Kineti L'Tziyon קנאתי לציון

Some Thoughts on Purim during a war with Iran by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:15:00 +0000

If you've followed me for a while, you might remember that I have had a rough time on Purim over the years because I've been caught up in unpleasant events around this time of year. So although I'm not superstitious, every year as the Purim holiday approaches, I always get a little nervous.

This year it turned out that I wasn't nervous enough.

Although we've been watching events develop over the last couple of months, which made the likelihood of this war breaking out more and more likely, there were a few things that made me go to sleep just before midnight on Friday, February 27th, thinking it was unlikely to start in the next few days. This included the news about another round of talks being scheduled on Monday, the docking of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in Haifa (why start a war when one of the carriers is in port, essentially helpless to do anything but be a target?) and the fact that the IDF Home Front Command hadn't changed the guidelines, which I always figured they'd do at least 18 hours before the balloon going up.

But maybe that was all one of the biggest fake-outs in military history. Or, maybe what has been reported is true, that intelligence picked up on the fact that a meeting was going to be held at the residence of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, involving dozens of regime big shots, and so it was decided that this was an opportunity to decapitate the regime which would be unlikely to be repeated, so it had to be taken. Attacking in the morning, in broad daylight, on Shabbat, is something that the Ayatollahs (and the rest of us) would never see coming, which is exactly why it would work.

Maybe that really is how it went down. I'm quite sure there's more to it than that, but we'll probably never know the whole story.

In any case, the next morning, I was still half asleep when I heard a large number of jets flying. Even in my sleep, I knew this was very unusual, because it was Saturday morning. Part of my half-asleep brain told me to leap out of bed, get dressed, and prepare for possible action. But another part was really enjoying being in bed, under the nice warm covers, and there was no rush. So I took a middle path, slowly waking up, opening my eyes, beginning to swing my legs over the side of the bed, and just then, the sirens wailed, and I knew, in that moment, that the war had begun.

A war against Iran, on Purim.

It's impossible to ignore the symbolism here, and my Facebook feed has been flooded with memes about it. Some of these memes are clever, while others are silly and childish, but nonetheless on point.

There certainly are many candidates for the role of "Haman" in this modern-day Purim story.

The Ayatollah Khamenei himself, who was taken down in the strike on his compound, along with many other senior regime officials, certainly fits the bill. He has been breathing fire for years, declaring over and over again that he was going to lead an effort to destroy Israel. Now he's gone, and Israel is not only still here, it's in much better shape than Iran in every possible way. If there was ever someone who got hanged on the gallows they built for someone else, it was Ayatollah Khamenei.

Tucker Carlson, who has declared this strike on the Ayatollah regime to be "disgusting and evil" for no other reason than because it benefits Israel and he has become obsessed with hatred and contempt for Israel, is another candidate for the role of Haman. No matter how absurd the lies, deceit and gaslighting that guy produces get, he seems to find ways to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible (in a bad way.) Sooner or later, he's gonna get a taste of his own medicine, and I'm sure he won't like it.

But to be fair to Tucker, he's just doing what almost everyone else is doing these days, driving up his social media profile and feeding the algorithms by being outrageous and inflammatory. If Tucker Carlson stopped caring about the truth a long time ago, and now just wants people to watch his videos, click on his links, etc. so that he can make money off it, then he's just doing what everyone else would like to do if they could.

But on the other hand, maybe he actually believes his own rhetoric. In some ways, that would be much worse, but in the end, it won't make any difference.

Even if he never gets a taste of his own medicine in this life, the way Khamenei did, someday he'll have to stand before the Throne and give an account for his life, for every word that ever came out of his mouth. I wouldn't trade places with him even if someone offered me ten times the amount of money he's making from his various revenue streams, probably including the money he's being paid by the Moslem Brotherhood fueled regime that rules in Qatar.

On that subject, I can't not comment on the astonishing tsunami of high-octane silly, stupid, ridiculous, idiotic nonsense I hear and see coming out of the so-called "experts" on international relations, geopolitics, and related topics. Almost all of them agree on what a bad idea it was to launch this war, how it's just making a bad situation worse, won't solve anything, etc. They also seem to be almost universally convinced that Iran is ten feet tall and bulletproof, can do enormous damage to Israel, America's position in the Middle East, etc.

The reasons and the reasoning they present to support these galactically absurd arguments would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that so many very serious people, who have very important decisions to make, are known to take these "experts" seriously. So, they're likely to make some very bad decisions, which will negatively affect the lives of millions of people, including me.

In any case, as I'm writing this blog on the second evening of this war against Iran, it is astonishing to see some of the things that are happening. It's similar in many ways to the 12 Day War last June, in that my family and I have had to run down to the bomb shelter several times, meeting our neighbors from upstairs. The drowsiness this has caused me to feel because the siren often comes in the middle of the night, sending a jolt of adrenaline into my system and making it hard to get back to sleep even after the all-clear signal comes, is also familiar.

But there's other things that are different, principally the fact that this time it feels like it'll be over more quickly, and this time, it'll end with the regime in Iran being utterly defeated and more than likely removed. I don't think President Trump will impose a ceasefire this time, until the regime has been defeated, not just degraded.

That'll be good, for all kinds of reasons, starting with the fact that it'll make it much easier for Israel to finish the job against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Many other issues will likely get sorted out as well, and once again that will all be to the good.

But the removal of the Ayatollah regime in Iran will also leave the way clear for Israel's other great enemy in this region, the Moslem Brotherhood, to finally come out of the shadows and become our next big problem. As I said before, the Brotherhood has already more or less taken over Qatar, and Turkey is also far down that road. Other countries in the region are also somewhat up for grabs, including Egypt, where the Brotherhood briefly took over in the wake of the Arab Spring and could do so again in the future.

One thing is for sure, my life, and the lives of the other 10 million Israelis, is unlikely to get boring again any time soon.

Happy Purim everyone!

Some thoughts on obsolescence by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 21:40:00 +0000

(Authors note: This blog is a kind of post-script to my previous blog about Artificial Intelligence. Also, this blog is long, but there's a payoff at the end, which I hope will make it worth it to have read the entire thing.)

An incident which occurred recently has brought to mind, a few weeks earlier than usual, a memory that comes up every year for me as we approach the graduation season.

My own graduation from college was a happy occasion. On that day, I walked across the stage and accepted my diploma as my parents and my professors looked on, beaming with pride. The chair of the Political Science Department, from whom I had taken almost half of my classes, also had a hint of sadness in his eyes as he smiled at me, and after the ceremony, he came over to meet my parents and told them how proud they should be of me and so on, but then he leaned in, touched me gently on the arm and invited me to come see him in his office the next day after lunch, before moving off to talk to other people.

The next day after lunch my parents would be leaving for the airport, so I was free to go meet "Dr. B" as his students affectionately called him.

Dr. B's graduation day gown was still hanging up in the open closet next to his desk but otherwise there was nothing in the office to indicate that it was anything other than a normal workday for him. He was the kind of teacher whose greatest joy in life was to help his students help themselves, but he wasn't the only one in the building that day preparing for the summer session, which would start in a few weeks.

I sat down in front of his desk, where I had sat many times before over the previous four years, as he began to speak. He told me once again how proud he was of me, and he asked me some general questions about what I planned to do next and so on. Then, he got really quiet for a few moments, looking down at his desk, and I could tell he was struggling to find the right words to say what was on his mind. Experience told me to be patient, and eventually he'd have something to say that I'd be glad I got the opportunity to hear.

After a few moments, he began to speak once again, and although it was almost 30 years ago, I can still hear what he said in my mind as clearly as I did that day.

He said; "Aaron, you are one of the best students I ever had, and I'm not just saying that. I've been teaching here for 32 years. Most of the kids who come through here don't try very hard to learn anything. They just do the minimum to get by and they don't care about learning anything and after they graduate, I quickly forget about them and I'm not sorry to see them go. But you really made the most of your time here, it was a pleasure to have you in my classes, and I'm VERY sorry to see you go."

He paused for a moment, and I could see he was struggling again, but soon he continued and said words I'll never forget.

"Aaron, there's something else that makes me very sad today, because the fact is...well...I'm afraid the degree you earned here is already obsolete."

I sat there utterly stunned for a few seconds before he continued.

"Y'see Aaron, with this internet thing (the internet was still pretty new back then) everything I've taught you over the past four years is going to be available soon to anyone who needs it at the click of a mouse. Your knowledge, all the information you know, and all the books you've read and all the lectures you've sat through and taken notes and all that, it's all out there for anyone who wants it, any time they need it. I'd be pretty surprised if you will even be able to get a job teaching social studies in a high school. I think in ten years or less, universities like this one will all be shut down and maybe high schools too. They might still have elementary schools for young children, just to teach them the basics before giving them a computer, but I think 8th grade is going to be the max and then everyone's going to just be done with school."

I sat there with my mouth open, utterly speechless, having no idea what to say, but he wasn't done. He went on to tell me that he'd be retiring in a few more years, and he was sure he was going to be among the last teachers to spend a career in the classroom and make it to a comfortable retirement. He felt sorry for the younger profs in the department who probably wouldn't have enough in their pension accounts to retire and would have to figure something else out. He also felt VERY sorry for me, as I was just starting out in life and would probably struggle a lot to find work that paid enough to live on (he wasn't wrong about that part.)

