Jesus v. Jerusalem: Christ’s Indictment of Rebellion and Faithlessness - by Dr. Joel McDurmon —

Most people don’t realize that many if not most of Jesus’ parables were intended not as general morality tales, but as particular pronouncements of coming judgment and change. Jesus was warning Jerusalem to repent and to accept its new King (Jesus) or else fall under ultimate condemnation of God. In fact, much of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels pertains primarily to that pre-ad 70 crowd, and without reading it in this light, we misunderstand it. And when we misunderstand it, we misapply it.

The following section of Luke requires this understanding. The parables Jesus tells during His final journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51-20:26) almost all pertain to the rebellion, faithlessness, judgment, and coming destruction of Jerusalem….

(Full text at link below)

Not only is Jesus threatening the “faithless generation” (Luke 9:41; 11:29-32, 50-51) with “desolation” (11:17, 13:34-35; 21:20), but there is further textual correlation with Leviticus 26. Four times in Leviticus 26 God promises that if the rebellious Jews do not respond to His chastisements, He will punish them seven times more for their sins (Lev. 26:18, 21, 24, 28). In Jesus’ parable in Luke 11:26, the cast-out demon goes and finds seven more demons to return and possess the desolate house.

In announcing this seven-fold worse punishment, God phrases it this way: “I will set my face against you” (Lev. 26:17). The Greek phrase in the Old Testament Greek (called the “Septuagint” or LXX) is the same as in our turning-point passage here (Luke 9:51): Jesus “set His face” to go to Jerusalem. In Leviticus 26:17, God says His face will be set against the people. This Greek phrase eph’ humas “against you” obviously designates judgment in this context. The exact same phrase appears in the Strong Man parable: “the kingdom of God has come upon you [eph’ humas]” Luke 11:20). In the person of Jesus, the Strong Man, the kingdom had indeed come not only “upon” but literally “against” the unfaithful people.

Some people may find it difficult to believe this “binding the strong man” passage has its primary if not only interpretation in the first-century context of unbelieving Israel. But the parallel account in Matthew makes this context and application explicit. After his version of the story where the wicked spirit is cast out, Matthew records Jesus concluding with this statement:

Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation” (Matt. 12:45).

The last sentence in this verse proves the context: Jesus was applying this parable of judgment to “this generation”—the generation to whom He was speaking. And, that generation Jesus considered “evil,” and thus deserving of the judgment that was to come. He was bringing a legal declaration of desolation to come. He had truly set his face against Jerusalem.

[This essay and many more like it are available in the author’s book Jesus v. Jerusalem: Jesus’ Lawsuit Against Israel.]

Jesus v. Jerusalem: Christ's Indictment of Rebellion and Faithlessness

Education Insanity - By Walter E. Williams

The most crucial input for a child’s education cannot be provided by schools, politicians and government. As such, continued calls for more school resources will produce disappointing results as they have in the past. There are certain minimum requirements that must be met for any child to do well in school. Someone must make the youngster do his homework, ensure that he gets eight to nine hours of sleep, feed him breakfast and make sure that he behaves in school and respects the teachers. If these minimum requirements are not met, and by the way they can be met even if a family is poor, all else is for naught.

What the education establishment can do is to prevent youngsters who are alien and hostile to the educational process from making education impossible for those who are equipped to learn. That is accomplished by removing students who pose disciplinary problems, but the Barack Obama administration is even restricting a school’s power to do that. You might ask, “Williams, what are we going to do with those expelled students?” I do not know, but I do know one thing: Black people cannot afford to allow them to sabotage the education chances of everyone else.

Full text at:  https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/01/walter-e-williams/black-fathers-mothers/

Lies about the Alt Right - by Vox Day

Cathy Young blatantly lies about the etymology of the term "cuckservative". And that's just the start:

A few months ago, Trump supporters on the Internet started mocking his conservative detractors with the bizarre slur “cuckservative.” The word is an amalgam of “cuckold” and “conservative,” derived from a pornographic genre in which a man is forced to watch while his wife has sex with another man (who is often black, while the “cuckold” is white). To the white nationalist alt-right, the “cuckservative” is a conservative race traitor who does not prioritize the interests of whites — who, most important, does not seek to restrict nonwhite immigration.

