What 2022 brought to us and looking forward to 2023

Liberation

Lots of people thought 2022 would be the year of liberating us from that terrible virus which got the world in its grip. Though not a liberation became several people on their part, an even more senseless killing ‘disease’ came unto Europe.

The leader of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, who would love to find a renewed Soviet Union, said at the beginning of the year he would bring liberation to the Ukrainians. Instead, his “bloodstained” tyranny plunged Europe into the war on a scale not seen since 1945 as Russian troops advanced on Kyiv on Thursday night, February 24th.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is shocking and disgraceful. It is the latest terrible aggression by the Putin regime and the latest damaging conflict in our world, with so many people being killed or injured, losing loved ones and seeing their homes destroyed.

2022 has been a tough year to navigate, with a series of political and economic crises that continue to shape our world.

One powerful man

Who could have ever imagined that one man, from up north, would single-handedly turn the world upside down? However, he has succeeded very well in not only bringing black snow over several people, and literally turning the landscape blood-red, he has severely disrupted economic life in several countries.

Following two long pandemic years – with many still experiencing the effects – we’ve witnessed the outbreak of war in Ukraine and could feel in our purse how it affects us also in our region. We cannot ignore this war that has affected many citizens. At our new WordPress Site “Some View on the World” we have given a voice to those suffering in the conflict as well as reporting the situation on the ground and providing the expertise needed to understand geopolitics.

Picturing what is happening in the world

As best we can, we try to give a picture of what is happening in the world on the continuation of “Our World“. 2022 was another year of figuring out how we would be able to keep up with bringing political and religious news alongside our other spiritual websites. We hope to find that balance further in 2023.

By nature, I am not an easy person and have dared to clash several times by speaking my mind outright. Even in the articles, I publish here and on my other websites, my thinking is based on my personal opinion. One can agree or disagree with that view. I, therefore, appreciate that people also dare to express their opinions. But in general, there is a little reaction in that area. Still, I hope the articles brought, can make people think. For instance, I was happy to find that my op-eds on Christmas in the Daily Telegraph were able to bring a debate after all.

Hoping to expose wrongdoings

With the news we place at Some View on the World we do hope we also could be able to expose the mistreatment and deaths of migrant workers in Qatar for almost a decade as well as other wrong attitudes towards people as well as animals and plants. At my personal site and this site as well, in particular on “Some View on the World” we continue to bear witness to the climate crisis as it destroys lives, uproots whole communities and changes the course of our shared future. We hope for 2023 to be able to bring regular news about our environment.

The fallout from the January 6 hearings and Donald Trump’s presidency could get our attention, and we hold our hearts for the intentions of Mr Trump, wanting to come back as president of the U.S.A..

Independence of my websites

For all the reporting we do here, and on my other websites, I would like to remind you, readers, that there is no financial support from companies anywhere and that all reporting is based on personal and independent reporting, where I keep searching for this site among texts that appear on the net what could possibly be fascinating for you to read as well, and thus to reblog them here.

2022 could bring lots of blogs on the net of which we presented some selections over here too. At Firefox several could find their way into ‘Pocket’, like: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, How to Want Less, A Neurologist’s Tips to Protect Your Memory, Why You Should Really Stop Charging Your Phone Overnight, A Guide to Getting Rid of Almost Everything, a.o. most read.

Uncovering and unravelling

Whether on social, political or religious issues, we are eager to seek the truth and expose false reports. Exposing wariness is not always appreciated, but is very important in our view. To do that, we can count on several investigative journalists and some newspapers to join in the pursuit of that muddle, so that together we can make certain things known to the world while others would rather see them covered up.

At Some View on the World we have maintained round-the-clock coverage from several places, not always bringing nice news, like mass graves of Bucha, Izium and many war crimes.

The war accelerated a global economic slump, sending costs soaring, throttling energy supplies and raising the spectre of blackouts, malnutrition and a winter of discontent across dozens of countries. As global food supplies fluctuated, we reported on the hunger gripping the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan. In 2022, it became impossible to ignore those victims in poorer countries. But sadly, we had to observe how little the public cared about those people living far from their homes. And closer, many did not wish to have refugees, so we could speak of a refugee crisis again this year.

Here in Belgium, the influx of refugees seems completely uncontrollable and many, even with small children, shamefully had to sleep outside several nights through rain and wind. This while in Great Britain, the reception was also not going smoothly and people started looking for a housing solution in Rwanda, and proceeded to deportations.

Condition of mother earth

A lot of people do not want to realise that things are very bad for Mother Earth. To this, in 2022, several scientists again tried to make it clear to the world that we need to think seriously about this and take action. We were confronted with UK’s hottest summer, a very early and long great Summer in Belgium, drought in Europe, and the accompanying fires.

Heating the houses became for many difficult to keep in the household budget. It looked like mother nature felt the pressure on the energy market, as well. Everywhere in Europe, we had extremely high temperatures for the time of year. In Belgium 2022 became the warmest year since measurements.

The climate emergency ran as a constant thread through much of our Some View on the World journalism in 2022.

While many European countries were suffering from a shortage of water, they had it in other countries, like Pakistan, too much. Devastating floods in Pakistan, encountering one of its worst natural catastrophes, Sydney’s wettest year on record, ferocious heatwaves in the US southwest and the costliest Atlantic hurricane for years, could catch our attention.

At Cop27 in Egypt, the Guardian asked the tough questions. Though, we did not give so much attention to the changing tactics of activists, now more likely to throw soup at a painting as they are to glue themselves to a public highway.

Uprising

In my view, many other protests could get our attention earlier, as they were carried out in a more correct way. Coming from a not expected corner, sparked by the death in custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini.

Once again, we were able to conclude in Afghanistan and Iran that there is no improvement in human rights yet. The Iranian authorities tightly control reporting inside the country, so we counted on the teams of the Guardian to redouble efforts to reach protagonists to tell their stories. Social media remained also important for this, so it was satisfying to see the Guardian Instagram video on why Iranians are risking everything for change reach more than 2 million viewers.

It is impossible for me to have news sources everywhere, which is why we must also call on professional companies, for which we must also pay. Financial aid is therefore very welcome to cover these expenses. Nevertheless, we try to be as aware as possible of the general events, for which we also make further use of the known news channels and reliable TV channels and newspapers.

United States debacle

In terms of exposure, it was imperative to look at the Trumpists who still claim high and low that the US elections were forged.

The country which was formed on the idea that it could be a free world where everybody could express himself freely and would not be bounded by limitations through a government, in 2022 came to see deep political divisions, caused by a man who as 45th president of the U.S.A. did mutiny on that state and brought democracy in danger. His party made the ongoing climate crisis and racial, economic and health inequalities worsened. It was impossible to ignore the fallout from the January 6 hearings and Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as his willingness to come back as president.

The repeal of Roe v Wade provided a divisive backdrop to the November midterm elections. The conservative, or better said, the extremist Christians in the U.S., made it possible that women lost even the right to their own bodies. They also did not want to give an eye for mother nature nor for all those poor Americans who have no house or anywhere to live except on the streets, where many in the last weeks of the year found their dead by Winter storm Elliott. Buffalo got the worst hit by that bomb cyclone.

Political storms

In 2022 there were more significant elections in America which caught our attention. In Brazil, there were an anxious few weeks as Jair Bolsonaro wanted to do like his friend Trump, saying the votes were falsified. Finally, he suffered a chastening defeat by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who completed a comeback from prison to the presidential palace.

To our annoyance, we in northern Europe had to observe an inverse movement towards South America. The far right in Sweden, Italy and Israel, could get most seats in parliament. Despite her political prowess, the 45-year-old from Rome, whose strong will and determination has drawn comparisons to Margaret Thatcher, Giorgia Meloni has spent three decades fighting her way to the top of Italian politics. She is clear evidence that go-getters win. In October last year, after Brothers of Italy managed to draw votes away from the Northern League in its northern strongholds in local elections, a secret recording revealed Matteo Salvini hitting out at Meloni, calling her a “pain in the ass”.

In Belgium, too, the newspapers disguised several polls, clearly showing that the right is making a strong rise and where voices can already be heard that NVA will have to make the choice to form a majority coalition with Vlaams Belang.

As for British politics, prime ministers came and went with alarming regularity and the nation buried the pound, Queen Elizabeth and its global standing in quick succession. For 10 days in September, the future of the monarchy dominated the newsroom. The crazy game of the English conservatives who wanted their leader to put his capsones under the benches and to ask the people to stay at home because of Corona and not to have parties seemed to think it normal that their leader could do that and lie about it too. The whole world could laugh at the blunders of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, while the British citizen seemed not to mind. In any case, they did not demand new elections and left it to the Tory members to elect the new prime minister.

In Australia Labour could note a historic federal election victory.

Economical storms

The struggle between Russia and Ukraine is also a struggle between the Putin regime and Western Europe.

The war accelerated a global economic slump, sending costs soaring, throttling energy supplies and raising the spectre of blackouts, malnutrition and a winter of discontent across dozens of countries. But we also noticed that certain companies were abusing the war in Ukraine to raise their prices.

Cereals and gas were not released enough by blockades from the Russians, which caused major food problems, especially in Africa. In Western Europe we felt our energy prices skyrocket due to the pressure on the export and import markets. In Belgium, it took forever for the government to take measures to mitigate the costs of its citizens. After several months of calls by the Labour Party PvdA/PtB to reduce VAT to 6% and by their appeals to the public to put pressure on the government, things finally came to a head.

Health matters

2022 received big leaps forward for Alzheimer’s treatments, bowel cancer prevention and understanding depression.

In several countries there was joy that people could come together again to party and that the elderly should no longer be separated from their children and grandchildren. The lockdown had made it very clear how important personal contact is. It was striking how in 2022 teenagers and twens still had many psychological difficulties, which were not resolved. Bad enough, many could not be admitted in time, causing unnecessarily too many young people to die, while this could have been avoided.

Post-pandemic in Europe in danger

For months Europe tried to combat Covid-19. We started the annual overview with the relaxation of the Corona measures. But at the end of December, they now appear to be endangered because Europe does not want to take strict measures for the Chinese who are now allowed by their government to travel outside China again, which will allow them to spread the increased disease further outside China. With the coming Chinese New Year, they could start a new pandemic as in Belgium, it started in Antwerp.

For much of the world, a sort of post-pandemic normality has resumed – with one striking exception: the country where it all began. Chinese leaders faced a rapid spread of public anger caused by their draconian Covid lockdown policy. Only after some activists could ignite a revolt against the lockdown and more people joined them on the streets, even coming to shout to get rid of the Chinese leader and communist party, the government got seriously afraid and eased the lockdown measures. After they had done that another hell broke down, the virus rapidly spreading and killing so many people the mortuaries could not handle it anymore.

While the Chinese seem to be in the first Corona wave, as it were, the rest of the world has gotten out over time and everyone is now looking forward to a shock-free 2023.

We too look forward to an ending of the war in Ukraine and to a peaceful solution between Kosovo and Serbia.

At Some View of the World and at my other personal Space, we shall try to bring you up-to-date news of the happenings in the world, and here on this website, we hope we shall still be able to offer you and share with you, some worthwhile articles to read in this coming New Year.

 

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A sincere thank you to our readers and supporters – wherever you are in the world,
we wish you a wonderful end to 2022 and an optimistic 2023.

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Additional reading

1. G7 agreed to ban or phase out Russian oil and gas imports
2. 2022 the year of fearing some wars

With the ear shut off from the world

Foto door Marcelo Chagas op Pexels.com

Walking down the street or in shops, one encounters many young people who have earphones on or wear earbuds and seem to be far from the world. On the street, it is noticeable because their attention is more on what is entering their heads through the speakers than what is happening around them.

There has been much talk of late about how the streetscape of our towns and cities, not to mention our workplaces, have drastically changed since lockdown. But the biggest change, despite footfall finally starting to rise and working from home slowly tailing off, is the silence.

Peter Stanford, from England, writes in the Telegraph

It is not that we have suddenly become a more reserved country, or even that we have been struck dumb by the slew of problems that are confronting the nation and the world right now. No, it is the ubiquity of a generation of digital natives listening to devices in their ears that put them at one step removed for everyone else around them.

