#and instead we got no conclusion to Jerusalem

[just-your-average-tangerine]

The moonbase theta out finale was exactly what I expected. The 'I'm sadder than you' twins has their 'I'm sadder than you' fight. Roger said something stupid that ruined the emotion of the moment. And there was absolutely no conclusion to be seen. In the series finale.

[fairuzfan]

academia is often used as the forefront of much of the violence inflicted on palestinians — for example in the library of congress, there is a collection called "the american colony of jerusalem" with racist photography and items that help visually perpetuate the "people without a land, land without a people" part of herzel's ideology, which itself is the forefront of much of zionist ideology. pointing out the systematic harm in academia is often considered "irrelevant" by zionists.... denies the origins of zionism as a political and academic ideology with physical consequences.

much of palestinian history throughout the last century has to do with erasure and silencing — that is how we got to this point. when i say no one listened to palestinians i mean NO ONE listened. they were ignored. all their demands were unreasonable. instead they get blamed for much of the world's unwillingness to listen. even my family members — i have stories of their work in academic resistance since '48. and some of them are well known contributions throughout euro-american and swana society. yet they're still ignored because of their palestinian origin.

"if you were just more reasonable" or "if you took the time to listen with compassion" or "you have to appeal to people's sense of reason" ignores the fact of the matter — this ideology's founding principals were built on "a people without a land for a land without a people." you cannot and should not ignore that. in order to complete the zionist ideology, you must remove the native population. therefore any subscribers to the idea of zionism are violent, whether they intend it or not.

and if it were true, that academia were irrelevant.... then that doesn't explain the systematic torture and imprisonment of writers and scholars, the exile of my family members who were journalists and activists, the captivity of friends for no other reason than they were deemed a threat by some list or the other.

oftentimes zionists, or zionist sympathizers, ignore our (diaspora's) material ties to the occupation and dismiss us as being "disconnected" from the "situation" in Palestine and "misunderstanding" or "misconstruing" israeli society. what am i misunderstanding exactly? that the origins of this "country" relies on violent displacement and exile? that for the past 75 years, that violence has not stopped once? that no matter what we say about the violence of zionism as an intrinsic aspect, it takes a secondary seat to the imagined realities of zionism?

therefore, anti-zionism is the logical conclusion for valuing palestinian lives. but what are the arguments against anti-zionism? that arab governments expelled jews from SWANA? do you think that's a result of anti-zionism? then you must not understand that palestinians are often treated poorly by the same governments that claim to have done this in the name of "anti-zionism," living in poverty in refugee camps, tortured and arrested, even in some cases exiled by governments. this also neglects to mention zionist collaboration with said governments to exile the jews of their lands.

so then, what?

if anti-zionism is the rejection of the settler colonial state of israel, which you must admit to be truly anti-zionist, then it is an exclamation of palestinian sovereignty and identity. so when you say anti-zionism and antisemitism are linked.... do you realize what you are implying? do you realize that zionism, the root cause of palestinian suffering, is the reason for our expulsion and displacement? so then when you write academic thinkpieces about the "complexity" of zionism, do you realize the harm you're doing? do you realize that this, in fact, is not a new or useful argument? that i've seen iterations of it for years and years? that at the core, the zionist ideology relies on this muddying of the waters for you to not do anything?

to be frank, your constant reminding of the complexity of zionism when people in palestine are suffering from the material effects of it only scream, to me, utter contempt and selfishness. zionism is violence, to me and my family. it is violence for every palestinian in this world. you must admit that to be a sincere advocate for palestinians, otherwise your words ring hollow. the present reality outweighs any possibilities.

[4ft10tvlandfangirl]

After reading your post, do you think Israel was already planning the massacre, it seems too easy they got everything ready for deployment.

With the magnitude of the response it certainly looks like they have been waiting for a reason to attack Gaza like this. The reports of Egypt warning Israel adds fuel to that fire although PM Netanyahu and his office deny receiving any such warning.

One could argue though that since Netanyahu was facing a lot of protesting and criticism before October 7th...

...that the magnitude of his response is not because he was simply waiting for a reason but to serve other purposes. He gets to try to make up for lax security on the day of the attack which many blame him for. An overcompensation if you will. He also gets to hold on to power a bit longer since leadership doesn't usually change during time of great conflict. See FDR as an example.

During the protests in Israel many reservist soldiers and young people threatened not to turn up for duty, something that would greatly affect general national security. Of course an attack like October 7th would have understandably caused many of those protesting to change their minds on that. It worked out in Bibi's favour but does that mean it was by design?

Looking into the Nakba of 1948 and comparing it to the events happening now, the similarities are too striking to ignore. History is repeating and I do think it constitutes as an ethnic cleansing and genocide. With so many of the hospitals non-operational and communications down now the death toll is no longer being counted I believe. The south of Gaza was supposed to be 'safe' but it's being bombed too and now the people of Gaza are being pushed as close to the border of Egypt as possible. There are even suggestions that countries be willing to take refugees as if the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza is a foregone conclusion and the best way forward.

As my people would say anon, it looks very plannish.

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[a-queer-seminarian]

found this wonderful essay on Facebook....the full thing is pasted below; selective bolding is mine.

(image description: the first paragraph of a facebook post by Jim Rigby from March 4 2021, pasted below. / end id)

____________

MOST AMERICAN CHRISTIANS WOULD HAVE HATED THE EARLY CHURCH

After seminary, one of the first things I did was to read the writings of the early church. By “early” I mean before the Latin creeds were written. Many, if not most, Christians are taught to believe those later creeds define what it means to be “Christian.” I wondered, “what about the centuries before that?” Why do so many in the church say Christianity is defined, not by Jesus and the early church, but by creeds and rituals developed centuries later?

The “heroes of Christianity” I was taught in seminary, like Calvin and Luther, came long much later than the early church. These latter day theologians came along after the church had stopped being persecuted. I have come to the conclusion that the church was a no longer persecuted after the Latin creeds because at that point it was no longer a threat to empire. 

The early church wasn’t persecuted by Rome because of its theology. Rome didn't care about metaphysics, it cared about dominating its citizens' minds and hearts. The early church was persecuted for political reasons, namely because it refused to participate in the violence and hoarding required to be a good citizen of an empire like Rome. By replacing the teachings of Jesus with the creeds and rituals of later Christendom, the church could avoid persecution by replacing the teachings of Jesus with abstract hypothetical assertions about God. By taking the emphasis off the radical and universal teachings of Jesus, the church was able to find a comfortable niche by playing the role of pious liturgist to the crimes of empire.

Frankly, I don’t think most American Christians would have liked the early church very much. In fact, I find myself challenged and sometimes offended by their teachings. I myself would think twice about joining the early church. For one thing, the early church demanded a radical commitment to economic justice as a price of entry.

Saint Basil the Great (b. 330 C.E.) compared those who base their idea of justice upon property rights to a man in a theatre who claims the seats next to him and will not let latecomers have them. Basil says, “That’s what the rich are like; having seized what belongs to all, they claim it as their own on the basis of having got there first.”

How many modern Christians would agree with Saint Chrysostom's words, "Those who strip others of their clothes are called "thieves." Should not those who have the power to clothe the naked but do not do so be called the same? The bread in your larder belongs to the hungry. The cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked. The shoes you allow to rot belong to the barefoot. The money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. You do injustice to every person whom you could help but do not."

Chrysostom (b. 347 C.E.) also refuted the age old excuse for wealth inequality, namely that rich people work hard and poor people do not, "Now don’t tell me that you actually work hard. If you call earning money, making business deals, and caring for your possessions “work”, I say, “No, that is not work. But alms, prayers, the protection of the injured and the like – these are genuine work.” You charge the poor with idleness; I charge you with corrupt behavior."

Most modern American Christians would also hate the early church because it renounced nationalism and the violence necessary to sustain it. Origen (b. 186 C.E.) said, “You cannot demand military service of Christians any more than you can of priests. We do not go forth as soldiers with the Emperor even if he demands this.”

I get uncomfortable when I read the early church leader Hippolytus (b. 170 C.E) saying that those entering the church must be screened for their profession to make sure they are not participating in violence against or exploitation of others, “The professions and trades of those who are going to be accepted into the community must be examined. The nature and type of each must be established… brothel, sculptors of idols, charioteer, athlete, gladiator…give it up or be rejected. A military constable must be forbidden to kill, neither may he swear; if he is not willing to follow these instructions, he must be rejected. A proconsul or magistrate who wears the purple and governs by the sword shall give it up or be rejected. Anyone taking or already baptized who wants to become a soldier shall be sent away, for he has despised God.”

It also seems to me that the early church demanded universality or internationalism as a price of entry. Tertullian (b. 160 C.E) wrote, “Shall we carry a flag? It is a rival to Christ.” St. Chrysostom said, “I am a Christian. One who answers thus has declared everything at once—their country, their profession, their family; the believer belongs to no city on earth but to the heavenly Jerusalem.”

Again, let me confess I find some of the above shocking and uncomfortable. I do not want to share everything. I want to keep my computer and my guitar. I kind of like the idea of an army protecting me, but if I am going to be honest I must also confess that the early church calls me to much more than the comfortable creeds and rituals used to define Christianity today.

It seems to me, by “Christian” the early church did not mean members of a exclusive sectarian religious cult, but people of every creed and culture who serve our one human family by choosing:

- Lives of service instead of careers of power and domination, - An economic system based on sharing fairly instead of one focused on personal wealth and success, - To be a good citizen of the whole world, not just of our own nation, - And, finally, by choosing to sing reverent hymns that consecrate us ALL to the common life instead of mindless repeating the religious creeds that divide us into sects.

[ehyeh-joshua]

God of Dragons

@greater-than-the-sword - rather than dragging your post further off-topic, I decided to finally get around to writing this up.

If you honestly want to grapple with the Bible, it becomes essential to consider our ancient scaled friend/enemy the dragon. The Scriptures leave no alternative but to declare that man walked with dinosaurs.

The Hebrew word that we translate as “dragon” is Tannin, and like all ancient Hebrew thought, is not a specific species, but a genera – to us, we categorise things by qualities – we use “pencil” and “pen” and “quill” to describe specific classes of objects; to the mindset of Biblical Hebrew, they are all the same; you write with them.

What Tannin refers to is any large, dangerous reptile, whether on land, at sea or in the air, and while it would include them, it doesn't actually mean our modern understanding of dragon, which having being split from it's roots in historical creatures, is now mythical. (although such creatures are mentioned)

In the Septuagint – the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was considered the Old Testament for the Greek-speaking early church – the word Tannin is translated by “Drakkon” which is the root for our word “dragon”.

The word Tannin is used 23 times in Scripture:(note-all the citations are quoted in full at the end, truncated here for brevity)

Singular form:

Nehemiah 2:13; Psalm 91:13; Isaiah 27:1 and 51:9; Jeremiah 51:34; Ezekiel 29:3,  Exodus 7:9, 7:10 and 7:12,  and Genesis 1:21.

Plural form:

Deuteronomy 32:33,  Job 7:12 and Job 30:29, Psalms 44:19, 74:13; and 148:7, Isaiah 13:22 Jeremiah 9:11, 10:22, 14:6, 49:33 and 51:37 and Ezekiel 32:2.

The second word we need to have in mind is Leviatan – this is the creature we think of when we think of dragon. This word is used five times in four verses:  Job 41:1, Psalm 74:14 and 104:26, and twice in Isaiah 27:1. Like Tannin, Leviatan is translated in the Septuagint by “drakkon”.

Leviatan has the longest description, having nearly a whole chapter devoted to describing it at the end of Job – this is the strongest evidence, as this is God Himself describing this creature as an example of His own power.

One of the reasons I like Dragons so much is that God has set them as a testimony to Himself.

Sadly, this is perhaps the most mistranslated word in modern English Bibles; most English Bibles insert jackals into these verses wherever the Scriptures undeniably mean literal creatures, doing so because of the wrong belief that dragons are mythical.

The thing is, Hebrew has a word that actually means jackal; it is the same as that for “fox”, and for good reason, as they are known to be able to interbreed, and are therefore the same baramin. That word is “sha’ul”.

Nehemiah 4:3 for example; 'Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!”'

He’s trying to say that despite the fact that the fox/jackal is such a small and weak animal, it could crush the walls the Jews were building; he’s insulting them. By contrast, a dragon smashing down a wall is kind of what you would expect to happen, and throughout the Prophets, the threat of dragons overwhelming a city is used to express judgement.

Compiling all these references gives us a huge amount of information about these creatures, some of it (most of it in fact) directly from God describing what we would understand as a water drake.

Firstly, that the purpose of these creatures is to give glory to God.

Secondly, it tells us that these are huge reptiles that are very dangerous; enough that the mere threat of them is enough to put a city of people to fleeing for safety – a quarter of the times Tannin is used, it is referring to this terror.

If a city got overrun with jackals, a single person could chase them out; a decent thickness stick as a club, and they scatter. A host of people working together could do it easily. They are mildly dangerous, but they have absolutely nothing on levyatan, which the Scriptures equate to Tannin. A Dragon however? An armoured, fire breathing dragon?

That is dangerous; one dragon is enough to be a risk to an entire region, they are apex predators, there is absolutely no shortage of stories of the danger dragons possess.

Now, if you had an entire city overrun by dragons? You’re not going to reclaim that. Not on the Bronze/Iron age technology possessed by Ancient Israel. Roman Ballistae might have a chance, and a Macedonian Phalanx could make a melee fight in the open stick, but I wouldn’t want to try that kind of a battle without at least trebuchet, if not cannon. And this is from a guy who knows how to solo a T-Rex; T-Rex has one primary weapon, the bite. The solution is a fuck-off amount of three feet long spikes covering your whole body, that way it can’t bite you without facing it’s own mortal peril. You could probably win with a spear, but I’d rather have the spikes.

Dragons? Fire. The accounts of dragons possessing fire-breathing capability are nearly universal, and it is far more reasonable than you might think; using the Bombardier Beetle as a baseline, to breath fire a dragon needs the reaction of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, catalysed by catalase and peroxidase; the reactants are ejected from separated storage areas into the front of the open mouth, where the reaction begins in conjunction with the rush of oxygen from heavy breathing out, causing both the reaction and the expellation of the reactants. Range could be comfortably over ten metres and still sufficient to cause burns and scalding on the victim.

Coincidentally, but rather obvious when you think about it, dragon stories generally stop after the invention of cannon, and by the 1800s, almost stop completely outside of Native American tribes.

It is therefore plain that reading the text and allowing the text to explain itself leads to the conclusion that Tannin/Levyatan are a race of immense and dangerous monsters, usually serpent-like but again not always, who’s presence is like the judgement of God, and which God Himself uses to say how awesome He is that He made them and controls their fates. Note also the contrast - the Babylonians had their gods being scared of these monsters, but right from the beginning God takes ownership of them.

The Bible tells us how these creatures lived, where they lived, their diet, their habitat, to an extent their way of life; and it exists as part of material from all over the world that shows that man and dinosaur coexisted. And if humans and dinosaurs coexisted, evolutionary beliefs about ages collapse.