As those who have read Cuckservative: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America know, the term does not derive from either pornography or race. That is a lie repeatedly bruited about by cuckservatives and others who fear the rise of the Alt Right.

This is just another attempt by fearful conservatives, who have conserved nothing, to discredit and disqualify. Their cry of "racist, anti-semite, impolite" is their hapless imitation of the SJWs' "racist, sexist, homophobic, bigot".

Conservatives are not our allies. They never were. They are surrender monkeys, and as such they are the subservient allies and handmaidens of the Left. 

And if they are afraid of the Alt Right, just wait until they encounter the Mil Right....

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/01/lies-about-alt-right.html

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/donald-trump-s-rant-against-political-correctness-is-comfort-food-to-racists-1.11391400

Charting the Crash - How Far will the Bounce Get?... - By Clive Maund

The purpose of this update is to define exactly where we are on the market clock, because if we know where we are, broadly speaking we will know where we are going.

Before going any further I want to point out that so far we have tracked this nascent market crash well, first looking for the market to cave in last Summer, in the Preparing for the Crash series, calling for the Biotech sector to plunge before Christmas in Biotech Inverse ETFs update – Perfect Entry Point for New Shorts, for China to crater at the end of December in the China update and more recently calling for a waterfall decline in the US stock market right at the start of the year in Broad US Stockmarket Still Perched Atop a Cliff

Last week the market plunged to arrive at the last ditch support level in the 1800 – 1850 zone on the S&P500 index that we had earlier defined as marking the lower boundary of the giant Head-and-Shoulders top. Once this level is breached, the full-on crash starts. Because it arrived at this support level in an even more oversold state than it was at the depths of the plunge last August, and because Smart Money has become bullish, it made it unlikely that it would break down and crash just yet, and sure enough the market has started to bounce, which means that the danger has probably abated, for now. The stabilization of the market here is expected to generate a short covering bounce, regardless of the rotten fundamentals, and as it unfolds the “reasons” for it will be presented in the mainstream financial media as “Market responds to stimulus talk” etc. The big question now is how far this bounce is likely to get, and that is what we are going to attempt to determine here, because it is crucial for the purpose of piling on short positions at the optimum juncture at the best prices in the future.

Full text at:  https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/01/clive-maund/charting-crash/

The Rise of Religious Narcissism - By Bruce W. Davidson

We live in a very neo-Romantic age, in which feelings are considered more significant than facts.  This is why a man can claim to be a woman just because he feels like one and be taken seriously, even held up as a hero, despite the obvious biological evidence to the contrary.  The Achilles heel of this mindset is that feelings often lie, especially self-centered ones.  Unfortunately, this mentality has also spilled over into the religious world, where it has given rise to self-absorbed spirituality that can best be called religious narcissism.

In Altar to an Unknown Love, Beasley remarks that this trend "has been a longstanding development of subjective religion here in America: a kind of modernized emotion-based-existentialism which subjugates everything beneath the thoughts, feelings, intentions, and imaginations of the worshipper."  The foundation for this was probably laid by the pietistic brand of Christianity that became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century in the U.S., the U.K., and Europe…..

Subsequently, this therapeutic New Age outlook has given rise to a self-centered, highly emotional brand of religion, even among Christians.  Contemporary religious writers such as John Eldredge and Sarah Young are cases in point, since both come from psychological, counseling backgrounds.  Unsurprisingly, the Jesus who mystically speaks to them sometimes sounds a lot more like a pop psychologist or a New Age guru than the Jesus of the New Testament……….

Long ago, the American theologian Jonathan Edwards discoursed at length on the problem of religious narcissism, which he considered the essence of hypocrisy.  Many others have also been convinced that the Bible prophetically warns about this type of religion in passages such as 2 Timothy 3:1-5 (NASB): "... difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy... lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness[.]"  The Apostle Paul is speaking here of the religious world, not the secular world.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/the_rise_of_religious_narcissism.html#ixzz3yHcczJe4

U.S.-China trade: National Review is the 'Buffoon,' not Trump - By Howard Richman & Raymond Richman

In one of National Review’s hit pieces against Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump (“What Trump Doesn’t Understand – It’s a lot about our Trade with China”), correspondent Kevin D. Williamson called Trump a “dangerous buffoon” because he would threaten tariffs upon China’s products and thus risk a trade war with China.  But it’s not Trump who is the buffoon on trade; it is National Review!