Foto door Marcelo Chagas op Pexels.com

One could say that, as it were, the young have decided not to be too confronted with the real world. Even down to the restrooms or canteen(s) in companies, one finds a large proportion of workers glued to their smartphones, either following up with their digital friends or playing games but making no effort to make friends at work or in real life.

At the beginning of the smartphone, it was mainly the very young, but during the Corona period, many older people joined the younger generation.

Whether it be on public transport, in a shopping centre or in the middle of a bank of desks in the office, a sizeable slice of the 25 to 40-year-old working population is, thanks to their headphones, with us but not with us: no chatter in the sandwich queue; no rows over pushing in; not even a flicker of recognition and a meeting of eyes. For those like me whose heads are unadorned by any tech, it can feel like walking on to the set of some dystopian sci-fi drama.

Strangely enough, many of those youngsters are not aware of their asocial behaviour. Those millennials looking for flexible working opportunities in such cases do not see all the time the same faces, so they could have contact with different people all the time. Hot-desking and shared spaces with work benches, touchdown points or social hubs, where staff can work in a group or on their own in a more informal setting, are more attractive to millennials and generation X than old-fashioned rows of desks with fixed computers and telephones.

For those businesses that prefer to stick with a more traditional office layout, flexibility comes outside the building, by allowing staff to work from home or remotely. Such remote work gives even less opportunity to socialise with work colleagues. However, it should not be forgotten that social interaction is a very important element in being human and in providing well-being for the individual. Social interaction is something that gets pushed aside completely by those earbuds, earphones or headphones.

You may say a big start to that evolution was given by Apple’s chief executive officer, Steve Jobs, who recognised potential in the nascent personal media player market and commissioned Apple engineer Jon Rubinstein to create a product in keeping with Apple’s minimalist, user-friendly style. Small white earbud headphones became an iconic trademark of the product in Apple’s pervasive and award-winning advertising campaigns.

Those youngsters are not interested in older phones the workplaces offers. Millennials will expect to use high-quality, reliable and covetable products at work to match their home devices and choose to bring in their own favoured, newer and higher performing smartphones and laptops to use at work. Top-notch Wi-Fi is also a must for millennials, who will expect high-speed connectivity anywhere they choose to work, whether that’s at a set workstation, from a hot desk, outside in the grounds or in a meeting room.
With a very high connection speed, the younger generation hopes to be in touch with ‘them’ and what interests them directly all the time. Time does not play much of a role here, which is why we see several young people walking down the street while all the time we hear them talking on the air to someone unseen.

Alison DaSilva, executive vice-president of CSR Research & Insights at Cone says about the Millenials

“Millennials view social media as a place to curate and share content that reflects their values – and this generation is enthusiastic about showing how their work is making an impact in the world,”

Foto door Jess Bailey Designs op Pexels.com

Danger lurks – from the millennials cycling or e-scooting along with the headphones on, eyes open but minds firmly in another reality; or for the pedestrians halfway through a conversation relayed through pods or headphones and prone to stepping into the traffic at any moment because they are blanking out those finetuned skills an older generation has developed to listen out for traffic approaching from your blindside.

Looking at these young people, it seems as if we may assume that they have chosen to dwell in their own chosen lifestyle. Cristina Odone, head of the family policy unit at the Centre for Social Justice confirms

“When millennials spend so much time with these big headphones over their ears, it sends out a clear message that they are choosing to be in a world of their own.”

And that, she adds,

excludes everyone else, including their own families.

It is predicted that by 2027 half of the UK will own headphones, with current trends seeing half of that ownership concentrated in the 25 to 45-year-old age groups and just 12 per cent in the 55-plus demographic.

None of the users seem to think about the dangers of neither distraction nor hearing damage. The NHS offers official advice that such headphones used too much or with too much volume have the potential to damage hearing.

We each are born with around 15,000 auditory hair cells in each of our ears that are all we will have for the rest of our lifetime to transmit sound to our brains. And they don’t like being blasted out by headphones any more than they do being assaulted by massive banks of speakers at pop festivals.

If you follow NHS guidelines, you will wear your headphones for no more than an hour at a time, followed by at least a five-minute interval before putting them back on again. Yet with current research showing that the younger group of users in their late teens and 20s often have them on for up to seven hours a day.

Foto door Ju00c9SHOOTS op Pexels.com

Most important, though, the experts say, is selecting the right volume. It should not be above 60 per cent. Some models, aimed at cautious parents of younger children, have a built-in volume lock switch.

But we are convinced that a very different danger is also totally overlooked, namely the element of socialising. It is not just the physical damage to ears that should be worrying us.

It’s the less obvious cost of the social and human obstacles they are creating,

says Julia Samuel, psychotherapist, bestselling author and presenter of the Therapy Works podcast.

Headphones, she believes, have the potential to damage the emotional growth of those whose daily ritual as they leave the house is to put them on precisely at the moment when they could be engaging with the world.

“They are placing a barrier in the whole interactive and interweaving between mind and body,”

she says,

“because they limit the amount of input wearers are getting from outside.”

They can cause, she worries,

“a deficit of connection with those around you and leave you a little emptier and a little chillier”.

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Please find to read:

How millennials in the workplace are shaping today’s businesses

How headphone dependency is widening the generation gap

Some wanting a #childfreemillennial in an ‘overpopulated’ world

In the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China there was an official program initiated to restrict the amount of children, reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population, making that today there are not enough youngsters to pay for the older generation. There were even forced abortions and sterilizations (the latter primarily of women).

The one-child policy produced consequences beyond the goal of reducing population growth. Most notably, the country’s overall sex ratio became skewed toward males—roughly between 3 and 4 percent more males than females.

It seems now several youngsters also have preference not to have children. They seem to forget that when they would be over 60 there shall be no children able for them to take care. The consequence of not wanting children is not providing a generation who shall be at work whilst the elders would be retired, so that there would not be money to provide for those retired people. Something which has become a huge problem in China.

We wonder if those who now say it will be great to have a child-free life still would say that when they passed the age to have children. shall they still say

“You’ve slept in, woken up to a tidy home, it’s quiet, and you’ve got the rest of the day to potter around, no interruptions. A child-free life is a good life.”

when they find themselves in that quiet home where they are just with themselves and nobody to continue their family generation.

The above message floats over a video that captures a scene of serene domesticity. Posted on TikTok a few days ago, it has already racked up more than 100,000 views.

The video’s creator, “Danni ‘childfree’ Duncan”, who seems mainly to be concerned about his own freedom, is among those who have been able to start a movement under their generation which clearly has decided not to have children. That movement even has its own hashtags (#childfreebychoice and #nothavingkids).

One could easily think that all this is a whim of short duration. But we rather have the impression that these young people do not really realise what their childless life might be in a few years.

However, we obviously cannot ignore or overlook this movement, because it involves not just a few but thousands of women all over the western world.

This craze is just one small part of a wider, and highly significant, demographic issue: across much of the world, birth rates are plummeting.

On Nov 15 this year, the global population is expected to reach eight billion. The United Nations predicts it could grow to about 8.5 billion by 2030 before peaking at 10.4 billion in the 2080s. After that – and some predict it will happen 20 years earlier – the world’s population will start to fall.

Some on the other hand argue that we here in the West should curb births because in the poorer countries, far too many children are coming into this world and thus will overpopulate it. In certain countries they thought lots of children would die because of Covid or because of global warming disasters. In the industrialised countries there was a growth of babies born.

“About nine months after the pandemic, we see what we call a ‘baby bump,’”

said Martha Bailey, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the authors of a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

After more than a year, lots of people having been in lockdown, in those countries with economic unemployment we could notice more children being born than normally in the same period over a year. In several countries, lots of 80+ and 90+ people died from the Coronavirus, but still, we can see that the number of 70-79 year-olds increased a remarkable percentage.

We should be aware that usually in countries where conditions for survival are more difficult that more children will be born there, but also more deaths will occur. In the West, similarly, with improved living conditions and a reduction in child deaths, we have had a reduction in births.

The few decades of projected global population growth that remain will be driven by a small number of undeveloped countries, many in the Sahel region of Africa. In countries like Niger, which has the world’s highest fertility rate, economic conditions remain so harsh that women continue to have an average of six or more children in order to survive.

In contrast, for most of the rest of the world – including Britain – it’s a baby bust. And it’s happening now. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), women born in 1975 had on average just 1.92 children. This compared with the average 2.08 children produced by their mothers’ generation (taken as women born in 1949) and is far below the 2.1 children needed for the existing population to replace itself. For a country it is accepted that, to maintain stability in a country, an overall total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed, assuming no immigration or emigration occurs. A total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 is known as the replacement rate. Generally speaking, when the TFR is greater than 2.1, the population in a given area will increase, and when it is less than 2.1, the population in a given area will eventually decrease, though it may take some time because factors such as age structure, emigration, or immigration must be considered.

Last year, the French were urged to have more children after the number of births in the country slumped to its lowest level since the Second World War, with 1.83 children born per woman, compared with 2.02 more than a decade earlier. The birth rate in Spain also dropped to a historic low last year, hitting just 1.19 children born to every woman – a 29 per cent fall compared with a decade earlier.

And in parts of Asia the situation is even worse. South Korea’s fertility rate sank to its lowest ever in 2020, a meagre 0.84 children per woman, giving the country the lowest birth rate in the world.

If, on average, women give birth to 2.1 children and these children survive to the age of 15, any given woman will have replaced herself and her partner upon death.

If young people have now decided not to have children, it means that in a few years’ time, we will indeed have a reduced number of people in several countries but there will also be a very ageing population for which not enough young people will be able to care, a problem China is now facing.

Europe and the U.S.A are already facing a similar problem too because although fertility rates remain well above the replacement rate in many parts of the world, the global TFR has declined significantly since 1970. The decline may be so drastic that populations are expected to halve by 2100 in more than 20 countries, including Spain, Portugal and Japan.

While some may think that humans will have to move to other planets due to overpopulation, some also realise that there will be an emerging population reduction. Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla chief executive, has called it

“one of the biggest risks to civilisation”.

But why, when living standards and freedoms have never been higher, are women across the globe having so few children or rejecting the concept of motherhood altogether? And what if anything can policymakers do to reverse the trend?

What we should be concerned about is why young people, if not out of selfishness, do not want to bear children. Is it because those twens consider children an economic drain caused by housing, education cost and other costs.

Economic stresses and spiralling house prices mean more couples will feel they can’t afford children,

explains Lyman Stone, chief information officer at Demographic Intelligence.

To promote “no children” may also just be an excuse to avoid such an obligation to share each other with a third party and if they find they can no longer have children, hide it behind their so-called “no children policy”. It looks like many youngsters do not want to invest time or money in any other beings in their relationship. Most of them want leisure time, and time to focus on their own well-being and development.

The reverse of the leisurist coin is the “workist” mindset, in which they value their job very highly as a source of meaning and purpose in their life. Getting higher in work has become a very important factor, and that goal of reaching a high position is considered much more important than having children.

Like leisurism, it is not hugely compatible with parenthood. More than one study has suggested a correlation between workist attitudes – which Stone says are prevalent among a growing share of adults – and lower fertility.

A survey last year by the Pew Research Center in the US found a rising share of childless American adults said they were unlikely to ever start a family. Some 44 per cent of non-parents aged 18 to 49 fell into this category, up from 37 per cent in 2018. While some cited financial reasons, climate change or their lack of a partner as a reason, the majority (56 per cent) said they probably wouldn’t have children because they just didn’t want to.

It’s a group that’s becoming more vocal. In 2015 and 2017, the NotMom Summit – billed as one of the world’s first major conferences for women without children – was held in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2021, Erin Spurling, a British woman in her mid-30s, created the Childfree Lounge, an online community for women without children.

Many of those no-children lovers say they love their freedom, spontaneity and peace and quiet. They often also value time alone or just with a partner or even want to change partners regularly.