----

Nehemiah 2:13;  “I went out by night by the Valley Gate to the Dragon Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.”- presumably, the Dragon spring was a well or spring that was named for a resident/visitor dragon.

Psalm 91:13; “You will tread on lion and viper; you will trample young lion and dragon.” - the point is to talk about the protection of God; the claim about jackals makes no sense, and using serpent instead has already been covered. Further, the Septuagint uses Drakkon here.

Isaiah 27:1; “In that day GOD will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent with His fierce, great, strong sword, Leviathan the twisted serpent! He will slay the dragon in the sea.” Again, entirely pointless unless it refers to either a real animal, or a mythologised version of a real animal. 

Isaiah 51:9; “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of GOD, awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not You who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?” Again, a pointless exercise if not referring to an actual event.

Jeremiah 51:34; “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me, crushed me, set me aside like an empty dish, swallowed me up like a dragon, filled his belly with my delicacies, rinsed me away.” Jackals cannot eat even a whole arm, and certainly cannot swallow a whole man as the similie depends on; whereas plenty of large carnivorous dinosaurs could.

Ezekiel 29:3, “Speak and say, thus says the LORD GOD: ‘Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh King of Egypt, the great dragon lying in his rivers, who says: “My Nile is my own—I made it for myself.” The idea is to convey that Egypt believes itself to be extremely powerful, before it is cast down in judgement.

Exodus 7:9, 7:10 and 7:12; “So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and did as Adonai had commanded. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a dragon. Then Pharaoh called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they too, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each man threw down his staff, and they became dragons. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.” Not much to say here, although the Septuagint again uses drakkon both times, instead of one of the words that means a snake.

Genesis 1:21; “And God created the great dragons and every living soul that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their nature, and every winged fowl after its nature; and God saw that it was good.” This is one of the few times the Septuagint uses keytos (whale) to translate Tannin, however, dragons are traditionally associated with the sea and sky, so it makes sense that they are created on day 5.

Plural form:

Deuteronomy 32:33: “Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.” This also informs us that some dragons were poisonous, a feature noted of certain dinosaurs, and never with jackals.

Job 7:12; “Am I a sea, or a dragon, that you set a watch over me?” Again linking dragons to the sea.

Job 30:29; “I am a brother to the dragons, & a companion to the ostriches.” By this, he is continuing his theme, and he means he is alone, ostracised from the community. Jackals however, operate in packs. 

Psalms 44:19; “Though you have broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.” Doesn’t tell us much this one, as it’s relying on the nature of tanninim to convey the situation.

Psalms 74:13; “You split open the sea by your strength; You broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.” Possibly a reference to the Flood.

Psalms 148:7; “Praise the LORD from the earth, you dragons, and all deeps:” An intriguing statement, given extra-Biblical documentation of dragon intelligence, which some sources put as near-Human.

Isaiah 13:21; “But wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will dwell, and there wild goats will dance.” while it doesn’t say dragon, it says howling creatures, Wycliffe was happy to write dragouns as his translation solely from the sound identified, and it has to be inquired why he did so if humans could not have encountered dragons to record the sound.

Isaiah 13:22; " And the wild beasts shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.” Given the reference is about animals being used as tools for judgement, it’s no surprise that dragons are mentioned.

Jeremiah 9:11; “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of dragons, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.” Again, a judgement making the city uninhabitable.

Jeremiah 10:22;  “Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.“ again, dragons used as a symbol of judgement.

Jeremiah 14:6; 2and the wild asses stood in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes failed because there was no grass.“ This gives us information about how dragons breathed, which is something very difficult to know unless you either witnessed it or heard from someone who had.

Jeremiah 49:33; “And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for ever: there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it.“ Again, using dragons as a symbol of judgement.

Jeremiah 51:37; “And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an astonishment, and a hissing, without an inhabitant.” Jeremiah again uses the presence of dragons as a judgement.

 Ezekiel 32:2 “ “Son of man, raise a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt and say to him: “You consider yourself a lion of the nations, but you are like a dragon in the seas; you burst forth in your rivers, trouble the waters with your feet, and foul their rivers.”Not much to say here.

[thessaliah]

is it true there's no fuyuki in arcade?

Fuyuki is the tutorial. I’ve been watching walkthroughs about Arcade since Merlin Proto release. I can tell you a few points:

No Da Vinci in the menus to strengthen the characters/Craft essences, instead your picked Servant (or party lead?) is always on the menu greeting you. 

There’s no playable adult Da Vinci yet, but there was a welfare version of the Fake one who clarified came from the “Second Grand Order.” 

Mash is the only Chaldea character who is on the menu (Fuyuki had no Olga, and the rest doesn’t have Roman - they do appear in the CEs of anniversary) who guides you first as a tutorial. Fou also doesn’t appear but he’s still in “loading...” 

The “story” is screen summaries before a battle and has diverged a little (Orleans pillar-I think was speculated to be Mozart. Fuyuki had no story cut in, but had Mash explain things in a tutorial way about the gameplay). 

Solomon doesn’t appear in London (but you have a mysterious black mass watching from Big Ben, so that’s likely him). 

USA chapter is the one where diversion is a big clearly obvious: Sita helps out instead of Rama and is a support, the pillar demon summoned is mixed with dragons (they actually look pretty cool!) and Proto Merlin appears to help in the last battle. 

There’s no reason not to think the villain isn’t Solomon-related, Ars Salomonis is ring is on the sky, the incineration happened, and the demon gods are the bosses of all chapters. 

For now, next chapter is going to be Jerusalem (this could change like it happened in the mobage: it was Jerusalem first then changed to Camelot).

Guda is still the Master (in case you thought could be Wodime), we get to choose female or male beforehand. This means the sabotage took place, or Team A/Team B would be there instead.

Could this be a different “storyline”? Maybe. They have the “there’s more than one Chaldea” on stage but the arcade isn’t plot heavy (understatement!). Unless Nasu wants to tie in everything and expects players follow arcade to understand the mobage story, I will be skeptical and assume is to give a more different gameplay experience and surprises. Unless Type Moon publishes the full “plot” for Arcade in a novel.... or Nasu writes it in his blog (like he did with Extella backstory...). However a few possible “connection hooks” that is being speculated by fans in Japanese twitter:

In Camelot, Bedivere said that Merlin told him the “real Chaldea” has a man called Romani Archaman leading. That’s why he opened up to us because Roman was leading us. This seemed weird at the time. I assumed meant Kirschtaria’s simulations (he had Jerusalem) but considering his high opinion on Roman, would be weird if he didn’t lead him too.

In Moonlight Lostroom, Mash and Guda thank Olga for being their leader during the Grand Order (a different sequence from Olga’s “I’m a Master” sequence)? Olga has no memories of this. Immediately after she leaves, Guda asks Mash “who was that person”? As if he never met her or forgot her (implied she likely never went to Fuyuki or she wasn’t directing Chaldea at all?), so could indicate Guda has memories of other timelines (or simulations?) while in the lostroom?

Arcade song is from Mash to Roman (her big loss after part 1 finale): “ I don’t want to let my memories with you end in sorrow. Just like you said, the conclusion can be repainted, always.”  This song was not exclusively for Arcade but Chaldea’s feelings (Mash) in the middle of their grand adventure. The song by Maaya Sakamoto wrote with Backlight and included them in the same single. Maaya got informed by Nasu about his plans for future FGO.

We all know about the simulations Kirschtaria run to bring his friends back, too. Or the “simulated worlds potentially becoming real” in Melty Blood Backalley Nightmare, and what Olga lived (as Master) and Guda too. The whole having different memories ones including Olga in part 1 and other not even recalling her so means she had little impact and was just that boss that yelled at them in the beginning for falling asleep perhaps - or maybe a timeline Marisbury was still leader of Chaldea so Olga wasn’t even there?

The dragon inclusion could mean a cooperation of Beast I and Manaka + Beast VI, that’s why Proto Merlin appears?

I still don’t think it’s necessarily plot connected, but thought to include it for you guys if you feel is important about what’s being speculated.

[eretzyisrael]

Not a year goes by without an attempt by someone to associate the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Palestinian cause. It’s particularly striking because while he lived, no one had much doubt about where he stood. Here, for example, is the late Edward Said, foremost Palestinian thinker of his day, in a 1993 interview:

With the emergence of the civil rights movement in the middle ’60s – and particularly in ’66-’67 – I was very soon turned off by Martin Luther King, who revealed himself to be a tremendous Zionist, and who always used to speak very warmly in support of Israel, particularly in ’67, after the war.

With the passage of time and memory, some have suggested that King would have supported the Palestinians, if only his life hadn’t been cut short by assassination in 1968. So argued New York Times columnist Michelle Alexander on last year’s Martin Luther King Day. Her conclusion: “If we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions.”

But as I pointed out in an essay last March, King didn’t lack opportunities to condemn Israel while he lived, during the twenty years between 1948 and 1968. Instead he praised it.

Not only that: he knew the “plight” of the Palestinians perfectly well, having visited Jordanian-held East Jerusalem in 1959, where he got a tutorial over dinner from the leading lights of Arab Palestine. Yet he never left a quote in support of any aspect of the Palestinian Arab cause.

This is a source of Palestinian frustration on every Martin Luther King Day, since supporters of Israel have their pick of King quotes that favor Israel (“an oasis of brotherhood and democracy,” in King’s words). A few years back, I myself validated the origins of one of the most contentious of these quotes: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!”

[dailyaudiobible]

09/02/2020 DAB Transcript

Ecclesiastes 1:1-3:22, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Psalms 46:1-11, Proverbs 22:15

Today is the 2nd day of September…I was gonna say July and I have no idea why because that was a while back. It’s the 2nd day of September, and here we are in a brand-new month and we’re obvious…I'm obviously trying to move into this new month, but we’re moving into some new territory along with moving into this new month. We finished the book of Job yesterday, which brings us to the book of Ecclesiastes today.

Introduction to the book of Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes is one of the more interesting books in the Bible, at least for me. Like there was a time it was my least favorite thing to read in the Scriptures because it kinda comes up across the depressing and a little hopeless and pointless and I used to not like…just…didn't reconcile well with what I had assumed life was supposed to look like. And but now it's one my favorite…one my favorite books because its brutally honest and we face some hard stuff. And Job does the same kind of thing, it just does it from a different perspective. So, to…to kinda get ourselves in the right frame of mind to enter into Ecclesiastes, the best thing that we can do is think about what would happen if you got everything you ever wanted? And you can think, “that sounds heavenly.” Like, “that sounds like what I'm after.” But imagine it. Imagine that all of the challenges of your life essentially, they kind of evaporate. So, money is no longer a problem. You checked the bank this morning and there was $100 million in your bank account, like more than you can spend and your house is paid for, your vehicles are new you, got money in the bank, your kids are doing great, they’re obeying, they're not rebellious, you can care for them, you can care for their children, you can care for their grandchildren into the future, whatever you’d like to pursue you can pursue it and when you're done with it you can be done with it and just everything, the resources for everything, the power for everything is at your disposal. So very, very few people in the world ever experience anything like that. We’re always just striving forward to…to get through or to make ends meet, or just to get a little ahead or have a little nest egg or to pursue a dream but not a lot of people can do whatever they want whenever they want with whoever they want, but the writer of Ecclesiastes who is known to be Solomon who collected and penned many of the Proverbs, he did have that ability. That was his life. So, his father, King David had gone through the establishment of the city of David, right, and making Jerusalem the capital city of Israel, and he fought many battles and he collected many treasures, but it was left to his son to build the temple of God. And we remember the story of Solomon praying to the Lord for wisdom and God saying that He would grant him wisdom and grant him long life and grant him riches and honor, and everything else. And, so, Solomon did have this. Solomon took ancient Israel to the apex of their civilization. The brief period where the wind was at their back and everything was in their favor happened under Solomon's reign and rule. And he was so wise people traveled from all over the world to hear him and to speak to him and to consult with him. He was the king. And, so, he was the supreme ruler of the land with the power of life and death. He was enormously wealthy and brought Israel into a time of immense prosperity. So, he could dream in any direction and he did. We’ll find this from the book of Ecclesiastes, but we also found this when we were reading of the story of Solomon, of his development, of the things that he built, of the things that he dreamed, of the people who came to hear him, of the alliances that he formed. So, he’s a very powerful…maybe the most powerful man in the world at this time. He also had 700 wives and 300 concubines, so 1,000 of the most beautiful women in all of the world available to him all wishing to bear a prince or a princess. And I know all of our children are princes and princesses but like for real, like to bear a royal child. So, this is a very powerful person who has been given the wisdom of God. So, you’d expect like if he gets later in life and he wants to write down the story, you’d think it would be this unbelievable adventure story, a memoir of unspeakable experiences and instead what he writes is that it's all meaningless, which just seems like such a weird conclusion to come to, but that's what he concludes, it's chasing the wind, it's all meaningless. It's almost hard to comprehend because we’re always chasing that next…that next thing. Like, if I could just achieve this then my life would be better. If I could just get or attain that then my life would be better. And, so, we…we chase these things, but we can never get to the end that, we’ll always be chasing something. So, if that's really what's going to make life better, we’ll never get there because we’ll only be chasing the next thing. Solomon gives us the perspective of somebody who got all the things, everything you could ever want he experienced. And, so, we get a look at his perspective on what it looks like to get off the wheel, basically to stop chasing and pursuing other things because they don't lead anywhere, they’re meaningless. And, so, Ecclesiastes comes to similar conclusions that Job comes to. Now Job dealt with suffering and in that context, we explored it. Solomon wasn't exploring suffering he was exploring whatever he wanted to explore. But it gives us the perspective of…man…if you do achieve it all, if you do, then you find out that it still did not fulfill you. And he concludes that only God can do that. There is no other way to fulfillment and what you have is something that you should appreciate and enjoy and see it as a gift from God and be looking at what everybody else has or whatever else you are trying to achieve because if you achieve it all you’re still not gonna be fulfilled. So, it gives us a prime opportunity to explore those pursuits and to consider what we’re trading our life for. What is promising us more that we would actually trade the days of our lives that we cannot get back that are precious? What we trading our lives for? Is it really gonna be worth it? So, Ecclesiastes is part of the wisdom literature of the Bible, which also included Job, which includes Proverbs, which includes part of the Psalms, which includes apocryphal texts, like Sirach. So, that’s kinda the genre that we’re reading and some of the territory that we’re heading into. And may we allow the Holy Spirit to come and teach us. We have Proverbs and we see all of these wise sayings, but this is deeper than that. This is an older man nearing the end of his life reflecting back on all that he's experienced and coming to certain conclusions about the way that he’s spent his own life. And may we find that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. And maybe we've been trading our lives chasing the wind. And, so, we begin. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Ecclesiastes 1, 2, and 3 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, you can kinda see what we’re talking about the book of Ecclesiastes, everything is meaningless, it's chasing the wind. And, so, let's just…for a quick second since we’ve already talked about Ecclesiastes…just…let’s look at what we read today. Solomon basically said, “look, I have done it all. I have gone as far as you can go in any number of directions and it's meaningless, it's chasing the wind because no matter what we achieve, no matter what gets accomplished, it's gonna be forgotten here upon the earth. No matter what we achieve, no matter how we accomplish, we’re no different than the animals because we all end up in the same place, which is we all experience death. And then Solomon is basically using all of the knowledge that he has upon the earth, the earth's knowledge, to say nobody knows what happens after that. Nobody can prove anything. So, it's…it's all meaningless. And, so, what's missing from the equation? What is it that makes it all meaningless? The lack of faith. Faith isn't a part of the equation of what we were talking about today. It's only faith that makes anything have meaning. And Solomon at this point in his life seems to be doing what…what you do as you kind of continue to grow and age ask the big, big questions. You kind of come to the end of what you can know and then realize it is meaningless. Without a view of eternity, without a faith view, without faith in God then really, we all do end up in the same place and everything that we've worked so hard to achieve fades away or is given to who knows. And, so, in so many ways we are, in the book of Ecclesiastes, looking at life apophatically. That's a process of subtraction to arrive at the truth instead of a process of addition. So, if you're looking cataphatically, like essentially a process of addition, you're saying, “this is like that. This is like.” Whereas if you are looking apathetically, you’ll be like, “that is not like that. This is not like that.” In so many ways what Solomon is talking about is what Jesus said, “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”

