Hanukkah holds hidden secrets to end-time prophecy

Hanukkah holds hidden secrets to end-time prophecy Eight-day festival began Sunday at sundown

Most Christians think of Hanukkah as "that nice little Jewish holiday," but they miss the deeper meaning, says best-selling author and Messianic Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Cahn. They picture Jewish families spinning dreidels, lighting menorahs and eating fried potato pancakes. But there's more to this eight-day holiday, which begins at sundown Sunday. "It actually holds a big, prophetic end-time revelation," Cahn said. "It's a heavy holiday." And it keeps getting heavier as time progresses and biblical prophecies about the end times inch closer to being fulfilled. "If anything, over the course of the last year, America and much of the West has moved closer to the scenario foreshadowed in the days of the Maccabees" and the Hanukkah end-time events, said Cahn. He believes Hanukkah presents a preview of the end times events, the spirit that will envelop the world, and the strategies for Christian endurance more than any other biblical holiday. "It foreshadows the Antichrist, the abomination that causes desolation, the calling of evil good and good evil, the removing of God from the public square, the banning of God's Word, sexual immorality, and the persecution of God's people," he told WND. "It also reveals the strategy that end-time believers need to know that might overcome all these things. "We are fast approaching a day when believers can be thrown in jail and the majority of Americans applaud it," he continued. "It is all the more crucial that we be prepared, vigilant, wise, and prepared that we might live victoriously for such a time as this." Jesus celebrated Hanukkah as described in John 10:22-23, when He "walked in the temple in Solomon's porch" during the "Feast of Dedication." A revolutionary act The word Hanukkah means "dedication" and revolves around a historic and improbable revolution, Cahn explains in his documentary film, "The Hanukkah EndTime Mystery." The holiday celebrates the story of the Maccabean revolt against Greek oppression in the period between the Old and New Testaments. This revolt was predicted by Daniel more than 300 years before it occurred, and the miraculous success of that revolution was still being celebrated during the time of Jesus' earthly ministry. If it had not been successful, the Jewish religion and culture would have been wiped out, and the Messiah could not have been born into a devout Jewish family as predicted by the Old Testament prophets. Daniel 12 speaks of a period when "there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, and at that time your people shall be delivered. … But you Daniel close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end." "How long shall the fulfillment of these wonders be?" Daniel asks. The angel answers saying his prophecies would be sealed until the end of the age, but when the time comes, "the wise will understand." Cahn believes Hanukkah and the Maccabees are best understood in light of prophecies by Daniel and the apostle John in Revelation. "You could not know salvation. You could not have Christmas (the birth of Christ). You would not have the New Testament, without Hanukkah," he said. The Syrian Greek dictator, Antiochus Epiphanes, was hell bent on destroying Jewish culture and faith. Without the revolt, without Hanukkah, there would have been no Virgin Mary, no Joseph, to hear and humbly obey the voice of God. Daniel prophesied about Antiochus Epiphanes or "God manifest" arising from the north and invading the Holy Land. Much like the Islamic State has declared war on Jews and Christians today, Antiochus set out to erase every trace, every memory that could lead anyone to the one true God or the history of his people. Families circumcised their sons secretly. They observed Sabbath secretly. To be caught meant certain death. "And he comes into the temple with a mission to defile it, slaughters a pig, sets up an idol in the temple, and launches an all-out war on the Bible," Cahn said. The Jews had a choice. Offer sacrifices to the idols or die. In today's Western culture, the preferred god is no longer Zeus. It's secularism. Every teaching is tolerated, even blessed by the state, except one. The world's major religions are taught to children in public schools as being equal. Cahn sees the seeds of Christian persecution already planted in America, and likely to grow in the coming years. Christians, he said, will find answers on how to deal with persecution in the Hanukkah story. Cahn believes Daniel's prophecies carry a dual meaning for the period of Antiochus in 167 B.C. and the period when the antichrist will arise in the end times. "It looks like Antiochus is going to wipe out the faith of (the one true) God in the world and it looked like it would be the end of this biblical faith," Cahn said. "If he had succeeded, you would not have the New Testament. God had other plans, though." Foreshadow of Antichrist Christians in the last days will be overcomers, like the Maccabees, Cahn believes. In fact, the Hanukkah story contains a blueprint for how to prevail against the overwhelming odds of the world and its anti-Christ system. "You have God's people but then you have apostasy breaking out all around them. You see evil overtaking the land, you see a new morality that seeks to eradicate faith in God," Cahn said. "It's imposed but also many are going along with it freely. Antiochus makes this law that everyone is to abandon their faith. He proclaims himself god. Man proclaiming himself God; He is a foreshadow of the Antichrist." Just as Revelation speaks of a temple in Jerusalem being defiled, so there is an idol set up in the temple in the Hanukkah story. In each story, a man proclaims himself as god, sitting in the holy place. All the people of Antiochus' empire were to become one people culturally, mixed into one multicultural cesspool of paganism. This can be seen today with the migration of peoples from one region of the world to another, with Muslims flooding into once-Christian Europe and America. Politicians like Barack Obama and Angela Merkel invite them and preach that everyone should be "welcoming" of an antagonistic culture. The policies of Obama and Merkel are encouraged by the United Nations and financed by atheist billionaires like George Soros. The God of the Bible in the Maccabees' time would be replaced with Zeus. Today, he is replaced with Allah or the god of the secular state and humanism. "The gentiles immediately said OK and even some in Israel said 'yes we must go along with this.' Not the Maccabees," Cahn said. Likewise, in Revelation, the Antichrist begins to oppress the saints of God and tries to change the set times and laws. "We are living in such times," Cahn said. "Believers, if you are a true believer, you're going to be a thorn in the side of the world. We are already witnessing it. There is a spirit of Antichrist in the world."