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Find also to read

Child-free by choice: The birth rate crisis gripping the West

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Additional reading

1. How the pandemic created an unexpected “baby bump”
2. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #4 The Family pact
3. Ecological economics in the stomach #3 Food and Populace
4. How to look back at Cop26
5. What effect does population have on climate change?
6. Overpopulation not the cause of overusing our earth

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Related

1. Boomers miss the boat: Qld population shift leaves two age groups stranded
2. A Small Circle in Asia Contains More Than Half the World’s Population | HowStuffWorks
3. Book review: ‘Letter to the American Church’
4. Sexual Selection In Men
5. Special Release on 2020 CPH, Municipality of Cabusao7
6. Top 10 Most Populated Countries in Europe #shorts #facts – YouTube 채널: Swapna Ideas
7. Is Large Population a Problem?

P5 The Empire we’re in: Individualism & Consumerism

In the previous weeks, the government had made sure that the anti-vaxxers had no reason to demonstrate and/or smash things up.

12-storey floor of retail area inside of Berjaya Times Square shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Mainstream churches have also opened their doors to the general public, but as before, the Corona Crisis, the huge shopping centra are and remain the main ‘worship temples’. There, in those shopping malls, people feel most at ease and satisfied that they can buy anything they want to own again.
For them, the big shopping mall is a sacred place to pay homage to their god (Mammon), money.

Consumerism has gone so far that lots of people when they buy something are even not interested in what the ecological footprint might be of what they buy.

Even though most people have become slaves to money, and therefore slaves to their employers, it is up to the Church to make those people realise how they have gone off the rails with their way of life and money-making.

It is up to the believer in the One True God to show people that there are much better ways than the worship of money, by which people are chained.

After the war in the Middle East seemed to have come to an end there was again a new war, the Russians invading Ukraine, we can see that Gog stood up and tries to go south to enlarge its world to get back a Great Russia or USSR. Others wonder who or what that “One World Government” seeking world domination might be.

Many do not want to know about God and His commandments and laugh at the idea of one world government or theocracy. The idea of living in the last days seems for many ridiculous whilst others think we can clearly see the signs indicating we are close to the times of the return of Christ, of experiencing the end of the world, there was something dramatic, inspiring, exciting about it all.

 

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Preceding

Material gain to honour God

Your position about materialistic desires having conquered the world

Looking for the consummation of presents

The Proper Place of Excess

Earth’s pandemic and T-shirts for young people

The meaning of life – Finding purpose

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Additional reading

1. Looking at an era of international “youth culture”
2. Looking on what is going on and not being of it
3. Not everything has to be reciprocated with money
4. An other trait for faith in Jesus and his God
5. Good to make sure that you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy
6. Hamas the modern Philistines
7. The post-Christian world
8. Today’s Thought “Flee these things” (May 24)
9. Today’s Thought “Keep your life free from … ” (June 06)
10. Today’s thought “Flee these things. Pursue …” (November 23)
11. Mark 10 – The Nazarene’s Commentary: Mark 10:23-31 – The Difficulty of Money
12. Not created to be on our own (Our world) = Not created to be on our own (Some View on the World)
13. Missionary action paradigm for all endeavours of the church
14. True riches
15. Count your blessings
16. Sign of the Times and the Last Days #1 The Son of man revealing
17. Sign of the Times and the Last Days #2 Wars, natural disasters, famine and false Messiahs
18. Last days and destruction of the flesh
19. Hope For, But Not In, Evangelicalism

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Related

1. P1 This might not be the End, but it sure feels like it / A.J. Hendry
2. What Does Larry Cohen’s THE STUFF Say About How Easily We Are Manipulated and Our Weaknesses Exploited?
3. America’s Shopping Addiction
4. The case against consumerism: Part 1 – The real cost of our everyday purchases
5. Extreme individualism is on the rise
6. Individualism and Individuation
7. Individualism in the Age of Social Media
8. Covid Evidence: Supply Vs Demand Shock
9. Community or Consumption: Social Ecology in Greater Manchester
10. Consumerism’s Effect on Creating an Addictive Society – Pt. 3
11. Time for a radical farewell to overconsumption
12. Is sustainable consumption fundamentally an issue of inequality?
13. The Money Problem
14. The control of money is where the true power lies – but only because of the way we think
15. On conspiracies, apocalyptic Christian nationalism, and how bad eschatology is ruining the world / Michael Frost
16. Tightened Covid curbs spark protests, riots across Europe
17. Be prepared – last-days spiritual warfare is intense
18. Is this how the End of the World begins?
19. What Shall Be The Sign Of Thy Coming? And Of The End Of The World?
20. Food For Thought
21. A Gate out of hell
22. In the Miso Soup
23. Quote of the day (20-Apr-2022)
24. Make more pies
25. Which attitude is better for our society?
26. The importance of the individual and the individual vs the group
27. Relationships help with resilience, not individualism
28. 4/1/22 – Individually Individual
29. Buying Stuff for Stuff
30. Dang, I shopped.
31. The Free Gift!!
32. Green Consumerism: Who Cares About The Environment?
33. faith in Christ for each other
34. A Saviour for the world, the Samaritans, and our individualistic selves (Growing Deeper with John 4:27-42)
35. Saved from what? (And For what?) [Sermon]
36. Breaking free
37. How to Buy Less and Buy Better with the Less But Better Method
38. J.B Mackinnon’s The Day the World Stops Shopping: Book Review

When Lambs Are Silent

This is part 5 in a series where we will be exploring and imagining how faith communities, and our community in general, may need to evolve in order to adapt to our changing times. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

In our last piece we discussed how our society, though regarded as secular, is very much shaped by its own God’s that demand allegiance and require our worship and sacrifice. We named these as Individualism, Consumerism and White Supremacy. In our last piece we dealt with the latter, in this article we will be talking about the former two.

Throughout the lockdown there has been calls to open various shopping centres, lament’s that we have not been free to shop, to browse and buy. And in Auckland last week, as Covid restrictions began to ease, the great Temples of this age…

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Passover 7 days of meditation opening a way to conversion

Immanuel Verbondskind looks back at the lockdown period and the impact on the small Jeshuaist community and some Jewish communities. For Jews it has even been more difficult to undergo the lockdown, because many do have no television or internet and have been in a real-time strict isolation, not being able to have worship moments with brethren and sisters.

Those times of seclusion and restriction could be called a ‘reflection time‘ or retreat, where one had enough time to think about faith and religion. On the 15th of April this year (2022) it was 14 Nisan, the evening to remember the liberation of God’s People from the enslavement in Egypt, but also to remember the gathering of Jeshua and his disciples, where at the last supper Jesus talked about the blood being shed for the liberation of all people.

In Wintertime, many Christians celebrate Christmas and have some holiday, where they also can think about the light that came in the darkness. For true Christians and for Jews, 14-22 Nisan is the most sacred period of the religious year, where is remembered how the Elohim brought to light in the dark night by passing over the houses where there was the blood of the lamb, giving the opportunity for the Jews to flee their world of slavery in Egypt.

True Christians with Jeshuaists remember also the Passover lamb Jeshua (Jesus Christ) and show their gratitude for the salvation by the Grace of God, Him accepting that ransom Jesus was willing to pay for all people.

 

Since Friday night Jeshuaists and Christadelphians, like other true Christians, since some long time of isolation because of lockdown, could at some places get together (in restricted form) and make connections with other brothers and sisters, either in place or via the internet streaming. Many, the previous time in isolation got lots of opportunities to think about the value of such a connection or ‘fraternity‘. They had enough time in the lockdown period to think about their religious affiliation, and some also about their need to go over into a conversion. Because the last few months, more signs could be seen that we are entering a new period in the Time of Ages or in God’s Plan.

Because of those “Signs of the Times” there has come a certain pressure to know what to do and which direction to go. Now many more ask themselves who shall be part of the things going to be there after the big battle or great tribullation.

Several people have wondered in those Covid times if it would not be better to become part of a community. There also have been Jews by race or non-believing and non-practising Jews, who started to change ideas about the world and its Creator. The Jews from Middle European origin also started wondering by which denomination of Jews they would best join. Those people living here in Belgium, France, Holland and Germany wonder if they would convert to Judaism, if they then would be accepted as a Jew.

Anti-Zionists often claim that Ashkenazi Jews are white imposters, fake Jews who are entirely descended from European converts to Judaism. This is completely rebutted by genetic studies which have proven a Middle Eastern patrilineal origin for Ashkenazi Jewry. However, when the Anti-Zionists make the Apartheid accusation are Jews suddenly a single racial group. The notion that Jews generally constitute a racial group is Nazi in origin and is at the core of the Anti-Jewish Apartheid libel. {Why Many Ashkenazi Jews “Look” European}

There is a long history of the racialization of Jews. There have also been religious and non-religious Jews in several countries.

Racialization of Jews have a long pedigree in the history of Anti-Semitism. Racialization of Jews was practiced in Spain against the Anusim (“Marranos”), Jews who were involuntarily converted to Christianity during the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Racialization of Jews in Germany became prominent already in the second half of the 19th century when religious Anti-Semitism (Anti-Judaism) was increasingly supplanted by racializing Anti-Semitism. The third phase is the current racialization of Jews by the extreme left.

Racialization of Jews is intended to paint Jews as “genetic aliens” in a certain country (e.g. Spain, Germany or Israel). Of course painting any other people as “genetic aliens” is not socially acceptable beyond Nazi circles. But Anti-Semitic opponents of Israel systematically engage in discourse to stigmatize the Jews in the land of Israel as genetic aliens despite Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrahim patrilineally being very very genetically similar to Palestinians due to common historical origin, with the genetic divergence accounted for by historical conversions to Judaism and by immigration to the land of Israel from other parts of the Middle East during the Islamic era.

Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrahim are more similar to each other than to any other populations and are predominantly of Middle Eastern origin in genetically confirming the historical narrative of ancient Israelite origin. The Anti-Semitic accusation according to which Ashkenazi Jews are exclusively descended from European converts to Judaism despite that part of Ashkenazi ancestry accounting only for only 30% of the Ashkenazi gene pool with the remaining 70% being Middle Eastern in origin is used by Anti-Semites such as Palestinian-American professor of Columbia University Joseph Massad to libelously paint Israeli Jews as “European colonizers” and against the scientific consensus denying that most modern Israeli Jews are Levantine returnees to Israel. The false claim that Ashkenazi Jews are “European colonizers” is in fact one of the main claims involved in the Anti-Semitic racialization of Ashkenazi Jewry. {Jews are a Nation of Color}

After the covid pandemic several feel a greater need to come to connect with one or another Jewish or Jeshuaist denomination. Having been on their own, in their own living room, with nobody else to share the faith, was too lonely. Some, who were previously connected with a shul, lost contact but also interest to go to a prayer and study house. Though others have now, even more than ever before, felt the need to be connected to other fellow believers.

This Passover is for several an essential time to consider the way how God handled His People and how, also today, He is still willing to guide them through the desert of this (non-religious) world.

Some people take time to think about separation and isolation, and look at the lessons we get from the Scrolls that teach that the priests were deliberately separated from everyone else. They even couldn’t go to family funerals, like many could not in the Corona crisis. Their job was to remain separate from the people they served, which may sound strange. But their goal was to maintain their close connection with the Most High in purity or holiness.

To remain separate at all times isn’t healthy for anyone. All over the world many learned that all too well the last two years. this year many felt a great joy they were able again to come together with some friends to do like the apostles did, following up the permanent ordinance… a celebration for all of God’s people throughout all time, remembering Passover.

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Find to read:

Times of seclusion, restriction, liberation, connection, religious affiliation and conversion

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Preceding

Measure of loneliness whilst time drags

Adar 6, Matan Torah remembering the giving of Torah

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Additional reading

1. Jewish diaspora
2. December a joyful time for many
3. Lenten Season and our minds and hearts the spiritual temple in which God seeks to live
4. Remember the day
5. Ransom for all
6. A perfect life, obedient death, and glorious resurrection
7. Redemption #4 The Passover Lamb
8. Redemption #7 Christ alive in the faithful
9. Atonement And Fellowship 8/8
10. A strange thing might happen when you come under Christ
11. Seeing or not seeing and willingness to find God
12. Falling figures for identifying Christians
13. What is happening in America to religion and to the language of faith
14. Who is a Jew?
15. Counting sands and stars
16. We Count. We Just Weren’t Counted.
17. Judaism and Jeshuaism a religion of the future
18. Great tribulation and Armageddon
19. Armageddon or the Great Tribulation
20. Ashkenazi Jews are extremely inbred

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Related

1. Passover Blessings – April 15th through 22nd, 2014
2. Proselytism
3. Jesus Became Our Passover Lamb
4. How Jews look to non-Jews – Part 1
5. Going back to shul
6. Fighting ignorance

Andrá Tutto Bene, Everything will be fine!