Prayer:

Father, we thank you for your word and it's disruptive on..on…in many places at many times. It's disruptive it shakes us. It…it shakes us out of our comfort zones and forces us to look at what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. And right at the outset we can see there is no purpose or meaning without a bigger view. The same kinds of things Paul is writing about in his letters, “look higher. This is a bigger story.” But it if we don't see that bigger story than all we see is the toil of our lives trying to scrape forward and achieve some sort of security and some sort of happiness that all fades away in time. There is no hope but you. And, so, we are acknowledging that and we invite your Holy Spirit as we continue into this month and into this territory that the Bible is leading us into, that you take us deep, deep to the level of our motivations, deep to what it is we’re trying to do here. Are we trying to be our own God? Be our own sovereign? Carve of our own niche? Even if we could do that we end up in the same place as everything else on this earth, which is the grave. If we have no hope beyond that it is meaningless. And, so, you are our meaning. You are our purpose, not what we can do for you. You are our hope, not what you can help us do to make life better. You are our only hope and we put our hope in you. And we ask, Holy Spirit, sweet comforter, that you come into the disruptive places and that you comfort us and that you reprioritize and reorient our posture and what we’re aiming toward in this life. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Song:

Turn Turn Turn - Anthem Lights

[Spencer Kane]

To everything - turn, turn, turn There is a season - turn, turn, turn And a time to every purpose under heaven

[Joey Stamper] To everything - turn, turn, turn There is a season - turn, turn, turn And a time to every purpose under heaven

[Caleb Grimm] A time to be born, a time to die A time to plant, a time to reap A time to kill, a time to heal A time to laugh, a time to weep

[Chad Graham] To everything - turn, turn, turn There is a season - turn, turn, turn And a time to every purpose under heaven

[Spencer Kane] A time of love, a time of hate A time of war, a time of peace A time you may embrace A time to refrain from embracing

[Joey Stamper] To everything - turn, turn, turn There is a season - turn, turn, turn And a time to every purpose under heaven

[Caleb Grimm, Spencer Kane, Joey Stamper] A time to gain, a time to lose A time to rend, a time to sow A time for love, a time for hate A time for peace, I swear it's not too late

[Chad Graham]

To everything - turn, turn, turn There is a season - turn, turn, turn

[duhragonball]

shadowjack12345 replied to your photo “Got a commission this week by the awesome FrauleinPflaume, and it...”

Nice to finally see Zatte, I always liked her - she's dangerous in a way we don't often get in DB.

Hey, thanks, that means a lot to me.    Also, this is all the prompting I need to try to explain how I came up with the character.   Spoilers under the cut.

The thing that held me up early on was that I couldn’t decide if Luffa’s “career” in the past should be long or short.   I used the Bardock: Father of Goku TV special as a model of a “short” Luffa arc.    You have this character who’s only mentioned in passing (by Raditz), and the TV special fleshes him out and kills him off in the space of an hour.   Then he wakes up in the past in the 2011 “Episode of Bardock” Special, if you want to count that.    On some level, I imagined it could be possible to give Luffa a really quick run in her native era, and then send her to the future to join the TIme Patrol, like the Bardock specials.   

I worked on Chapter 126 and 127 today, so I think it’s clear that I did not go down that route.   I knew the alternative would be to really flesh out the character, having her go through multiple adventures like Goku in Dragon Ball.   That meant I had to come up with extra stuff for her to do.   The simple fact is that I really enjoyed writing the character, and I wanted to take the long road, so that later on, when she refers to her past exploits, there would be some weight to them.   

So I worked on coming up with stuff for her to do in between major plot points.   I thought about giving her some love interests, since we’d never seen a Saiyan character jump from one relationship to another, like Spider-Man in the 70′s.   At some point, I thought it might be interesting to have her run into an old flame, someone who knew her before she went Super.   

The problem with that was that when we first meet Luffa, she’s only 19 years old, and she’s been married to Kandai for about a year.    And she’s been living on the Dorlun colony for about five years.    I say this like someone else foisted this problem on me, but I’m the one who came up with all that stuff, to better amplifly the tragedy she experiences before turning Super Saiyan.   This isn’t some seasoned veteran who’s been all over the universe, loving and leaving ‘em from one planet to the next.     She’s young and inexperienced and isolated in a very small community.    

But I still liked the idea, and I hadn’t published Chapters 1-10 yet, so I still had a lot of room to set things up for later.   I realized the only way this would work would be if the “old flame” was a Dorlun who had admired Luffa from afar.    And that led me to Captain Mesas, the leader of the Dorlun militia.  

Mesas originally served only one purpose, which was to be a sort of proxy who could represent the entire Dorlun colony that Luffa had been hired to defend.   I assigned her gender at random, I think.    I just know that I didn’t put a ton of thought into it, since I was planning to kill all of the Dorluns off later anyway.   Luffa would take this personally, because she came to appreciate these people without really admitting it, and this would be demonstrated by her respect for Mesas, who was their lead warrior, and thus the most Saiyan-like of the bunch.   Eventually, I renamed her Captain Zatte, because I had settled on naming all the Dorlun characters after anagrams of metric prefixes, i.e. “zetta”.  

So I quickly came to the conclusion that the only way this “reunited with an old flame” idea would work would be if it was a Dorlun, and the only one that would make any sense would have to be Zatte, and the only way that could work would be if there was some sort of romantic tension between them.    They couldn’t be lovers in those early chapters because Luffa was married at the time, but later, there would need to be a moment where Zatte would confess her feelings and Luffa would have to feel the same way.   

And this is how I ended up making Luffa bisexual.    I didn’t want Zatte to be a man, and I couldn’t make Luffa gay, because I needed her to start out in a marriage to a Saiyan man.   Too much of the plot depended upon that.   I struggled with this decision for a couple of reasons.   

First, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, and I didn’t know if I wanted this story to be my first try, because I was already trying to do a lot of other new tricks.   I didn’t want real-world wlw’s to see this story and be disappointed by my amateurish attempt to get it right.    

Second, I felt disingenuous about making such a major change to the character for my own convenience.    I felt like I’d seen that a lot in comic books over the years, where writers would seemingly assign bisexuality to characters arbitrarily, or for “shock” value, or just to be salacious.  I didn’t want readers to think I was only doing this for shallow reasons, or to get my jollies writing two girls making out.  

But at the same time, I really wanted to do it this way, and I finally decided to just go with it and see where it took me.   In hindsight, I realize that I was just being a fraidy cat about the whole thing.   Writing wlw romance isn’t so functionally different from mlw romance, and once I got used to the idea, I realized the only thing I needed to do was to treat it with the proper respect.    And really, this wasn’t so far off from the original premise.    I wanted to make the “Legendary Super Saiyan” a woman to defy convention and to piss off dudebros.    Making her queer just continues that same line of reasoning, right?   I used to see jackasses on the internet say that women couldn’t turn Super Saiyan because they couldn’t “get angry enough,” which is pretty similar to a lot of biphobic crap I’ve heard on the internet.    I mean, I used to listen to Loveline on the radio around 2001, and Dr. Drew was acting like bisexuality was some made-up thing.    Apparently Dr. Drew went nuts somewhere along the way, or maybe he always was, but he seemed pretty progressive in 2001, and he accepted gay and lesbian callers just fine, but he told bi callers to “figure out what they want”, and that never sat right with me.   People used to say there were no such things as black swans, too.    That’s Luffa all over.     You can deny her all you want, but she’ll still kick your ass.  

I’m this close to going off on a rant about J.K. Rowling, so let me try to force myself to talk about Zatte here.    The problem I ran into almost immediately was that I wrote what I had originally planned for her, and I was very pleased with how it turned out.  And then I had to move on to the next arc, and yet, she was still there, and I knew I’d have to do something with her.    I feel like I’ve been winging it ever since, but my main priority was to set her apart from Keda, the other Dorlun character I kept around.  So I ran with the idea that Zatte is more “Saiyan-like” than the rest of her species, and maybe that makes her a little radical at times, maybe not in a way we humans might notice, but a way that other Dorluns would find unsettling.   Dorluns are survivalists, and for them “risk” is a four-letter word, but Zatte’s a thrillseeker at heart.   She wants to survive in spite of the dangers rather than back away from them.    Keda would find somewhere to hide for several months until it’s safe to come out, but Zatte would try to go all Die Hard on a situation.   Keda sticks close to Luffa because Luffa is the strongest person in the universe, so by Luffa’s side is arguably the safest place to be.    Zatte sticks close to Luffa because she’s a furry being by Luffa’s side is arguably the most dangerous place to be.    If she can survive there, she can survive anywhere.  

There’s also the whole fanaticism angle.   At some point, I came up with the idea that Zatte sees Luffa’s Super Saiyan emergence as a watershed moment in history.     I sort of threw that together, mostly to make Luffa uncomfortable and to add some tension to their relationship, but it also distinguishes Zatte from characters like Chi-Chi or Bulma, who see Super Saiyan as a lot of flashy nonsense, signifying nothing.    “Punk rocker?   Don’t you understand?   Your son is a miracle!”

That angle is kind of hard for me to work with, because I also tried to make Zatte very grounded at the same time.    I guess it’s like if you had Jerusalem Syndrome but you were very self-aware the entire time.   You make a toga out of your hotel linens and just constantly saying “Man, I’m just being really nutty right now, but oh well.”

A lot of her tactics are sort of rooted in stuff I thought made sense with the weaker characters in Dragon Ball.   I don’t really know how strong Zatte would be.    I envisioned her as being like a “mere mortal”, like Lois Lane, but in Dragon World even guys like Mr. Satan are insanely tough.   I’m pretty sure Bulma could kick Brock Lesnar’s ass if she visited our own world.   He’d F5 her and she’d just get up and slap him in the face and he’d collapse.    I feel like if Zatte entered the 23rd Budokai, she could sweep the entire thing.   That’s not what I set out to do, and it sounds really arrogant because I’d be putting her over Goku and Piccolo, but come on, that’s low-tier by DBZ standards.   If she couldn’t dominate the 23rd Budokai, then definitely the 22nd, which also sounds unthinkable, but that’s how this crazy show works.   Yajirobe could have won the 22nd Budokai if he’d only thought to enter it.   

My point is that “weaker” characters can do a lot from the sidelines if they know their limits and pick their spots, like Tien using the Kikoho on Cell and Super Buu, or Yajirobe cutting off Vegeta’s tail, and so forth.    Most of those guys hate resorting to that sort of thing, because they prefer to stand and fight in the open, but Zatte specializes in sneaky hit-and-run attacks.   She should be able to shoot ki blasts, but she sticks to firearms instead, because they’re more precise and ki senses can’t pick them up.  She likes being underestimated, to the point where her ideal battle is one where the enemy doesn’t even know she’s on the field.  

I dunno, I’ve always wondered if I was getting her “right” all this time, but now that I summarize it all in one place, it doesn’t seem as disjointed as I feared.   I had all these different things I needed her to be and do, and most of them involved finding ways to justify her continued presence in the story, but maybe it’s all worked out after all.   Sometimes I feel like Zatte is the Yoko Ono of this fic, but the Beatles suck, so I shouldn’t indulge in their crude analogies.    I Zatted my way into this mess, and I’m happy to Zatte my way out.    

[tessatechaitea]

Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child

Darkseid pees out of his eyes.

"It's 2020 and Frank Miller is still doing 'Not' jokes" is the only review of this comic book you probably need.

The Joker and Darkseid are cumming in their pants over the engagement in the election cycle. I guess people who want to stop terrible politicians from making the country a living hell for a vast number of the population are simply falling into their trap! Stupid people who want a better world! Can't they see that the only way to defeat The Joker and Darkseid is to disengage from the circus of election cycles and simply live their own life without any concern for others? Doesn't the electorate know the best life to live is the life that leads to Ayn Randian defenses of their own selfish needs? Just shut up and take what they give you, you dumb fucks. I should probably finish reading this story before I continue to jump from conclusion to conclusion about Frank Miller's point. His ultimate point might simply be that the children will save us all! Or that it doesn't matter if the children change the world or not because the adults will all be dead by then so who fucking cares? Supergirl Lara confronts Darkseid by blasting him with her heat vision. He dies multiple times or something but doesn't somehow. He applauds her rage the way bad guys always do and then calmly sits down to tell all of the children a story. He's going to be sensible and rational which means it will be the truth, I think. Obviously if you have any emotional attachment to your beliefs, they're garbage beliefs. Until you can squeeze all of the humanity out of yourself, the things you believe won't hold up in rational debate! So divest yourself of your rage, children! It will only make you more logical and intellectually stronger! But also divest yourself of your joy and your despair and your other emotions I can't think of! There must be more, right? While Darkseid is distracted regaling everybody with his tale of the anti-life equation, Superboy sneaks up behind him and takes over his Omega Effect. He turns it back on Darkseid and Darkseid disintegrates into non-existence. Unless he was transported back in time. I don't really know how his eyeball lasers work. Darkseid doesn't stay dead for long. He returns as the Omega God, as the end of everything, as the final death of everything on Earth.

But maybe later, I guess?

