to God, it drove them to such madness that they gnawed on him with their teeth.

“1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. 2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.” – Revelation 6:1-2

Who or what is the white horse? The white horse we suppose to be the symbol of war, not simply battle, but good victory in just war. Some suggest that it is the opening of Rome’s war against Jerusalem. Ultimately, it’s God’s decree in heaven and carried out on earth among those nations and men in the first century. Jerusalem, greater Judea, all the land area called Israel, and surrounding areas were engulfed in the war. This section of Scripture is about the siege of Jerusalem. We think there is somewhat of a time progression shown in the horsemen as the city’s situation grew increasingly dim. Some say the bow represents the early stages of the war with standoff weapons such as the bow and catapult. But indeed, the first horse is that of standard Roman warfare techniques and tactics employed in the first century against Jerusalem.

“3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. 4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.” – Revelation 6:3-4

Jesus opens the second seal, and the horse is red. A symbol of blood and evil. This horse is the setting forth by God of the internal struggle among the “kings” and “rulers” of the “world” or land. History shows that as Rome approached and surrounded Jerusalem, terrible infighting occurred (Matthew 10:34), tribe against tribe, kingdom against kingdom, family against each other; even the Zealots turned on each other (Matthew 24:7, 10), all under the influence of devils as God allowed. See Isaiah 19:1-2 as an example of God turning kinsmen against each other as a proclamation of internal warring under His judicial review. Satanic confederacies always fall to internal strifes. Though we deserve what must be coming today, may God have mercy on Western Civilization.

Though we don’t hold this view, some suggest that this seal also represents the totality of fighting. Though Jerusalem was held by siege, the Jews fought back against Rome viciously and to significant effect in the provinces and especially in what is now North Africa.

“5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. 6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” – Revelation 6:5-6

Black is that color of distress, calamity, and specifically starvation with its attendant health problems (Lamentations 5:10) and moreover death by famine. The rationing of goods is the picture here. The equivalent of a day’s wages (Matthew 20:2, 9) would net a man only a measure to eat. There are varying opinions on what the standard (amount) was, but suffice it to say; that it was not enough to sustain more than one person and barely at that. Hyperinflation in food costs is pictured. Another example of famine is here in Ezekiel 4:16-17. Here is the Law of a Just Balance – Leviticus 19:36, supported in Proverbs 11:1, 16:11. The balance is a common symbol of equity and justice, which comes from the Bible. God is the great provider of all for all; food scarcity is the just reward for the evils of men and nations.

“7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. 8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” – Revelation 6:7-8

That Death and Hell are capitalized here in the KJV is a proper rendering. Verse 8 is the consummation of the fearful ravages of war wrought in the judgments of Holy God. So we also consider pestilence as a manner of judgment along with death by wild animals. The mind goes to the war of northern aggression in which more died from a combination of poor hygiene, lack of nutrition, and inadequate healthcare than by cannon or mini ball. Such is war, real war anyway. As to death by animals, we consider this in Bible terms to be the carcass of the unjust, now discarded, torn by animals (unclean), with no man to attend to a proper burial. It’s the treatment of the dead body of a disgraced man (or nation) in the Bible.

As an aside about verse 8: “his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” This phrase (with Revelation 20:13) points to why we coined the title: the kingdom of death and hell, which are all, spirit and man, that is opposed to the love and light and truth by Jesus Christ. We that are saved by grace, having the Spirit of God, moving and living, and having our being in Christ, are in the Kingdom of God. There are two kingdoms, and all men serve in one. By abiding in, or accepting, the kingdom of death and hell, sooner or later, it comes for its own, devouring them in their own evil designs on earth as outer darkness and eternal torment awaits, even to good men who do nothing and reject Christ.

Ezekiel 14:21 relates a concise word picture of what we find here in Revelation. The fourfold judgment is that of war, external by Rome in seal one. And seal two, internal fighting under the demonic influence indicated by the phrase “Hell following” in verse 8. This means the devils of hell were allowed by God to torment the people into fighting each other. (Have you noticed the spirit of the people in America lately?) Thirdly, famine and starvation, including uncontrolled inflation, as people sought too few goods. Fourth is the general calamity of war, including disease. The book of Revelation is not some new thing in language or typology. See Jeremiah 14:12, Ezekiel 5:12, 6:11-12 as a few examples of the tools God uses against all who break His covenants.

This section of Scripture is reasonably typical of apocalyptics representing sweeping historical events. The horsemen are not to be viewed in a historicist manner at all. These judgments are a single event in history, i.e., the destruction of Jerusalem. War is terrible; no right man would want it, nor would any right man tolerate it without rebellion for just cause.

The correct interpretation of these first four seals is that which Jesus spoke to His disciples of the desolation of Jerusalem in Matthew 24:6-8, Luke 21:5-6, 10-11.