He also said, before he let me go, that he didn't want me to be completely despondent because if I could find a way to make the internet work for me, I still had a chance to have a happy, successful life. But, he cautioned me, I needed to understand that although I had completed my formal schooling, my education would never end. I needed to continue reading books and otherwise learning in order to stay one step ahead of the competition. He used his thumb to point to the enormous number of books he had on the shelves behind his desk and told me that most of them he'd read after he graduated, and he continued to read two or three books a month, just to stay on top of things in his own profession. I would probably need to read even more, he cautioned me, and I should also make use of the internet to find and get more information to stay current on everything. That, he said, is the only way I could continue to be relevant and employable until I reached the age of retirement myself.

And then, having rendered unto his star pupil this final lesson, Dr. B once again shook my hand and told me to get out there and be a successful human being.

Well, all these years later, it's obvious that Dr. B's eulogy for the traditional education system, and all the ramifications it would have for the economy and me personally, was premature. In any case, I ended up going into journalism, not teaching, so even if he had been right about that part, it wouldn't have necessarily been as bad for me as he thought it was going to be.

But he wasn't wrong about everything he told me that day, and in some ways, I'm starting to think that he wasn't actually wrong at all, just slightly ahead of his time.

I DID take his advice and ever since graduating from college, I have continued to buy and read an enormous quantity of books. Since moving to Israel almost 25 years ago I've probably spent close to $3,000 or more on such books, and I've been given many more as gifts. I've also read hundreds of pages worth of PDF files published by think tanks here in Israel, listened to thousands of hours worth of podcasts and YouTube videos that were posted by think tanks, media organizations, historical societies and universities. This material covered a wide variety of topics related to Israel and the Middle East, from Biblical and modern history, archaeology, environmental issues, strategic issues, economic issues, social issues, military issues, cultural issues, religious/theological issues, and all kinds of other stuff.

But, as I said in the beginning of this blog, I recently experienced something which made me remember old Dr. B's advice, and it's left me thinking he might have been just slightly ahead of his time.

It happened like this.

My wife and I are contemplating moving out of our apartment in a few months, so I decided to try and get ahead of the issue and start sorting through stuff now and getting rid of things I don't need. I have been astounded at how much junk I've found that I should have thrown out a long time ago, including clothes, toys, puzzles, games and other stuff my children outgrew years ago.

But I've also been going through my own stuff, including my precious books, and I realized that I had dozens of volumes that were no longer relevant to my life. Some of them were "obsolete" because they were essentially commentary on things which had been "current events" when they'd been written but were now "ancient history". For instance, I had three books that talked about the threat to Israel from the Assad regime in Syria, which no longer exists.

Other books weren't useful to me anymore, although they might have been useful to someone, so, I did what any self-respecting bookworm will do: I tried to find a library to donate these books to. I started with the library at my eldest son's high school, which is part of a network of schools that is closely connected to the Hebrew University. I figured they'd for sure want all this stuff, but they didn't, which wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was the reason they gave me for not wanting them.

One of the people who worked at the library told me, in fact, that up until a few years ago, the University probably would have happily taken these books, but because of AI, hardly anyone even needs books anymore, even at a university. AI can do all the research needed to write an up-to-the-minute expert report on any topic you might ask it to write, and the computer can give it to you in the form of a movie or podcast if you want it to. Sitting down to read a physical book, printed on paper, that an ordinary human "expert" spent months or even years researching and compiling, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past that no one does anymore.

I made a few more attempts to give my books to a good home but no one wanted them, so eventually I just left the two boxes at one of those places where old-fashioned people like me take and leave old-fashioned paper books.

As I walked away, trying not to think about all the money and time I had invested in all the books I was leaving behind, I had the horrible feeling that I was, in fact, an obsolete human being. Dr. B had warned me 30 years ago that my college degree was already obsolete even back then, but he'd tried to cheer me up by telling me that if I continued my education by reading and staying current on topics related to my profession, I'd continue to be relevant, and more to the point, employable.

Now, I was starting to wonder if even that is still true.

When I got home, I opened Chat GPT and asked it to write me an analytical synopsis of current events in the Middle East over the last 24 hours, taking into account historical trends, the policies of governments, corporations, etc, traditional precedents, current military deployments and forces, and so on. The result of that query left me deeply depressed. It was fantastic, brilliant even, at least as good as anything I could have written myself, and probably better, and I wasn't even using the most recent iteration of AI that's available.

The experience left me wondering what anyone needed me for anymore. My usual fee for an hour of freelance work is more than the cost of an AI subscription for an entire month. I justify charging that fee by telling my clients that I have so much experience and have invested all that time and effort to amass all that "expertise" which allows me to produce materials that will be useful to them.

I'm deeply grateful that I still have a few clients, but how long will that last, and what will I do if and when they figure out that they're being suckers to pay me so much for something that they can get from AI for a tiny fraction of the price?

With these cheerful thoughts buzzing through my mind, I listlessly opened up Facebook and started scrolling, and one of the first things I saw was a meme with Colossians 3:23-24; "And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ."

It came to me in a flash as I read these words from the Bible that the only thing that makes me special, the only thing that EVER made me special, was the God thinks I'm special. That brought to mind another passage of Scripture, Luke 12:24; Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. How much more value are you than the birds?

With that, my mood lifted as I recalled how God has always taken care of me, my entire life, including many seasons when I felt forgotten and forsaken by literally everyone else. So, even if my professional skills and all the "expertise" I've worked so hard and spent so much money accumulating is obsolete, God will still find a way to take care of me, just as He always has.

This has been a long blog, but I know I'm not the only person feeling obsolete these days, so I hope it was a blessing to someone.

Some Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 11:37:00 +0000

(Authors note: This blog is in two parts for those who don't have a lot of time and/or patience. The first part is fairly short and deals specifically with the subject of practical ramifications of Artificial Intelligence, the second part gets into some related philosophical and ontological issues for those who have time, bandwidth, and appetite for that sort of thing.)

PART 1, Practical Ramifications of AI

Artificial intelligence is a relatively new technological development that is already having an enormous impact on the lives of nearly every human being walking this earth's surface, whether we like it or not, whether we understand it or not (almost no one does), and even whether we're aware of it or not.

Many people are confused, worried and even afraid of what is happening, and some are also angry about how all of these massive changes are happening (and accelerating) without ordinary people having any input into the process or control over it. Some people, like Judah Gabriel Himango (who kindly allows me to post blogs to this site,) are really excited about all the wonderful and amazing things AI will be used for that will make our lives so much better. But even Judah acknowledge that there's also some potential for AI to be misused and abused.

So, with that in mind, what are some of the potential downsides of AI?

At the extreme end is the scenario presented to us in the Terminator movies, where an AI supercomputer becomes self-aware, decides that humans are an obsolete waste of time and resources and decides to wipe us out, using the control it has over the weapons we built to protect ourselves to destroy us instead.

This scenario is not entirely implausible, but I don't think it's very likely, and even to the degree that it is possible, it is far from being the only thing we need to worry about.

The very existence of this technology means that a lot of things are going to change and although change has happened for thousands of years, for most of human history, it came at a fairly slow pace, so people had all the time they needed to adapt. A "lifetime" of change usually took an actual human lifetime, sometimes more than one. Now, a "lifetime" worth of change can happen in just a few years. For instance, I'm not quite 50 years old, but the circumstances that defined my childhood are VASTLY different from the circumstances that my own children are dealing with, for better and for worse.

On a related note, my sister-in-law is a teacher in the Israeli school system, and she recently attended a meeting with many other teachers in which they were told very straightforwardly that big changes are going to have to be made in the educational process because the curriculum that currently exists is completely inadequate to prepare students for the jobs that they will be trying to get when they finish school in a few years. Students who graduated from school in the last few years at the top of their class, with good grades and all kinds of honors and achievements, are unable to find work because none of the companies they're applying to need workers who have their skills and abilities. This is already a problem, and it's getting worse by the month.

For that matter, we've already seen large numbers of people losing their jobs because AI can do what they used to do faster, better, and above all, cheaper. Big companies are willing to spend lots of money for AI software that will allow them to stop paying salaries (often the largest expense a business has) because they think that will increase their profitability. The problem with that, obviously, is that their workers are also their consumers. If enough consumers don't have money to buy products and services being produced by these big companies anymore, they can save all the money they want on not paying salaries, but they still won't be profitable because they're not going to be bringing in any income.

The economy is a system of systems, with many moving parts, all interacting with each other in different ways. If you remove one of the major components of any system (in this case, consumers being removed from the economy) that system will start to break down, and eventually it will just completely stop functioning. It might be replaced by something else sooner or later, but it will still be a massive shock to everyone who was part of the system to begin with.

This is also important to understand for those of you who think that you'll be able to keep your job by learning how to make AI work for you. AI is VERY good at learning and evolving, and whatever you think you can do now that AI can't, it will probably be able to do it just fine before too much more time has passed.

But even if you DO manage to keep your job for awhile longer, if most of your neighbors DON'T keep their jobs, it's still going to cause all kinds of problems for you. Once again, the economy is a system of systems, with many moving parts. If some parts keep working the way they always did, that's all fine and good, but if other parts start to break down and stop working, it'll still cause problems even for the parts that still work.

To sum up part 1 of this blog, there is an observable historical pattern that there are always winners and losers any time civilization goes through a big change, whether it's brought on by changing weather patterns, some kind of political and/or cultural revolution, a big war and/or pandemic, or a technological breakthrough of some kind. Very few people know much about the losers of past seasons of change and VERY few people ever consider the possibility that they'll be one of the losers in whatever season of change they're currently in.

This is where the attitude comes from that can be summed up by the phrase "the world has always been falling apart, but we're still here".

Yeah, the collective human race is "still here" but literally billions of people who came before us, who were losers in the epochs they lived through, are not "still here," and even the memory of them has been largely erased. But what we do know about them is that they had a really bad experience and then they died.