HALBROOK: What made the Nazi Holocaust possible? Gun control

HALBROOK: What made the Nazi Holocaust possible? Gun control

By Stephen P. Halbrook 

We recently marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass, the Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jews on Nov. 9-10, 1938. Historians have documented most everything about it except what made it so easy to attack the defenseless Jews without fear of resistance. Their guns were registered and thus easily confiscated.

To illustrate, turn the clock back further and focus on just one victim, a renowned German athlete. Alfred Flatow won first place in gymnastics at the 1896 Olympics. In 1932, he dutifully registered three handguns, as required by a decree of the liberal Weimar Republic. The decree also provided that in times of unrest, the guns could be confiscated. The government gullibly neglected to consider that only law-abiding citizens would register, while political extremists and criminals would not. However, it did warn that the gun-registration records must be carefully stored so they would not fall into the hands of extremists.

 The ultimate extremist group led by Adolf Hitler seized power just a year later in 1933. The Nazis immediately used the firearms-registration records to identify, disarm and attack “enemies of the state,” a euphemism for Social Democrats and other political opponents of all types. Police conducted search-and-seizure operations for guns and “subversive” literature in Jewish communities and working-class neighborhoods.

Jews were increasingly deprived of more and more rights of citizenship in the coming years. The Gestapo cautioned the police that it would endanger public safety to issue gun permits to Jews. Hitler faked a show of tolerance for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but Flatow refused to attend the reunion there of former champions. He was Jewish and would not endorse the farce.

By fall of 1938, the Nazis were ratcheting up measures to expropriate the assets of Jews. To ensure that they had no means of resistance, the Jews were ordered to surrender their firearms.

Flatow walked into a Berlin police station to comply with the command and was arrested on the spot, as were other Jews standing in line. The arrest report confirmed that his pistols were duly registered, which was obviously how the police knew he had them. While no law prohibited a Jew from owning guns, the report recited the Nazi mantra: “Jews in possession of weapons are a danger to the German people.” Despite his compliance, Flatow was turned over to the Gestapo.

This scenario took place all over Germany — firearms were confiscated from all Jews registered as gun owners. As this was occurring, a wholly irrelevant event provided just the excuse needed to launch a violent attack on the Jewish community: A Polish teenager who was Jewish shot a German diplomat in Paris. The stage was set to instigate Kristallnacht, a carefully orchestrated Nazi onslaught against the entire Jewish community in Germany that horrified the world and even the German public.

Under the pretense of searching for weapons, Jewish homes were vandalized, businesses ransacked and synagogues burned. Jews were terrorized, beaten and killed. Orders were sent to shoot anyone who resisted.

Today, gun control, registration and prohibition are depicted as benign and progressive. Government should register gun owners and ban any guns it wishes, Americans are told, because government is inherently good and trustworthy. The experiences of Hitler’s Germany and, for that matter, Stalin’s Russia and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, are beneath the realm of possibility in exceptional America. Let’s hope so.

Still, be careful what you wish for.

Stephen Halbrook is research fellow with the Independent Institute and author “Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and ‘Enemies of the State’” (Independent Institute, 2013).

Pondering Hitler's Legacy

Pondering Hitler's Legacy

By George Friedman

Happenstance has brought me today to a house on the Austria-Germany border, just south of Salzburg. That puts me about 3 miles from the German town of Berchtesgaden, on the German side of the border. Adolf Hitler's home, the Berghof, was just outside the town, on a mountain in the Bavarian Alps. To the extent that Hitler had a home, this was it, and it was the place where Hitler met with many notables, particularly before the war began.

As it happens, today is the 76th anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe. It is always a strange feeling to be here. There is a sense of history present here, but it is mostly a sense of the mind, since Berchtesgaden is an attractive but ordinary place. It always feels as if towns like this should have a patina of extraordinariness sticking to everything. But that isn't how history works. There is a patina of mind, but not of place. On Sept. 1 of any year since 1939, and at a place like this, there is a sense of urgency to extract the real meaning of the man who lived in a house on the mountain I am looking at.