Batwoman beats up some Jokers and shuts down Trump's ability to broadcast to Gotham. It makes Darkseid angry enough to return for some reason. Probably a metaphorical reason. Or an analogical reason. I think maybe my attention span is seriously slipping! And right when I'm getting to the part that's probably going to explain what the fuck is going on in this comic book. Superboy destroys Darkseid by calling him an old fart. Also maybe a little bit by blasting him with a new super power: neutron vision! Darkseid has now had his powers stripped so far back that a human bouncing a rock off of his head makes him bleed. But still he thinks, "I will manipulate these fools with my lofty words!" But then Greta Thunberg clenches her fist at him and Batwoman says, "You have no power here! We're thinking for ourselves now!" And then that's the end somehow. Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child Rating: I can't comprehend what I just read. Maybe the point was that we shouldn't comprehend what other people want us to comprehend? Maybe it was an anti-propaganda story? Maybe it was just terrible writing pretending to be art? It's so hard to tell because it's trying so hard to be complex! Is it's complexity real or a facade? I can't tell! Maybe I should stick to easier things to understand, like James Joyce's Finnegans Wake or Alan Moore's 1300 page novel, Jerusalem, which I finished. Maybe that's Frank Miller's problem. Maybe he just didn't have enough pages to really get to the point he was trying to make. But then if he did have more pages, how many would he waste by simply repeating the same things over and over again? For those of you who haven't read this (or Superman: Year One), he does that a lot. Not in the good way that Tom King and Gertrude Stein repeat themselves. Just in a way that makes you think, "I got it! Superboy is right in Darkseid's brain." Maybe that's a poor example from this comic book because repeating that over and over works to show how painful Superboy's presence in Darkseid's brain is. But I assure you there were many other examples that I can't make excuses for. I just can't be bothered to dig back through the comic book to find them.

[berniesrevolution]

On the list of America’s irrational fears, Palestine is near the top. This is no small feat for a “country” with no actual territory and a population about the size of South Carolina. Despite its lack of an air force, navy, or any real army to speak of, Palestine has long been considered an existential threat to Israel, a nuclear-armed power with one of the most powerful militaries in the world and the full backing of the United States. Since there’s no military or economic justification for this threat, a more nebulous one had to be invented. Thus, Palestinians are depicted in the media as hot-blooded terrorists, driven by the twin passions of fanatical Islam and a seething hatred for Western culture. So engrained is this belief that the op-ed page of the New York Times can “grapple with questions of [Palestinian] rights” by advocating openly for apartheid, forced expulsion, or worse.

This worldview demands an Olympian feat of mental gymnastics. It can only be maintained so long as most Americans have no firsthand contact with Palestine or Palestinian people. Even the smallest act of cultural exchange is enough to make us start questioning the panic-laced myths we’ve been taught since birth.  

Of course, the best way to discover the truth about Palestine is to visit the country yourself, though most Americans don’t have the free time or financial resources to do so (this is not a coincidence). This means that those of us who are fortunate enough to visit have a responsibility to share what we’ve seen and heard, without lapsing into pre-fabricated narratives, even “sympathetic” ones. We can’t fight untruth by telling untruths from the opposite perspective. What we can do, however, is report what we saw and heard in Palestine. We can try to provide a snapshot of daily life and let people come to their own conclusions.

With this in mind, here’s what I learned during a recent trip to the Holy Land…

The Palestinian doorman of the Palm Hostel in Jerusalem is a large and friendly man who insists his name is Mike. My fiancée and I are skeptical, as we’d expected something a bit more Arabic. We ask him what his friends call him.

“Just Mike,” he says, and taps an L&M cigarette against the wooden desk. He’s sitting in a dark alcove with rough stone floors, nestled halfway up the staircase that leads from the fruit market to the Palm’s small arched doorway.  A pleasant, musty oldness floats in the air. You could imagine Indiana Jones staying here, if he’d lost tenure and gone broke for some reason. To Westerners like us, it seems too exotic to have a doorman named Mike.

Before we can ask him again, though, Mike pounces with a question of his own. “You’re from the States, right?” He speaks English with a thick accent and slow but almost flawless diction, an odd combination that is causing my fiancée some visible confusion, which seems amusing to Mike. I tell him that we’re from Minnesota, a small and boring place in the center-north of the USA. His grin gets bigger, which makes me self-conscious, so I also explain that Minnesota has no mountains or sea, and the winters are very cold.

“Yeah, I know,” says Mike. “I lived in El Paso for thirty years. Border cop, K9 unit. It was a nice place. Had a couple kids there.” Now it’s my turn to gawk, and I start to race through all the possible scams he might be trying to pull. Mike seems to guess what I’m thinking. “Really. I even learned some Spanish.” He scrunches his brow in mock concentration and clamps a hairy hand over his forehead. “Hola. ¿Como estás?Una cerveza, por favor.”  He opens his eyes and laughs. “Welcome to Jerusalem, guys. Damascus Gate is that way. Enjoy.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised he knows a handful of Taco Bellisms, or why this convinces me of his honesty. However, now it’s impossible to walk away. We have too many questions. The first one: Why’d he return to Jerusalem? Mike looks down at his cigarette, smoldering into a fine grey tail of ash. He flicks it against a stone and a bright red ember blazes to life.

“This is my home. I had to.”

Later, as we sip sweet Turkish coffee outside a rug shop in the Old City, it occurs to me that Mike was the first Palestinian person I’d ever spoken with face-to-face. His life story seemed unusual, but I have no idea what’s “usual” when it comes to Palestinian lives. I’d never thought about them before, to be honest. The world has an infinite number of stories, and the days are not as long as I’d like. It’s not like I’d chosen to ignore Palestine. I just hadn’t chosen to be interested in it.

Which was odd, because Palestine has been all over the news since I was a kid. There isn’t a single specific story I recall, just a murky soup of words and phrases, like “fragile peace talks” and “two-state solution” and “violent demonstrations.” They all swirl together, settling under the stock image of a bombed-out warzone as the headlines mumbled something about Hamas or Hezbollah or the Palestinian Authority. I remember reading about rockets and settlements, refugees and suicide bombers, non-binding resolutions and vetoed Security Council decisions. Not a single detail had stuck. I could feign awareness of some important-sounding events—the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Summit—but I couldn’t say what decade they happened, or who was involved, or what was decided.

For years, I’d been under the impression that I knew enough about Palestine to be uninterested in what was happening there. This isn’t to say I felt any particular animosity toward the Palestinians. But it’s impossible to fight for every cause, no matter how righteous, if only for reasons of time. Every minute you spend feeding the hungry is a minute you’re not visiting the sick. Life is a zero sum game more often than we’d like to believe.

As we headed toward the Via Dolorosa, the road that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion, I began to feel uneasy. The Israeli police (indistinguishable from soldiers except for the patches on their uniforms) who stood guard at every corner still smiled at us, and they were still apologetic when they forbade us from walking down streets that were “for Muslims only, unfortunately.” Their English was excellent. Many of them were women. They were young and diverse and photogenic, a recruiter’s dream team. But all I could see were their bulletproof vests and submachine guns. Above every ancient stone arch bristled a nest of surveillance cameras. Only a few hours ago, I’d been able to block all that from my sight, leaving me free to enjoy the giddy sensation of strolling through the holiest city on earth.

The road ended at the Lion’s Gate. Just as we approached it, a battered Toyota came rattling through. It screeched to a halt and a squad of Israeli police surrounded the car. All four doors opened and out stepped a Palestinian family. The driver was a young man in his 20s, with short black hair cut in the style of Ronaldo, the famous Real Madrid footballer. When the police told him to turn around and face the wall, he did so without a word. It was obvious this was a daily ritual. The policeman who frisked him looked as bored as it’s possible to look when patting down another man’s genitals. Soon it was over, and the family got back in their car. One of the policemen pulled out his phone and started texting.

If I’d made a video of the search (which I didn’t) and showed it to you with the volume off, you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. The Israeli police didn’t hurt the man, and he barely made eye contact with them. There were no outrageous racial slurs or savage beatings. The only thing you’d see is a group of people in camouflage battle gear standing around a small white sedan, with a middle-aged woman and a couple of young girls off to the right. Unless you have hawk-like eyesight and an exceptional knowledge of obscure uniform insignias, I doubt you’d be able to tell “which side” any of the participants might be on. All you could say for sure is that the police wanted to search the family’s bodies and belongings, and the family looked very unhappy about it, but the police had guns and cameras, and that settled things. It’s interesting what conclusions different people might draw from a scene like that.

Later that night, after we get back to the Palm, I tell Mike about what we saw. He asks what we’d thought. “It was fucked up,” we say.

Mike sighs. “You should see Bethlehem.”    

Jerusalem is so close to Bethlehem that you barely have time to wonder why all the billboards that advertise luxury condos use English instead of Arabic as the second language before you arrive at the wall.

The wall is the most hideous structure I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge, groaning monument to death. Tall grey rectangles bite into the earth like iron teeth, horribly bare, cold, sterile, a towering monstrosity. The wall makes the air taste like poison.

We’re in the car of Mike’s cousin Harun, who is Palestinian, but his car has Israeli plates so we aren’t searched at the checkpoint. We inch past the concrete barriers and armored trucks. Harun holds his identity pass out the window, a soldier waves us through, and a few seconds later we’re in Bethlehem, a short drive from where Jesus Christ was born. It feels like entering prison. I don’t say prison in the sense of an ugly and depressing place you’d prefer not to visit. I say prison in the literal sense: a fortified enclosure where human beings are kept against their will by heavily armed guards who will shoot them if they try to leave. This is what modern life is like in Bethlehem, birthplace of our Lord and Savior.

Looking at the wall from the Israeli side breaks your heart because of its naked ugliness. On the Palestinian side, the unending slabs of concrete have been decorated with slogans, signs, and graffiti, which break your heart for different reasons. One of the hardest parts is reading the sumud series. These are short stories written on plain white posters, plastered to the wall about 10 feet up. Each story comes from a Palestinian woman or girl, and most are written in English, because the only people who read these stories are tourists.

One in particular catches my eye, by a woman named Antoinette:

All my life was in Jerusalem! I was there daily: I worked there at a school as a volunteer and all my friends live there. I used to belong to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and was a volunteer there. I arranged the flowers and was active with the other women. I rented a flat but I was not allowed to stay because I do not have a Jerusalem ID card. Now I cannot go to Jerusalem: the wall separates me from my church, from my life. We are imprisoned here in Bethlehem. All my relationships with Jerusalem are dead. I am a dying woman.

The flowers are what gets me, because my mother also arranges flowers at church. Hers is an Eastern Orthodox congregation in Minneapolis, about 20 minutes by car from my childhood home. That’s about the same distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, although there aren’t any military checkpoints or armored cars patrolling the Minnesotan highways. Until today, I would’ve been unable to imagine what that would even look like. The situation here is so unlike anything I’ve ever encountered in real life that all I can think is, “it’s like a bad war movie.” For the Palestinian people who’ve been living under an increasingly brutal military occupation for the last 70 years, an entire lifetime, I can’t begin to guess at the depths of their helpless anger. What did Antoinette think, the first time the soldiers refused to let her pass? What did she say? What would my mother say? There wouldn’t be a goddamned thing she could do, or I could do, or my father or my sisters, or anyone else. We’d all just have to live with it, the soldiers groping us, beating us, mocking us. No wonder Antoinette gave up hope. In her place, would I be any different? We walk in silence for a long time.

We end up in a refugee camp called Aida, where more than 6,000 people live in an area roughly the size of a Super Target. Here, the air is literally poison. Israeli soldiers have fired so much tear gas into the tiny area that 100 percent of residents now suffer from its effects. If they were using the tear gas against, say, ISIS soldiers instead of Palestinian civilians, this would be a war crime, since “asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases” are banned by the Geneva Protocol. However, such practices are deemed to be acceptable in peacetime, since there’s no chance an unarmed civilian population would be able to retaliate with toxic agents of their own. Without the threat of escalation, chemical warfare is just crowd control.

Before we continue, there are three things you should know about Aida. The first is that there’s no clear dividing line between Aida and Bethlehem, so an unwary pedestrian can easily wander into the refugee camp without realizing it. The second thing is that it doesn’t look like a refugee camp, at least if you’re expecting a refugee camp to be full of emergency trailers, flimsy tents, and flaming barrels of trash. The third thing is that the kids who live there have terrible taste in soccer teams.

We meet the first group as soon as we enter the camp. There are five of them, all teenage boys. One of them is wearing a knockoff Yankees hat. They’re staring at us, and at once I’m very aware of my camera bag’s bulkiness and the blondeness of my fiancée’s hair. A loudspeaker crackles with the cry of the muzzein, and it’s only then that I realize how deeply we Americans have been conditioned to associate the Arabic language with violence and death. The boys exchange a quick burst of words, raising my blood pressure even higher, and cross the street toward us.

“Hello…  what’s your name?” The kid who speaks first is tall and stocky, wearing the same black track jacket and blue jeans favored by 95 percent of the world’s male adolescents. He’s also sporting the Ronaldo haircut, as are several of his friends. Two of the kids start to pull out cigarettes, so I pull out my cigarettes faster and offer the pack to them. Is this a bad, irresponsible thing to do? Sure, and if you’re worried about the long-term health of these kids’ lungs, you should call the American manufacturers who supply Israel with the chemical weapons that are used to poison the air they breathe every day.

I tell the kid my name is Nick, and he shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Shadi.” He’s carrying a rolled-up book, as are his friends, so I ask if he’s going to school. “Yeah bro, exams. We have three this week.” His friends laugh, and then engage in a quick tussle for the right of explaining that they’re heading to their math exam now, which is a boring and difficult subject, and I agree that it is, although at least you never have to use most of it after you finish school, a sentiment that earns me daps from Shadi and his friends, and we stand there giggling and smoking on the street corner of the refugee camp, though for a few moments we could be anywhere in the world.

My fiancée and I, both teachers by trade, start to pepper the kids with questions. Shadi says that he has one year left at the nearby high school, which is run by the UN refugee agency that was just stripped of half its funding by Trump. After he finishes, he plans to study at Bethlehem University. The other guys nod with approval, and speak of similar hopes. I ask them who their favorite footballer is, and they all say Ronaldo, at which I spit in disbelief, because everyone knows that Ronaldo sucks and Messi is much better, visca el Barça! Shadi and his friends break into huge grins, since few elements of brotherhood are more universal than talking shit about sports. Seconds later we’re howling with laughter as Shadi’s buddy makes insulting pantomimes about Messi’s diminutive size. A small part of my brain is loudly and repeatedly insisting that everything about this moment of life is batshit lunacy, that there’s no reason why I should be standing in a Palestinian refugee camp, yards away from buildings my country helped bomb into rubble, with my pretty fiancée and expensive camera, talking in English slang with a group of boys whose lungs are scarred with chemicals made in the USA, the exact kind of reckless young ruffians whose slingshots and stones are such a terrifying threat to the fearsome Israeli military, and the craziest thing of all is that here in the refugee camp, surrounded by derelict cars and rusty barbed wire and 6,000 displaced Palestinians,  we are not in danger, at least not from whom you’d think. Here, in the refugee camp, we can joke around with people who speak our language and know our cultural references and actively seek to help us navigate their neighborhood. None of this is to say that Aida is a safe, comfortable, or morally defensible place to put human beings, but only that the people who live there treated us with such overwhelming kindness and decency that I have never been more ashamed at what my country does in my name. I tell Shadi and his friends to take the rest of my cigarettes, but they smile and decline.

“We, uh, have to go now,” says Shadi, as his friends start to walk up the street. “Do you have Facebook?” We do, because everyone does, and as we exchange information, I wish him good luck on his math exam. “No way, bro, I suck at math,” he says. We both laugh, and I pat him on the back.

“Fuck math. But hey, you’re gonna do great, Shadi.”

“Thanks bro. Fuck math.”