My own personal opinion is that the season of change we're in right now, which is defined by changing weather patterns, political and cultural revolutions, and all the other things I mentioned before but above all by the technological revolution powered by AI, is going to produce far more losers than winners. I don't think it's wise for anyone to assume that they'll be one of the winners who are "still here" when it's over.

As a footnote, there's another possibility that I can see being very likely, and that is that the AI revolution will be held up for awhile by a factor that everyone seems to be forgetting about. AI data centers need an enormous amount of electricity to function, and the physical infrastructure that produces and distributes electricity in those parts of the world where AI data centers are being built is already in very poor shape. So the development of AI, and all the changes that AI is bringing to our lives, might be slowed down by this.

But it's still coming, and that's a fact we all have to deal with as best we can.

Part 2, Philosophical and Ontological Ramifications of AI

Everyone knows that gunpowder was invented in China. But "China" is a big place, and it's been around for a long time, and many things happened there before careful, written historical records were being kept, so there's some dispute among historians about exactly where, when, and how it happened.

There are also lots of folk stories, legends, fairy tales, etc., about it because, as the saying goes, success has a thousand fathers.

One of my favorite legends about how gunpowder was invented goes a little bit something like this.

In China, many years ago, there was a village on the side of a mountain, and in this village, most of the men worked all day in a silver mine so they could get silver to trade for food with the villages down in the plains, which had farms.

One day, a baby girl was born in this village. She already had an older brother, and her father and his younger brother both worked in the silver mine. Every morning, they would go to the mine together and come home together in the evening to eat supper with the family. It was a happy life, but one day, the younger brother came home from the mine by himself with a very sad look on his face, and he told the family that his brother had died that day in an accident at the mine.

This was very sad, but it was something that happened sometimes, so a few years passed, and then the little girl's older brother was ready to go to work in the mine. Every day, he went to work with his uncle and in the evening, they came home and had supper with the family. But one day, he came home alone with a sad expression on his face and told his mother and sister that his uncle had died that day in an accident in the mine. Once again, it was sad, but time passed and one day the little girl was not so little anymore, and she got married.

Her husband was a boy who had grown up with her in the village. They had known each other since they were children and she was very happy to be his wife. Every day, he went to work in the mine with her older brother and then came home in the evening to have supper with the family. But one day, her husband came home from work with a sad look on his face and told her that her brother had died that day in an accident in the mine. This was very sad for her, but soon she had good news to cheer her up because she gave birth to a beautiful little boy. He was the joy of her life and his father also loved him very much.

A few more years passed and every day her husband went to work in the mine with the other men of the village, but one day, the other men of the village came to her home at the end of the workday without her husband, and they had to tell her that he had died that day in an accident in the mine.

She sat down and cried and cried and cried, thinking about how bitterly unfair it was that her father, her uncle, her older brother, and now her husband had all lost their lives in accidents at this mine. Then she looked down at her son, playing in the sand outside their home and she realized that in just a few more years, he too would be old enough to go to work in the mine, and she would have to sit at home alone all day wondering if he would come home to her in the evening, or whether he would also die in an accident at the mine.

So, the next morning, she left her son with a neighbor and went to the mine with the men, which was a very unusual, almost unheard of, thing for a woman to do. When she got there, she asked to speak to the foreman, a man who had known her brother and her husband, and he reluctantly agreed to talk to her.

She asked him how and why so many men died in the mine, and he explained that it was very difficult work to dig for hours underground. The men got tired, and they started to get careless, and that's when accidents happened. He said that he and other foremen before him had tried many things to try and avoid accidents, but sooner or later, there would be another accident, and another, and another. He said it was something he wished he could do something about, but everything he could think of had already been tried.

So she went home and thought about what the foreman had told her, and she decided that she needed to find a way to make digging easier for the men so they wouldn't get tired and then they wouldn't get careless and start making mistakes that would lead to accidents.

So she went looking for answers to this problem, and she spent many days traveling to other villages to ask questions of people who knew different things about many subjects. After a few years, she began experimenting with different elements, and after many trials and much error, she thought she'd found a solution. So, on the first day that her son was old enough to go to work in the mine, she gave him a little jar filled with black powder and told him to give it to the foreman along with a little scroll on which she had written some instructions about how to use it, and also how to make more of the little black powder.

As she watched her son walking away towards his first day of work at the mine, carrying her little jar of black powder and the scroll with the instructions about how to use it, the little girl, who was actually an old woman by now, said to herself "I have saved my sons life, and I have also saved the lives of many more young men."

Now, obviously, this story isn't true, but it points us to a very important truth. Almost every technological development, invention, innovation, new process, etc. that has ever been dreamed up and built by anyone, was developed in order to solve some kind of problem. But MANY of these developments ended up being used for purposes that were not anticipated (or even imagined) by the people who did all the research and development to bring these things to the world.

My personal favorite example of this (which IS a true story) is the airplane, which, as everyone knows, was invented by Orville and Wilbur Wright and first flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. The Wright brothers were motivated to build machines that could allow humans to fly for a few different reasons, but the practical outcomes they envisioned for their invention were fairly limited. Orville Wright told one of his friends in 1902 that he thought it would be really amazing to have a way to deliver mail faster, and they also believed it might be used to bring medicine to remote communities in time to save the lives of people who would otherwise die if they had to wait for the medicine to be brought by someone in a wagon pulled by horses or other pack animals.

Certainly, those uses WERE made of machines that were based on the technology that Orville and Wilbur Wright developed. But there were many other uses made of such machines, and Orville Wright, who died in January of 1948, got to see how machines based on his invention were used to horrific effect in two world wars, including the massive destruction of entire cities in Europe and the Far East by carpet bombing raids which culminated in the nuclear bomb strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by B-29 bombers at end of WWII.

Now there's one more, much less dramatic but no less demonstrative, example I can cite of this phenomenon.

Bruce Springsteen, sometimes called the poet laureate of America's brutalized working class, wrote a song many years ago called "Born in the USA." He wrote this song as a protest against the mindless Jingoism which he believed (and I agree with him) had been exploited by America's societal elites to manipulate ordinary people into doing a lot of things that were not in their actual best interests.

But as the years have gone by, the song actually became the ANTHEM of mindless jingoism, often played at political rallies and other events that had the exact effect on the crowds that Springsteen was specifically trying to criticize with the song, and he has expressed great frustration at this, but there's nothing he can do about it.

The point here is that once an engineer presents their invention to the world, or an artist presents their song, or an author presents their book, or as soon as anyone releases whatever they've created into the world, they lose control over what happens with it. In my own experience, I've had total strangers come up to me at events where I was wearing a name tag and tell me that they read a blog I wrote and it changed their life, which is great. But most of the time, what they took away from the blog they read was a million miles away from what I was trying to say in that blog. It's a fact of life that I've made my peace with, but I never forget it when I'm writing and posting these blogs.

When it comes to AI, it's such a powerful tool. The only thing that can even be remotely compared to it is the internet, which was designed to simply be a reliable way for the US military to communicate globally, but it turned out to be something that was used by everyone, making some things better and many other things much worse, and also bringing all kinds of new good and bad things that no one ever even imagined would happen.

Think about the unintended consequences of the internet, how much it's changed all of our lives just in a few decades. AI is going to change much more, and the changes are going to happen much faster. Most people won't be able to keep up. The system of systems that we call the global economy, and beyond that, human civilization itself, probably won't be able to keep up.

Something is going to have to give, and it's likely going to happen before the end of this decade, so my advice to anyone who is reading this blog is to take care of any unfinished business you might have with God, your family, and your current circumstances as soon as you can.

That's what I've got for you this week. I hope it blessed someone.

Some Thoughts on the Little Foxes, by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:17:00 +0000

You don't hear too many sermons preached on the Song of Solomon, do you? Well, there are some really good reasons for that, actually, starting with the fact that this book in the Bible covers material that's more appropriate for private counseling sessions (especially pre-marital counseling) than for general interest. However, there's one passage that I heard a message on many years ago, and it came to my mind about a month ago when we were preparing to launch into a new year, and I thought about making some of those infamous "New Year's Resolutions."

The title of that sermon I heard many years ago was "Make war on the little foxes" and it was based on Song of Solomon 2:15; Catch us the foxes, The little foxes that spoil the vines, For our vines have tender grapes.

According to the interpretation of this message I heard many years ago (which I agreed with then and still do) the "little foxes" Solomon is referring to in this passage are the little, day to day habits that we all have which don't really create any serious problems of and by themselves, but when we do these "little" things on a regular or maybe even daily basis, over time, the impact they have accumulates and end up causing us big problems.

So, as the new year 2026 approached, I thought about what "little foxes" I had in my life that I could eliminate and, by eliminating them, slowly but surely eliminate the damage they were causing to my life.

I started with some low-hanging fruit, the bag of potato chips I used to buy for myself every time I went to the grocery store. This stupid little bag of chips "only" cost me six shekels and they "only" added about 180 calories to my daily intake. I "only" bought and ate them a few times a week, sometimes less, so it wasn't really such a big deal right?

Well, in the month of January, I didn't buy that little bag of potato chips when I went to the store. Instead, I made a hashmark in a little notebook every time I went to the store and DIDN'T buy a bag of chips. At the end of January, I was shocked to see that there were 19 hashmarks in that notebook. That meant I'd not spent 114 shekels on this "little fox" and I'd also not taken in 3,240 calories I didn't need, which is an entire day and a half worth of recommended caloric intake.

What's amazing is that occasionally, as I was eating those chips, I'd stop and think about how I really wasn't even enjoying them much, but I just had this habit of buying and eating them. Now, I have stopped, and I don't miss them at all.