After 76 years, it seems appropriate to try to figure out what Hitler and the war he initiated genuinely changed in the world. This is not an easy question, because to arrive at an answer I had to dismiss from my mind the many acts of gratuitous evil that he committed. It is hard to dismiss those, but in a sense they left little legacy to the world except for the realization that civilization is a thin layer over humanity's beastly savagery. But truly, we didn't have to have Hitler to learn that. We humans have always sensed what is beneath our surface.

The question is how the world changed as a result of Hitler's decision to invade Poland.

The Price for Europe

The first outcome, obviously, was that he destroyed Europe's hegemony over much of the world and its influence over the rest. Within 15 years of the end of the war, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands lost their empires. A handful of European nations had dominated the world. By the end of the war they had lost the will, the energy and the wealth to maintain their power. After half-hearted and doomed attempts to resist, these countries willingly participated in the dismantling of what they had once thought of as their birthright.

This changed the shape of the world, of course, but the change was less the result of the world's resistance to Europe than a result of Europe's exhaustion. After the war, Europe faced the task of rebuilding buildings. The ambition to rule had been exhausted. However flawed or wicked that ambition might have been, there is still something sad in the loss of all ambition, beyond the desire for comfort. The will to dominate, seen in its most extreme form in Hitler's appetites, chills the blood. The loss of any transcendent ambition merely cools it. Europe has lost its recklessness, which is on the whole good. Yet it has gained an excessive caution that makes it difficult for Europe to make up its mind over matters small and large. 

The world is certainly a better place without Hitler's reckless imprudence. It is probably a better place without British or French imperialism, although when we look at what they left behind, we wonder if the wreckage of empire is worth the wreckage of the post-imperial world, whoever we blame for that wreckage.

Hitler clearly didn't want this outcome. I think he was sincere when he said that he would leave the British Empire intact, along with its navy, if the United Kingdom accepted German domination of the European mainland. He wanted peace with the British so he could crush the Soviets. But the British as a nation could accept that deal only if they trusted Hitler's promise. However sincere he was in 1940, Britain couldn't bet on the endurance of his word. As a result, Hitler in due course committed suicide in Berlin, and Britain presided over the dissolution of its own empire — the only thing that would have disgusted both Churchill and Hitler. Churchill's imperialism and Hitler's racism met on that point.

There was another thing Hitler cost Europe: the metaphysical sensibility. It is startling, the extent to which Christian Europe has abandoned Christianity for secularism. Consider this map:

The decline of church attendance is the outer husk of a European sensibility that, at the highest levels of thought, contemplated the deeper meanings of things. It was not Hitler who destroyed the European metaphysical sensibility. In many ways it destroyed itself from the inside, with a radical skepticism derived from the Enlightenment that turned on itself. But Hitler provided a coup de grace to that sensibility by appropriating figures like Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner to his own political ends, thereby delegitimizing not only them but also the tradition from which they emerged. Hitler, in his own strange wanderings in the depths, made such wanderings no longer respectable, and indeed, suspect. There is a saying I once heard: "German philosophers go down deeper, stay down longer and come up dirtier than any others." I don't know about philosophers, but Hitler, the would-be philosopher, certainly did, and it cost Europe the jewel of its intellectual heritage.

It is said that Napoleon called the English a nation of shopkeepers. He obviously meant that as an insult, seeing shopkeepers as people of limited imagination, ambition and wit. There is some truth to the saying about the English, although George Orwell was enraged at the trivialization of their achievements. To the extent to which the English were suspicious of the wholesomeness and usefulness of French and particularly German philosophy, Napoleon was right. But if he was, then Hitler achieved something extraordinary: He made all of Europe into nations of shopkeepers.

After the war, the obsession of Europeans was to live. Then it was to make a living. Napoleon's insult was that there was more to life than simply making a living. What Hitler achieved was what he would have been appalled by: shopkeepers ruling Europe. But Europe is obsessed with making a living and suspicious of profound thinking. It has seen where that got it and it doesn't intend to go there again. The best minds get MBAs. The broad public sleeps late on Sunday. The train wreck that Hitler made of Europe created a secularism not only in relation to Christianity, but in all attempts to recreate the depth of European culture.

The Power of the United States

Of course in all of this, perhaps the most important thing that Hitler did was unleash the United States, a country where earning a living is the definition of life. Hitler believed that his defeat meant the triumph of Bolshevism. It really meant the triumph of the United States and its culture, which it distributed in Western Europe through occupation and in the Soviet bloc through imitation.