Throughout 2020 and 2021 people wondered how long their restrictions would take. In many countries doctors and nursers had to give more than their best to save lives. In the health area they were at war, daily fighting this war whose enemy is invisible.
For them, there is this message.

We keep praying for all those involved to help people to survive this crisis.

As citizens, we can all do our best to stay safe by keeping to the Corona measures. Let us not forget all those health workers and in respect of them stay protected at home stay.

Andrá Tutto Bene, Everything will be fine!

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Let’s count…

Now that we have closed the curtains of the year 2021, when we open the blinds for 2022, let us consider how lucky we are to have the light of 2022 coming to us.

On January 8, 2021 Sushmita Sahay wanted to start with an empty jar and fill it with notes about good things that happen to you, her and us. On the next new year’s eve, we then could open it and see what an awesome year it has been. She wrote:

Imagine what a life it has been for all of us… You tell me, is it worth it, all these plans, new year resolutions etc ? Shut inside our holes, masked up faces, sanitizing any human presence… simply praying to see just another day; unscathed. God managed to puncture the great human Ego. So it’s time to start with counting our blessings in reflection:

The lockdown proved it beyond doubt that we could all cook, or at least potter around the kitchen with productive results. God and government kept our food supplies running, thank God. {This Year…}

So many people found so much to complain, about being limited in their freedom, about not being able to do what they wanted to do, etc.. Many could be at home for more hours than they would have been able when normal work times would have gone on. Instead of enjoying the extra free time at home they looked for reasons to complain and moan.

Last year many people could enjoy more time for themselves. Like the year before:

Snatched moments of fresh air on the terrace, walking in solitude on deserted garden paths became the most beautiful experience. Alps can wait forever. {This Year…}

2021 had started with so many wishes and what did we finally get?

The virus marauded us… taking away our loved ones. {and it’s December}

All the year through, we heard cyphers and numbers, see lots of statistics and heard lots of predictions.

Two years of confinement, new words in our lexicon and the undying spirit! With such optimism, we tread on, specially we the 1.39 billion! …. it’s all up to the media… They are capable of pushing things out of collective memory! …. {and it’s December}

No end to woes, it seems Covid likes reruns…race for cure began, vaccine came, but new strains came in stronger. {This and that}

The Indian traveller still went from the extreme South to the East in all PPE and social distancing that an economy class ticket of a budget airline could vouch for, whilst she hoped she and her fellow Indians can resist this virus as well. She like we came to see that

A virus can change the fabric of a society; this has been proved beyond doubt, as human survival takes over all social gimmickry. Weddings and funerals being binding factors in the Indian context, have been eye openers in the recent times. The virus has successfully imparted a life-lesson at what all can you manage without. When attendees numbers were compulsorily reduced, it was about making do with barest minimum people and paraphernalia. Covid reduced expenses, alright, but also reduced the need for bonding between neighbours, relatives and friends… {This and that}

For this New Year we should try to open our eyes again with the positive colours of life, being grateful for all the things we still have.

Heartfelt

Remember what I said at the start of this year? No? Read it here👇 http://sushmitasahay.com/2021/01/08/this-year/

Although it was an emotional watershed year…we still have lots to be thankful for if we begin to count our blessings one by one. Just for starts, here I go…

1. We are still here, me writing you reading.

2. Hopefully, not all our loved ones are gone, some still are waiting with enough warmth in their embrace to hug our miseries away.

3. Then there is this immense blue sky, filling us up with thoughts of immense infinity.

4. A child/ your child smiled back at you, just like that! No reason( Its a wonderful Kodak moment, I tell you 🥰)

5. You were able to help someone in dire monetary need without expecting a return because God has been kind to you.

6. Like me, you didn’t have to visit the doctor this…

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Seeing the glass half-empty or half-full

In these darker days, normally many people look at this world and their days in a groovy mood.

A non-Orthodox Jewish Young(-ish) Professional JYP, (aka “Judgy Young Pessimist”) who does like latkes (fried potato pancakes), and seems to enjoy parties featuring lots of people, food, dancing, and drinking which comes on his way with the Chanukah Parties.

But when he looks at the glasses, we have the impression he looks them from the wrong site of the picture. He writes:

It should come as no surprise that I, JYP, (aka “Judgy Young Pessimist”) see the glass as half-empty. {I Can’t Think of a Witty Title for This Post}

And that is what lots of people have done this last year. In this Corona-period they have taken on the coat of negativity.

Does it really matter if the glass is half-full or half-empty? Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash

In the past year, several young people have taken on the mantle of the dark side of life. Many have lost positive thoughts towards the future. They see it all in such a gloomy light, while at the end of that dark tunnel there is a beautiful light in sight.

In these darker days let us decorate our homes with fine ornaments, colourful and luminous things, so that the darkness is somewhat hidden by our smiling light.

We may not forget that it really matters how we look at the glass in front of us.

In case we do not take it up to drink from the glass, someone else will do it. He or she might drink the contents and then we’ll see the glass completely empty.

He might think the glass will be left untouched, but in that instance, we shall have to doubt the nicety of the gathering, or perhaps the misjudgement of the host who hoped for more attendees than actually came. JYP would then see the beverage eventually attracting bugs and becoming gross. (What a waste.)

Were the invited people not in time because they were not sure to come by train or plane, or did they take so much time discussing what to wear, that they forgot the appointed time?

In any case, the glass still standing there might still be half full or half empty. When you look at it take it to be half full, and enjoy the rest of the evening sipping what is still leftover.

Don’t let Covid messages and lockdowns spoil your days, but make the most of these times of isolation and enjoy every moment you can.

Happy end of year celebrations!

Freedom for whom?

 

East of Eden

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to drag on, one thing is emminently clear to politicians, scientisits, business leaders and the public at large: mass vaccination is the only way out of the pandemic, and thus the only way out of the cycle of restrictions that have been imposed on our lives. Most people can see this, and thus most people in Britain have already gotten vaccinated at this point. But of course, not every country is as fortunate to have vaccination rates as high as ours.

In Austria, which has among the lowest vaccination rates in Europe at 42%, has recently become the first country in Europe to make it mandatory for all eligible citizens to recieve the Covid vaccine. In the US, only about 59% of the population has been vaccinated, which sounds fine until you remember that a large and vocal part of the population resists the idea…

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Allister Heath on people who have a vested interest in this permanent Covid emergency

In the Daily Telegraph Allister Heath brings a comment where he blames that the pandemic has become a convenient excuse for bodies that fail to do their jobs properly

He writes:

There is much that we have learnt about the character of modern Britain since Covid burst so disastrously on the scene almost two years ago. The only unambiguous positive is that our community spirit is alive and well, with millions ready to volunteer for the general good. We are more trusting of political and medical authorities than most other societies, and in return the British state has remained ever so slightly more liberal towards us; unfortunately, our second-rate machinery of government is still scandalously unprepared for modern-day pandemics, new variants or any kind of genuine crisis.

Read further: Too many people have a vested interest in this permanent Covid emergency

You also may find more crucial insights and in-depth analysis as Boris Johnson announces all adults will be offered booster vaccinations by the end of January. The Telegraph’s expert team will talk you through everything you need to know about the third vaccine dose. You’ll also find answers to our readers’ most pressing questions on the omicron variant, including how the symptoms differ and what protection vaccines offer. Paul Nuki examines whether the new variant will cause severe disease or just a runny nose, while Sarah Knapton explains why “The Ghosts of Variants Past may bring comfort amid omicron gloom”.

Sherelle Jacobs provides illuminating commentary as she warns that “The failed Whitehall blob threatens to push Britain back into lockdown”. Tom Harris is incisive as he explores “Why many on the Left want another lockdown”. Plus, as new rules are brought in to combat the variant’s spread, Tim Stanley laments that “Lockdown looms and our liberties are in tatters”.

MoonDay Musings: the magic of storytelling

In a certain way it is a shame, the tradition of telling about the past of the family, does not exist anymore.

Probably, for some time, the Boom generation is the last generation where the youngsters sat on the lap of their grandparents listening to those very interesting stories of the past as well as to the many fairytales and fables.
As kids we could dream about wonder tales involving marvellous elements and occurrences, bringing us in dreamland. Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm ( Jacob Ludwig Carl and Wilhelm Carl Grimm) , were daily food for many of the generations born before 1960, who also grew up with several fables or parables.

In many industrialised countries there is no time given anymore to public storytellers or to public poets .It would not be bad to have again a bearer of “old lore” (seanchas) or have again recitals by bards, to bring the past back to life.
We may not forget that by telling about the past we can learn for the future and find ways to strengthen ourselves.

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Additional reading

1. To relive that what happened in the past
2. Stories of the beginnings, and one Main book composed of four major sections
3. The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 6 European myths
4. Dia de Los Muertos – Day of the dead
5. Allhallowtide with Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day

Inner Journey Events Blog

Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

We learn history in many ways — from school textbooks, non-fiction scholarly works, novels, television, documentaries and films, the nightly news and more — and some of those sources may even be accurate. 

But what of cultural lore and traditions, and family history?

In the past, these stories were shared at family gatherings, at times of celebration such as festivals like Samhain and Bealtaine, but also on special days for individuals such as births, birthdays or naming days, weddings, and —yes — deaths, as families gathered to celebrate the life of a loved one who had passed. 

In ancient Irish traditions — and many other cultures and places with strong oral traditions — families, villages, clans and tribes honoured the role of the story teller.

These were known as the fílidh (pronounced fee-lee) in Druidic and Celtic traditions, poet-seers who learned hundred…

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Community Farming

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Preceding

Is Organic food even safe?

Nature's Kingdom

We all know that Food is the most essential requirement for the nourishment of human life. Even if a human being does not have shelter over their head or clothes over their body, they would still survive if they get wholesome nutrition. That is why all over human history, we have been motivated to search and seek food.

In March the Government has declared a Lockdown and people for Panic started living city, who staying in Bangalore they were facing lots of problems to buy grocery and daily needs, if they are in containment zone then nobody, where allowed, goes move out of the restricted area.

The community concept is for the people who care about fresh and healthy food, where local food come together to build and support community farms in their neighborhoods, and some assist community groups that are needed to govern the farm, some want to…

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Vaccinations and anti-vaxers

Ex-president Donald Trump was against vaccinations and even did want Americans to believe the “Chinese disease would soon be over”. This ego tripper managed lots of Americans not to believe in the dangers of the Coronavirus.

By his misleading words he got many Republicans, evangelicals, but also poor blacks, and Hispanics to believe it are foreign forces and socialists or, worse, communists, trying to undermine the American society. Today many are suspicious of the government which would have become in power by a fraud election. Conservative evangelicals are among the quickest to share all those absurd stories about a.o. coronavirus-related conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of government. In many countries we can see that it is the Religious Right which is a hothouse of anti-vax activism and health fads.

Fools will readily believe a case without closely seeking out and attending to the criticisms of it (Proverbs 18:17). They routinely judge before hearing. They also attend to and spread rumours, inaccurate reports, and unreliable tales, while failing diligently to pursue the truth of a matter. The wise, by contrast, examine things carefully before moving to judgment or passing on a report. {Wisdom and Folly in Christian Responses to Coronavirus}

a lot of youngsters only go be the headings on their Social Media. Titles on You Tube or on Facebook, without going to read the article, let withstand to think about it and to examine what is said in it.