There were a handful of other "little foxes" that I had less success eliminating. I still wasted too much time watching stupid videos on YouTube, and I bought a few things I probably didn't need, etc. But I reduced their presence in my life, and I have hope that in February, I will reduce them even more and maybe even eliminate them. In any case, my own personal "war on the Little Foxes" will definitely continue, and I have great hopes that by the end of the year, my bank account, my physical health, my daily schedule and many other things will be in better shape then they were on January 1st.

What are some "little foxes" that you can eliminate from your life? Let me know in the comments section, or if you don't want to, just think about it for yourself and determine to make war on them. You don't need to wait for a new year to start, you can do it right now.

Controversial 1st century passage about Jesus’s resurrection might be original after all

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:45:00 +0000

Wonderful news of illuminating new scholarship by religious studies professor T.C. Schmidt on Josephus and Jesus.

The Jewish historian Josephus (AD 37-100) is one of the most important historical sources of Jewish life, war, and religion in the 1st century. A member of the Jewish priestly class and military general in the failed war against Rome, he wrote over a half million words about Jewish life, including a controversial paragraph about Jesus.

Scholars have long thought that Josephus' writing about Jesus, called Testimonium Flavianum, was a later addition or editorial by Christian scribes. It seems too Christian for a non-Christian Jew like Josephus to write.

But new scholarship gives evidence that Josephus' famous Testimonium Flavianum is original and not a later addition as once thought.

What's the new scholarship? 4 new pieces of evidence.

1. Manuscript evidence: Early Syriac and Latin translations of the original Greek attest to an original reading in which Josephus says Jesus was thought to be the Messiah.

2. Literary evidence: Computer literary analysis confirms the style, grammar, and word choices of the passage as authentic; a literary fingerprint unique to Josephus.

3. Greek evidence: When Josephus says Jesus appeared to his followers on the third day, he used the Greek word phaino, which connotes "something seeming to appear". This fits the style of Josephus and renders a non-committal take on the resurrection of Jesus; not out of place for a non-Christian Jew.

4. Insider Evidence: Where did Josephus get his information from? New scholarship shows it's from first-hand sources. Josephus' wartime commander was Ananus II, who Josephus records as having executed Jesus' half-brother James. He was the son of Ananus I, the same high priest who presided over Jesus' interrogation, and who's son-in-law was Caiaphas. Both appear in the Gospels (Luke 3 and John 18).

I'll give more details on each of these below. But first, for context, here's today's translation of Testimoniam Flavianum:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

It sounds very Christian. This has led scholars to suggest it's inauthentic; a later Christian addition or edit.

But T.C. Schmidt proposes that given this new evidence, Testimonium Flavianum should read as an authentic writing from Josephus:

And in this time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher of men who receive truisms with pleasure. And he brought over many from amongst the Jews and many from amongst the Greeks. He was thought to be the Christ. And, when Pilate had condemned him to the cross at the accusation of the first men amongst us, those who at first were devoted to him did not cease to be so, for on the third day it seemed to them that he was alive again given that the divine prophets had spoken such things and thousands of other wonderful things about him. And up till now the tribe of the Christians, who were named from him, has not disappeared.

1. Manuscript Evidence

In the traditional Testimonium Flavianum, the statement “He was the Christ” is the giveaway, so it was thought, that this couldn’t have been written by a non-Christian Jew like Josephus. The expression “a (mere) wise man” earlier in the paragraph fits Josephus’s likely view, but a declaration of messianic identity is out of place.

But Schmidt gathered all Latin and Syriac translations of Josephus' Antiquities. In these, he notes that Latin and Syriac manuscripts of this passage don’t have the clear affirmation “He was the Christ” but instead the more doubtful “He was believed to be [Latin] / thought to be [Syriac] the Christ.”

Given the early date of these renditions—AD 300s—and the unlikelihood that any Latin or Syriac Christian copyist would demote Jesus, it seems reasonable to conclude this was what Josephus wrote. In the Greek copying tradition, a single verb (legomenos, “called,” perhaps) appears to have dropped out, either by accident or intent.

2. Literary Evidence

A mathematical, computer-assisted literary analysis of the author's vocabulary and syntax suggest Testimonium is original.

Schmidt found that Josephus used a unique term every ~87 words throughout his corpus. Having a unique word, and a couple of rare words, in a 90-word paragraph is exactly what we’d expect. Schmidt even examined Josephus’s rate of using common words such as "and", "or", and "the"—and the Testimonium shows the same frequencies as the rest of his nearly half-million-word output. Josephus’s fingerprints are all over this contested paragraph.

3. Greek Evidence

Schmidt offers a Greek-language insight into the most obvious Christian interpolation: the statement typically translated “he appeared to them alive again on the third day.” The key verb is phainō—"to appear." Many scholars have reasonably noted that a non-Christian Jew like Josephus would never have said Jesus actually "appeared alive." -- too Christian!

But Schmidt argues that phainō in this context carries one of its other connotations, well attested in Greek writings from Plato (fourth century BC) to Origen (third century AD)—namely, to indicate "something seeming or appearing to be so (but which may not actually be so)."

That would mean Josephus isn’t claiming Jesus really was alive, any more than earlier in the paragraph he was claiming Jesus was actually the Christ. Rather, he’s reporting, in a noncommittal or even skeptical way, that “it seemed” to Jesus’s followers he was alive, just as they "believed" or "thought" Jesus to be the Christ. Schmidt gives examples of this usage in Josephus.

4. Insider Evidence

But even if Testimonium is original to Josephus, it doesn't mean Josephus got it right. After all, Josephus could just be reporting rumors he heard, or official stances from one or more groups.

But Schmidt argues convincingly that Josephus got his information about Jesus and the resurrection from first-hand sources.

Josephus moved within the priestly dynasty directly connected to both deaths. His wartime commander was Ananus II (Ananus the Younger), the high priest who ordered James’s execution. Ananus II was the son of Ananus I, Ananus the Elder, the former high priest who presided over Jesus’s interrogation (known as Annas in John 18:13). Ananus the Elder’s daughter married Caiaphas, the high priest named in the Gospels. Ananus II was therefore Caiaphas’s brother-in-law. Luke 3:2 and John 18:13 place Ananus and Caiaphas together at the apex of the priestly establishment.

Josephus twice calls Ananus II "the oldest of the chief priests" and notes his death in AD 68–69. Ananus II was likely in his 70s or 80s when he died, making him in his 30s or 40s around AD 30, fully adult and influential at the time of Jesus’s trial.

Therefore, Schmidt plausibly speculates that Ananus II (the Younger) might even have been a member of the Sanhedrin that handed Jesus over to Pilate. Whatever we make of that suggestion, Schmidt is right to note that Jewish law required families to keep the Passover meal in the patriarch’s house. This means Ananus II would have been at his father’s house on the night Jesus was brought there for questioning (John 18:13). Therefore, Schmidt writes, "Ananus II surely would have observed the portion of the proceedings held in his family’s patriarchal residence."

Conclusion

Absolutely fascinating new evidence that Josephus' words about Jesus are essentially authentic. It renders Josephus non-committal about Jesus; only saying he was called the Messiah and that it appeared to his followers that he was raised from the dead.

However, even this is remarkable, early attestation of Jesus and claims of his resurrection. Today, many atheists want to claim that Jesus was either entirely fabricated, or that his claims of messiahship or resurrection were later innovations or exaggerations.

The authenticity of Testimonium works against those claims. Remarkable!

Very grateful to T.S. Schmidt's work and its review by John Dickson in The Gospel Coalition.

A statement that demands a response by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:35:00 +0000

Brothers and sisters, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem have issued a public statement which expressed stern disapproval of Christian support for Zionism and less forthrightly but still unmistakably, the very existence of the State of Israel.

This is not unusual.

Sadly, the "Apostolic" churches in Jerusalem are deeply invested in Replacement Theology and all kinds of other un-Biblical nonsense, including man-made traditions that their communities, both inside the Holy Land and outside of it, have been observing for so long that they've talked themselves into believing these traditions are more authoritative than the Bible itself. In fairness, this is no different, and certainly no worse, than what the Orthodox Jewish leadership has done by elevating their own man-made traditions above the Bible.

Moreover, the tone of this statement is also not unusual. These guys take themselves very seriously, and they seem to think everyone else should too.

In a way, their insistence on thinking themselves to be important because they're the traditional churches in the Holy Land is comparable to France insisting on believing that it is important because it has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. In both cases, the present iteration of a certain institution is trying to point to the status it believes it inherited from a previous iteration, even though the previous iteration only got that way in the first place because of a confluence of events and circumstances that was purely accidental in the first place and not very relevant at the present time in any case.

That having been said, you might be surprised to hear this, but I think they raise a valid point in this post. They say their communities have been here, maintaining a Christian presence in this country, for a long time, and so they have a valid right to speak up about this issue. I agree with that. But the point of disagreement is that they seem to think they're the ONLY ones who have any business speaking up on behalf of the Body of Christ in this country, and that is most certainly not the case.

Once again, however, fairness compels me to point out that they are, in part, speaking out because of a valid concern that the sheep of their flocks, both here in Israel and also in surrounding countries, could come in for some serious abuse by other factions if they do not give some rhetorical pushback against the Jewish State. Therefore, they also feel the need to speak out against leaders of Arab Christian communities who publicly support Israel.

I believe the specific individuals they are referring to in this statement, who are supporting Christian Zionism, are the leaders of Bethlehem Baptist Church. But there are also a handful of other Arab Christian clergy from mostly Protestant but also Greek Orthodox churches who are becoming more and more bold in speaking out in support of the State of Israel and even encouraging young Arab men and women in their congregations to volunteer to serve in the IDF.