The United States redefined European culture. As I have written in Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, it was not Coca-Cola but the computer that was the carrier of American culture. The computer had nothing to do with metaphysics or with the true or beautiful. It had to do with the narrowest form of instrumental reason: It simply got things done, and in doing so, it justified its existence. The computer dominated the world — and Europe — and with it came a mode of thinking, contained in programming, that was so radically different from what European culture consisted of as to almost be from another planet. Of course, Europeans helped found the culture, but they bequeathed it to their heir, the United States. Paradoxically, the United States remains the most religious of countries, with church attendance at its height. Religiosity and instrumental reason are compatible in the United States — a point to ponder.

Hitler respected Josef Stalin. He understood the radical ideologue who was ready to kill. He had little respect for the United States. He understood Stalin, but he couldn't fathom Roosevelt. But as I sit here looking toward Berchtesgaden, I must recall that it was the 7th Infantry Regiment of the Third Division, U.S. Army, that captured the town and Hitler's home. The Americans occupied the area until 1995, using it for military purposes. This was the most important thing Hitler achieved, and the last thing he expected. Hitler drew the Americans into the heart of Europe and left the Europeans completely vulnerable to the emerging, and quite strange, modes of thought that a nation that holds shopkeepers in great regard can produce. Hitler destroyed the dams that Europe had built around itself. He crippled all of Europe, including the Soviet Union. He could not imagine the need to cripple the Americans, nor could he have had realized the need. And therefore, in the end, they rebuilt Berchtesgaden and I am sitting here looking at it.

Hitler will be remembered not only for great evil but also — and more important, in many ways — for the manner in which almost all of the consequences of his war were unexpected. 

Will Christendom Fall?

Will Christendom Fall?

I've studied and written about the outright war between Christendom and Muslim.  I've advocated that Christendom (all religions that follow the Abrahamic God and Jesus Christ) cannot coexist with the Muslim belief system.  Further Muhammad's God is not our God.  The laws of Muhammad and memorialized in the Koran are antithetical to our Bible.

The gist of my study and writings is a bold and harsh reality: the followers of these two religions will not and cannot coexist.  That fact has been obscured by the followers of the false notion of "multiculturalism".  I won't go into again why it is a false idealism in this writing.

The answer the question in the title is "yes".  But it does not have to be.  The followers of Christ have become meek and silent.  The pulpits have gone quiet.  This is not Biblical nor is it what the Bible teaches. There are many scriptures to use in fighting an enemy, be it the Devil, a demon, or anything else. Here are but a few:

Old Testament

If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them … you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. I will give you peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid; I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.” Leviticus 26:3

“For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and give your enemies over to you; therefore your camp shall be holy, that He may see no unclean thing among you, and turn away from you.” Deuteronomy 23:14

“… For we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You … Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel … thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God’s … You will not need to fight in this battle. Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, who is with you, O Judah and Jerusalem!” Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord is with you.” 2 Chronicles 20:12-17

New Testament

“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”Luke 10:19

“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7

“And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.” 2 Timothy 4:18

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” Romans 8:31

Being right and just is not enough.  Satan has is at war with Christ no differently than he was 2000 years ago.  We cannot go quietly. We cannot be sheep lead to slaughter. Evil is alive and well and Christendom must come together, segregate ourselves from evil and prevail in the name of God and Jesus Christ.

Why do I write this impassioned plea? I get and see many articles and meme's circulating the internet. The intent is obviously heart felt.  However, they fall short. God has commanded us into action.  None of these are a call to action.  We must become Christian activist and persevere against evil in all its forms.

I would go further, to say that all of Christendom around the world should rise up for the Kingdom of God and slay the enemy and at least segregate ourselves from them.  They can live in peace, but not in our land and not in the land ordained by God to be free.

No peace in our time - Understanding Netanyahu

No peace in our time

by Charles Krauthammer

Of all the idiocies uttered in reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning election victory, none is more ubiquitous than the idea that peace prospects are now dead because Netanyahu has declared that there will be no Palestinian state while he is Israel’s prime minister.

I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister, either. Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state – with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted – only to be rudely rejected.

This is not ancient history. This is 2000, 2001 and 2008 – three astonishingly concessionary peace offers within the last 15 years. Every one rejected.

The fundamental reality remains: This generation of Palestinian leadership – from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas – has never and will never sign its name to a final peace settlement dividing the land with a Jewish state. And without that, no Israeli government of any kind will agree to a Palestinian state.

Today, however, there is a second reason a peace agreement is impossible: the supreme instability of the entire Middle East. For half a century, it was run by dictators no one liked but with whom you could do business. For example, the 1974 Israel-Syria disengagement agreement yielded more than four decades of near-total quiet on the border because the Assad dictatorships so decreed.

That authoritarian order is gone. Syria is wracked by a multi-sided civil war that has killed 200,000 people and that has al-Qaeda allies, Hezbollah fighters, government troops and even the occasional Iranian general prowling the Israeli border. Who inherits? No one knows.