I hope he gets every question correct on his exam. I hope he goes to university and wins a scholarship to Oxford. I hope he invents some insanely popular widget and it makes him a billion dollars and he never has to breathe tear gas again.

We continue walking through Aida camp. The buildings are square, ugly, and drab, but the walls are decorated with colorful paintings of fish and butterflies and meadows (along with a somewhat darker array of scenes from the Israeli military occupation). We meet a group of cousins, aged four to 10, all girls, who ask if we can speak English. When we offer them a bag of candy, they take one piece each, and run away yelping when a man limps out the front door of their house. “Thank you,” he says, his face a mask of grave civility. Cars, all bearing green-and-white Palestinian plates instead of the blue-and-yellow Israeli ones, slow down so their drivers can shout “Hello!” We meet another group of kids, boys this time, who grab fistfuls of candy and make playful attempts to unfasten my wristwatch. We make a hasty retreat from this group. The streets are scorched in spots where tear gas canisters exploded.  Narrow strips of pockmarked pavement lead us down steep hills and into winding alleys, and soon we’re lost.

This is how we meet Ahmed. He’s a tall man, about 40 years old, with a small black mustache and arms as thin as a stork’s legs. A yellow sofa leans against the concrete wall of the three-storey apartment building where he lives. Ahmed is sitting there with an elderly couple. He asks if we’d like a cup of tea, and although we’ve been warned about the old “come inside for a cup of tea” scam, we accept his offer. The elderly couple greets us in Arabic, and I try not to notice the large plastic bag of orange liquid peeking out from beneath the old man’s shirt.

While we climb the stairs to Ahmed’s apartment, he tells us that the old people are his parents. “They live here,” he says, pointing to the door on the first floor, “because they don’t walk very good. My mother has problems with her legs, my father is sick from the water.” He traces the pipes with his finger, and we see they’re coated in a thick reddish crust. “Here is the home of my big son,” he says when we reach the second floor. “He has a new baby.” We congratulate him on becoming a grandfather. “And I have a new baby, too! Come, I show you!” One more flight of stairs, and we arrive at Ahmed’s apartment.

It looks remarkably similar to a hundred other apartments we’ve visited. Framed photos of various family members hang on the living room walls, which are painted the same not-quite-white as most living room walls. There’s a beautiful red rug and a small TV. A woman is sitting on the sofa, nursing a baby as she folds socks. “My wife,” says Ahmed.

She speaks a little English too, and says that her name is Nada. She has a pale round face and long black hair. Her eyes are soft, kind, and completely exhausted. Yet if she’s annoyed or embarrassed by our presence, she doesn’t show it. She just hands the baby to Ahmed and goes to make the tea.

“I’m sorry for my house,” says Ahmed, cradling his son like a loaf of bread with legs. “We try to be clean, but…” There’s not so much as a slipper out of place, but I know what he means. “We rent this flat. And my son, and my parents. All rent. Before we have a farm, animals, olive trees, but now, we rent.” I ask about his job. He smiles and shakes his head. “I want a job,” he says, “I love to work. With my hands, with my mind. I love to work. But here, haven’t jobs.” For a second he looks like he’s going to continue this line of thinking, but he stops himself. “I help my wife, that is my job.” Ahmed laughs and passes his baby to my fiancée. “And he, he helps in the home?” She demurs while I protest in mock indignation. I do the dishes every morning before she even wakes up! Still laughing, Ahmed rubs his shins, and again it’s easy to forget we’re sitting in a refugee camp in Jesus’ hometown.

Then the baby wheezes. It’s a dry, scratchy wheeze. Ahmed squirms in his seat, looking embarrassed. The baby begins to cough. My fiancée rubs his back as the coughing turns wet and violent.  Machine gun explosions blast from his tiny lungs. As an asthmatic, I recognize the sound of serious sickness. The baby writhes in my fiancée’s lap, struggling to breathe. He’s gasping and it’s getting worse fast. At moments like these, personal experience tells me that a nebulizer can be the difference between life and death. I don’t insult Ahmed by asking if he has one, because it’s clear that he doesn’t. All I can do is rub the boy’s chest with my finger, a stupid and useless massage. He kicks and stretches as if trying to wiggle away from the unseen demon that’s strangling him.

Nada hurries back with the tea. “I’m sorry,” she says, picking up the baby. She coos to him in Arabic and rubs his back, both of which are comforting but neither of which can relax the inflamed tissues of her infant’s lungs. “My baby…” Unable to find the words in English, she looks to her husband.

Ahmed rubs his cheek. “When she is pregnant, one night the soldiers come. They say the children throw stones. They always throw stones. So the soldiers shoot gas in all the houses. In the windows, over there.” His voice gets quieter. “And she is very sick. When the baby is born, he is sick too.” I ask him if it’s possible to find medicine. “Sometimes yes,” says Ahmed, “but very, very expensive.” For the first time, there’s a note of frustration in his voice. “Everything is expensive here. You see this,” and he picks up a pack of diapers, “it cost me thirty shekels. 10 dollars, almost. And the baby needs so many things. It is impossible to buy. I haven’t money for meat, how can I buy medicine?” He points to a plastic bag with four small pitas. “This is our food. One bread for my two sons, and two breads for my wife. She must make milk for our baby.” When I ask him what he eats, he holds up his cup of tea.

Somehow Nada has soothed the baby out of danger. His breathing is almost normal again, just a quiet raspy crackle. She’s still staring at him, her big brown eyes wide with worry. I don’t know how many times she’s done this before. I don’t know how many times are left before her luck runs out. 

Somehow she’s keeping her baby alive with nothing but the sheer force of her love. I ask to use the toilet so I don’t have to cry in front of her.

(Continue Reading)

[filmstruck]

Learning the Ropes: Early Scorsese by R. Emmet Sweeney

Martin Scorsese is not just a name, but a phrase that conjures a world of lower east side street corners, Italian-American toughs and mob rituals. He has built a remarkable resume over 50 years of filmmaking and preservation work that has managed to retain outsized artistic ambitions as Hollywood’s continues to shrink. He has become a living institution, which can sometimes obscure some of the work that built that reputation. FilmStruck is programming three early Scorsese films to re-acquaint ourselves with a portrait of Scorsese as a young director: WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR (’67), MEAN STREETS (’73) and ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (’74). Today I am writing about the two lesser-known films, WHO’S THAT KNOCKING and ALICE, which show Scorsese inhabiting and reaching beyond his roots.

WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR took four years for Scorsese to make and get into theaters, first conceived in 1965 while he was still an undergrad at NYU. He received $5,000 in seed money from his professor Haig Manoogian (listed as a producer). It was intended to be the second part of a trilogy in which MEAN STREETS would be the conclusion. The first being the never-produced JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM. The trilogy was to be a semi-autobiographical story of a lower east side NYC striver named J.R. (Harvey Keitel in his first feature – he was making a living as a court stenographer), hanging out in social clubs in between short-term jobs, hoping for a break. The film went through many variations, first as a short film called Bring on the Dancing Girls, which was then incorporated into a feature called I Call First (where it premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival and was positively reviewed by Roger Ebert).

It received its final form after sex film distributor Joseph Brenner agreed to pick it up if Scorsese would add some nudity. Scorsese described to Anthony DeCurtis in 1991: “We shot it in Holland, because I was up in Amsterdam doing some commercials for a friend of mine. We flew Harvey [Keitel] over and we got the young ladies there and we did this nude scene. I came back, kind of smuggled it back into the country in my raincoat, put it in the middle of the film and then the film was released. But it was still a rough sketch to me…ah, it’s the old story: if I knew then what I know now it would be different.”

The film follows J.R. as he kills time with his buddies at their social club and at bars drinking the hours away. But there is also a flashback to J.R.’s fractured relationship with a girl (Zina Bethune) he picks up while waiting for the Staten Island Ferry. She reads F. Scott Fitzgerald while he is an expert in Westerns. Their first conversation revolves around John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS (’56), since there is a photo of John Wayne in the French magazine she is reading. They swiftly fall in love, but J.R. is still something of a child, prone to outbursts and totally uncomprehending that a woman can have an inner life of her own. When she reveals that she has been sexually assaulted, instead of offering solace, J.R. is repulsed, his Roman Catholic upbringing thumping in his brain, telling him she must have brought it upon herself.

Scorsese, deeply under the spell of the French New Wave, proceeds with a heavy use of jump cuts, though here it feels like less of a rhythmic element and more of a way to stitch together disparate footage shot years apart. He was lucky enough to hire Thelma Schoonmaker right off the bat, but here was a reclamation job she could not entirely succeed at. But there is remarkable skill and daring on display here, especially in the use of slow motion, superimposition, and especially in the use of music. The closing montage is a quick-cut portrait of a Roman Catholic church, with The Genies’ “Who’s That Knocking” plastered on the soundtrack, forcefully displaying J.R.’s inculcated roots in the church, the source of his warped views on women, as well as his interest in breaking free. Early on he begs his social club boss Joey (Lennard Kuras) to go get a drink in the Village, and is rebuffed. The Village, and later, the Girl played by Zina Bethune, are symbols of escape. But he doesn’t really understand either. He is shocked when the Girl is upset when he “forgives” her for being assaulted, and retreats back to the cocoon of Joey and his neighborhood pals. There is an extended take at the end of a bar – where J.R., Joey and a young kid they dismissively call Sally Gaga (Michael Scala) sit and laugh. They toss napkins at each other, like high-school kids at lunch having spitball wars. They are still, for all intents and purposes, children. And yet they have been loosed upon the adult world and the poor women who will have to suffer their notions of Catholic guilt.

After MEAN STREETS, Scorsese was a hot commodity and instead of doubling down on small time NYC crime stories, he shifted gears into a sweetly romantic road movie – ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. Instead of NYC, it’s the sunbaked climes of New Mexico and Arizona, where a struggling single mom and singer (Ellen Burstyn) is trying to make her way to California to make a living for her son. Opening with credits in Academy ratio and a booming Miklos Rozsa-esque score, it’s clear this is Scorsese’s attempt at a Hollywood melodrama in the Douglas Sirk mode, only filtered through the New Hollywood sensibility.

Ellen Burstyn approached Scorsese to take on the project. According to the AFI Catalog, she had received the script by Robert Getchell from Warner Bros. president John Calley, and though it had been passed over many times, Burstyn was attracted by the character of Alice. Coming off of THE EXORCIST (’73), she was given her choice of director, as well as final script approval (she also advocated for more women to be hired on the crew, including editor Marcia Lucas and art director Toby Carr Rafelson). MEAN STREETS had not been released yet, but it was getting strong early reviews and the two hit it off. They worked on improving the script together and participated in extensive rehearsals and improvisations (the bit about Alice’s first stage act was Burstyn’s improvisation, drawing on her real-life act with her brother).

The movie begins with a fairytale, WIZARD OF OZ-like back lot set, a pigtailed girl walking down a lane to her clapboard house, only this time with way more cursing. It’s a cutesy way to introduce the character of Alice, who is a combination of sweetness and a salty mouth. The film is really a showcase for Burstyn, who appears in nearly every scene, giving a performance of gallows humor and deep pathos. She establishes a natural rapport with Alfred Lutter, who plays her son Tommy. Their relationship is one of mutual needling and teasing, one that can ratchet up to anger at moments of extreme stress. At one of Alice’s low ebbs, when she has to postpone her singing career to take a job as a waitress, they let off steam by getting into a water fight. It escalates from a little joke into a full-blown soaking for both, a diversion of stress into play violence. The duo become expert at coming up with games to lessen the anxiety of their tenuous economic existence. And like on WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR, the soundtrack provides not just a backbeat but insight into the characters’ lives, from Tommy’s blasting of Mott the Hoople to sensitive-boyfriend type Kris Kristofferson’s mellow take on “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

Where WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR provides the doomed tough guy Scorsese template that he would elaborate on for the decades to come, ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE shows he could apply his talents just as skillfully to the melodrama, as he would occasionally detour to explore again in films like THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (’93, newly out on Blu-ray from Criterion). So while the crime films will always be synonymous with Scorsese, the TAXI DRIVER (’76) and GOODFELLAS (’90), we should expand that association to include ALICE right alongside them.

[yesjustcallmewes]

Peace in the Middle East - Is it possible?

Would there finally be peace in the Middle East if the Palestinians were granted a state of their own?

Since this is a long-standing demand of the Palestinians, you might think so. But not so fast.

In the simplest of terms, until 1947 in the Middle East there were two stateless peoples - the Jews and the Arabs. There was much history of conflict between them, and it is instructive to examine some of it.

In 1919, after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, Britain took control of most of the Middle East land, including the area that constitutes modern Israel and the surrounding land.

Seventeen years later, in 1936, the Arabs rebelled against the British, and against the Jews with whom the Arabs had shared that land - not without conflict. In Britain, the Peel Commission was formed to examine the cause of the insurrection and to map out a solution to the violence.

Their conclusion was as simple as it was obvious. They concluded that the problem was that two peoples – Jews and Arabs – wanted to govern the same land at the same time. Simple in its complexity. But no solution to the now defined problem was proffered, and the violence continued.

That's the way things stood until 1947, when the newly minted UN offered each group a land of their own, to be carved out of the Middle East land that Britain had "owned" since WWI, for the creation two separate States - one Jewish and one Arab. This was the first mention of which I’m aware of the "two-state solution."

It should be noted that the suggested split was heavily in favor of the Arabs. The British offered them 80 percent of the disputed territory; the Jews, the remaining 20 percent. Yet, despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs ignored the fact that the offer was very much slanted in their favor, rejected it out of hand and resumed their violent rebellion, launching an all-out war against the new state of Isreal.

Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria joined the conflict on the side of the Arabs. But they failed. Israel won the war and got on with the business of building a new nation. Most of the land set aside by the UN for an Arab state – the West Bank and east Jerusalem – became “occupied” territory; but importantly, occupied not by Israel, but by Jordan. Arab against Arab – but Arabs with a common enemy; Isreal.

I was born in the same year as Isreal (1948), so for my entire life until I was 19 my only knowledge was of Isreal and a bunch of Arabs who constantly attacked it. I had little understanding, or interest, in any of this, but I vividly remember that in 1967, the Arabs, led this time by Egypt and joined by Syria and Jordan, once again sought to destroy the Jewish State. The 1967 conflict, known as the Six Day War for obvious reasons, ended in a stunning victory for Israel.

Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the area known as the Gaza Strip, fell into Israel’s hands for the first time. Thus begins the first of the continuing wrestling match over the city of Jerusalem, which had not yet been split into Jerusalem and East Jerusalem.

The Isreali government split over what to do with this new territory. Half wanted to return the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace. The first “land for peace” offer by Isreal.

The other half wanted to give it to the region’s Arabs, who had begun referring to themselves as the Palestinians, in the hope that they would ultimately build their own state there.

Neither initiative got very far. A few months later, the Arab League met in Sudan and issued its infamous “Three No’s” dictate:

No peace with Israel.

No recognition of Israel.

No negotiations with Israel.