The opposition of the "Apostolic" church leadership to this is understandable, given their previously mentioned devotion to Replacement Theology as well as their historic association with the cause of Arab Nationalism, which is another one of those "traditions" that they've been honoring for so long, they've talked themselves into believing it's even more important than the Bible itself.

Needless to say, the leaders of these "Apostolic" Churches would never dream of even acknowledging, much less taking seriously, the Messianic Jewish community in Israel, so I don't think this letter is addressed to us.

However, I DO think the leadership of the Jewish Believer community in Israel ought to respond to this letter. Candidly, the Jewish Believer community has more business speaking up on these issues than these "Apostolic" church leaders do. Maybe this could start by reminding the leaders of these "Apostolic" churches that all the original "Apostles" were all Jewish men, as was James, the little brother of Jesus, who was the first "Bishop" of the churches here in Jerusalem, whom the current "Apostolic" church leaders all claim to be the descendants of.

I have a lot more to say about this letter, but I kind of want to know what everyone else thinks. Please speak up in the comments section of this blog, and share it with others who might also have an opinion and/or a stake in this discussion. If you want to respond to the leadership of these "Apostolic" churches directly, their contact information is publicly available and easy to find with a simple internet search. I think the issues raised by this letter, including the attitude of the people who signed off on it, are long overdue for a public discussion.

Did the New Testament inspire Spencer Pittman to burn Mississippi's oldest synagogue?

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 02:35:00 +0000

This weekend the historic Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi was burned and destroyed.

A photo of the burned synagogue, Beth Israel Congregation

The suspect was caught on camera and soon arrested: a Catholic Christian student and athlete by the name of Spencer Pittman.

Arson suspect Spencer Pittman

Pttman confessed to his father and to authorities that he burned the synagogue "because of its Jewish ties", and called it "the synagogue of Satan", quoting Revelation 2:9 and Revelation 3:9 from the New Testament.

Pittman's social media accounts are filled with Bible quotes and baseball photos.

Not exactly the kind of person you'd expect to burn a synagogue.

We've seen plenty of antisemitic vitriol and violence from the progressive left, often disguised as anti-Zionism from secular progressives or their Islamic allies. But here we have a young man who, from all appearances, is a politically conservative and committed Christian.

One must wonder, how does a person who quotes the book of Psalms, written by a Jew, or the book of II Corinthians, also written by a Jew, become a Jew hater? How can a person quote Revelation, written by a Jew, as a reason for burning a synagogue?

The answer is yet to be seen, but my suspicion lies firmly on the rising antisemitism of the conservative, right-wing in America. It's the kind of Jew-hating garbage promulgated by Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and the larger groyper movement on the right.

So did the New Testament inspire this attack?

A misunderstanding of it did.

Pittman is echoing a misreading of Revelation's "synagogue of Satan" to mean "all Jews are the synagogue of Satan." Revelation 2 and 3 speaks to "those who claim they are Jews but they are not; the synagogue of Satan".

What does that phrase actually mean? Scholars have suggested some possibilities.

One possibility is, this referred to a Christian group in the 1st century who claimed to be Jews but were of gentile lineage (Rev 3:9). Rome had allowed for Jewish exemption from worship of the Roman gods, but no such exemption existed for non-Jews. Thus, some early non-Jewish Christians claimed to be Jewish but were not.

Other Christian scholars suggest it had to do with a dispute between the local Christian and Jewish community in Smyrna. First Fruits of Zion has an in-depth explanation.

Whatever the true meaning, it's clear the verses don't support what antisemites claim: that God is asserting all Jews belong to Satan. Such a view contradicts nearly the entire Bible.

What can be learned from this arson attack by a young devoted Christian man?

Theology matters. Sometimes it's easy to think that "what you believe" is mostly theoretical, but in reality, what is in the mind and heart comes out in actions.
Antisemitism is cancerous. It is destroying young minds like Pittman, making the Lion of Judah and King of the Jews to be an antisemite. It is fracturing the Republican Party in the US and the conservative movement broadly.
Antisemitism is demonic. A young man who is happy and active and by all appearances succeeding in life commits a violent hate crime, burning the very Torah scrolls that are the foundation of his Bible? This is irrational and does not rationally follow. I think the best explanation for such hatred is spiritual. It is the same spirit of Ramses, Balak, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Emperor Titus, Hadrian, Constantine, Muhammed, Hitler, Hamas, Hezbollah, and thousands of others throughout history who have tried and failed to wipe out the people of Israel.

Dealing with Addiction in My Home

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 20:06:00 +0000

You may have noticed I've been a bit quieter here on the blog and in my various ministry projects (Messianic Radio, Messianic Chords, Etz Mitzvot). The reason is, I'm dealing with addiction in my home. A family member is suffering with a longstanding substance addiction.

The family member has agreed to check-in to a 30-day substance abuse recovery program. Right now, I'm just trying to keep my head above water, give 100% at my job, while dealing with this addiction and fallout in my home.

I keep reminding myself to have grace for myself. I'm going to fall behind on various projects, chores, and duties. I can't do it all, and I can't cover everything for the addicted family member. It's OK -- expected, even -- to fall behind on some of these things. I can't do everything, and I can't do 2 full-time jobs forever. I will inevitably forget chores, forget duties, forget to do some responsibility in the home, mess up on some of them. It's OK. I need to have grace for myself during this time.

This week I was driving my daughter to school (30 minute drive) and when we arrived, I realized we had forgotten her school backpack and lunchbox. I was angry at first. At my daughter and at myself. But I remembered to have grace. With the additional workload and burden, there will be things that get forgotten. I need to have grace for myself.

For my family members too. We're all frustrated, feel betrayed, feel estranged from the addicted family member. I need to have grace for them too.

The rehab clinic gave me several books to read. They're books about how family members of addicts can help the addict heal. They talk about how family members make things worse by enabling the addict, hiding addictions, keeping the truth hidden, covering for the addict, being willfully ignorant of the addiction, cowering instead of confronting. I have been doing some of those things for years.

One helpful thing the books taught me is to separate the addiction from the person. The addict is acting out and treating you terribly because the substance has warped their mind. It truly turns them into another person. It is like demonic possession in a way; that's not the person talking, it's the addiction.

Addiction turns people into demons. My addicted family member became a serial liar. I caught them in so many lies that I couldn't trust a word they told me. Nearly every interaction with the family member became dark and negative: an argument waiting to happen. During Christmas eve, when we had some family activities planned, the addicted family member started picking a fight about some triviality. I said, "It's Christmas eve, no fighting." The addicted family member was then angry and trying to fight with me over the next two days. I now see it's the addiction doing that, not the person. I want the person to get well, and checking into a recovery program is a step towards that.

The books have helped me understand that addiction is a lifelong thing. People can get on the road to recovery. But there will always be the temptation of the substance. Always a possibility of relapse. The addict, once in recovery, has to be vigilant for the rest of their life.

The recovery center has given some lectures to families and patients. At one of the lectures, the counselor said, "Alcohol addiction is hard, because buying and abusing it is legal. Wal Mart is a drug dealer, selling hard liquor. So is Costco and Target and your favorite restaurant."

My addicted family member has now been in the rehab program for 14 days. Being away from the family member for all that time has given me mixed emotions. On the positive side, it's been relatively peaceful. But it's also felt like I'm going through the meat grinder. The family member called me multiple times the first week, begging, pleading, crying, bargaining to get me to pick them up. I had to refuse. Because of that, the addicted family member said hurtful things to me and has for the most part avoided me when I've come to visit them in rehab.

One helpful thing is praising God. I'm reminded of Leah, the unloved wife of Jacob. She kept doing things to make her husband love her, even naming her sons with names that would imply that love. But after birthing several sons, and still feeling unloved, she had another son named Judah. She named him that because Judah means praise:

Then Leah became pregnant again and gave birth to another son and said, “This time I will praise the LORD.” For this reason she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

Praising God has been helpful during this time. In the car this morning, after dropping my daughter off at school, I just started praising God. I'm stressed and I'm doing 2 full time jobs and I'm short on sleep and I threw out my back yesterday (damn, I'm old). But I praised God anyway. It's almost a kind of holy defiance: No, I will not give up. No, I will not throw in the towel. No, I will not whine and complain and say woe is me. No, I will praise the Lord.

Please pray for us.

New Year's Resolutions for 2026, by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 16:48:00 +0000

Brothers and sisters, I'm writing this on the afternoon of 30 December, 2025, about 30 hours before the new year of 2026 will begin. Like every year around this time, people all over the world are making those infamous "New Year's Resolutions."

I've gone through the cycle many times myself, making the resolutions to, for instance, "eat more healthy" in the New Year. Usually, the resolutions didn't last long and soon they'd been completely forgotten.

I've never claimed to be a prophet, but I'm gonna make a prediction.

This year, it needs to be different, for all of us. We need to make resolutions and stick with them, because 2026 isn't going to be like previous years. 2026 is a year in which many of the things we rely on for our provision, safety, and security are going to come under severe strain, and it's not difficult to imagine that some of them might even break under that strain.

I'm talking about everything from our health insurance provider to the grocery store to the police and fire department, hospitals, municipal, local, state and federal governments, the schools your children attend, the post office, the military, the banks, the stock market, the electricity grid, the sewage system and everything in between.

It would take me a long time to explain why I think all these things are going to come under so much stress in 2026, but the short version is that my job requires me to consume mass quantities of information about current events on a daily basis, and that's how it looks to me after doing this every day of my life for the past 20 years or so.