In the last four years, Egypt has had two revolutions and three radically different regimes. Yemen went from pro-American to Iranian client so quickly the U.S. had to evacuate its embassy in a panic. Libya has gone from Moammar Gadhafi’s crazy authoritarianism to jihadi-dominated civil war. On Wednesday, Tunisia, the one relative success of the Arab Spring, suffered a major terror attack that the prime minister said “targets the stability of the country.”

From Mali to Iraq, everything is in flux. Amid this mayhem, by what magic would the West Bank, riven by a bitter Fatah-Hamas rivalry, be an island of stability? What would give any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement even a modicum of durability?

There was a time when Arafat commanded the Palestinian movement the way Gadhafi commanded Libya. Abbas commands no one. Why do you think he is in the 11th year of a four-year term, having refused to hold elections for the last five years? Because he’s afraid he would lose to Hamas.

With or without elections, the West Bank could fall to Hamas overnight. At which point fire rains down on Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and the entire Israeli urban heartland – just as it rains down on southern Israel from Gaza when it suits Hamas.

Any Arab-Israeli peace settlement would require Israel to make dangerous and inherently irreversible territorial concessions on the West Bank in return for promises and guarantees. Under current conditions, these would be written on sand.

Israel is ringed by jihadi terrorists in Sinai, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic State and Iranian proxies in Syria, and a friendly but highly fragile Jordan. Israelis have no idea who ends up running any of these places.

Well, say the critics. Israel could be given outside guarantees. Guarantees? Like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which the U.S., Britain and Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s “territorial integrity”? Like the red line in Syria? Like the unanimous U.N. resolutions declaring illegal any Iranian enrichment of uranium – now effectively rendered null?

Peace awaits three things. Eventual Palestinian acceptance of a Jewish state. A Palestinian leader willing to sign a deal based on that premise. A modicum of regional stability that allows Israel to risk the potentially fatal withdrawals such a deal would entail.

I believe such a day will come. But there is zero chance it comes now or even soon. That’s essentially what Netanyahu said in explaining – and softening – on Thursday his no-Palestinian-state statement.

In the interim, I understand the crushing disappointment of the Obama administration and its media poodles at the spectacular success of the foreign leader they loathe more than any other on the planet. The consequent seething and sputtering are understandable, if unseemly. Blaming Netanyahu for banishing peace, however, is mindless.

Why Gay Marriage Is Satanic

Gay Marriage Is Satanic

by Matt Barber

Logic is the cognitive pathway to truth. While to err is human, when we objectively apply logic to the question at hand, we at least endeavor, if done so in good faith, to arrive at the truth of the matter.

Jesus is the spiritual, and the very narrow, pathway to Truth, which is Himself. He invented logic. It's a tool that helps us to observe, study and to otherwise uncover the many mysteries veiled beneath His awesome natural order.

Truth is universal. It applies to everyone, including to the relativist who might prefer wandering aimless and far removed from logic's narrow path, the wilderness of spiritual death.

It remains true for all, for instance, that if one leaps from the Sears Tower, one will, absent some intervening salvation, splat below like a ripe tomato. Whether we like it or not, this is the natural order of things.

The question at hand is this: What exactly is "same-sex marriage"?

Let's do an exercise in logic.

In order to determine that which something is, it is sometimes helpful to first explore that which it is not. Hence, we can delineate that which is "gay marriage" by first understanding marriage itself. Jesus defined marriage for us. His definition is reflected in the spiritual, biological and in-every-other-way-self-evident order of His divinely defined design.

Declared Jesus: "'Haven't you read,' he replied, 'that at the beginning the Creator "made them male and female," and said, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh"? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate'" (Matt. 19:4-6).

Rather conspicuously, and as I've noted before, Jesus did not say: "At the beginning the Creator made them lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). For this reason a male, female or shemale will leave his, her or whatchahoozie's father and mother, father and father or mother and mother and be united to his or her wife—and/or husband—and the two or more will become one flesh. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Here, and as I've likewise explained, is what marriage is:

"Marriage is the God-ordained, lifelong, covenantal union between man and wife, designed to provide men, women and children optimal stability and overall well-being. Marriage is that biologically, spiritually and morally centered institution calculated to ensure responsible procreation and perpetuate the human race. Marriage, real marriage, represents the fundamental cornerstone of any healthy society (any society that hopes to survive, at least)."

"Here's what marriage is not:  "Anything else."

And so the notion of "same-sex" marriage is a self-defeating proposition. "Gay marriage" is not marriage at all.

Yet it is something. But what?

From o'er the big pond, the DailyMail offers insight: "Two male witches have tied the knot in the U.K.'s first pagan same-sex marriage.