They do not follow up closely on viewpoints that they have advanced, seeking criticism and cross-examination to ascertain their truth or falsity. And when anything is proven wrong, they do not return to correct it. {Wisdom and Folly in Christian Responses to Coronavirus}

You would think, in the U.S.A., after the new president tried to get some order again, the American citizens would get back to their senses. The number of new Covid-19 cases per day has increased dramatically in the United States in the past month. New, dangerous variants have spread widely. At first Trump could convince people not to wear masks, but luckily now they show up in many parts of the country. Artists, often looked at as being “left”, went to get their vaccination as soon as they could. CEO’s also did not wait to long before getting vaccinated. But for the lowest-income groups, we can see it is more difficult to get people over the line. In the U.S.A. only 1.1 percent of the population of poor countries has received a single shot. Some people have surrendered to a sense of doom because they formed unreasonable expectations that the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines would miraculously obliterate the virus.

You would expect after the 2020 lockdowns, the 2.4 million Americans hospitalised and the 610,000 killed, more Americans would hurry to get the vaccinations over and done with. But the unmistakable fact is that they’ve made great progress in recent months to smother the virus and steer national life back toward normal. Where 5,463 people died from Covid-19 on one day at the beginning of the year, the daily death count is now bouncing in the low hundreds. One good thing may be that already an undetermined number of people have acquired some immunity from Covid-19 by exposure to it.

Today in America, severe Covid-19 infections and death are almost entirely in unvaccinated people. And the vaccines are still remarkably effective — of the 163 million fully vaccinated in the United States, only 1,141 have died from the virus.

It is known that the older you are, the greater the chance of getting seriously ill or dying from CoViD, and the younger you are, the less likely you are to have serious symptoms. This makes a lot of youngsters not worrying or not afraid of getting infected. For them there are many reasons not to receive an injection. Though lots of those reasons are based on absurd messages on Social Media. Social Media is doing a lot of damage and undermining national safety. One would expect them to see now, that because of the success of the vaccination in the older population, that the infection rate from the Delta variant has sent the number of infections soaring, the number of deaths, at least right now, is surprisingly low.

Young and old should come to recognise this virus is not an ordinary virus, like we have seen previously several viruses coming over the lands. It is not a virus that shall allow us to cry victory soon. No matter who might be president or in power, all shall have to start with acknowledging that it’s not within our power to eliminate Covid-19 from our shores the way we have polio, or to vaccinate every American against the virus. If we’re willing to agree on an end goal of dramatically reducing the severe illness and deaths from the virus, however, we might begin to see what winning is about.

According to Anthony Fauci the vaccines are even effective against the new variants that people fret so much about.

“A higher percentage of Americans have taken a Covid-19 vaccine in the past seven months than took a flu vaccine during the catastrophic 2017-18 flu season (37 percent of adults). Only 54 percent of the American population had taken the Salk polio vaccine six years after its introduction. Viewed from these angles, Americans in 2021 have not been particularly “vaccine hesitant.”

he says. But when we see news coverage and some documentaries about the handling of CoViD in the United States we got another view, with a lot of people between the age of 20-40 coming up with a lot of reasonable and sometime idiotic fantasies why they do not want to be vaccinated.

All over the world people should become convinced that it is a matter of not only protecting yourself, but out of love for the other, protecting those around you. The more people we vaccinate, the safer we all are today and how sooner we can go back to a normal life. We need everybody to be able to go to work, to have all the shops, pubs and event centres open again. Trying to get everything working properly again, we should safeguard ourselves by taking enough precautions that the illness can not spread. The less opportunity dangerous variants will have to emerge and spread tomorrow the better our life shall be and the better our economy shall be able to recover from those two years ‘disaster’.

So many in France and Germany shout about their freedom being taken, but do they ever think about what freedom really might be? Freedom is also respecting the freedom of others!

The age factor helps to explain why the rate of vaccination has stalled and is unlikely to accelerate, especially among the 19-to-49 crowd, many of whom feel immortal. We also hear that several of that age group in Europe went only to get their vaccination to be able to travel or to go to music festivals.

Some people also point to the fact that lots of people die in car accidents or find their death by having cancer. They say the older generation reacted to strongly on a disease which perhaps should be regarded like any other flu variant or a disease that comes over our countries once in a while to bring a clean brush against overpopulation.

Jack Shafer, Politico’s senior media writer, agrees that everybody who can access a Covid-19 vaccine should line up and get the shot. Right now. But he also points out that we need to determine our “tolerance level” for the disease, realising that we are unlikely to eradicate it completely but that we cannot keep shutting down our society in an effort to eliminate all risk. According to him we also don’t do that with other diseases. He points out that in the 2017-2018 flu season, influenza put 810,000 Americans in the hospital and killed 61,000. Those are terrible numbers, but we didn’t panic, mandate masks, or lock down the economy.

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Also interesting to read

1. Remembering what happened in the previous influenza pandemic
2. According to Pew Most White Evangelicals Don’t Think COVID-19 is a Medical Crisis
3. Undermining security and democracy via the Internet
4. No time yet to relax the CoViD-19 restriction measures
5. Lockdown greetings for a newer year
6. Not created to be on our own
7. CoViD-19 Curation
8. A new start when the lockdown comes to an end
9. NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo his state of the state address
10. G7 and Building Back Better
11. Good time to sort out your friends and contacts
12. In Coronatime thinking about death
13. A living Word giving confidence
14. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief

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Related

1. Wisdom and Folly in Christian Responses to Coronavirus
2. Employee shortage, COVID-19 surge leave ICU nurses exhausted
3. Japan’s pandemic entering ‘new phase’ as Tokyo COVID-19 cases hit record high
4. As delta variant spreads, New York City ramps up vaccination efforts among students
5. Clubs NSW calls for COVID-19 vaccinated individuals to be allowed back into venues
6. NYC, Big Employers Taking Hard Line Against Vaccine Holdouts
7. Be aware of othersAugust 1, 2021
8. Waking Up
9. Anti Vaxers
10. Hospital CEO tells anti-vaxers to ‘shut up’
11. Public hearing underway as thousands want a say in the proposed ban on religious exemption for childhood vaccines
12. How To Talk To Anti-maskers And Not Lose Your Mind
13. Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl mock anti-vaxxers in new song
14. Jaco: Welcome to the death lottery; wanna play?
15. Re- emerging
16. 07/12/2021 Summer Doldrums
17. “Freedumb Must Reign!”
18. 28 & 1/3 Grams
19. It Sails Through the Air
20. Covid returns again – Why are you still not vaccinated?
21. I’m mad as hell, and not sorry
22. Give Them The Stick, Not The Carrot
23. Jaco: Make the anti-vaxers pay
24. Those who not get to the vaccine
25. Anti-vaxers had their fun
26. Wild deer found to have coronavirus antibodies in four-state study

Pan 1- Past Pandemics

It is nice to have an overview of some plagues, mankind had to struggle with and still has to face today.

Traveler's Tales

Black death:

Time period:	1346–1353
Deaths:	75-200 million
Disease:	Bubonic plague
Organism:	Yersinia pestis

Mode of spread:

Control measures:

That day	Today
– Social Distancing, Quarantine, hospitalization, a change in domestic housing that excluded rats from human dwellings ( Reference-1 ) – Rubbing onions, herbs, chopped up snake on the boils or cutting up a pigeon and rubbing it over an infected body. ( Reference-2 ) – People who believed God was punishing you for your sin, ‘flagellants’, went on processions whipping themselves	– Antibiotics such as streptomycin, gentamicin, doxycycline, or ciprofloxacin are used to treat plague. – Oxygen, intravenous fluids, andrespiratorysupport are usually also needed. ( Reference-3 )

Spanish Flu:

Time period:	1918–1920
Deaths:	17–100 million
Disease:	Influenza
Organism:	Haemophilus influenzae

Mode of spread:

Human to human transmission through infected person airborne respiratory secretion

Control measures:

That day	Today
– Doctors were unsure what caused it or…

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Ik manifesteer een perfecte blogpost

Tijdens de maanden van Corona lockdown kregen geestelijke websites (zoals de onze) heel wat meer bezoekers en vragen over leven en dood. Opmerkelijk daarbij is dat bij velen door het wegvallen van een geloof in een Opperwezen (God) en het ontbreken van een religieuze activiteit in hun leven, er een grote leegte is ontstaan die zij zoeken in te vullen met een hele hoop alternatieven.

Om hun mentale problemen op te lossen gaan velen nu een houvast in het spirituele zoeken.

Bij de huidige generaties valt het oog voornamelijk op materiële goederen. Het is niet bepaald de wetenschappelijkere kijk op de wereld die de oorzaak van de daling religiositeit zou veroorzaken. Wetenschap en religie hoeven elkaar niet uit te sluiten. Maar het is meer het materialisme, het oog voor Mamon de god van het geld, dat de mensen verblindt.

Toch is er het ongekende dat aantrekt en maakt dat jongeren ook wel op zoek durven gaan naar dat mysterieuze onbekende en het spirituele.

Jongeren zetten zich af van het traditionele geloof. Ze zijn nog steeds geïnteresseerd in het transcendente aspect van het leven, maar doen dat op een meer individualistische manier.

 

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Vindt ook te lezen

1. Gods vergeten Woord 14 Schepping 6 De Schepping als doel en garantie
2. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 1 Inleiding
3. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 2 Hoe te vinden
4. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 3 Zin van Christus
5. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 4 Zin van Christus leren kennen
6. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 5 Vrucht van de geest
7. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 6 Spiritualiteit en gebed
8. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 7 Prediking van het goede nieuws
9. Op zoek naar spiritualiteit 8 Eigen spiritualiteit
10. Spirualiteit geeft smaak aan leven
11. Godsgebeuren en Kerk in Europa
12. Jongeren interesseren zich voor spiritualiteit
13. ‘Heilig Vuur – religie en spiritualiteit in de moderne kunst’
14. Zinloosheid of zin van leven volgens Bas Heijne
15. Vragen om onder de vleugels van God te komen
16. Reeks over de plaats waar doden bevinden of wat dood zijn eigenlijk inhoudt.
17. Wie straalt, loopt nooit in het donker
18. Beter niets doen dan druk doen om niets
19. Kerkshoppen: “Arrogant tegenover kerklidmaatschap”
20. Voor- en nadelen van internetspiritualiteit
21. Aanroepen van Gods Naam

 

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Gerelateerd

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2. Heidendom met diepgang
3. Vraag en antwoord tussen Neil Donald Walsch en zijn God van Morgen
4. De Kerk heeft rafelranden nodig
5. Bezield leven

Godin Robin

Dat religie de deur uit wordt gegooid, zoals een vuilzak de avond voor de ophaling, dat wisten we al langer. Jongeren breken zich los van de gewoontes die vorige generaties meekregen van hun ouders. Is een wetenschappelijkere kijk op de wereld de oorzaak van de daling religiositeit? Of zijn we van religiositeit overgestapt naar spiritualiteit?

Jongeren zetten zich af van het traditionele geloof. Ze zijn nog steeds geïnteresseerd in het transcendente aspect van het leven, maar doen dat op een meer individualistische manier. Vroeger was het vanzelfsprekend dat je je bij een van de religies voegde. Het woord religie stamt af van het Latijnse woord religare wat gebonden betekend. Vroeger was religie of zingeving meer georganiseerd, tegenwoordig is het voornamelijk een individueel proces (Versteegh, 2012). In dat individueel proces komt er plaats voor andere manieren van spiritualiteit.

Hoe verplaatsen jongeren zich door die reis van spirituele ontdekking? Ook over dit…

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Is it really so?

Many nations in the world encounter difficult days in this time of CoViD-19. In many countries, the earth came to shake a lot and volcanos came to give a spectacular amount of smoke and ashes and magma flowing down.

(We would consider all that signs of the time.)

In many countries, nature shows that it conquers the virus and conquers man that destroyed already so much. But nature is the stronger one to man.

For sure

“We’re on the verge of something”

and we can feel it moving! Many deny that there is That Mightier Power which is above any man. Many try to fight against It or against His creation.

In these times of trials, we could seclude ourselves from all contact with all other humans. We could go in full lockdown and let the darkness pass, without having to interfere in our own house. But we should know that having to live in this present world, we can not ignore it. For those who believe in God and His sent one, it is high time to come out of the darkness and step into the light.

WTFAI

I heard it said that these are dark days for our nation. I wondered, according to who? why am I to agree? I do have free will and a choice, do I not? That is my decision, to embrace what is, and to choose to see it as my opportunity to infect my sphere of influence with the Love that has been so graciously been bestowed upon me.