This video (I don't post other people's videos in my blogs very often) is from a channel that specializes in prepping, and I don't necessarily vouch for the advice the guy in the video gives, but I certainly do agree with the rundown he gives of things we need to be paying attention to in the upcoming new year. If you're doing anything to "prep" for difficult times, don't stop. If you're not doing anything yet, it might be time to start. It's never too late and even a little bit of preparation is better than nothing.

Here in Israel, we're being told very candidly by the government that there is a high likelihood of renewed war with Hezbollah and probably also Iran in the new year, and we're also being told that the air defense systems that shot down most of the ballistic missiles Iran fired at us during the 12-Day War in June have been depleted and might not be able to protect us as well in a future conflict as they did in the last one. Even if there are no more wars, there are all kinds of other problems we're staring down the barrel of over here, including tax increases, cuts to government services and ongoing controversies regarding the judicial system, the Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community and the list just goes on and on.

So, what am I resolving to do in the new year, and what am I advising you to resolve to do?

Three things.

Pray more.

Read the Word more.

Fellowship with my fellow Believers more.

Those are the three things that connect me to the only thing that I can depend on for my provision, safety and security.

Brothers and sisters, please hear me. In 2026, like never before, everything that can be shaken will be shaken, including many things most of us thought would never be shaken. So resolve, in the New Year, to get closer to God and closer to your local congregation and closer to the Body of Christ generally. Pray for your pastoral leadership, pray for your political leadership, pray for your family and your friends, read the One Year Bible with your children, or with your roommate, or your dog, or whoever it is you live with. Do not neglect these things. As the old song goes, "upon the rock of Christ I stand, all other ground is sinking sand."

That's always been true, but it's even more true now than it ever was before.

Happy New Year.

Some thoughts on excuses, by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:48:00 +0000

Brothers and sisters, the human race is in very bad shape, and the worst part is, we have only ourselves to blame.

Before we go any further, here's this blog's proof text; Romans 1:18-21: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

This passage is seldom read, much less preached on, in churches today, and it's not hard to understand why. To modern, or maybe I should say "post-modern" ears, this passage sounds very judgmental and unkind. A passage that speaks of "the wrath of God" and also mentions words like "ungodliness and unrighteousness" seems to belong to the Old Testament, which many churches don't even touch anymore.

Even in many Evangelical Protestant churches, you're unlikely to hear any sermons on this passage because it's definitely not what anyone wants to hear in this season of history we're in. Churches, like any other institution, need money to operate, and the way they get money is by people coming in and tithing. But if people hear something they don't like, they might stop coming and they'll also stop tithing and then the church won't have any money and it might even have to shut down, in which case it won't be any good to anyone.

So, the pastors stay away from those passages and topics and "controversy" that might cause this chain of events. The idea of teaching and preaching on those passages and topics which people NEED to hear about, rather then what they might WANT to hear about, seems too risky for most pastors and churches.

In other words, they've got some really good excuses.

You see what I did there? There's a lot more where that came from brothers and sister, so keep reading.

Getting back to the passage itself, I actually think that these words are even more true today than when the Apostle Paul wrote them around 2,000 years ago.

Paul was referring to the people who populated the pagan, Greco-Roman world of his time, saying that they had no excuse not to worship the Creator God instead of the worthless idols of their pantheon, because the evidence of God's existence and His active involvement in the world could be clearly seen in the physical world. That continued to be true for the next 1,500 years, but then in the early 1600's in Europe, the Bible began to be available for ordinary people to read in their native languages, and there was even less of an excuse for these people to fail to see the truth of God's existence and involvement in the world. As the decades went on, the Bible was translated into more and more vernacular languages. Hundreds of millions of copies of this Book were printed in all these different languages, and they became available to almost everyone. Then the internet was invented, and the Scriptures became even more widely available.

Today, the overwhelming majority of people living on this planet have not only the "invisible attributes" of God right in front of their faces all the time, they also have access to the Word of God in their own native language.

Especially in the English-speaking and reading West, which is where most of the people reading this blog are, there truly is NO EXCUSE to be ignorant of the plans and purposes of God in this season of history we're in. If someone is not declaring themselves to be a follower of Jesus Christ, then they still don't have an excuse, but I'm going to put that issue to the side for a moment, and come back to it at the end of the blog.

For now, I'm focusing on the estimated 2.5 billion self-described Christians living in the world today, especially the estimated 800 million Evangelical Protestants. These people really have ZERO excuse to be ignorant of God's plans and purposes in the world today, and they REALLY shouldn't be actively and deliberately opposing those plans and purposes.

But many are.

The Jewish State of Israel's reappearance on the map of the world in 1948 is the fulfillment of prophecies in both the Old and New Testaments. The ingathering of the exiles, the capital of the country being in the city of Jerusalem, and many other things that have happened in the last 77 years are specifically mentioned in the Prophetic passages of both the Old and New Testaments.

Anyone who calls themselves a Christian should be familiar enough with the Bible to know that.

But many are not, and they have no excuse for it.

Another tragicomic example of this phenomenon is the so-called "Prosperity Gospel," which is not only not supported by Scripture, it is flatly and unambiguously repudiated by it.

So-called "Liberation theology" is another un-Biblical heresy which is widely popular in many Christian circles, and it is especially popular in anti-Israel circles where it is used as justification for opposing Israel, which the Liberation Theologians brand as an "oppressor" and a "colonizer" of the kind Jesus came to set the "oppressed" free from.

On the other hand, White Nationalism, especially the Christian variant of it, is also flatly repudiated by the Bible, as are many other ideas which are tragically very popular in the American Church, and also in other Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking countries. Those who make the triumphalist statement that "Christ is King" never say where on this earth the kingdom He rules over is, but it's obvious that they think it's basically the United States and maybe Canada and Western Europe, and that the kingdom of Christ is under siege from all the other earthly kingdoms, somehow especially Israel and the Jews.

Last but not least, Replacement Theology is not only not supported by Scripture, but it is also specifically addressed and repudiated later in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, especially in chapters 9-11.

Of course, my other least favorite anti-Christ heresy, Dual Covenant Theology, is also specifically addressed and repudiated by Paul's Epistle to the Romans, especially Romans 1:16; For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

Replacement Theology is the anti-Christ heresy Christians who oppose Israel love and the one Christian supporters of Israel love to hate, while Dual Covenant Theology is the one many Christian supporters of Israel embrace on some level and to some degree, whether they want to admit it or not.

What all of these heresies and silly ideas have in common is that the people who teach them probably know that they're not supported by Scripture, while the people who follow these false teachers have no excuse for doing so. The Bible also contains warnings about false teachers and false prophets, and procedures for how you can know when you encounter them, and what to do when you recognize one.

And yet, there are SO MANY cults and false religions, false teachers, false prophets and false brethren in the world today, and they've got tens of millions of followers.

The false prophets and false teachers pushing their false gospels and their false Christs are going to face terrible judgment for what they're doing, but their followers will be judged too.

Neither the false teachers nor their followers have any excuses.

Now there's two more groups of people who are very strongly opposing the plans and purposes of God in the world today, but they're not claiming to be Christians. I said earlier in the blog that I'd come back to them at the end, and here we are.

The first group are the hundreds of millions (and their numbers are ever increasing) of people who are anti-Israel (and often also anti-Semitic) because of one excuse or another. Sometimes it's because they claim to believe that "Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians" or because Israel is "in stolen land" or because "Israel is an apartheid state," or because "the Jews claim to be God's special people and that's exactly what the Nazis said about themselves," and so on and so on. There are SO MANY excuses that people have for being anti-Israel these days, and this phenomenon has gone all over the world.

The excuses people make for being anti-Israel (and despite their vehement denials, this almost always spills over into anti-Semitism) are ludicrously absurd at best.

Some people say they're angry about the USS Liberty incident, which happened in the context of the Six Day War in 1967, 58 years ago. These people will also say that they're not "anti-Jewish," they're just opposed to the policies of the current Israeli government, which wasn't in power in 1967 and actually, many of the people in the current Knesset hadn't even been born back then.

Other people will hold demonstrations outside Synagogues and say that they're not "anti-Jewish" but they are opposed to genocide and Israel wouldn't be able to survive without the support of Diaspora Jews like the ones in those synagogues. They'll also make excuses for their evil behavior by saying that these synagogues are places where "stolen land" gets sold or whatever.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

I think that on some level these people know that what they're doing is hypocritical, even by their own godless, secular, humanist standards. But they make these fig leaf excuses anyway, to anyone who challenges them, to each other, and most of all to themselves.

Finally, there's one other group of people who make hypocritical, dishonest excuses, and that's the Jewish people. The excuse they make for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah spoken about by the prophets is that He did not bring peace to the earth. I've had conversations with Orthodox rabbis in which I've pointed out that He fulfilled all the prophecies about where the Messiah would be born, what Tribe He would belong to, that He would be a descendent of King David, and many other thins. They don't even try to deny any of this. They just keep coming back to this excuse about how Jesus of Nazareth didn't bring peace to the earth, so He doesn't qualify as the Messiah.

At this point in the conversation, I will point out that Jesus provided the possibility of making the only peace that really matters, between the God who created this world, and the humans that He created, who have been at enmity with Him since the Garden of Eden because of the sin of Adam and Eve. By providing that possibility, He leaves it up to us humans to either accept what He's offering or not.

They've got excuses why they don't want to accept that undeniable fact as well, and if you want to know what the Rabbinically authorized excuses are, you can go ask a Rabbi yourself.

The point is, what all of these excuses have in common is that they don't hold up to serious and/or honest scrutiny. These excuses also won't hold up to the judgment of a holy God.