"Tom Lanting, 34, and Iain Robertson, 39, who have been together for 12 years, were married in a ceremony in the 16th-century vaulted cellars of Marlin's Wynd in Edinburgh. ...  The couple, who live in the Scottish capital, are both described as being hedge witches, who use herbal remedies to deal with medical and spiritual ailments. The ceremony encompassed a number of pagan traditions, including handfasting, where their hands were bound together, the sharing of mead and jumping the broom. ... The new equal marriage law means that we finally have equal recognition and acceptance of our relationship, and it opens the door for all LGBTI couples to take the same step,' the men said. ... Louise Park, the presiding officer for the Pagan Federation (Scotland), conducted the ceremony."

"We feel that, if any couple wish to, they should be able to make their marriage vows before their own personal [g]ods, friends and family, in a religious ceremony tailored to suit their own beliefs," she told the DailyMail.

Paganism is the antithesis of biblical Christianity, but it mustn't be too lightly grasped or narrowly defined. It is far more broadly characterized than the overt hocus pocus practiced by Tom and Iain. In truth, any religious tradition, or no tradition at all, that falls beyond the Judeo-Christian Bible is, by default, paganism.

The opposite of truth is the lie. If Christianity embodies absolute truth, which it does, then paganism embodies the absolute lie. If Christianity is of God, who is truth, then paganism is of Satan, who is the father of lies. Satan is the "personal god" of paganism in all of its deceptive and Christ-mocking manifestations.

So, to be clear, and when measured against Christ's unambiguous and biologically affirmed definition of marriage, all "same-sex marriages" are "pagan marriages." They are "mock marriages" insofar as they mock both real marriage and the Christ who created it.

Moreover, the very thing that defines "gay marriage," the biologically and spiritually disordered act of same-sex sodomy, likewise mocks God's design for natural sexual intercourse. The Bible, throughout both the Old and New Testaments, unambiguously condemns as sin rising to the level of "an abomination," all same-sex sexual conduct, be it, "loving, monogamous and committed," or otherwise.

Homosexuality is mock sexuality.

And "gay marriage" is mock marriage.

So, again, and lest there be any uncertainty as to where I'm going with all this, "same-sex marriage" is evil—always and without exception. It is centrally defined by the sin of Sodom, which is expressly wicked conduct. All good things come from God the Father, and all wickedness comes from the father of lies. If God designed biblical marriage and natural human sexuality, and He did, then we are left no doubt as to who designed its counterfeit—as to who fabricated pagan "gay marriage" and otherwise perverted God's perfect purposes for human sexuality.

"Gay marriage" is satanic. It's only logical.

Will West defend itself from its multicultural flaws or suffer the real and certain consequences?

Will West defend itself from its multicultural flaws?

By Walter E. Williams

Leftists and progressives believe that the United States should become more like Europe. They praise Europe’s massive welfare state, socialized medicine and stifling economic regulation and accept its unwillingness to defend itself against barbarism. I wonder whether America’s leftists and progressives want to import some of Europe’s barbaric extremism associated with its Muslim population.

Several European countries have what are called “no-go zones.” No-go zones function as microstates governed by Shariah. The host countries’ authorities have lost control over these areas. In some cases, they are unable to provide even police, firefighting and ambulance services.

In France, no-go zones are officially called Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones. There are estimated to be more than 750 such zones in France. According to The Washington Times, “France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah law.”

France is by no means by itself.
Sweden has some of the most liberal immigration laws in Europe. Malmo is Sweden’s third-largest city, with a population over 300,000, of which 25 percent is Muslims who have created large no-go zones. Fire and emergency workers refuse to enter Malmo’s mostly Muslim Rosengaard district without police escort. Gothenburg is Sweden’s second-largest city. In Angered, one of the city’s districts, Muslim youths pelt police cars with Molotov cocktails and have destroyed more than 15. They use green lasers to temporarily blind police officers by pointing them at their eyes.

The Gatestone Institute reports that an Islamist group called Muslims Against Crusades has launched an ambitious campaign to turn 12 British cities into independent Islamic states, including Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and what the group calls “Londonistan.” The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Shariah and operate entirely outside British jurisprudence. Several years ago, The Telegraph reported: “Islamic extremists have created ‘no-go’ areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter. ... People of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.”

No-go zones have also emerged in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. The basic question is: Does the Western world have the power to control its countries? In terms of capacity, as opposed to will, the answer is a clear yes. Western lack of will is a result of our having been paralyzed by the doctrine of multiculturalism. Diversity worship and multiculturalism have currency and are cause for celebration among our elite. Multiculturalists teach that cultural values are morally equivalent, such as those of Islam and the West. To suggest that Western values are superior to others would win one opprobrium by the know-it-all elite. Western values are indeed superior to all others because they hold the individual as supreme. Though Western values are superior to all others, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that in Germany, multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” Both Australia’s ex-prime minister John Howard and Spain’s ex-prime minister Jose Maria Aznar reached the same conclusion about multiculturalism in their countries. British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that multiculturalism is fostering extremist ideology and directly contributing to homegrown Islamic terrorism. UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said the United Kingdom’s push for multiculturalism has not united Britons but pushed them apart. It has allowed for Islam to emerge despite Britain’s Judeo-Christian culture. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the roots of violent Islamism are not “superficial but deep” and can be found “in the extremist minority that now, in every European city, preach hatred of the West and our way of life.” I wonder whether America’s leftists and progressives see multiculturalism as a success or failure.