Photo by Philippe Donn on Pexels.com

I am choosing to behold, observe and revere the mystery of the nature of things. In carrying on with the experience that if I am aware and honest, pausing to reflect upon the magnificence and miracle of living, I can experience the “Light infused darkness” that accompanies acceptance of uncertainty. I don’t know and don’t need to. Growth doesn’t occur in my comfort zone. Celebrate life and give thanks for the chance to make this a…

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Zij die in lockdown zaten in het begin van onze jaartelling

Velen vergeten wel eens wat het werkelijk betekend om in werkelijk “lockdown” te zijn of echt opgesloten te zitten.

Doorheen de geschiedenis hebben meermaals gelovigen zich moeten “insluiten” of “opsluiten” om zo met niemand in contact te komen of door niemand gezien of ontmoet te worden.

De apostelen hadden een zeer boeiende tijd gehad met hun leermeester uit Nazareth. Toen ze met hem op stap waren vreesden ze helemaal niet de toestroom van mensen. Maar nu Jezus gestorven en begraven was, was het helemaal anders. Angst was over hen gekomen. Zelfs Petrus die zo trouw aan Jezus was had verraad gepleegd en toen hij werd opgemerkt als een van Jezus discipelen, ontkende hij dat met klem. Hij wilde niet herkend worden als een volgeling van Jezus.

Na Jezus zijn dood zochten ze elk hun eigen plekje op om te schuilen. Als trouwe vrienden van Jezus vonden ze het veiligst om in lockdown te gaan. Zelfs nadat ze het gehoord hadden dat Jezus was opgestaan uit de doden, wat een ongelofelijk goed nieuws was, durfden ze toch nog niet in het openbaar verschijnen.

Eerst geloofden zij dat nieuws van Jezus opstanding niet. Maar na enkele verschijningen aan hen waren ze er wel van overtuigd. Toch gaf het hen nog niet de moed om naar buiten te komen en hier luidruchtig over rond te bazuinen.

Na een aantal wonderlijke verschijningen hadden zij hun meester de aarde zien verlaten om zijn positie als hogepriester voor God in te nemen. Zij kwamen ook te horen dat hun meester daar in de hemel ook als bemiddelaar voor hen zou optreden bij zijn hemelse Vader. Dat was ook voor hen nog uitstekend nieuws en de moeite waard om aan anderen te vertellen. Maar toch durfden zij nog niet naar buiten komen met al die goede berichten.

Het waren dagen van eenzaamheid, want het gemis van hun leermeester was groot. Zij dachten er wel aan dat Jezus hen een “Helper” zou sturen, maar wanneer die zou komen en wie het zou zijn wisten ze niet goed.

Vandaag moeten wij eens denken aan die vrienden van Jezus die achter een gesloten deur in Jeruzalem – niet bepaald de veiligste plek voor hen in die dagen! – moesten blijven wachten op de vervulling van die bijzondere belofte. Zij keken er wel naar uit dat die helper zou komen. Maar vooraleer die er zou komen durfden ze toch niet naar buiten gaan, op eigen kracht.

Vandaag weten wij hoe goed God voor die getrouwe leerlingen van Jezus gezorgd heeft. Ook al gingen de vissers nu niet meer alle nachten uit varen, toch konden ze zich zelf goed voorzien van voedsel en mogelijkheden om hun leven in zekere zin dragelijk te maken. Ze mochten hun leermeester geloven dat ze in elk geval niet als wezen zouden achterblijven. Jezus had voor een bijzondere Plaatsvervanger, Trooster en Pleitbezorger gezorgd.

Ook in onze dagen kunnen wij best die Pleitbezorger aanspreken en in ons huis van isolatie binnen laten.

Dezer dagen, nog steeds in lockdown, laten wij eens extra aandacht schenken aan al die gelovigen die in hun leven een periode van opsluiting door moesten maken. De apostelen, de anabaptisten, de baptisten, heel wat Bijbelstudenten in Frankrijk en België, en meermaals en in meerdere landen werd het Volk van God, de Joden veel meer beproefd dan de christenen. Zij hebben het nog het zwaarst gehad. Denk maar eens aan de Tweede Wereld oorlog en de jaren er voor. Van 1936 tot en met 1945 hebben velen een nachtmerrie beleefd, waar velen niet levend zijn uitgekomen. Onze huidige lockdown is niets in vergelijking met wat zij moesten door maken.

2020 a year of having more idols but also more personal problems

The Spring of 2020 brought something new to the world which made everyone and everything coming to a standstill but brought also many to having psychological problems. At first, it seemed incredible to hear certain churches calling for their members to come to church, even when the governments asked people to avoid contact with many. Some pastors dared to go so far as telling people that if they would become infected with Corona that would be because they had not enough faith. Such saying we can only call “criminal”. Several Christian groups, mainly in Holland wanted people to believe that as faithful people would come to the service they would not be harmed because they would do what God expected from them.

Lots of people got in problem with their mind, having become pulled away from their social contacts by the lockdown. Depression, bipolar episodes, and anxiety attacks were hindermost in the running.

Because depression isn’t often discussed in churches, a great deal of misunderstanding has popped up in this year when there were so many more people with a lot of psychological problems, who could not be helped by medical staff.

We want people to believe that the first step is realising what this disorder isn’t:

“It’s not a character defect, a spiritual disorder or an emotional dysfunction. And chief of all, it’s not a choice.”

Also we want Christians to be aware that it is not, like some Trinitarian preachers wanted their flock to believe

a penalty from God.

When you do not feel well in your skin it is not that God would be punishing you because you would have done something wrong or that you would not have enough faith in Him.

We also must be aware that just because someone seems “happy,” that doesn’t mean they’re healthy or that they really would be happy. Look at the very popular Flemish influencer. Social media seemed to take more people in its ban this year. The advertising flow is drying up, so professional users of social media tell more about their concerns and they seemed for many to provide some good information. After the death of that 21 year old boy more than ever, several influencers came to understand their role in the youthgroups and to realise that good mental health is important.

This way NokNok wants to teach young people that it is normal to not always feel perfect. Staff member Eline De Decker:

“Nobody walks on clouds every day. Sometimes you get up and immediately feel that it is going to be a terrible day. Sometimes you doubt yourself or feel insecure. Or are you stressed or disappointed with friends or family. That is normal.
And that’s all okay. ”

NokNok wants to convey that message clearly and shows young people between the ages of 12 and 16 what they can do to gain more self-confidence, have less stress and go through life as positivo.

Instagram has been around for ten years, and what the app has perhaps achieved best during that period is creating the illusion that users can “work independently” via the platform. Certainly influencers, people who live off sponsored photos on their Instagram profile, are an example of this bogus self-employment.
They live off Instagram, but much more for Instagram – they tweak their entire lives to create the best photos and videos. And once their Instagram goes down, they have nothing to fall back on.

With the rise of social media, the phenomenon of fanship has changed drastically. About ten or twenty years ago, an idol was someone you idolized by hanging posters on the wall, playing CDs, maybe watching movies or TV shows. The relationship fan-
Idol was pretty one-sided: the fan was occasionally thrown a treat – a new song, a TV appearance, a message about a wedding in a gossip magazine – and he or she had to settle for that.

But with digitization, the relationship between fans and idols has turned inside out,
British sociology professor Ellis Cashmore writes in his book Kardashian Kulture, in which he examines how celebrity culture has changed in the 21st century. No longer are fans from outside looking at the world in which their idol lives – they are right in the thick of it.

Certain churches used those idols also in church and wanted to attire people to their meetings by using a lot of music and disco settings. In 2020 we saw a continuation of the pulpits shrinking and even disappearing while bands and lighting have grown. But faith does not come from music, dynamic experiences, or supposed encounters with God. Faith is birthed through the proclamation of God’s Word (Rom 10:17).

Our assurance is threatened.
Whilst certain churches kept calling their flock to the church building, others tried to bring entertaining video presentations. All that attention or focussing on those idols and entertainement made many youngsters feeling even more alone, when there was no such church meeting any more. If we associate God’s presence with a particular experience or emotion, you can ask what happens when we no longer feel it.

We search for churches whose praise band, orchestra, or pipe organ produce in us the feelings we are chasing. But the reality of God in our lives depends on the mediation of Christ not on subjective experiences.

Musicians are given priestly status.
When music is seen as a means to encounter God, worship leaders and musicians are vested with a priestly role. They become the ones who bring us into the presence of God rather than Jesus Christ who alone has already fulfilled that role. Understandably, when a worship leader or band doesn’t help me experience God they have failed and must be replaced. On the other hand, when we believe that they have successfully moved us into God’s presence they will attain in our minds a status that is far too high for their own good.

Division is increased.
If we identify a feeling as an encounter with God, and only a particular kind of music produces that feeling, then we will insist that same music be played regularly in our church or gatherings. As long as everyone else shares our taste then there is no problem. But if others depend upon a different kind of music to produce the feeling that is important to them then division is cultivated. And because we routinely classify particular feelings as encounters with God our demands for what produce those feelings become very rigid. This is why so many churches succumb to offering multiple styles of worship services. By doing so, they unwittingly sanction division and self-centeredness among the people of God.

Scripture is full of exhortations to God’s people to sing and make music to Him. Our God has been gracious to give us this means to worship Him. But it is important to understand that music in our worship is for two specific purposes: to honour God and to edify our fellow believers. Unfortunately, many Christians tend to grant music a sacramental power which Scripture never bestows upon it.

Intense relationship
Those churches who by the years focused more on the show element of their services brought their members now in a situation where the lockdown is felt more as a restriction and limitation. Some even came to find that they could not serve God any more or did not give Him the full worship they had to offer Him. The fact they felt they could not serve their God any more made them feeling very bad. Instead of making them to understand they also could worship God in their own house in their own small bubble, some churches gave them even more a feeling of guilt by keeping to tell them they should not stop coming to the church building.

Against the lonely feeling they said what’s needed was the gathering and coming to feast again for God. But what is really needed is a loving community where people are encouraged to speak up and get help. And that speaking can be done by internet meetings and help can be giving by phone calls as well as by sending material by land mail.

People should know that when fear comes into their heart, they themselves can call to God. They not only should trust on the entertaining sessions of their church.

God Loves You

The fundamental message of the Gospel is that God loves you.
Do you understand?
God loves you. No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been, God will always love you. Dr. Kenneth Hutcherson describes it like this,

“No matter what kind of situation you may find yourself facing, don’t be afraid, because God will always be with you and have your best interests in mind since He loves you.  Whenever feelings of fear creep into your life, turn to God for the help you need to overcome them and successfully navigate your circumstances.  Whenever you sense God calling you to do something that requires taking a risk, move forward without fear because God will empower you to do whatever He calls you to do.”

It’s Alright to Feel Sad

No one likes to feel sad. We frequently try to avoid feelings of pain, or bury them under the weight of our daily routines. But sorrow cannot and should not be ignored. Accepting our sorrow doesn’t mean we’re weak, or a failure, it means we’re human. Just look what Ethan McCarthy of Christianity Today had to say,

“Our faith is predicated on sadness. As we grow in Christ’s service, we begin to recognize ourselves in Christ’s sad gaze in the icons. The sadness of Jesus exemplifies the sadness of Christians everywhere, and through it the whole world is redeemed. For the sadness of Jesus is not an ultimate sadness: the Bible also promises the end of sadness, and the wiping away of all tears: ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted’ (Matt. 5:4).”

After bad times better times

2020 may not have been an ideal year, but we should know there have been lots more worse years in the past. When looking at those horrible years of illnesses, pains, horrible situations and wars, we should see that we did not have it as bad as some want us to believe.

Hope is a frail thing, but it’s hard to kill. If you’ve found yourself struggling in the valleys of life, please don’t give up. Surround yourself with friends who will comfort you and mourn with you. If you’re suffering from depression, have courage and make an appointment with a doctor. Above all, remember that God loves you, and that will never change.

2020 has been a year where a lot more people had psychological difficulties. The helplines got a lot more calls. Lots of people were struggling with depression.  More than 1 in 5 youngsters this year had difficulties with the isolation brought unto them. Christians should see signs and then should come to help.

