04/17/17

Ancient Historians on Jesus Christ: World’s Most Elaborate Conspiracy Theory, or… Not?

By: Arlen Williams | Gulag Bound

God born into the flesh of man; died to pay the price of sin, for those who believe in and yield their lives to him; resurrected to overcome that separation from God above; and ascended back to Heaven till he returns — true or false? That is the crux of it, pardon the Passion season pun.

It has been said the life of Jesus, from a small town in the middle of the world called Nazareth, is the most well documented of ancient history. We have more historical detail and validation of his biography than, for example, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan.

Further, he is the subject of the most extensive study of any human, ever since. And the most “extreme” view of him is actually the shared eyewitness view of his followers and the contemporaries they convinced, now generation upon generation. They corroborate his own attestations with courtroom consistency.

Beyond that, in the most mutually corroborative accounts, the Bible’s four Gospels (i.e., “Good News” in Ancient Greek) he is shown to have fulfilled Old Testament prophecies spread over hundreds, even thousands of years. Many of these were regarded as confounding mysteries… until he solved them by bringing them to pass. That is, if one believes all the documentation is not an astoundingly vast and intricate work of conspiracy concocted right under the noses of Jesus’ contemporary skeptics and powerful opposers.

Yet beyond this, one of the often cited proof points of Christian apologists is the historic accounting of so many people so consistently willing to die for sake of this story, their confession. And these were renown for seeking to uphold the morality and ethics taught in the Bible, martyrs including those original eyewitnesses, Jesus’ disciples and chroniclers.

Must all this testimony be further corroborated by less interested historians of approximately that time, to dare be believed? J. Warner Wallace has briefly summarized just such accounts in a single article, “Is there Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible?” His site is called Cold Case Christianity.

Wallace suggests the decision of what to believe about Jesus is not unlike the same kind of evaluation concerning two much more recent happenings.

Two well documented historical events with a rich set of evidences. In spite of this, both events have been interpreted in a variety of ways. It shouldn’t surprise us then to find the historical records of Jesus Christ might also experience the same type of scrutiny and diverse interpretation. Did Jesus truly live, minister, died and rise from the grave as the Gospels record or was it an elaborate conspiracy? One thing we know about the Kennedy assassination and the World Trade Center attack: regardless of interpretation, there were eyewitnesses to the events, and the events did truly occur. In a similar manner, the ancient evidence related to Jesus reveals there were eyewitnesses and He did exist in history. Is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible? Yes, and the ancient non-Christian interpretations (and critical commentaries) of the Gospel accounts serve to strengthen the core claims of the New Testament.

He refers to historians, Thallus (52AD), Tacitus (56-120AD), Mara Bar-Serapion (70AD), Phlegon (80-140AD), Pliny the Younger (61-113AD), Suetonius (69-140AD), Lucian of Samosata: (115-200 A.D.), and Celsus (175AD). He also cites the Talmudic references of Medieval Jewish writings. Not all were kindly disposed to Jesus of Nazareth being the Bible’s Messiah.

What does Wallace conclude? I will let you look into that at will, but my careful suggestion as a Jesus Truther, don’t take too long.

“Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” – Jesus, Luke 12:57.

03/28/16

Considering the Condescension of God?

By: T F Stern | T F Stern’s Rantings

Easter morning I found myself considering the word Condescension as it applies to mortal men trying to figure out our purpose and relationship with God and His Only Beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

I’d purchased chocolate bunnies to go along with the Easter Eggs that my grandchildren colored in the front yard; but that has little if anything to do with the spiritual importance of Easter.

Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines Condescension:
1. voluntary descent from one’s rank or dignity in relations with an inferior
2. patronizing attitude or behavior

Most often when you hear the word Condescension it holds a negative meaning. Someone feels they are above your station in life talks to you in a way intended to remind you that they are above you in stature. Immediately the hair on your back bristles; you recognize the offensive attitude being presented, similar to how We The People react to those we’ve elected as they develop their self appointed elitist state of mind, a station above the lowly peasants.