Hanukkah's lessons for today

Hanukkah's lessons for today

Joseph Farah compares Maccabees' challenge to that of believers today

I love Hanukkah, as I probably made abundantly clear in my earlier column this week.

But there's more to be said about this holiday.

In fact, I would say Hanukkah holds great spiritual as well as political significance for us today – Jews and Christians alike.

First the spiritual:

Most prophecy teachers have missed the fact that Hanukkah contains one of the most amazingly detailed revelations of the end times, Cahn explains. The story of Hanukkah is a metaphor – a foreshadowing – of what we can expect before the return of Yeshua the Messiah.

But what about the political significance?

The political lesson of Hanukkah is that we can do all things through our faith and obedience to God.

There are many disillusioned Americans today. They are wondering if our election system has broken down. They are wondering if our culture has become degraded past the point of no return. They are wondering if America is being transformed from a self-governing society to one in which the people are ruled by government. They are wondering about whether all the false idols we worship are going to spell our doom. They are wondering if our collective sins – from same-sex marriage to abortion to child pornography to dismissing the Creator from our lives – places us beyond redemption as a nation.

Something similar happened in Israel 200 years before Yeshua the Messiah was born. A foreign empire sought to impose its false religion on Israel. It was largely successful. Most Israelis went along with the Greek orders. Idols were placed in the Temple. The altar was desecrated by the sacrifice of a pig. Jewish woman about to be married were forced to submit themselves to Greek officials for an evening of sexual entertainment.

But one family, the Maccabees, refused to capitulate.

They led a revolt that was far less likely to be successful than the one America's founders led against Great Britain. They were outnumbered. They were out-armed. The odds did not look good.

But the Maccabees had faith and swore obedience to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob rather than the Greek pagan myths.

The Greeks attacked with a massive army. They were routed by the Maccabees.

The Greeks attacked with a bigger army. They were routed by the Maccabees.

The Greeks attacked with all their power and might, determined to wipe out this uprising. And once again they were routed by the Maccabees.

The Temple was ritually purified. The Greek idols were removed. And that is the breathtaking story of Hanukkah in a nutshell.

The lesson? If God is with us, who can be against us?

Americans should take heart in this holiday commemoration and the miracles of Hanukkah – whether they are Christians or Jews – because God will work this same kind of miracle for us today if we are faithful to Him and repent of our sins and turn from our wicked ways.

And I don't mean the whole nation has to do this.

In 2 Chronicles 7:14, it makes very clear that only those called by His name need to humble themselves and follow this prescription.

What that means is that all the forces of hell can't defeat us if we take this one simple, vital step today.

We can overcome the darkness. But it all begins with the believers.

Joseph Farah

Hebrew - The Holy Tongue

Holy Tongue

By Mordechai Schiller

Not all languages are created equal. There is one language apart from all others.

Hebrew is called "Lashon Hakodesh" — the Holy Tongue. There are some who might dismiss this as just pious Heb-perbole. But you don't have to be pious — or Jewish — to know that Hebrew is special.

Personally, I have no problem with axiomatically quoting the Torah. We hold its Truth to be self-evident. As an old bumper sticker put it: "G-d said it. I believe it. That settles it!" But, for the cynics, skeptics, and others absolutely sure of their uncertainty, rather than beg the question by jumping right into quoting the Torah to prove its own specialness, let me start with a venerated secular source: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The word "Ivri — Hebrew," means otherness. According to the OED, the etymology of the English word Hebrew is:

"Middle English Ebreu, from Old French Ebreu, Ebrieu (nominative Ebreus, 12th cent. in Hatzfeld & Darmesteter), from medieval Latin Ebrus for classical Latin Hebræus, from Greek Hebraios,from Aramaic 'ebrai, corresponding to Hebrew ibr? 'a Hebrew,' lit. 'one from the other side (of the river)'; from '?ber the region on the other or opposite side; from '?bar to cross or pass over.)"

Eons before Oxford, the Midrash explained why the Torah calls Abraham "ha'Ivri — the Hebrew." The word Ivri is related to the word eiver, meaning "on the other side." The Midrash explains that Abraham was unfazed by standing alone in his beliefs. "The whole world stood on one side and he stood on the other."

Could Thoreau have known this Midrash? In his essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau wrote that Abolitionists should withdraw support for the government of Massachusetts and

 "not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have G-d on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."