Every suicide is a tragic end to a life that’s precious to God. If you’re willing, God can empower you to help save the lives of people he loves from ending their lives before they’ve completed the lifetimes he intends for them. Here’s how you can help prevent suicide by reaching out to struggling people you know:

Recognize warning signs.

The American Association of Suicidology says that people who are at risk of committing suicide often display warning signs such as: communicating a desire to kill themselves, looking for ways to kill themselves (like seeking access to guns or medications), expressing a lack of purpose or hope in life, demonstrating dramatic mood changes, behaving in significantly anxious or angry ways, sleeping too much or not sleeping enough, feeling trapped in a challenging situation, taking reckless risks, abusing alcohol or drugs, and withdrawing from relationships with family and friends.

Listen well and offer unconditional love, like God does.

Pay attention to the troubling thoughts and feelings that people share with you. Listen carefully to what they express, and ask them questions to clarify and seek more information. If suicidal people know that you’re genuinely interested in them and that they can trust you not to judge them, gossip about them, or avoid them when they tell you something disturbing, they’ll likely open up to you. Ask God to help you love suicidal people unconditionally – like He does – and that will give them hope they desperately need while struggling with embarrassment and shame.

Pray specifically.

Let people know that they can count on you to pray for them about every specific issue they’ve shared with you. Ask God to bring them the help and healing they need, and pray in Jesus’ name against any form of evil that may be attacking them spiritually.

Give people a fresh perspective on themselves and their problems.

Suicidal people often become so preoccupied with their own failures and the problems in their lives that they blow them out of proportion. When that happens, they feel overwhelmed and can’t see how they can ever find solutions to their problems or find relief from their suffering. Mistakenly thinking that there’s no hope for them to experience better lives, they then may choose to simply end their lives. If someone tells you that she hates herself or feels like a burden on others, you can encourage her by pointing out specific ways she has enriched your life. When someone you know is distraught about a problem that seems insurmountable, you can gently and respectfully point out other aspects of her life that are positive to help her gain a better perspective. Refrain from giving unsolicited advice, which can seem judgmental to someone who is struggling. But remind your friend that there’s plenty of good in her, and in her life, despite the bad aspects that trouble her. You can also point out that every problem – no matter how severe – is temporary, but suicide is permanent. Encourage suicidal people to give themselves time to see how their problems can resolve in unexpected ways, rather than prematurely ending their lives.

Strong churches don’t “fix” depression.

Even large churches may not have the framework currently in place to deal with mental disorders. So, what’s needed?

“Healing comes from a prayerful, loving community that seeks to truly understand major depressive disorder and related conditions, and one that develops a positive response.”

Depression can feel like a huge weight that keeps pulling a Christian down again and again. Breaking free from the clutches of this disorder may seem impossible, but Margaret Ashmore (of the Association of Biblical Counselors) says that one of the most important things a sufferer can do is “the next thing”:

“So ‘doing the next thing’ might mean getting right with someone you’ve wronged, making restitution on outstanding payments, putting away once for all that website or magazine which feeds a monstrous, lustful appetite, taking back a purchase of self indulgence whose only outcome was more debt – you will have your own list. I certainly have mine. But be assured, this principle alone can take you from a shrugging Atlas with the weight of the world on your shoulders to that of renewed vigor and reviving refreshment….”

“The choices we make to obey despite our feelings or to give in to the downward pull of a fallen world filled with fallen people – mean everything.”

If you suffer from anxiety of depression, you’re not alone.

The one true source of freedom: Jesus.

People who kill themselves are trying to break free from their pain. But suicide just makes people dead, not free, and it actually causes more pain by spreading grief around to deceased people’s loved ones. Tell struggling people you know that while suicide can’t make them free, Jesus Christ can. Jesus is the way to God. He is the mediator between God and man, and having been here on earth as a man of flesh and blood, he very well knows the pains man can have to face.

No matter how difficult, certain things may look for us, when we pray to God we may find solutions to get over those difficult situations.

 

(With parts of articles by a.o. Todd Pruitt, John UpChurch, Ryan Duncan, Whitney Hopler of Crosswalk.com)

 

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Voor erediensten met Kerstmis

In principe is een kleine eredienst mogelijk: in een gebedshuis mogen 15 personen aanwezig zijn, kinderen tot en met 12 jaar en de bedienaar niet meegerekend. Je vraagt best na bij jouw gemeente of er iets georganiseerd wordt. Enkele grote gebedshuizen streamen hun kerstviering live via hun website of op regionale televisie.

Wij raden echter iedereen aan om wijselijk thuis te blijven en daar in de huishoudelijke kring te bidden. Op meerdere televisie zenders worden gebedsdiensten uitgezonden, alsook zijn er kerken die een virtuele gebedsdienst houden.

God kan men overal aanbidden. Ook al zegt de Bijbel het vergaderen niet na te laten, zegt deze niet dat dit enkel in levende lijve zou mogen. Wij beleven nu uitzonderlijke tijden waarbij het raadzamer is om niet met teveel mensen samen te komen. Per internet dienst houden is evenwaardig als in een kerkdienst zitten als men dan ook actief die gebedsdienst mee beleefd.

Wij wensen u een aangename en gezegende kersttijd.

Three basic commands

At the (internet) service this morning brother Eric Lowe spoke about people at first following up the CoViD-19 measures strictly. At the first lockdown, the governments of the West-European countries had been giving very clear instructions. That way lots of people kept to the measures and seemed to have fewer difficulties following those instructions than by the second lockdown.

When the governments started to relax the measures and then started giving different signals people started to get confused and we could see that many people were not any more prepared to follow the social restrictions. So many months after the beginning of the corona crisis, people start getting tired and less interested to listen to the advice of the epidemiologists.

In Christendom we can see a similar attitude as in the citizen world. Today we see a lot of people who are not so much interested in listening to wise, and even less to old and new sensible advice. Mr. Lowe said the less people are listening they go by, and remarked:

If you are not listening you can not hear.

And that is just the problem by a lot of people who call themselves Christian. We better would look to the examples in Scriptures, which would all make it so much easier to pass those difficult times of isolation.

If we care not to listen then our listening shuts down.

That is what we see what happened with lots of Christians, not to say with the majority. For many so-called Christians, there is not any more such a good connection with God. They have forgotten that the experience with God depends on our nearness to God and all that would happen in His presence. Many wait for God’s presence to happen, and in the meantime try out their own gods and saints to bow down for and pray for.

Billy Graham warned:

“God doesn’t want us to waste our latter years or spend them in superficial, meaningless pursuits. Instead, He wants us to use them in whatever ways we can to influence those who will come after us. God wants us to finish well. . . .”

When being a Christian people should be as a disciple of Christ, following his teachings and worshipping the same God a Christ. Though many, who call themselves Christian, do not worship the same God as Jesus Christ worshipped. They even do not want to accept the Words of God, Who Himself said that Jesus was His beloved son. God, Who is no liar, never said He is Jesus or never held back to say that He would be Jesus. In case God would be Jesus, then he would naturally have told the people around Jesus a lot of lies, but also to His prophets He would have told lies more than ones.  Already in Jesus time, when there was a genuine and powerful work of God, men did not like to be apart from it, especially if they were religious leaders. Consequently we find both Pharisees and Sadducees coming to John’s baptism. He met them however with prophetic insight. He unmasked them as having the characteristics of the serpent, and warned them that wrath lay before them. He knew that they would boast of being in the proper Abrahamic succession, so he knocked that prop from beneath them, showing that it would not count with God. Nothing would do but repentance, and his baptism was with a view to that; but it must be genuine and manifest itself in fruits that were suitable. James, in his Epistle, insists that faith, if it is real and vital, must express itself in suitable works.

When Jesus got baptised the Elohim Hashem Jehovah, the God of Israel made clear who that Nazarene man standing in the river Jordan was:

3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of יהוה, make his paths straight. (Matt 3:3, NRKJV)

13 Then cometh Yahushua from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. 14 But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? 15 And Yahushua answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him. 16 And Yahushua, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of Elohim descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: 17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (Matt 3:13-17, NRKJV)

Some months later Jehovah would repeat it and say:

18 Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. 19 He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. 20 A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. 21 And in his name shall the Gentiles trust. (Matt 12:18-21, NRKJV)

Also today we are in times that many do not want to hear God’s Word and do give preference to words of theologians and people who say they are from God. But they are often wolves in sheep clothes and people fall for their words instead of believing the simple words of the Bible.

Though our brother Eric Lowe, had it this morning about man’s attitude in corona times, we can interpolate it also to the behaviour of many people who call themselves Christian today. The majority of those belonging to Christendom care not to listen to God’s Word. That makes their listening shuts down.

One example of a young girl (teniiiola) who writes:

I know that they’re two different people because the Bible makes it clear that Jesus is seated at the right side of God. Nevertheless, they are the same. As per, they are one. Praising God is equal to praising Jesus (one can’t even access God without Jesus anyway) and praising Jesus is the same as praising God.  {comment on 4 misconceptions that need to be cleared about being a Christian.}

On one side she seems to understand that Jesus and God are two different persons. Though then she, like some other people, sees a proof of Jesus to be God, when is written:

that Jesus is seated at the right side of God

clearly not seeing and not understanding Jesus is not sitting on the throne of God, but is sitting next to God, which indicate he, as another person than God takes the place on the seat next to God.

For following up the Covid-rules simple messages worked, but as soon as complex messages were given confusion started to take master of many people. The same when in Christianity several teachers started using Roman-Greek philosophy and twisted several words of Christ, to please the people who were so used to heathen rites and festivals.

The young girl on her website also says:

Calling Jesus God does not equal to calling God’s name in vain…Jesus wasn’t even on Earth as at the time this instruction was given.   {comment on 4 misconceptions that need to be cleared about being a Christian.}

giving the idea when people were not on earth when a Bible text was written the calling of their name as a god would not be wrong or would be acceptable. That is closing the eyes for reality and for the meaning of God’s Words. Those who have Madonna as their goddess today and honour her name are doing the same fault as those in ancient times, who honoured Apollo as their god.

Today with the pandemic lots of people are like in the wilderness. After Jesus his baptism, after God had declared him to be His son, this son of man also went into a wilderness. There he told the adversary of God “not to tempt God”, something we see many do. Lots of ministers and priests calling their flock to come to gather in their churches, not having to worry, because God would protect them. Some even dare to say:

 Those people who are catching CoViD-19 are those who do not believe enough in Jesus, who saves all who believe in him.

The Bible tells us God can not be tempted and that man can do nothing to Him. But Jesus, all should know, was tempted more than once. When in the wilderness Jesus told a tempter:

7 Yahushua said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt יהוה thy Elohim. (Matt 4:7, NRKJV)

Those who say they are a Christian should pick up such words of Christ. They also should remember Jesus words when the tempter offered an opportunity for Jesus to be worshipped and praised:

10 Then saith Yahushua unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship יהוה thy Elohim, and him only shalt thou serve. (Matt 4:10, NRKJV)

Not Jesus should be worshipped, but all glory, worship and praise should be given to the Elohim Hashem Jehovah, the God Who is above all gods. From his time in the wilderness, we should remember three words as memory joggers. From the story of Jesus in the desert, we should remember three basic commands, which should be the fundamentals of Christian faith.

1. obey the commands
2. don’t test God
3. fear Jehovah God and worship only Him

A true lover of God can’t be double-minded and always shall take the following words of God at heart.

16 Ye shall not tempt יהוה your Elohim, as ye tempted him in Massah. (Deut 6:16, NRKJV)

Being in difficult days we should remember how God was with His people and how He is willing to be with us, in case we want to be with HIm.