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03/21/16

The Missing Holiday

By: T F Stern | The Moral Liberal

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

During Sunday School a question was asked, “Of all the holidays during the year, what’s your favorite?”  This being the third week in March several answered, “Easter”, while Christmas, Thanksgiving and the 4th of July were also in the running.  Then the instructor asked if anyone celebrated this coming Thursday; something I hadn’t considered as a ‘holiday’.

As Easter weekend comes around perhaps this Thursday should be celebrated; if not as a holiday then surely it falls into the category of important and significant.

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04/14/15

The Left: Love Means Never Having to Say Anything is Wrong

By: Lloyd Marcus

Christian Love

President Obama shows great respect for Muslims and their holy days and even lectures us to do the same. And yet, a few days after another slaughter of Christians which Obama refused to acknowledge, Obama cavalierly chose the Christian high holy day of Easter to take yet another of his signature shots at Christians. Obama displays a hypersensitive respect for Islam while displaying little sensitivity or respect for Christians while claiming to be a Christian. The Bible says by their fruits ye shall know them.

At the Easter Prayer Breakfast, Obama accused Christians of not acting in love. http://exm.nr/1CrnJsJ

This Leftist trick (tactic) has worked on too many Christians for far too long.

Candidly, I found myself in church rolling my eyes listening to a sermon in which the pastor chided his congregation. His rebuke is the LGBT community does not like Christians because we are not loving enough to them. Most Christians I know are extremely tolerant and loving to homosexuals. I sat there thinking, “Brother, that’s not what this is about. Obviously, you have not yet realized the Left’s War on Christianity.” This “ain’t” about homosexuals seeking acceptance. The Left’s mission hidden in plain sight is to force their secular, liberal and anti-biblical agenda down our throats. Some say the Left has already won over a generation of our kids; hijacking their thinking starting in kindergarten with books like “Heather Has Two Mommies.”

Whenever Christians catch wind of the Left’s stealthily orchestrated war on Christians and push back, the Left employs their you’re-not-acting-in-love according to the teachings of Jesus tactic. Insidious and repulsive. These people who despise Jesus dare to reference His teachings to manipulate Christians.

The Left’s narrative is love equals accepting someone just the way they are.

My brother said, “Love does not mean we should co-sign sin.” If your child is a thief, love does not require you to support their illegal behavior. Quite the opposite. Whom the Lord loves He chastens.

As I stated, far too many Christians are manipulated by the Left’s love guilt-trip tactic. In the name of love, duped Christians are ignoring God’s Word to adopt an anything goes mindset. The Bible says hate the sin, but love the sinner. The Left are highly enraged by this biblical command to Christians.

The Left demands that Christians enthusiastically rubber stamp anti-biblical behavior or risk being made an example of; humiliated in the mainstream media, sued and forced out of business. Hello, the Catholic nuns of Little Sisters of the Poor http://fxn.ws/1CwHK0V, Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A, Sweet Cakes by Melissa http://bit.ly/1Cytd4F, Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts http://bit.ly/1DmEOc2, Elane Photography http://bit.ly/1aMgkhS, Mozilla CEO http://bit.ly/1Cj7EWI , the Benham brothers who lost their show on HGTV http://bit.ly/1EemN0r and Memories Pizza to name a few.

The Left’s message is alarmingly loud and clear. To all who do not embrace our mission to kill babies and paint the mark of the homosexual rainbow over the door of your business, we will figuratively bury you.

Loyal to Obama, some black pastors now embrace same sex marriage. I heard a black minister scold his congregation. He preached that Obama is correct in embracing same sex marriage because he is president, not a Christian evangelist. A supposed man of God praising the president for siding against God’s Word.