Shortly after my brother Rabbi Nota Schiller (dean of Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem) got married, he moved to Israel. Before he left, he went to take leave of, Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner, zt"l, the late dean of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin.

Rabbi Hutner told my brother, "When we make a l'chaim toast for a yahrtzeit, we say, 'May the neshamah have an Aliyah [May the soul rise to a higher level in Heaven].' Now, I say to you, may your Aliyah [ascension to live in Israel] have a neshamah [soul]!"

In the course of the conversation, my brother mentioned that he was concerned about adapting to a new language. Given his lifelong involvement in writing and communication, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to fully express himself, writing in Hebrew.

Rabbi Hutner told him that people can readily learn to write in a new language. "But nobody," he said, "writes poetry in an adopted language."

Poetry, he explained, is too profoundly connected to our primal emotions. "There is one exception, though," the sage said, "A Jew from any country can learn to write poetry in Lashon Hakodesh; because Lashon Hakodesh is every Jew's first language."

Still pondering Rabbi Hutner's premise that no one writes poetry in an adopted language, my brother asked, "But what about Joseph Conrad?" (Conrad was a Polish immigrant, and one of England's greatest lyrical novelists.) Rabbi Hutner countered, "That is not poetry; that is prose." Apparently, Rabbi Hutner felt that — no matter how poetic — prose couldn't be verse.

A horse of a different color

Hebrew is the language of Creation: The Mishnah in Ethics of the Fathers tells us "that "the world was created with 10 utterances." The Divine created the universe using one set of tools: Hebrew words.

The Torah says Adam called his wife ishah (woman) because "she was taken from ish [man]." The foremost commentator, Rashi, explains, based on the Midrash, that this derivation teaches us that "The world was created with Lashon Hakodesh — the Holy Tongue — Hebrew."

Adam later "called his wife 'Chavah' [Eve] because she was to be mother of all chai [life]." The name Adam itself comes from the Hebrew word adamah [earth], because G-d created Adam from the earth.

A Horse is a horse, of course. But is it, really? The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says the etymology of horse is: "hors = Old Frisianhors, hars, hers (Frisian hoars), Old Saxon hros (Middle Low German ros, ors, Middle Dutch ors, Low German and Dutch ros), Old High German hros, ros, Middle High German ros, ors, German rosz, all neuter, Old Norse hross masculine; not recorded in Gothic. The affinities of the word outside Germanic are uncertain. …"

In other words, nobody knows for sure. So, "You pays your money and you takes your choice." Or, as Mark Twain said, "It is difference of opinion that makes horse-races."

On the other hoof, the Hebrew word sus is a horse of a different color. The Torah says that the Divine brought all the animals before Adam, "…and whatever the man would call each living creature — that was its name."

Adam didn't "give" the animals names. He prophetically connected with the spiritual essence of each animal and called it by its name. Thus, the Hebrew word sus isn't a mere label. It definitively identifies the creature we call a horse.

More to the point, all other languages are nothing more than collections of arbitrary sounds that enough people got together and agreed on to refer to a specific object.

In our case, that object is a mammal that has hooves, pulls loads, runs races and helped win the West. All things being equine, there is no intrinsic meaning to the juxtaposition of phonemes riding on horse. Since Hebrew is the language of Creation, by corollary, it is the language of prophecy.

As my brother said, "In prophecy, there is an absoluteness to diction and syntax. We scramble to catch the bobbing and weaving sparks of holiness hidden elsewhere. Yet the phrase 'V'romamtanu mikol ha'leshonos — He lifted us above all other tongues' — means just that." And so, only Hebrew is "Lashon Hakodesh — the Holy Tongue."

When I was a rabbinical student at the Beth Medrash Gevoha in Lakewood, NJ., I would sometimes spend lunchtime in the yeshivah library, reading Sefer HaCarmel — a dictionary/thesaurus based on the commentary of the Malbim (d. 1879).

The Malbim wrote in the introduction to his commentary on the book of Isaiah that the Jewish prophets never used two different words to mean the same thing.

There are no "synonyms" in Hebrew. That is, there are no interchangeable words. Each word is precise and essential. In his commentary, he defines seeming synonyms explaining the fine differences in meaning.

Yehuda Leib Gordon, the poet (d. 1892), and Pinhas Rutenberg (founder of the Israel Electric Corporation) were both irreverent enough to name electricity for an angel in Ezekiel's vision: "Chashmal."

It is ironic that the fathers of Modern Hebrew couldn't come up with a more creative word in Ivrit for Alexander Graham Bell's "harmonic telegraph" than telefon.

Lamentably, Modern Hebrew continues to deteriorate. How sad that the glut of Western media led to Israelis giving up "Shalom" for "Bye." But there is still hope. The OED says the etymology of "goodbye" is "A contraction of the phrase G-d be with you"!