8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. 10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: 11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. (Ps 95:8-11, NRKJV)

7 Wherefore (as the Holy Spirit saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, (Heb 3:7, NRKJV)

13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! (Ps 81:13, NRKJV)

29 O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever! (Deut 5:29, NRKJV)

Jehovah God told very clearly to what we have to keep:

6 I am יהוה thy Elohim, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 7 Thou shalt have none other elohim before me. 8 Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: 9 Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I יהוה thy Elohim am a jealous El, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, 10 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. 11 Thou shalt not take the name of יהוה thy Elohim in vain: for יהוה will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. (Deut 5:6-11, NRKJV)

Several who call themselves Christians have difficulty with

3 Thou shalt have no other elohim before me. (Exod 20:3, NRKJV)

and have taken Jesus as their god and as if that was not enough also have taken his mother as a goddess and several other human beings as saints to whom they pray and hope they shall fulfil some of their wishes. Praying to someone else than Jehovah God is also taking God’s Name in vain and desecrating it.  Nobody should forget:

11 Who is like unto thee, O יהוה, among the mighty ones? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? (Exod 15:11, NRKJV)

24 O Sovereign יהוה, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what el is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might? (Deut 3:24, NRKJV)

Even Jesus who did such wonderworks could not do anything without God.

19 Then answered Yahushua and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. (John 5:19, NRKJV)

Jesus very well knew Who had saved his People and by Whom he could do all things he did. Jesus as the previous prophets feared and wanted to serve God.

11 And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; 12 Then beware lest thou forget יהוה, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 13 Thou shalt fear יהוה thy Elohim, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name. 14 Ye shall not go after other elohim, of the elohim of the people which are round about you; 15 (For יהוה thy Elohim is a jealous El among you) lest the anger of יהוה thy Elohim be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. 16 Ye shall not tempt יהוה your Elohim, as ye tempted him in Massah. 17 Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of יהוה your Elohim, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee. 18 And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of יהוה: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which יהוה sware unto thy fathers. 19 To cast out all thine enemies from before thee, as יהוה hath spoken. (Deut 6:11-19, NRKJV)

From his followers, Jesus also demanded that they would follow God’s commandments and that they would do God His Will, like Jesus also did God His Will. For following the commandments of God is for the good of man.

26 Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; 27 A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of יהוה your Elohim, which I command you this day: 28 And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of יהוה your Elohim, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other elohim, which ye have not known. (Deut 11:26-28, NRKJV)

15 But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of יהוה thy Elohim, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: (Deut 28:15, NRKJV)

The chosen ones by Christ also asked their followers to fulfil the Wish of God and warned what could happen to them who do not keep to God’s commandments.

8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, (Rom 2:8, NRKJV)

29 O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever! (Deut 5:29, NRKJV)

As with Israel we should also know what Jesus and his God require from us.

12 And now, Israel, what doth יהוה thy Elohim require of thee, but to fear יהוה thy Elohim, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve יהוה thy Elohim with all thy heart and with all thy soul, (Deut 10:12, NRKJV)

Like Petrus once was a satan, resisting what God wanted, we too should be very careful not to resist God and not to go against His Laws.

10 Then saith Yahushua unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship יהוה thy Elohim, and him only shalt thou serve. (Matt 4:10, NRKJV)

14 Now therefore fear יהוה, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the elohim which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye יהוה. (Josh 24:14, NRKJV)

It is a simple message and we should not complicate it. We only have to have One God Who is One, and not two or three.

35 Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that יהוה he is Elohim; there is none else beside him. (Deut 4:35, NRKJV)

6 Thus saith יהוה the King of Israel, and his redeemer יהוה of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no Elohim. (Isa 44:6, NRKJV)

Humanity wants to reverse the complexity and reject the simple because it is too simple and confronting. All people should know that Jesus is getting to the essence of the Old Tetament. Jesus is the way to God and we should be thankfull he managed to do the will of God, putting his own will aside. (In case he would be God he would not have to put his will aside because than he would always have done his own will.) Jesus also was not a schizophrenic god who would say he was someone else and pray to someone else when he would be praying to himself. Jesus did not pray to himself and learned others also not to pray to him, but to his heavenly Father.

Matt 6
1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. 2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: 4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. 5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. 9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. (Matt 6:1-9, NRKJV)

39 And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives; and his disciples also followed him. 40 And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. 41 And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, 42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. 43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. 44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 45 And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow, 46 And said unto them, Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. (Luke 22:39-46, NRKJV)

2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. (Luke 11:2, NRKJV)

Jesus prefered to do the Will of God, and that is what a Christian, or follower of Christ also should do. We should look forward to God’s Kingdom to come. As followers of Christ we should remember and do likewise Jesus Christ.

38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. (John 6:38, NRKJV)

34 Yahushua saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. (John 4:34, NRKJV)

30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. (John 5:30, NRKJV)

Real Christians shall or should follow the teachings of Christ and shall take up the task given by him, namely to go out into the world spreading God’s Word and spreading the Good News of the coming Kingdom of God. Those who want to call themselves “Christian” should do as Jesus Christ asks them to do.

Jesus asks his disciples to make up their mind and to be clear sighted, not about others, but about themselves.

To be clearsighted about ourselves, is to be aware of our own shortcomings, limitations, and challenges. But it also means to be aware of our own gifts and talents. {Seeing Clearly – Br. James Koester}

But Jesus demands a full breath true insight, a proper choice of oneself! He does not want you to follow him because others say so or because others are following him. You have to do it out of own choice and by believing in him and even more important, believing in Him Who sent him.

24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24, NRKJV)

16 For יהוה so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For יהוה sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:16-17, NRKJV)

It is by believing it was God Who sent His own son, and not that God Himself would have come down to earth to fake His birth, torture, death and resurrection (all parts which do not belong to God).

18 And all things are of יהוה, who hath reconciled us to himself by Yahushua the Messiah, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 To wit, that יהוה was in the Messiah, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 20 Now then we are ambassadors for the Messiah, as though Elohim did beseech you by us: we pray you in the Messiah’s stead, be ye reconciled to יהוה. 21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of יהוה in him. (2Cor 5:18-21, NRKJV)

10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to יהוה by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Rom 5:10, NRKJV)

The gospel may be very simple, do not make it complicated. The Bible speaks a clear language, but we should be willing to hear ait and to see the underlying essence and message.

Faith is simple {Check Yourself, Christian}

so keep it simple and do not unnecessarily complicate things by twisting the words of the Bible; Just take those words like they are written down.

Are there ways in which we may be externally religious—doctrinally sound, outwardly well-behaved, “godly” in character and lifestyle—yet insincere behind the curtain, and before the Lord? {Check Yourself, Christian}

When we are not careful, we can get carried away by all those theologians and people who prefer to keep to human doctrines instead of keeping to Biblical doctrines. Many of them are able to carry a lot of Christians away from the Biblical Truth.

Seeing Biblical truth is only possible when one is willing to listen to God His Word as it is written in the Book of books, the Bible.

Being a good and real Christian requires to see who Christ Jesus is and to believe he is the sent one from God, who really died for the sins of others. God can not die, so in case Jesus would be God he would not only always have done his will, but also would not ever had to be afraid of what the Romans would do with him, because he could not die, so any impalement would not harm him. Al those who say Jesus is God, make of his impalement (or crucifixion) a big farce and make of his appearance on earth a whole farce.

Real Christians recognise what Jesus realy has done, and know what a horrible fear he must have had. Real Christians are also aware how much pain Jesus must have had and as such appreciate it so much more, that he was undergoing all that torture for people he did not know and at a time he could have been unsure if God would be going to help him or taking him out of the dead. At one moment the fear became so high he even cried to his heavenly Father (and not to himself);

46 And about the ninth hour Yahushua cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My Elohim, my Elohim, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matt 27:46, NRKJV)

A person can not leave himself, so Jesus did not ask to himself why he had left himself, but asked his heavenly Father Why He (God) left him (Jesus):

34 And at the ninth hour Yahushua cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My Elohim, my Elohim, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mark 15:34, NRKJV)

Yes, after Jesus in fear called to his Father in heaven, as if He would have forsaken Jesus (which He did not), Jesus gave up the spirit, which means that Jesus really died. (Remember that God as an eternal Spirit can not die.) It was not in his own hands that Jesus gave his life, but in the Hands of his heavenly Father, the Only One True God.

46 And when Yahushua had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the Spirit. (Luke 23:46, NRKJV)

When Jesus died, his life finished, but not his story. He had always kept to the three basic commands and lived according to those fundamentals he tried to explain and which each true follower of him should follow.

As society may go further away from God’s command and from Christ’s teachings, real followers should give the example and prepare the way, so that more people may come to see that Jesus is the way to God.

6 Yahushua saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6, NRKJV)

Let us take a piece of advice from a Trinitarian at heart, though even he might not see how he himself is caught up in the chains of this world.

We cannot accept the lies that are popularly accepted, even when progressive “Christians” around us conform to them. The only source of truth is the Word of God and we know that His Word will never change! {Progressive Christianity}

Working full-time as a witness “for his Savior” we only can hope he with his wife Brittany, shall come to recognise the work Jesus did and shall come to follow him wholeheartedly. And that is always possible because people have to grow in the Word of God. We all live in a world where many things are said and where many satans or adversaries of God are at work. Because of the main churches being so strong and so eager to get their false teaching of the trinity across, it is very difficult for people to see the trees in the wood. Though if they would be willing to open their eyes for the simple things and the simple words, clarity will be near.

That is the hope the lovers of God can have. It is never too late to spread the gospel and to show people the real Christ who bore witness of his heavenly Father. the Bible tells us also that this shall happen when we come closer to the end times, and as such we can live by the hope in Christ. He, who even did not know when he would be coming back, because such thing is only known by God (and Jesus not being God as such did not know it) gave us the hope that one day when the kingdom of God would be preached all over the world the Day will arrive that he shall be allowed to judge in the name of God.

19 Then answered Yahushua and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. 20 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. 21 For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. 22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: 23 That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. 24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. 25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of יהוה: and they that hear shall live. 26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; 27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. 28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, 29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. 30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. 31 If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. 32 There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. 33 Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. 34 But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. 35 He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light. 36 But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. 37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. 38 And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. 39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. 40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. 41 I receive not honour from men. 42 But I know you, that ye have not the love of Elohim in you. 43 I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. 44 How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from Elohim only? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. 46 For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. 47 But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? (John 5:19-47, NRKJV)

When we call ourselves “Christian”, let us believe in that sent one from God, who is authorised to speak and act in the Name of God and follow up his given task to instruct all the nations, immersing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe and to give heed to all as much as Jesus has given and commanded his disciples.

18 And Yahushua came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age. (Matt 28:18-20, NRKJV)

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Preceding

Do you really know what you say you believe in?

Not About The Name Of The Godhead Of Jesus

Rhetoric and Biblical Truth

Religion and the essence of devotion

The false prophets in the present world

O God, How Long? ~ Psalm 74

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Additional reading

1. Words in the world
2. Let us make sure we are not stiff-necked
3. The Almighty Lord God of gods King above all gods
4. El-Shaddai God Almighty Who no-one may see and live
5. Relating to God is it possible
6. No man see the Almighty God and live
7. When there is a God is it possible to relate to Him
8. Only One God
9. God is One
10. The Trinity – the Truth about God
11. How did the Trinity Doctrine Develop
12. Altered to fit a Trinity
13. First Century of Christianity
14. Hellenistic influences
15. History of the acceptance of a three-in-one God
16. Preexistence in the Divine purpose and Trinity
17. The habitual misreading of John 1 and the ‘Word being God’ #2
18. Yeshua a man with a special personality
19. Sayings of Jesus, what to believe and being or not of the devil
20. Entrance of a king to question our position #2 Who do we want to see and to be
21. Why did Christ not reveal the exact time of his second coming?
22. Followers with deepening
23. What Does it Really Mean to Be a Radical Follower of Jesus?
24. A small company of Jesus’ footstep follower
25. If you have integrity
26. Attitude to others important for reaching them
27. Love and cultivate that which is pure
28. Who are the Christadelphians

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Related articles

1. Seeing Clearly – Br. James Koester
2. Running and pausing with Jesus – Br. Todd Blackham
3. It’s a privilege
4. What Does It Mean to be a True Christian?
5. Being A Cultural Christian Is Not Enough
6. Being Christian
7. Effective Christianity
8. Progressive Christianity
9. They Will Know We Are Christians By…What?
10. The History of the Development of the Trinity Doctrine
11. Is Jesus God? Debate between Pastor Stanley Sjoberg and Sheikh Ahmed Deedat
12. The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven
13. Do As I Say
14. Christians
15. Peace at any price?