One of the most terrifying passages of Scripture is Hebrews 9:26-28; He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

The terrifying part is in the middle, " it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment."

Every single human being who ever lived, sooner or later came (or will come) to the end of their mortal life and stepped out of time and into eternity, and they started their journey in eternity by standing before the Judgement Seat of Christ.

The Bible doesn't tell us everything about that experience, but there's one thing I think we can nonetheless be quite certain of, He isn't interested in anyone's excuses.

He's not going to be interested in anyone's lame, silly, hypocritical, dishonest excuses.

Those people who call themselves Christians but never bothered to read the Bible and become familiar enough with it so that they got involved in carrying out His plans and purposes in this world instead of being a hindrance to them are going to have to try and explain why, and if they try to make excuses, those excuses aren't going to work on HIm. They might have worked in this life, but they won't work there.

So, brothers and sisters, I urge you to spend time in His Word in this rapidly approaching new year.

The best way to do that is through the One Year Bible which I recommend every year in the month of December. You can download the App for free and there's still time to get an old-fashioned paper copy before the new year starts.

But whether you read it online or get a paper copy, I commend the One Year Bible to you.

Get to know Him. Get to know His heart for Israel, the Jewish people, the Gentiles, and everything else that's going on in this season of history we're living in. The more you learn, the fewer mistakes you'll make, the more useful you will be to Him and His Kingdom, the less of a hindrance you'll be to His Kingdom, and the less of a stumbling block you'll be to others.

If you read this entire blog, I salute you. I know it's not what most people want to hear, but it IS what this generation needs to hear.

The Justice of Giving Thanks

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:49:00 +0000

Giving thanks is a form of justice.

Those who benefitted us are owed our gratitude. To withhold it -- ingratitude -- is a form of injustice.

Worse still is the person who complains the good they received was lacking in some way; it not only withholds justice, it repays good with evil by placing blame on the benefactor for their good work.

Giving thanks is an antidote to apathy and discontent. Charlie Kirk said his goal in speaking to college students was to get them to be grateful, even if in some small way, for the rich blessings they enjoy in this great nation.

Perhaps this is why one of the most repeated phrases in the Bible is, “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good and His lovingkindness lasts forever.”

And if giving thanks is a form of justice, then it is one of the highest callings God has on humanity.

Some Thoughts on Baseball and Human History, by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 14:40:00 +0000

I've lived more than half of my life outside America now, and the rhythms of life that were once so familiar are becoming less and less distinct with every passing year. For instance, I found out just this morning by scrolling through my news feed that the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series. I had so completely lost track of things that I didn't even know the World Series was going on, much less which teams were playing in it.

But it got me thinking about the greatest World Series of all time back in 2016, when the Chicago Cubs beat the team from Cleveland (I've also lost track of what the mascots are these days, and whether we're allowed to call them by their former names). It was a thrilling series for all kinds of reasons, including because the Cubs were down 3 games to 1 and then came back to win the whole thing, and it was decided by one run in the 10th (overtime) inning of the seventh game.

But that's not why it was the greatest World Series of all time.

It was the greatest World Series of all time because it ended the longest dry spell in professional sports, as the Cubs had not won a championship since 1908. No other professional sports team in existence had gone so long without winning it all.

Nevertheless, the Chicago Cubs, despite being one of the worst-performing professional sports teams in the entire world, had one of the largest and most loyal fan bases of any professional sports team in the world. At the end of every season, no matter if the Cubs made it to the post-season playoffs (which was rare) or even if they managed to win more games then they lost during the season, there would always be confident predictions made that "we'll win the World Series next year". There are literally people who lived their whole lives saying that same thing every year, and they died having never seen it come to pass.

That's why, when they finally won the World Series again in 2016, the celebrations were so huge.

All of that has been on my mind today, and it makes me very sad, because I compare it to something that's kind of similar, but which is proceeding on a very different track.

I am talking about the Second Advent of the Lord God Jesus Christ to this earth, which was prophesied to happen almost 2,000 years ago. There are today around 2.6 billion people walking this earth's surface who identify as "Christian" in one denomination or another, and every single one of them has been told that "Jesus could come back at any time" just like Chicago Cubs fans tell each other "next year we'll win the World Series."

The prophecies about His Second Coming appear in the pages of the Bible, especially the Book of Revelation, and some of them are very specific. For hundreds of years, people who call themselves Christians have been looking forward to this event with eager anticipation. Sometimes they were too eager, getting ahead of themselves and talking themselves and others into believing that they'd figured out the exact date it would happen, and that has led to a lot of damaged people as well as a great deal of damage to the reputation of the Bible and those of us who point to it as a source of Authority.

This last part is a great tragedy, because the truth is, someday the Rapture will happen. Someday, Jesus Christ WILL return to this Earth, and many of the signs that these events are drawing closer are observable for all to see, but a VERY large percentage of the people walking this earth's surface in November of 2025 are not paying the slightest bit of attention to these things.

Can you imagine if all those millions of people who called themselves Chicago Cubs fans, who said every year, and apparently believed it, that "next year the Cubs will win the World Series" were unmoved in the summer of 2016, when the Cubs had a great regular season, winning 103 games, then advancing to the playoffs and eventually winning the National League Pennant and earning the chance to play in the World Series? Can you imagine all those fans shrugging their shoulders and saying "there's more to being a Chicago Cubs fan than watching as they actually go to the World Series for the first time since before my parents were born. I'm busy. I've got lots of stuff going on in my Chicago Cubs fandom. I can't be expected to get excited just because this is happening."

That, obviously, is an utterly absurd scenario which would never play out in the real world.

But that EXACT scenario is playing out in the world today among Christians.

The signs of the culmination of this Age in human history, which the Bible tells us will come some day, are all around us. The most tangible, visible and undeniable sign is that the State of Israel is back on the map after 2,000 years. That state is doing things that are impossible to explain naturally, and can only be a miracle of God. It is winning wars that it has no business winning, producing inventions that it has no business producing and it has a GDP which is orders of magnitude larger than it has any business having. Last but certainly not least, there is a revival of the Gospel today among Jews, both in Israel and around the world, like we have not seen since the First Century.

Many other events that were prophesied to happen in the Last Days, just before the Second Advent of Jesus Christ to this earth are happening all over the world. But the percentage of professing Christians who appear to be paying attention is very low. Those who are speaking out about it are dismissed as "looney toon" or whatever. To be fair, the previously mentioned false prophets, frauds and charlatans who have confidently declared the date of the Rapture or even Jesus' Second Advent have given Bible prophecy a black eye, and made others hesitant to be seen as making a big deal out of it.

In particular, Christians who support Israel are beginning to face some very strong headwinds in general society and even within the Church.

Tucker Carlson recently called Christian Zionism a "mind virus" and is speaking out more and more forcefully against the idea that Christians should support Israel.

As sad and infuriating as it is to see a man who has such vast influence in American Christian circles saying such things, at least he's talking about it. At least he's taking note of this phenomenon and drawing people's attention to it so that they can have the opportunity to think about it for themselves if they have the courage and ambition to do so.

So many other Christian leaders and pastors are simply ignoring Israel, not to even mention the Revival among Jewish people, not to even mention the large and growing revival in traditionally Muslim countries in the Middle East and beyond.

If you try to bring these topics up, or even talk about those parts of the Bible that provide the prophetic revelations about the Last Days, many pastors shut down. They don't teach their congregations about it, they don't talk about it even amongst themselves. They say it's "too confusing" and "too divisive." They claim that Israel is a "political subjects" and they don't want to bring politics into their congregations.

It is simply mind-boggling.

Going back to my earlier analogy, it would be like someone saying they're a fan of a certain sports team, but they think the regular season will go on forever. There will never be a post-season. There will never be regional, league, or national championships. Just an endless regular season, in which it doesn't even matter much who wins and who loses this or that game, as long as the teams all just keep showing up for the next game.

The whole idea of a "post-season" in which some teams will advance and others won't, and there will eventually be a final event that will culminate in the eternal separation between winners and runners-up up is just "too controversial" or "too political" or whatever for these pastors. So they pretend like it's never really gonna happen, we'll just have an endless regular season forever.

Brothers and sisters, please hear me.

Life has proceeded on this planet for the last several thousand years at a pretty slow pace, just as the regular season of Major League Baseball usually does. But just like the regular season of Major League Baseball has a beginning, middle and end, and is then followed by the post-season, the playoffs, the pennant races, and then finally the World Series, which ends with one team or the other walking away with the trophy, and then baseball season is completely over for the year, so with human history.

The metaphor isn't perfect (no metaphor ever is) but you get the point.

This is not my personal opinion. This is what the Bible very clearly and unambiguously tells us.

It tells us that "in the beginning," God created the physical universe and everything in it, including this planet and the human race. Then, for several thousand years, we had days and seasons, years, decades, centuries, etc., during which there was uneven progress in many different areas of human endeavor in different places all over the world. That was the "regular season" of human history.

For many reasons, which I wrote about in a blog several years ago, I believe 1860 was the year that human history entered the "post-season" and the pennant races and then, with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, that was the beginning of the World Series.

Brothers and sisters, I can't be certain but it sure does feel like we're in Game 7.

I don't know which inning we're in, but we're getting very close to the end. The signs of this are everywhere, and the Church of Jesus Christ around the world, especially in the West, DESPERATELY needs to wake up. Like I said before, Tucker Carlson is making the wrong call, but at least he's got his eyes on the ball.

What about you?

Maimonides and the Apostle Paul agree: You need a job even if you study the Bible full-time

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 20:08:00 +0000

Thousands of Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox Jews) protest Israel's mandatory military service. Last year, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Haredim are no longer exempt from service.