And so another two-state solution offered by the Israelis was dismissed by the Palestinians

In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met at Camp David with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to conclude a new two-state plan. Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 94% of the West Bank with EAST JERUSALEM as its capital. The rest of Jerusalem would remain under Isreali control as its capital. But the Palestinian Leadership rejected the offer. In the words of US President Bill Clinton, Arafat was “Here 14 days and said ‘no’ to everything.”

And so another two-state solution offered by the Israelis was dismissed by the Palestinians (formally known simply as the ‘Arabs’).

Instead, the Palestinians launched a bloody wave of suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more – on buses, in wedding halls, and in pizza parlors.

In 2008, Israel tried yet again. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went even further than Ehud Barak had, expanding the peace offer to include additional land to sweeten the deal. Like his the predecessor, the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, turned the deal down.

 In between these last two Israeli offers, Israel unilaterally left Gaza, giving the Palestinians complete control there. Instead of developing this territory for the good of its citizens, the Palestinians turned Gaza into a terrorist base, from which they have fired thousands of rockets into Israel.

Each time Israel has agreed to a Palestinian state, the Palestinians have rejected the offer, often violently.

 My take on this? If you’re interested in peace in the Middle East, maybe the answer is not to pressure Israel to make yet another offer of a state to the Palestinians. Maybe the answer is to pressure the Palestinians to finally accept the existence of a Jewish State.

And of the original purpose of this essay, the fate of the capital of Isreal, it is clear to me that Isreal has every right to name Jerusalem as its capital, and we have every right, every duty, in fact, to place our Embassy in Isreal’s capital.

And since the US first formally recognized Jerusalem as Isreal’s capital, in 1995, every president has indicated their intent to move our Embassy there. But not until President Trump has that decision been announced and the process begun. Is that a fully justifiable and even brave move by Trump, or a reckless folly by Trump?

I believe it is a long overdue move, and that however many are bloodied or killed in the resultant fighting by the Palestinians are blood solely on the hands of the Palestinians.

Just my two cents . . .

[dfroza]

An innocent Man convicted.

and yet, willingly and even silently allowing the authorities to sentence Him to death, which was the will of the crowd.

and what was the response to all of this?

“Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.”

the laying down of a life for the wrongdoing of others that paved the True path of grace for all who “believe...” pure & simply as children of our heavenly Father.

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 23rd chapter of the book of Luke:

So the whole council got up and took Jesus to Pilate. They brought accusations against Him.

Sanhedrin: We have observed this man leading our nation astray. He even forbade us to pay our taxes to Caesar. He claims to be the Anointed One and a King Himself.

Pilate: Are You the King of the Jews?

Jesus: It’s as you say.

Pilate (to the chief priest and crowd): I find this man guilty of no crime.

Sanhedrin (growing more intense): He has been stirring up discontent among the people all over Judea. He started up in Galilee, and now He’s brought His brand of trouble all the way to Jerusalem!

Pilate: Just a minute. Is this man a Galilean?

When Pilate learned that Jesus was indeed Galilean—which meant He was officially under Herod’s jurisdiction—Pilate sent Him over to Herod, who was currently in Jerusalem. Herod was fascinated to meet Jesus for he had heard about Him for a long time. He was hoping he might be treated to a miracle or two. He interrogated Jesus for quite a while, but Jesus remained silent, refusing to answer his questions. Meanwhile the chief priests and religious scholars had plenty to say—angrily hurling accusations at Jesus.

Eventually Herod and his soldiers began to insult Jesus, mocking and degrading Him. They put expensive clothing on Him and sent Him back to Pilate. This ended a long-standing rift between Herod and Pilate; they became friends from that day forward.

Pilate assembled the chief priests and other Jewish authorities.

Pilate: You presented this man to me as a rabble-rouser, but I examined Him in your presence and found Him not guilty of the charges you have leveled against Him. Herod also examined Him and released Him to my custody. So He hasn’t done anything deserving the death penalty. I’ll see to it that He is properly whipped and then let Him go.

[It was the custom for Pilate to set one prisoner free during the holiday festivities.]

Crowd (all shouting at once): Away with this man! Free Barabbas instead!

Barabbas had been imprisoned after being convicted of an insurrection he had led in Jerusalem. He had also committed murder. Pilate argued with them, wishing he could release Jesus, but they wouldn’t be silenced.

Crowd (shouting): Crucify Him! Crucify Him!

Pilate (countering a third time): Why? What has He done that is so evil? I have found in Him no offense worthy of capital punishment. As I said, I will punish Him and then release Him.

But they would not relent. They shouted louder and louder that He should be crucified, and eventually Pilate capitulated. So he pronounced the punishment they demanded.

He released the rebel and murderer Barabbas—the insurrectionist they had pleaded for in His place—and he handed Jesus over to them to do with as they desired.

On the way to the place of crucifixion, they pulled a man from the crowd—his name was Simon of Cyrene, a person from the countryside who happened to be entering the city at that moment. They put Jesus’ cross on Simon’s shoulders, and he followed behind Jesus. Along with Him was a huge crowd of common people, including many women shrieking and wailing in grief.

Jesus (to the people in the crowd): Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me. Weep instead for yourselves and weep for your children. Days are coming when people will say, “Blessed are the infertile; blessed are the wombs that never bore a child; blessed are the breasts that never nursed an infant.” People will beg the mountains, “Surround us!” They’ll plead with the hills, “Cover us!” For if they treat Me like this when I’m like green unseasoned wood, what will they do to a nation that’s ready to burn like seasoned firewood?

Jesus wasn’t the only one being crucified that day. There were two others, criminals, who were also being led to their execution. When they came to the place known as “The Skull,” they crucified Jesus there, in the company of criminals, one to the right of Jesus and the other to His left.

Jesus: [Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.]

Meanwhile they were drawing lots to see who would win Jesus’ clothing. The crowd of people stood, watching.

Authorities (mocking Jesus): So He was supposed to rescue others, was He? He was supposed to be God’s Anointed, the Liberating King? Let’s see Him start by liberating Himself!

The soldiers joined in the mockery. First, they pretended to offer Him a soothing drink—but it was sour wine.

Soldiers: Hey, if You’re the King of the Jews, why don’t You free Yourself!

Even the inscription they placed over Him was intended to mock Him—“This is the King of the Jews!” [This was written in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.]

One of the criminals joined in the cruel talk.

Cynical Criminal: You’re supposed to be the Anointed One, right? Well—do it! Rescue Yourself and us!

But the other criminal told him to be quiet.

Believing Criminal: Don’t you have any fear of God at all? You’re getting the same death sentence He is! We’re getting what we deserve since we’ve committed crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong at all! (turning to Jesus) Jesus, when You come into Your kingdom, please remember me.

Jesus: I promise you that this very day you will be with Me in paradise.

At this point, it was about noon, and a darkness fell over the whole region. The darkness persisted until about three in the afternoon, and at some point during this darkness, the curtain in the temple was torn in two.

Jesus (shouting out loudly): Father, I entrust My spirit into Your hands!

And with those words, He exhaled—and breathed no more.

The Centurion—one of the soldiers who performed the execution—saw all this, and he praised God.

Centurion: No doubt, this man must have been innocent.

The crowds of common people who had gathered and watched the whole ordeal through to its conclusion left for their homes, pounding on their own chests in profound grief. And all who knew Jesus personally, including the group of women who had been with Him from the beginning in Galilee, stood at a distance, watching all of these things unfold.

Meanwhile a man named Joseph had been at work. He was a member of the council, a good and fair man, from a Judean town called Arimathea. He had objected to the plans and actions of the council; he was seeking the kingdom of God. He had gone to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. He removed the body from the cross and wrapped it in a shroud made of fine linen. He then laid the body in a cavelike tomb cut from solid rock, a tomb that never had been used before. It was Preparation Day—the day before the holy Sabbath—and it was about to begin at sundown. The women who had accompanied Jesus from the beginning in Galilee now came, took note of where the tomb was and how His body had been prepared, then left to prepare spices and ointments for His proper burial. They ceased their work on the Sabbath so they could rest as the Hebrew Scriptures required.

The Book of Luke, Chapter 23 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 31st chapter of the book of Job that concludes his words to his friends:

[What Can I Expect from God?]

“I made a solemn pact with myself

never to undress a girl with my eyes.

So what can I expect from God?

What do I deserve from God Almighty above?

Isn’t calamity reserved for the wicked?

Isn’t disaster supposed to strike those who do wrong?

Isn’t God looking, observing how I live?

Doesn’t he mark every step I take?

“Have I walked hand in hand with falsehood,

or hung out in the company of deceit?

Weigh me on a set of honest scales

so God has proof of my integrity.

If I’ve strayed off the straight and narrow,

wanted things I had no right to,

messed around with sin,

Go ahead, then—

give my portion to someone who deserves it.

“If I’ve let myself be seduced by a woman

and conspired to go to bed with her,

Fine, my wife has every right to go ahead

and sleep with anyone she wants to.

For disgusting behavior like that,

I’d deserve the worst punishment you could hand out.

Adultery is a fire that burns the house down;

I wouldn’t expect anything I count dear to survive it.

“Have I ever been unfair to my employees

when they brought a complaint to me?

What, then, will I do when God confronts me?

When God examines my books, what can I say?

Didn’t the same God who made me, make them?

Aren’t we all made of the same stuff, equals before God?

“Have I ignored the needs of the poor,

turned my back on the indigent,

Taken care of my own needs and fed my own face

while they languished?

Wasn’t my home always open to them?

Weren’t they always welcome at my table?

“Have I ever left a poor family shivering in the cold

when they had no warm clothes?

Didn’t the poor bless me when they saw me coming,

knowing I’d brought coats from my closet?

“If I’ve ever used my strength and influence

to take advantage of the unfortunate,

Go ahead, break both my arms,

cut off all my fingers!

The fear of God has kept me from these things—

how else could I ever face him?

“Did I set my heart on making big money

or worship at the bank?

Did I boast about my wealth,

show off because I was well-off?

Was I ever so awed by the sun’s brilliance

and moved by the moon’s beauty

That I let myself become seduced by them

and worshiped them on the sly?

If so, I would deserve the worst of punishments,

for I would be betraying God himself.

“Did I ever gloat over my enemy’s ruin?

Or get excited over my rival’s bad luck?

No, I never said a word of detraction,

never cursed them, even under my breath.

“Didn’t those who worked for me say,

‘He fed us well. There were always second helpings’?

And no stranger ever had to spend a night in the street;

my doors were always open to travelers.

Did I hide my sin the way Adam did,

or conceal my guilt behind closed doors

Because I was afraid what people would say,

fearing the gossip of the neighbors so much

That I turned myself into a recluse?

You know good and well that I didn’t.

“Oh, if only someone would give me a hearing!

I’ve signed my name to my defense—let the Almighty One answer!

I want to see my indictment in writing.

Anyone’s welcome to read my defense;

I’ll write it on a poster and carry it around town.

I’m prepared to account for every move I’ve ever made—

to anyone and everyone, prince or pauper.

“If the very ground that I farm accuses me,

if even the furrows fill with tears from my abuse,

If I’ve ever raped the earth for my own profit

or dispossessed its rightful owners,

Then curse it with thistles instead of wheat,

curse it with weeds instead of barley.”

The words of Job to his three friends were finished.

The Book of Job, Chapter 31 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Saturday, may 8 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons that looks at the inner life:

Do you sometimes feel out of control with your emotions? Have you ever felt overwhelmed by fear, anger, or inordinate desire? Yeshua said "out of the heart come evil thoughts" (i.e., διαλογισμοὶ πονηροί, literally, evil "dialogs") that result in bad feelings, wicked actions, and despair, and therefore we must understand the connection between how we think (and what we believe) and the emotional condition of our inner life. Have you ever heard the saying, "Hurt people hurt people?" The word for “evil” in Hebrew (i.e., ra': רע) comes from a verb (רעע) that means to injure or harm others, though the word also connotes a despair of the heart that gives up and chooses to turn “hard” and difficult (קשה). Evil is also connected with cowardice, since the conscience (i.e., moral awareness) reveals judgment for sin, and therefore evil thinking leads to rationalizations, self-deception, and a running away from the truth about who we are...

The Scriptures say that a person without self-control (i.e., מעצר לרוּחוֹ, “rule over his spirit”) is like an ancient city without walls - vulnerable to attack and easily overcome by hostile forces (Prov. 25:28)... If you are impulsive or easily agitated, you are rendered defenseless before the enemy of your soul, and therefore it is essential to repair any breach within your heart and to become unified in your thinking and resolve. The Holy Spirit is called the "Comforter" (παράκλητος) because he imparts strength that fortifies the heart. Therefore the fruit of the Spirit (פרי הרוח) is "self-control" (ἐγκράτεια), a word that means “inner strength” (from εν-, "in" + κράτος, "power") referring to mastery over one’s desires and passions.

A person without restraint or "inner limits" is easily overcome by evil. For example, a person who cannot control his anger cannot control what he says, and this reveals subjection to the lower nature. If a person says anything or everything that enters his mind, he is without boundaries, and there will be no door to close his lips... The same can be said of emotions that rise up within the soul. Some strong emotions, of course, are appropriate to a some situations, but others are not, and without "taking every thought captive" by exercising self-control, we are liable to be brought into bondage to alien passions and obsessive thinking (2 Cor. 10:4). This is the source of addiction and self-destructive behavior in our lives. Being a "spirit without restraint" is to surrender yourself to dark forces that disregard the glory of your Creator.

May the Lord bless you with the gift of strength that comes from His Spirit, and may he enable you to take every thought captive to the obedience of the Messiah. Amen. [Hebrew for Christians]

5.7.21 • Facebook

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

May 8, 2021

Atonement

“Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.” (Genesis 6:14)

It may be surprising to learn that God’s instructions to Noah concerning the Ark’s design contain the first reference in the Bible to the great doctrine of atonement. The Hebrew word used here for pitch (kaphar) is the same word translated “atonement” in many other places in the Old Testament.

While the New Testament word “atonement” implies reconciliation, the Old Testament “atonement” was merely a covering (with many applications). As the pitch was to make the Ark watertight, keeping the judgment waters of the Flood from reaching those inside, so, on the sacrificial altar, “it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11), keeping the fires of God’s wrath away from the sinner for whom the sacrifice was substituted and slain. The pitch was a covering for the Ark, and the blood was a covering for the soul, the first assuring physical deliverance, the second spiritual salvation.

However, not even the shed blood on the altar could really produce salvation. It could assure it through faith in God’s promises on the part of the sinner who offered it, but “the blood of bulls and of goats” could never “take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).

Both the covering pitch and animal blood were mere symbols of the substituting death of Jesus Christ, “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (Romans 3:25). Through faith in Christ, our sins are “covered” under the blood, forgiven by God, and replaced by His own perfect righteousness, by all of which we become finally and fully reconciled to God. HMM

[okimargarvez]

LIKE EASTER

Original title: Like Easter.

Prompt: Easter holydays, Italy, Holy Week.

Warnings: reflections on my catholic faith.

Genre: comedy, family, romantic, friendship.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez, (JJ, Spencer), O.C.

Pairing: Garvez.

Note: oneshot.

Legend: 💏😘❗🎈.

Song mentioned: none.