A black Christian minister friend strongly opposed same sex marriage. Desperate to make Obama good and his Christian opposition wrong, my friend changed. His excuse is you can not legislate behavior. He said his faith does not permit him to attend a homosexual wedding ceremony, but he would attend the homosexual wedding reception. I thought, “What do you say chatting with guests? Wasn’t Harry a beautiful bride?“

Praise God! A coalition of over 3,700 black Christian ministers are pushing back against Obama and the Left’s anti-biblical agenda. http://bit.ly/1artboO

Folks, please listen to this compelling interview on the Joe Miller radio show with John Zmirak. John articulates what the Left has been scheming under the radar of most Christians. Note that John once supported same sex marriage, but has come to realize that it is only the tip of the iceberg of the Left’s scary anti-Christian agenda. http://bit.ly/1anTJaB

Bottom line, Christian’s strategy of appeasing the Left is in essence allowing the fox to run rampant in the hen house; corrupting the minds of our kids via public schools, Hollywood and the media.

In His love, it is time for Christians to stand up and be salt and light in our culture.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee

04/5/15

Happy Easter from NoisyRoom.net! He is risen!!

In an atmosphere that seems more and more subdued here in the blogosphere, I’d like to wish all of you a blessed and happy Easter! As a Christian, this day means the world to me and I count my blessings that Jesus died for my sins on a cross. I find comfort and peace in the fact that He is God and walks with me every moment of every day of my life. He has saved me over and over again and I will follow Him no matter the cost.

As I watch the ongoing genocide of Christians across the planet by Islamists and those full of hate, I pause to reflect that Christians are not lambs to the slaughter. That we are given a mandate to pick up our swords if need be and fight for what is good and right… to prevail over evil and save ourselves. An epic battle between the light and the dark is coming and if we do not fight, physical death will be the least of our worries.

Here in the United States, Christians are now being heavily persecuted, targeted and hunted. Just ask Memories Pizzeria in Indiana for not wanting to serve pizza at a gay wedding. As Mark Steyn says, these Christian businesses are being sought out and set up by the gay mafia. People donated almost a million dollars to the family that owns Memories Pizzeria – gay and straight, right and left – they recognize that freedom of religion and our Constitutional rights are at stake here and fascists are destroying those rights. When bakers, florists, food providers, photographers, etc. cannot exercise their right to turn someone away because of their religious beliefs – when sexual preference is dictated as a civil right – a right that outweighs the rights of others to worship as they see fit – you have crossed a line into Nazism. Christians will not quietly concede on this. The left should prepare for an epic battle – one they will lose in the end.

Why is it that Muslim bakeries are given a pass and not Christians? I’ll tell you why… because the left, communists and Islamists have joined forces to suppress and terrorize Christians. Per their agenda, they want to wipe us out. This is one Christian (of millions and millions) who will not be silenced. Who will not just quietly go away no matter the cost. You may force a family pizzeria to close their doors and go into hiding, but don’t be fooled. You have not won this fight and Christians will go to war with you over their faith and their rights. Do not expect Christian America to roll over, surrender their Constitutional rights and their bibles. It will never happen.

I wish all our Jewish friends out there a blessed Passover… I wish all Christians a blessed and happy Easter as well. We stand with God. Do not let the ungodly silence you. Wear your faith as you would armor and gird your loins for the fight of a lifetime in honor of our Savior.

Yours in faith,

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
NoisyRoom.net

04/1/15

Obama’s Virtual War on Israel

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

Israel in the Sights

This is hardly the best week to demonstrate his intense hatred of Israel, but since he has devoted 18 months to a fruitless and foolish negotiation with Iran, one can understand why Barack Hussein Obama is in a bad mood. His foreign policy “legacy” is close to being flushed down the Iranian toilet.

On March 31, the Defense of Democracies’ Iran Press Review quoted the Deputy Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, who said, “All should know that we will not allow the inspection of the country’s military and defense industries.” Or, as they say in Farsi, “No deal.”

This week began with Palm Sunday celebrating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and proceeds to Good Friday which, at sundown, coincides with the Jewish observance of Passover and Christianity’s “last supper.” It concludes with Easter; holy days that occurred in the holy land that was Israel then and now.