Trump plans to take on the huge U.S. trade deficit with the world, and especially with China.  He threatens to place upon Chinese products a tariff like the 45% tariff that China recently placed upon some U.S. cars.  Such a threat could lead to negotiations between the U.S. and China about balancing trade, and Trump wrote the book on negotiations………..

The purpose of trade is to exchange an amount of goods and services that a country considers less valuable for an amount of goods and services that it considers more valuable.  Economists are unanimous that both countries benefit when trade is balanced.

But the trade deficits that the U.S. has experienced for decades have converted the U.S. from the world’s leading creditor nation to the world’s leading debtor and have caused the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs, have reduced American power, and have retarded U.S. economic growth.

Williamson and National Review would let totalitarian China continue to expand its trade surplus with the United States and eventually replace the U.S. as the world’s premier economic and political power.  They consider their position “conservative.”

But Trump is right to seek balanced trade with China.  He could get the negotiations going by threatening to impose our Scaled Tariff.  And if the negotiations were to fail, the Scaled Tariff would balance trade regardless.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/uschina_trade_national_review_is_the_buffoon_not_trump.html#ixzz3yHP9FVOb 

  

A Soft Civil War - By Clarice Feldman

Cruz and Trump, the leading contenders on the Republican side, have their fierce defenders and detractors, though most people concede either would be preferable to the criminal serial liar or the aged Commie on the Democratic ticket. City Journal had to my way of thinking a really sound explanation for Trump’s popularity:

What rankles most among workaday white Americans is that, even as their incomes and life expectancies decline, and even as the protections promised in the Fourteenth Amendment are eviscerated in favor of new minority carve-outs, they’re accused of benefitting from “white privilege.” The rise of Ferguson’s Michael Brown and Baltimore’s Freddy Gray -- the first a thug, the second a small-time drug dealer -- as black icons of white oppression, exemplify the perversions of Obama’s America. Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, a dramatically diminished racism is asked to account for the ongoing infirmities of the inner-city underclass.

Trump is both a reaction to and expression of liberal delusions. [Arthur] Schlesinger’s fears have largely come to pass; we’ve become what he called a “quarrelsome spatter of enclaves.” Schlesinger was too much a part of the elite to imagine that the class he always thought of as representing the best of the future would come to be despised by a broad swath of Americans for its incompetence and ineffectuality. But what Schlesinger saw on the horizon seems to have arrived, with no sign of abating: we are in the midst of a soft civil war."

As if to underscore the Republicans' broad distaste and feeling of betrayal, Senate Republicans, giving up their last shot to reining in our far left president, keep confirming his wretched nominees for office.

After confirming a liberal judge to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week as their first act of 2016, Senate Republicans are prepared to confirm yet another liberal judge next week.

[snip]

On Tuesday afternoon, Republicans will vote to confirm Wilhelmina Marie Wright, a sitting member of the Minnesota state Supreme Court, to the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Just who is Ms. Wright?

Writing a short entry for the UCLA Law Review in 1990 (page 18-19 of PDF), Ms. Wright brazenly asserted that, “[T]he practice of American racism is based on two principles: the sanctity of property and the belief in the hierarchy of races

Giving voice to the many disaffected rank-and-file voters is West Virginia’s Don Surber:

This time, many conservatives just want the wall built. Trump has not always been pro-life and pro-guns, but he is now and that is what counts. He also is unapologetically politically incorrect, to the point of being rude, but being polite has not gotten conservatives a damned thing. Trump is bringing Democrats, independents and unregistered people into the party. Losing just to meet some conservative purity test is a luxury Republicans no longer can afford.

Washington conservatives -- Cable News Conservatives -- overlook the fundamental principle of conservativism, and that is giving everyone the same opportunity. America is best when she is a capitalistic society that builds railroads and industry. The idea that only career politicians are qualified to hold public office is not conservative.

But this year's election is not about conservativism or liberalism. The survival of the nation is. It's not about entitlements or foreign policy or balancing the budget. It is about protecting the borders. We are reduced to that basic an issue because Washington has failed to protect the nation from two simultaneous invasions. Trump's response to Muslim terrorism in San Bernardino led to a chorus of clucked tongues on cable TV, but the people watching at home cheered.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/a_soft_civil_war.html#ixzz3yBVFBEde
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