Easter holidays and Luke have a problem to solve: his grandmother waits for him in Rome for the Holy Week and wants that he’s accompanied by a girlfriend; Penelope, on the other hand, feels cast aside as the “painted eggs” festivity.

Like Easter- Masterlist

MY OTHER GARVEZ STORIES

Part 9

Friday night. Day spent doing tourist, but enough distracted. Too lost one in the eyes of other, one on the lips of other, to notice the monuments. They behave like teen-agers. Each phrase, each pretext is good to stay closer, to search the physical contact with the other. The mouth.

Day of fasting. No problem. Who is hungry, when the stomach is full of butterflies? She never understood this way of saying. However, the result is the same. The only thing she needs is him. They kiss, but even talk, a lot. About what they were before, about their past. Luke tells her some episodes of his period with the task-force. He explains the difficult living in war-zones. She feels the necessity to verify, like S. Thomas who put his finger in the holes of Jesus’s body, for feeling in her turn, with her hands, his wounds. She listens him explain his first days in the BAU, like profiler in training, and his lack of understanding why the computer technician, of whom, like it or not, he heard so much about, why she treated so coldly only him.  She listens him while he tells her that he gets the right conclusions, but however he had still thinking about her. That he had realized the situation was graved, when he found her in the field, on Bradenton, and, without time to recover, Reid was detained in police custody, he had saw her so fragile, for the first time she hadn’t the force to make fun of him. The final straw was seeing her crying openly.

And after this talk, Luke had patiently listened her saying her version. And above all, they realized to feel the same doubts and fears. They no need any more (if they ever had) to show themselves like a couple.

 Each time that she feels wavering, she turns towards him, looking at him and some courage revives her. It’s the time.

Nothing that she had even seen in her life, equals one spectacle like this. The city seems to have drifted out of historical fantasy videogame. All of those monuments, those works created by man, so many time ago. Yet, only this could be enough to shocked her, left breathless, despite she had seen this already during the week. But this time there is something more: the night. A night that seems to come from medieval times, from that period when darkness was something very different to what is in the present-day: because with the possibility to make rise the sun in every moment, we lost that emptiness, that ancestral fear. And then, the people: so many, more than during a concert, at most comparable with Woodstock. So many people, that for a while she feels lost, she is scared to losing herself. She turns to make sure that Luke is still there, and he seems to understand what crosses her mind. He takes her hand and squeezes it strongly.

And suddenly, the murmur dies away and then, a man dressed in white starts to speak. The Pope seems extremely human, one of many. He speaks in Italian and she doesn’t understand, or almost. Luckily, most is written in the book she keeps with one hand. Penelope glances at the woman closer to her. She smiles, with tears in her eyes. He it’s from the end of the world. Very close to the place that her family it’s from.

A chorus starts to sing. Even this is scenography sign that contributes to make her feel like they were in another century. Use of Latin. That language so… inexplicable.

-1st Station. Jesus is condemned to death.- just when the chorus is silenced, a female voice starts to speak, very coached. Then, that of another man seems to find a correspondence with the liturgical books that are read. Penelope realizes that she is keep her breath just when Luke’s grandmother coughs, bringing her out from this kind of trance. It’s a weird thing: she doesn’t comprehend what she hears, just the tone and to understand she must strive to follow it on the book. Yet, even if she can’t understand, something penetrates in her.

-2nd Station: Jesus is denied by Peter.- again, that chant so weird, those voices that seem to come from another dimension. After other explanations, read by persuasive voice that transport her in that universe and, simultaneously backwards in time: and not 1000 years ago, but much closer, just few years ago; after this, everyone around her say the prayer, even Luke and Rosa, is she the only one that didn’t know it? Yet, she recognizes the rhythm and inside, she knows what it’s about. Patern noster. But she doesn’t know these words, she learns it in Italian, but this is… Latin. And she feels in difficulty. For the umpteenth time. Yes, the words are printed there, before her eyes, but she doesn’t have that accent, and… if she would wrong, if someone would notice it?

-3rd Station: Jesus and Pilatus.- reading that part of the Gospel, she remembers what she had feel the first time that she found herself before this: indignation. But finally a way to say had found sense. Wash their hands like Pontius Pilates. It was a horrible thing. Almost as bad as commit a crime. She is deeply agree with who, since the beginning of time, has said that the real problem aren’t the ones who hurt, but those do nothing for stop it, that show themselves indifferent, like this had nothing to do with them.

-4th Station: Jesus king of Glory.- the idea of crown of thorns is so… tragic. No one can imagine what kind of pain He would feel. The soldiers’ mockery, those ignorant, symbol of the whole humanity for which Him had wanted to die, He was willing to sacrifice Himself totally. Everything had re-emerged in Penelope’ memory now. She is used it with different words, but the meaning is the same. Is universal. And this latter is the correct translate of Catholicism.

-5th Station: Jesus carries His cross.- the Cross. That symbol is turned as much absolute, because no only Christians use to say or to consider a pain, a serious suffering, like a Cross. Because in the end, even those who professes themselves atheist or agnostic, that one having fun mocking religion, sending their invectives more towards church leaders, rather than towards Jesus. Because He, like Buddha and Gandhi, was been first of all a good man, a model that transcends geographic, social and human borders.

-6th Station: Jesus and Simon of Cyrene.- one part of Via Crucis that ever puts her on the spot. Because it would’ve been better if this Simon had been happy to take Jesus’ Cross. And instead he behaves like any other man, and after all, even Peter had denies His Lord, on three occasions! And he’s become the first Pope of the World, the rock on which the Church itself was build. But this Simon doesn’t want to be put in the middle of these things, that don’t concern him. He doesn’t want to risk his security of humanity for something far more potentially upper, but uncertain.

-7th Station: Jesus and the Daughters of Jerusalem.- this time the tone of the woman who is reading is more high, or rather more serious, less artificial, more active, and following almost simultaneous translation, the blonde agrees. There is almost bitter irony in her voice. And how she can’t think about all feminicide that are committed each day in the world? Then, with the work that they do… for the first time since the rite started, she look at Luke, who never had problem with Italian and so he follows the procession, without the use of book.

-8th Station: Jesus clothes are taken away.- in his hand there is a light of a lantern, like those of everyone. The other hand is ever held in hers. He not letting go her hand a second. Occasionally some fingers seem to brush her palm, sweetly. But this doesn’t take her mind off things that words, and mood is giving her. Another, one more humiliation. Ever those ignorant soldiers, it got to the point that they playing dice His clothes.

-9th Station: Jesus is nailed to the cross.- she feels angst flowing in her heart, hearing and reading these words. It’s inconceivable. Yet, even in the period when she was convinced that she no longer believes in Him, or that she wanted to feel Him far away, even in those moments she couldn’t help but be impressed, each time she heard someone talk about these things. Rossi was believer. Spencer knew by heart the Bible, but he didn’t believe, like any good scientist. Emily was always showed wary, if not worse, whit everyone those who was wearing white collar. Derek, instead, had an open conflict toward the Church, for what he had suffer; yet, he was in that kind of building, when she was shot in the chest.

-10th Station: Jesus mocked on the cross.- infamy, again and mocking. To the point of wrote an inscription and put it on the top of the Cross. INRI. And then, that thieve, the one “bad”, how dare he find the courage to ask Him why He not came down from the cross and saved them too? How dare that thing claim this? She always was indignant about it. Not just the first time that she had heard it by the priest at the moment, but every other time. And even now, that sentiment re-emerged in her. Like it was stayed away for so long, while she was away. Lost, like the sheep in the parable of the Good Shepherd.  

-11th Station: Jesus and His mother.- a tragic moment. Another one. She can’t imagine the pain that woman went through, that ordinary woman and yet, so special, superior to anyone else. Symbol of universal suffering. Pure and yet human, mother first of all: how can someone forget the episode when she and Joseph were worried because little Jesus was disappeared? The one which more suffer, because she cannot claim anything, because she was chosen for a work even bigger than her. The immensity of that thing crushes Penelope, which feels faint for a while. But the hand of the man that led her to be here right now is still held in hers, so he notices her faint and he becomes worried, but she nods that everything is ok.

-12th Station: Jesus dies on the cross.- He is dead. He is really gone. It’s not a thing that human mind can seriously understand. Until that moment everyone didn’t believe that it could happened. Both ones that didn’t believe in Him, which consider Him like an impostor, and those that, instead, like apostles, had seen that light and had understood there was something more. Both categories expected something different. And instead, no. He is dead and in Penelope’ soul there is an ancestral pain, like anyone with a heart.  

-13th Station: The body of Jesus is taken down from the cross.- she doesn’t conscious now about what happening. She can’t even follow the words and what is saw. Rosa’ eyes are watery, too, but she seems grave and respectable, like whoever are not ready to cry during a funeral of a person they loved with any inch of their soul. Luke instead seems rapt, focused. She tries to follow again what is happening. It’s almost over.

-14th Station: Jesus in the tomb and the women.- almost there and it’s all over. And just in two days He‘ll be resurrected. But until that moment we can live in hope or in angst, in the pain of people who felt betrayed from His words. And then, those women found empty tomb. And the angel which is there with the difficult task of explaining them that He isn’t there, as He had announced. And everyone had saw (or pretended) to believe it with every inch of their body, and instead wasn’t so: the example of Peter proves it. Faith, yes, but humanity and humanity pushing us to make mistake.

After the classic phrases, to which also she answers, without any hesitation, with -Amen.-, the man dressed in white speaks again. She has to ask Luke to explain what he’s saying. But she doesn’t need someone to clarify the tone and the way he says those things: so much suffered, almost consumed, desperate. Certainly not an aseptic and distant voice. And there a such silent, no one covers in any way those unknow words.

With other brief ritual phrases and the benediction, the celebration is end. It seems incredible. It seems they are come from a millennium trip, and instead it’s been two hours. Not only not she got bored, but she is… shocked, in a good way. It wasn’t that spectacular like she expected, hearing Luke talking about it. Maybe, the Palm Sunday was more scenic, for the presence of liturgical drama. The chorus starts to sing and, although they can proceed to exit, nobody moves, and an ovation starts, like a shower of rain. Only after Pope gets into a car and starts another journey, people begin slowly to leave.

They head towards the parking, where they had left Rosa’ car. The older walks intentionally faster, to give them the chance to stay one more moment alone. Maybe they think that she didn’t notice, instead she knows the way they had look into each other’s eyes first, and the way they look now. It’s so clear that something is changed between them, and if she knows her nephew as she thinks… what he wanted her to think is came true. Good, because if he ever let himself to miss out a girl like Penelope, she would make him regret it for a life. -So?- she turns toward him. -What did you think?- he stops before her. But the blonde hasn’t the right words to describe what she feels. So, she answers him with a hug. Then they have to walk faster, because his grandmother is now a spot just about visible.

TAGS: @theshamelessmanatee @itsdawnashlie @talesoffairies @janiedreams88 @kiki-krakatoa @yessenia993 @teyamarra @c00lhandsluke  @gcchic @arses21434 @orangesickle @entireoranges @jarmin @kathy5654 @martinab26 @thisonekid @thenibblets @perfectly-penelope @ambrosiaswhispers @maziikeen92 @lovelukealvez @reidskitty13 @jenf42 @gracieeelizabeth27 @silviajajaja @smalliemichelle99 @charchampagne14 @ichooseno  @ megs2219 @rkt3357 @franklintrixie @thinitta @chewwy123 @skisun @maba84 @saisnarry @myhollyhanna23 @thenorthernlytes

Note: it was so difficult to try to translate this part. I do not know how it came out and probably Penelope is OOC, because her thoughts are mine. The next will contain much more garvez and less religious reflections (a little).

[christsbride]

Who was John The Apostle?

 The Apostle John is an extremely important figure when it comes to our knowledge about what Jesus did and taught.  He is also extremely important in early church history.  He was the son of Zebedee and Salome. His brother was James, who was also one of the Twelve Apostles.  He was ready for anything did the most he could out of his love for Christ.  John Coming To Faith "Going on from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and He called them."  (Matthew 4:21).  Notice it is Jesus that called John and not the other way around.   John's Witness of Jesus John was named as one of the original 12 Apostles (Matthew 10:2).   He and his older brother James were nicknamed "Sons of Thunder" (Mark 3:17).  The nickname reflected their readiness for anything.  When things went down, John was ready.  Jesus attempted to find accommodations for the night in one place but was met with opposition from the villagers, simply because His destination was Jerusalem—a result of Jew-Samaritan prejudice. “When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?’” (Luke 9:54). Jesus rebuked the brothers, and they all went to another village.  John was ready to throw down, but Jesus was more merciful than John. John was part of the most inner circle of Jesus where he was granted the opportunity to see some great events.  The only witnesses of the raising of Jairus's daughter (Mark 5:37), of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1), and of the Agony in Gethsemani (Matthew 26:37).  Jesus specifically only allowed them to witnesses such events (Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51).  Jesus chose him for specific tasks as well (Luke 22:8) Not only was he part of the 12 and in the most inner circle, he, himself, was very close to Jesus (John 13:23, 21:20).  He was so close to Jesus in fact, that at the cross, Jesus chose him to be the guardian of His mother, Mary (John 19:25-26). Having this closeness to Jesus himself allowed for him to inquire in greater detail the teachings of Jesus and the mind of God. (Mark 9:38, 10:35, 13:3) John and The Crucifixion John was present at the scene of the Crucifixion.  Close enough where Jesus spoke to him while hanging on the cross (John 19:25-26).  Therefore he was an eye witness the moment Jesus let up his spirit and physically died on the cross. John and The Resurrection Because of his closeness to Jesus, once Mary discovered the empty tomb, she came and told the unofficial leader of the group, Peter, AND John.  (John 20:2).  It was then John who first recognized the resurrected Jesus (John 21:7).  He was a witness of and with the risen Jesus being taught until Jesus' ascension (Acts 1:2-4). John and The Accession   John, and the remaining 10 other Apostles were with Jesus when he ascended into heaven (Acts 1:6-11).  With his own eyes, he saw Jesus literally ascend to heaven. John's Ministry Work

John began his ministry work with the other Apostles in Jerusalem following Pentecost (Acts 1:13).   They would still attend the temple for prayer but he was becoming more infamous and recognizable.  It is also important to note that John (and Peter) were not wealthy, nor did they seek wealth from all they had experienced.  They instead felt that the message, the gospel of Jesus Christ was far greater than material gain (Acts 3:3).  John's gospel message was validated by God through healing and other miracles (Acts 3:4-11). 