Jesus was a Jew preaching primarily to Jews, whose disciples were Jews, and doing so entirely in Israel, the homeland of Jews for more than a thousand years at that time. The ancestors of Arabs in those days would have been regarded as Assyrians or Egyptians. The people called “Palestinians” did not exist until designated as such by Yassir Arafat in the 1960s.

So why is Obama leading a virtual war on Israel by declassifying information about Israel’s nuclear defenses and a purported effort to get the United Nations to declare “Palestine” a separate state?

At what point will it be understood that the United Nations has no power to create states or to grant formal “recognition” to state aspirants and that the Palestinian Authority and/or Hamas does not meet even the most basic characteristics of a state, lacking for example either a capitol or a currency.

As spelled out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, “Palestine” would have to have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. By contrast, the current president of the Palestinian Authority is now into his eleventh year of a term that, by their own law, is limited to four.

Not only have the “Palestinians” refused statehood and a two-state relationship since the founding of Israel, but they have participated in large wars and small against Israel, beginning with one in 1948 when Israel declared its statehood. Despite 1949 Armistice Agreements, reprisal operations continued through to the 1960s from Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The Six-Day war occurred in June 1967 and the Yom Kippur War was fought in 1973.

Focusing on the “Palestinians”, the First Intifada, an uprising against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza occurred from 1987 to 1993. It was followed by a Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005. Responding to escalating rocket fire, there was a three-week Gaza War from December 2008 to January 2009 and in 2014, the Israelis had to respond to weeks of rockets again.

Barack ObamaObama has turned to the United Nations knowing that it took the UN seventy years to even acknowledge the January 28-28 anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau, the Nazi death camp in which millions of Jews perished. The UN has studiously avoided the subject of anti-Semitism because that would only call attention to the fact that it has been the global platform for anti-Semitism since its founding in 1945.

A perfect example has been its Human Rights Council that has always included nations famed for their own lack of human rights. When it began its March 2nd session since electing 14 new members last fall, it included Saudi Arabia, Cuba, China and Russia. By the end of March, the Human Rights Council had declared Israel the world’s leading woman’s rights violator and followed up with a general condemnation, adopting four resolutions condemning Israel, four times more than any other of the 192 members of the UN.

This is the same UN that in 2014 elected Iran to its woman’s rights commission, that selected genocidal Sudan and other slave-holding nations to its Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations to oversee human rights activists, and whose UNRWA handed rockets found in Gaza schools back to Hamas. By acclamation, a senior post on the US Special Committee on Decolonization was given to the murderous regime of Syria.

The question of whether Israel is guilty of war crimes was raised in the UN when, after weeks of rocketing from Gaza, it defended itself with an air and land war. It followed the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014. Operation Protective Edge began on July 8 and lasted seven weeks. In the course of it, they discovered over thirty tunnels whose purpose was to provide access to Israel for attacks on its citizens. Apparently self-defense is not a privilege the UN wants to extend to Israel.

In last Saturday’s issue of The New York Times, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, founder of the World Values Network, took out a full page advertisement comparing the deal to empower Iran to make its own nuclear weapons to the 1933 Munich Agreement by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with Adolf Hitler that led to World War II. In the Jerusalem Great Synagogue on the same day, the American-born Chief Rabbi said, “The President of the United States is lashing out at Israel just like Haman lashed out at the Jews.”

No doubt this will be on the minds of Jews, less than 0.2% of the world’s population, when they sit down to celebrate Passover, remembering their enslavement in Egypt and the exodus that led them to freedom. Jesus celebrated Passover and the Kingdom of God. He would pay for it when the Romans put him to death shortly thereafter.

It is futile to think that Obama will cease from his assaults on Israel in the remaining 22 months of his second and final term in office. Those who know the history cited above must join hands to resist this latest enemy of Israel, this disgrace to America who is already widely regarded as the worst, most lawless President ever elected to that office.

© Alan Caruba, 2015