Note that in Luke 21:12, after the ascension of Jesus but before the war, the persecution predicted by our Lord had already started, which points to the martyrs in the fifth seal; Revelation 6:9-11. The fifth seal is explained well in paragraph (2) here. It should bring great comfort to the saints of God to know that one day, all will be settled in heaven, and in earth, we win and will be vindicated in Christ. That the souls of the martyrs are under the altar indicates that they were a worthy sacrifice unto the Lord God. Are you?

The sixth seal is highly symbolic. We see the power and majesty of our God as He seeks to wreak vengeance for His saints. If you say that all the martyrs of all times are represented as under the alter, it’s not worth fussing over. That those souls in the first century were vindicated is apparent, and that all will be reckoned unto Holy God by the end of history, no believer doubts.

It’s best not to get carried away over-analyzing the symbolism in the prophetic books of Scripture. It’s easy to lose sight of the point of the book of Revelation when examining the red moon, darkened sun, dragon, colors of horses, etc. The book is the Revelation of Jesus Christ and not the revelation of any other thing at all.

Attempting to identify each horseman with any specific character or narrow historic event misses the point in spirit and method of apocalyptic literature in Scripture. If we were to know the particular interpretation of the (persons) horseman, it would be plainly explained in Scripture. God perfectly describes all specific symbolism in His holy word when it represents a particular thing or person we need to know. Revelation 1:20 is a good example, explaining the symbols in that chapter.

In first-century accounts of the siege, there’s evidence that people fled to hide in caves, piling up rocks to block the entrances. The sun was blocked out by fires burning from the Roman flaming catapult attacks, which also turned the moon red (orange). Those are two examples. Verses 13 and 14 are hyperbole bringing us to a sense of wonder at the power of God’s judicial authority over the earth. Other sections of Scripture have similar visual descriptions of the power and wrath of God. Perhaps those things have biblical significance, but it’s not a book of signs, and since they are used elsewhere but not literally, we accept the Revelation of Jesus Christ as being about Him.

Depicted in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are tools Almighty God uses in judgment against all who have forsaken His Law-word. So, by way of warning, one more time, without a national revival and returning to Him, what else could God do to America but the things depicted in both the Old Testament and the New Testament prophetic apocalyptic Scriptures? Europe is even now lining up for war and famine, diseases will follow, and death.

End notes: See Joel 1:4 and Zechariah 1:7-21, 6:1-8 as other examples using symbolism in rapidly successive multi-fold judgments of the Almighty emanating from the throne of His power in glory, each culminating as a single event in history on earth.

This Should Terrify Every American: DOJ Harasses Citizens for Exercising Their First Amendment Rights [UPDATED]

BY PGF
1 year, 6 months ago

Source:

Eagle Forum is a very small non-profit in Alabama. It only has one full-time employee and a second, part-time employee. Virtually all of its work on issues of interest to its members is done by volunteers.  It is the quintessential, uniquely American grassroots membership organization that French historian Alexis de Tocqueville lauded in Democracy in America.

As the Eagle Forum’s motion to quash the government subpoena says, one of the issues its members have been concerned over is “gender-altering medical treatment to minors” and the “permanent and adverse effects of such medical procedures on those minors.” Those serious, lifelong effects deeply concern many physicians and parents.

Members of the Eagle Forum made their worries known by doing things every American has an absolute right to do: they spoke out, made speeches, organized meetings, talked to other residents and organizations in the state, and contacted their elected state representatives. In other words, they exercised their constitutional rights to engage in “freedom of speech,” to “peaceably assemble,” and “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” They also exercised their right to associate, recognized by the Supreme Court as implicit under the Fourteenth Amendment.

None of these activities should trigger stalking by Justice Department lawyers. So how has this come about?

Earlier this year, the Alabama legislature passed the Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which became effective on May 8. It bans puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery to alter the biological sex of a minor. A huge number of left-wing advocacy organizations immediately sued the state, and the U.S. Justice Department intervened in the lawsuit, echoing their claims that the new Alabama law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Eagle Forum is not a party to the lawsuit. Yet the Justice Department has served what is referred to as a third-party subpoena on the Eagle Forum. This subpoena outrageously demands that the Eagle Forum and its members turn over all:

  • information and communications it has or engaged in over the law and any predecessor bills;
  • materials that were considered by the Forum connected to the legislation or any draft or model bills;
  • documents concerning the Forum’s “legislative or policy goals, initiatives, and/or strategies relating to medical care or treatment of transgender minors, or minors with gender dysphoria”;
  • communications with—and testimony, letters, reports, etc., sent to—state legislators or their staff; and any other government agencies and officials in Alabama over the legislation;
  • communications with any other nongovernmental organizations over the legislation;
  • internal minutes and records of meetings, polling and public opinion data, video presentations and speeches, newsletters and emails, and social media postings related to the legislation.

In other words, the Justice Department wants to turn the Eagle Forum inside out, forcing it to turn over its records on everything it does. This would let government lawyers paw through and scrutinize everything, including privileged communications and even personal discussions and communications with other private citizens and nonprofit organizations.

There an update to the story at the source. H/T Instapundit

PSA

BY PGF
1 year, 6 months ago


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