  This drew the attention of those who disbelieved in Jesus.  John was put in Jail for proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 4:1-3, 13). John then traveled to Samaria (Acts 8:14).  But he made sure that all the people of Israel had heard the gospel of Jesus Christ (Acts 13:24).  John verified the Apostle Paul and agreed with the need for the gentiles to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ at the Council of Jerusalem around 51AD (Galatians 2:9).  John, with the other Apostles, remained about twelve years in this first ministry field, until the persecution of Herod Agrippa I led to the scattering of the Apostles through the various provinces of the Roman Empire (Acts 12:1-17).  When Paul came again to Jerusalem after the second and after the third journey (Acts 18:22; 21:17) he seems no longer to have met John there. Some draw the conclusion from this that John left Palestine between the years 52 and 55 AD. It seems that John then traveled to Ephesus, got arrested, taken to Rome, attempted to be executed but the execution failed, he was then banished to Patmos.  Once the Roman Emperor died, he then traveled back to Ephesus where he remained until his death. According to Tertullian's testimony (De praescript., xxxvi), John had been thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil before the Porta Latina at Rome without suffering injury.  From there he would have been bannished to Patmos.  Early tradition says that John was banished to Patmos by the Roman authorities. This tradition is credible because banishment was a common punishment used during the Imperial period for a number of offenses. Among such offenses were the practices of magic and astrology.  Prophecy was viewed by the Romans as belonging to the same category, whether Pagan, Jewish, or Christian. Prophecy with political implications, like that expressed by John in the book of Revelation, would have been perceived as a threat to Roman political power and order. [not to mention not being injured by being thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil would have been viewed as magic].  Three of the islands in the Sporades were places where political offenders were banished. (Pliny, Natural History 4.69–70; Tacitus, Annals 4.30).  Eusebius (Church History III.13.1) and others we are obliged to place the Apostle's banishment to Patmos in the reign of the Emperor Domitian (81-96AD).  After Domitian's death the Apostle returned to Ephesus during the reign of Trajan.  In "Dialogue with Tryphon" (Chapter 81) Justin Martyr refers to "John, one of the Apostles of Christ" as a witness who had lived "with us", that is, at Ephesus.  Irenæus speaks in very many places of the Apostle John and his residence in Asia and expressly declares that he wrote his Gospel at Ephesus (Against Heresies III.1.1), and that he had lived there until the reign of Trajan (loc. cit., II, xxii, 5).  God spared John from Roman execution so that he would write his letters and ultimately Revelations.   Different Johns? Some modern scholars argue that there are many different Johns that wrote the various letters attributed to John The Apostle.  Eusebius states "It is said that in this persecution the apostle and evangelist John, who was still alive, was condemned to dwell on the island of Patmos in consequence of his testimony to the divine word."  Here Eusebius associates the titles of apostle and evangelist to one John.  Then Eusebius then states "It was at this time that the apostle John returned from his banishment in the island and took up his abode at Ephesus, according to an ancient Christian tradition."  So there is no confusion that Eusebius stated that the evangelist John as the same John that was banished and returned to Ephesus.  In Chapter 3, he again states "At that time the apostle and evangelist John, the one whom Jesus loved, was still living in Asia, and governing the churches of that region, having returned after the death of Domitian from his exile on the island."  This time, also associating the comment "one whom Jesus loved" with John The Evangelist.  Irenæus and Clement of Alexandria. stated (quoted by Eusebius) "The former in the second book of his work Against Heresies, writes as follows: And all the elders that associated with John the disciple of the Lord in Asia bear witness that John delivered it to them. For he remained among them until the time of Trajan...And in the third book of the same work he attests the same thing in the following words: But the church in Ephesus also, which was founded by Paul, and where John remained until the time of Trajan, is a faithful witness of the apostolic tradition. Some modern scholars try to make the claim that Revelations or Apocalypse of John was written by a different John.  But Irenaeus states this: "Such, then, being the state of the case, and this number being found in all the most approved and ancient copies of the Apocalypse, and those men who saw John face to face bearing their testimony to it" (Chapter XXX).  Eusebius states: "After this must be reckoned the epistles of Paul; next in order the extant former epistle of John, and likewise the epistle of Peter, must be maintained. After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Apocalypse of John, concerning which we shall give the different opinions at the proper time. These then belong among the accepted writings."  He states that the Apocalypse of John belongs with all the accepted writings from the Apostles.  Secondly, notice, the author is named along with The Apostle Peter.  Tertullian validates The Apocalypse of John as authoritative as he uses it to as proof (Book III).  John The Apostle and John The Evangelist are the same person but titles given to the different phases of witness.  After being an Apostle of Jesus Christ, he then became an evangelist to all the world about what he had experienced and learned as an Apostle.  The different title does not denote a different person.  John of Patmos clearly just signifies the location in the discussion about John.  Again, does not automatically denote a different John.  John The Presbyter is a title that denotes a managing spiritual role within the church.  Again, does not denote a different person, just a different role.  When considering the life of John, we see that he endured different phases within the church.  He went from being an Apostle of Jesus, to Evangelist and proclaiming what Jesus taught.  Then, when the church was more established, he took a more Presbyter role in establishing the next generation of leaders. Thus, The Apostle John was also an Evangelist, Presbyter, and Elder.  What about 2 John and 3 John? In these letters, John identifies himself as an "Elder".  Does this mean it is a different John?  Not exactly.  Peter calls himself and Elder in 1 Peter 5:1.  And there is no question, 1 Peter was written by Apostle Peter.  In the Gospel of John, he does not use his own name; because it was not about him.  In his letters he does, because of the authority and truth of his witness. There are similarities between passages in the Johannine epistles and the writings of Polycarp and Papias.  Which could make sense considering they were both disciples of John.  Irenaeus in Adversus Haereses 3.16.8 (written c. 180), quotes 2 John as authority from the Apostles.  The Muratorian Canon seems to refer to two letters of John only but when considering the type of letter 3 John was, a personal letter, it may not have been circulated due to the personal nature of the letter.  One factor which helps explain the late attestation of 3 John and the doubts about its authority is the very short nature of the letter; early writers may simply not have had occasion to quote from it.  Other possibilities, due to the shortness and similarity to 2 John, it may have been considered part of 2 John.  Regardless, All three Johannine epistles were recognized by the 39th festal letter of Athanasius, the Synod of Hippo and the Council of Carthage. The Disciples of John Papias;  Eusebius, in his "Chronicle" he expressly calls the Apostle John the teacher of Papias ("ad annum Abrah 2114") as does Jerome also in Ep. lxxv, "Ad Theodoram", iii, and in Illustrious Men 18.  Irenæus also positively designates the Apostle and Evangelist John as the teacher of Papias, and neither he nor any other writer before Eusebius had any idea of a other person named John in Asia (Against Heresies V.33.4).  Ignatius writes to John, calls him the Holy Presbyter and connects this name to being closely related to Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Also notice John is absent from them [probably in Patmos or Ephesus at this time] and Ignatius also points out that "She is the lady of our new religion and repentance".  Jesus told John to personally care for his mother and the fact that Ignatius states their faith is "new" shows the closeness to the origins of the faith. (IGNATIUS, First Epistle to St John) "Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom...There are also those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, “Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.” And Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, “Dost thou know me?” “I do know thee, the first-born of Satan.” (IRENÆUS, Chapter III). Who was John, personally? John was a fisherman in his families fishing business.  He then met Jesus and became a disciple of Jesus.  He became so close to Jesus he was called the one whom Jesus loved.  He was there for it all.  The miracles, rare miraculous moments, at the cross, seeing the empty tomb, recognizing the risen Jesus, witnessing Jesus' ascension, traveling to proclaim Jesus Christ, establishing churches and disciplining some of the most predominate church fathers.  John was ride or die with Jesus.  He was ready to throw down at a moments notice if Jesus commanded anything.  He was ready to call down fire from heaven to destroy hostel forces for Jesus.  Of course, Jesus rebuked them, seeing how unnecessary that was; he was still willing.  He was arrested and Roman attempted to execute him but they could not.  Despite facing death, the proclaimed Jesus regardless of what the world threw at him.  He was threatened, arrested, almost executed, and banished; yet never stopped writing, teaching, and proclaiming.  It was his passion for Christ that gave him the drive and will to continue and do to what ever was asked of him by God.  He loved Christ so dearly, his own life did not count.  His passion for Christ is seen in his disciples.  They thoroughly knew the truth of God, and he ensured they did.  He even wrote personal letters to show the love of Christ.  He wanted everyone to love Christ the way Christ deserved to be loved; utmost selfless self sacrificial devotion. What Did John Teach Specifically?

Apostolic Authority

eye witnesses 1 John 1:1-3,5, 4:14; Rev. 1:2, 11, 19, 21:8

Test anyone claiming to be an Apostle Rev. 2:2

 Completeness of Scripture

Scripture Alone 1 John 1:4, 2:24, 27, 5:13, 20; Rev. 22:18-19

Going too far and teaching what scripture does not teach 2 John 1:9

God The Father

Jesus was with the father and came from the father 1 John 1:2 

Jesus is our only advocate with The Father 1 John 2:2

God alone adopts his chosen children 1 John 3:1, 5:2

God The Father sent his Son 1 John 4:14

God The Son

Deity of Jesus 1 John 1:2 

Jesus, Son of God 1 John 1:3, 2 John 1:3

Jesus is the only way to salvation 1 John 2:23, 4:9, 5:11-12

Jesus is God's only begotten Son 1 John 4:9

Only Jesus is holy and worthy Rev. 4:1-5, 5:11-14

God The Holy Spirit

The Spirit enables us to love God 1 John 3:24 

The Spirit testifies about Jesus Christ 1 John 5:6

The Holy Spirit is God 1 John 5:9-10

God

God's love is perfected by loving God and our neighbor 1 John 2:5 

God is omniscient 1 John 3:20 

Commanded to believe in The Son Jesus Christ and love one another 1 John 3:23, 2 John 1:5-6

God is love 1 John 4:8, 16

God alone is due all glory and praise, on earth and in heaven Rev. 4:9-11

Jesus the Son of Man

Sinlessness of Jesus 1 John 3:5 

Physically died, but lives forever Rev. 1:17-18

Satan

The Evil One 1 John 2:13-14 

The devil 1 John 3:8

Those who live in sin, are of the devil, not of God 1 John 3:8

Sinners without Christ are Children of The Devil 1 John 3:10

Satan can not touch Children of God 1 John 5:18

The world lies in the power of the evil one 1 John 5:19

Satan imprisons faithful Christians Rev 2:10

Polycarp of Smyrna, along with fellow believers was arrested, traveled to Rome and martyred in the Colosseum in around 150AD.  Only 55 or so years after Rev. 2:9-10 was penned.

Sin

Sinlessness is a lie, all are sinners 1 John 1:8,10

Recognition of sin 1 John 1:9

Faith in Jesus covers all our sins 1 John 2:1

Jesus alone, pleased God for our sin payment 1 John 2:3, 4:10

Jesus' payment for sin can cover all sins in all the world 1 John 2:3 

lust of the flesh, pride of life is not of God 1 John 2:16

Sin is lawlessness 1 John 3:4

Hate is murder 1 John 3:15

We did not love God, but God loved us 1 John 4:10, 19

God forgives all sins, except apostasy and blasphemy of the Holy Spirit 1 John 5:16-17

Total depravity Rev. 1:5

Election

anointing from God, not man 1 John 2:27 

The church is chosen 2 John 1:1

Salvation

False claims of salvation 1 John 1:6, 2:4, 9, 11, 15, 19, 4:20

Jesus' Atonement, not works 1 John 1:7, 2:12

Jesus died for all sins, past, present, and future 1 John 1:7,9

Once saved, always saved 1 John 2:19, 3:9, 4:17, 5:18; Rev. 3:5

The chosen are anointed by God 1 John 2:20, 4:10

Jesus promises eternal life, not material gains 1 John 2:25

free from sin and covered by Jesus' sinlessness 1 John 3:6

three proofs of salvation through Jesus: baptism, Jesus' blood, and the Holy Spirit 1 John 5:6

Christian Living

Spiritual maturity 1 John 2:1,18

Keeping Jesus' command to love God and our neighbor 1 John 2:3, 10, 3:11, 4:11, 21

Imitate Jesus 1 John 2:6, 29, 3:7

Do not love the world or material possessions 1 John 2:15

Seek the will of God 1 John 2:17

true love is selfless self sacrificial 1 John 3:16

helping the needed is love 1 John 3:17

true love manifests in deeds 1 John 3:18

Guard our selves from making idols 1 John 5:21 

No greater joy than walking in truth 3 John 1:4

God reproves and disciplines those he loves Rev. 3:19

Support godly believers 3 John 1:8, 12

Poverty is not a sign lack of Godly favor Rev. 2:9

Wealth can be a sign of spiritual poverty Rev. 3:17

Prayer

we receive what ever we ask because we are inline with God's will 1 John 3:22 

All that which is according to God's Will 1 John 5:14

The Future

The world is passing away 1 John 2:17 

The last hour of the world 1 John 2:18

Many antichrists have came 1 John 2:18

The tribulation has already started Rev. 1:9

Jesus is coming back 1 John 2:28

Every one will witness his return Rev. 1:7

Our glorification 1 John 3:2-3

A great multitude, countless, from every nation and all tribes will die during the great tribulation Rev. 7:9,14

The Seventh Seal and the beginning of the destruction of the universe and God's judgement on the world Rev. 8:7-13

Jesus will come in a robe dripping with blood of his enemies Rev. 19:13-16

Final judgement of all people, past and present Rev. 20:12-15

New heaven and new earth Rev. 21:1-2

God makes all things new Rev. 21:5

False Prophets, Antichrists, deceivers

Test all claims 1 John 4:1

Many antichrists have come 1 John 2:18

Many false prophets are in the world 1 John 4:1

Anitchrists deny Jesus as Christ and only Messiah 1 John 2:22

Anitchrists deny the Son of God and God The Father 1 John 2:22

they try and deceive 1 John 2:26, 3:7

no one has seen God at any time 1 John 4:12 

Faith is the victory, not health, wealth or prosperity 1 John 5:4

some Deceivers say Christ was not in the flesh 2 John 1:7 

Do not receive False Prophets, Antichrists, deceivers into your house 2 John 1:10

receiving and entertaining them is participating with them 2 John 1:11

The world hates you for your faith 1 John 3:13

The spirit of the Antichrist is already in the world 1 John 4:3

They are from the world, and the world listens to them 1 John 4:5

Call people out by name 3 John 1:9-10; Rev. 2:6, 20

John saw extraordinary things and was empowered by God to do extraordinary things.  His testimony and witness was critical for the church.  His direct influence was immeasurable.  He, himself, (through the power of the Holy Spirit) discipled Polycarp, Papias, and Ignatius.  Polycarp (died 155AD) discipled Irenaeus, and Irenaeus (died 202AD) in turn discipled Hippolytus of Rome (died 235AD). Origen of Alexandria (died 255AD) heard Hippolytus preach as a young man.  The funeral of Hippolytus was conducted by Justin the Confessor who was also later martyred for refusing to denounce his faith in 269AD; a faith that stemmed all the way down from John The Apostle's testimony and witness almost 170 years earlier. When looking at what The Apostle John taught and did, it is hard to recognize his influence in the popular church teachers now.   He boldly proclaimed the deepest truths of God, preached about sin and repentance, warned about false prophets and antichrists, and dared to call people out by name.  A boldness that more modern preachers would find "too offensive".  Even his teachings about true love do not reflect the 'self love' teachings of modern preachers.  Does your preacher teach like John The Apostle of Jesus Christ? If you have any questions or comments about this article please contact us or join our discussion forms

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