Studying the Bible but not working is a recipe for trouble. This is affirmed in both the Jewish and Christian worlds.

In Israel (and New York City!) this week, there's been massive protests from the Haredim, the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, regarding Israel's compulsory military service and, well, working for a living.

🚨 BREAKING: Massive Million-Man Rally in Jerusalem: Hundreds of Thousands Decry Yeshiva Students' Imprisonment and IDF Draft.

A massive prayer and protest is taking place now in Israel against the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) intensified efforts to draft ultra-Orthodox… pic.twitter.com/PsK2E0UnlX
— Frum TikTok (@FrumTikTok) October 30, 2025

Last year, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Haredim, like everyone else in Israel, must serve in the military for a mandatory period of time: 3 years for men, 2 years for women.

Prior to this, the Haredim had a sweet deal. They study Torah and other religious texts full-time, and they receive welfare checks from the state of Israel. Basically, the Haredim receive money from the state, but give no service to the state.

This was the arrangement at the rebirth of Israel in 1948, when the Haredim made up just 1% of the Israeli population. Since then, however, the Haredi population has exploded. The average size of an Israeli Haredi family is 6.1, making up 13% of Israel's total population. This number is quickly growing.

Israel has begun enforcing this new law, including arresting draft dodging Yeshiva students. And this is the cause of the recent protests.

The Haredim frame this as religious persecution:

Some even describe Israel as an enemy state:

They make rather outlandish claim that their Torah study keeps the nation safe:

🧵 Does Torah study really protect a nation and help them during a war?

Should Torah scholars (aka Yeshiva students) be exempt from serving in the Army?

This question has been raised and discussed by many.

So let's go to the source: The Torah.

Yoav ben Tzeruyah was King… pic.twitter.com/cP1sHtZBaZ
— Frum TikTok (@FrumTikTok) October 31, 2025

Some of these protests turned ugly (just like last time), with scenes of Haredi youth throwing objects at reporters:

Revolting scenes in Jerusalem as Haredi youth protesting in favor of draft-dodging throw bottles at a reporter. pic.twitter.com/WYt6dwL9M5
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) October 30, 2025

But many Israelis see this all as religious hypocrisy.

How can Haredim refuse service to the nation while cashing the nation's welfare checks? How can you refuse to serve in the army of "the Israeli enemy state" while living off state benefits for your food, housing, and education?

When I visited Israel some time ago, I stayed with a secular Israeli friend who had spent nearly a decade in the military. He had anger and even disgust towards the Haredim. I asked him why. He told me that they have become leeches on Israeli society, taking but never giving. He resented the hardline religious for doing it, and I suspect it may have contributed to his own anti-religious viewpoints.

As it stands today, Haredi families receive substantial child benefits from the government, funding to support thousands of Haredi yeshiva students, as well as public housing assistance and food vouchers. They also enjoy Israel's unemployment benefits, disability payments, and other social safety nets.

One can argue that Israel ought to allow for genuine religious objections to military service. But it seems to me that such exemption should come with exemption from welfare benefits.

I'm not alone in this. Israeli rabbi Josh Yuter posts an excellent thread on religious military service. He notes that while the Haredim often cite Maimonides for support of their exemption, this is disingenuous because Maimonides asserts that the whole nation must go during commanded wars, citing Joel 2:16 and Mishna Sotah 8:7.

Additionally, R. Yuter notes Maimonides has harsh words for those who study Torah but don't work and instead rely on charity for their wellbeing:

"All Torah that is not accompanied by work will eventually be negated and lead to sin."

How prescient.

Haredi communities in Israel and the US have been plagued with abuse and scandals. While Haredim make up 13% of Israel's population, a full 63% of all Israel children who have suffered child sexual abuse has occurred within the Haredi community. And this number is likely underreported, as Haredi youth often feel reaching out to external authorities is a betrayal of the Haredi community.

On a lesser scale, even the verbal abuse and bottle-throwing shown in the above video is an example of sin resulting from Torah-without-accompanied-work.

This brought to mind the words of the Apostle Paul. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, he writes a similar warning:

Now we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, to keep away from every brother who behaves irresponsibly and not according to the tradition they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, for we did not behave inappropriately among you. And we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but worked night and day with labor and hardship, so as not to burden any of you. It wasn’t that we had no right, but rather to offer ourselves as an example for you to imitate.
For even when we were with you, we would give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that some among you are behaving irresponsibly—not busy, but busybodies. Now such people we command and urge in the Lord Messiah Yeshua to work in a quiet demeanor, so they may eat their own bread.

For both Maimonides and the Apostle Paul, if you don't work and instead rely on charity, it erases any of the good you're doing by studying the Bible.

Work was a curse by God in Genesis. But in some ways, God's curses are, in the long view, blessings. It's through work that I provide for myself and my family. It's through work I can flourish and prosper. It's through work I learn new skills and grow as a human being.

Work is a disguised blessing. I hope the Haredim will discover this in time.

Some Thoughts on Saving the World, by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:20:00 +0000

If you ask anyone who works in public policy or the the non-profit world, social workers, teachers, police officers, etc. they will all tell you the same thing, that society is falling apart.

People are lonely, feeling overwhelmed by their own problems and completely helpless to do anything about the big problems they hear and see being reported on in the news. People are reacting to this by, for the most part, simply giving up, turning inwards, avoiding contact with other human beings and spending all their time, money, effort and energy on escaping.

Most of the things they’re turning to to escape are unhealthy. They include alcohol and narcotics but they also include junk food, cheap entertainment, and above all else their internet connected devices. I saw a statistic recently that said the average person living in the US State of California spends 7 hours a day online for non-work-related activities. That means people are scrolling social media, watching videos, playing video games and chatting with their favorite AI avatar almost every moment that they’re not working (and probably quite a bit also while they’re working) or sleeping.

On that subject, many studies are showing that human beings aren’t getting enough sleep these days, and this, on top of everything else, is also causing all kinds of neurological, emotional, psychological and physical health issues for pretty much everyone.

The thread that connects all of these issues is loneliness. People are disconnected from each other and they’re also disconnected from God. The phone and all the other internet-enabled technology and devices offer a cheap, relatively easy way to try and feel connected to SOMETHING or SOMEONE but it’s a very poor substitute for real connections with real, flesh and blood people, to say nothing of the God who created us.

This is the real reason society is crashing down around our ears. It is the reason people are lashing out in violence, or lashing in by harming themselves (suicide rates are at terrifyingly high rates in almost every Western country across all demographics) and it is the reason for the horrifying rise in substance abuse, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and all the other thigns that are causing so much misery and despair everywhere you look.

So the question, as always, is what is to be done?

Mother Theresa of Calcutta is credited with having once said, while speaking to a group of people that she was talking to that “if you want to save the world, go home and love your families.”

Back in the late 1980s, there was a surge of interest in environmental issues. A popular saying that came out of that surge was “think globally, act locally,” and that’s almost the same thing as what Mother Theresa was saying.

Another similar slogan that I’ve heard many times is “make a dent where you’re sent.”

All of these slogans contain some very good advice, but I think the time has come to expand on them a little bit.

Because, as I said in a previous blog, the world is in very bad shape and there are some REALLY big problems almost everyone feels are completely beyond their ability to do anything about. The really big problems are too big for most ordinary people like you and me.

But I’ve got some good news.

You and I don’t have to solve the big problems, even if we theoretically could. We just have to look around the place where we live and find some small problems that we can help solve.

If enough people solve enough small problems in the immediate vicinity of where they live, then maybe the needle will start to move on some of the big problems.

There’s probably someone living in your apartment building, or in one of the other houses in your subdivision, who is lonely, and you can be a friend to that person.

You don't even need to go looking for these people. If you show up and let them know you care just a little bit, they'll find you.

If you’re blessed to live in an area where there’s some kind of community center or school, go to that facility and ask whoever runs it if there’s some work you can volunteer to do. In the course of doing this volunteer work, you will almost certainly come into contact with people who need a friend. It’s as easy as falling off a log.

Even if there’s no community center or school, or even any organized community activities, you don’t have to move very far from the place where you lay your head down to sleep every night to find people who are lonely, sad, tired, fed up, freaked out, beaten down, etc.

If you just set up a card table and couple of chairs on the sidewalk somewhere and put a little plate of cookies or whatever on the table and a sign which says “sit and have a cookie with me and tell me what’s on your mind” you’ll have plenty of people take you up on the offer.

The point is to not be one of those people who spend their entire evening after coming home from work or school scrolling on the phone. Instead, be one of those people who comes home from work (and, while you’re at work, try to be a friend to your co-workers as much as you can, because that’s a good way to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem as well) has dinner with your family, spends time with them and then, maybe together with them, goes out into your community and makes some kind of positive contribution to what’s going on there.

A really easy and obvious place to go is a local church congregation. It’s not just the place to go once a week to sing some worship songs, listen to a message, eat some coffee cake and then go home. Most churches have all kinds of activities going on during the week, and it’s a great place to invest your time, money, effort and energy.

That’s because there are people there who need you too, and the first person who needs you there is the pastor of the congregation. He’s trying to do what God called him to do in that congregation, in that neighborhood, in that community, and he needs help. He needs your help and he needs my help.

If you’re not attending a local congregation yet, find one and give everything you possibly can to what God is doing in and through that congregation. Give your tithes and offerings to that congregation. Give your time to that congregation. Be one of the people who goes to the prayer meeting at that congregation. Be one of the people who teaches the childrens classes at that congregation. Go to the Men’s group meetings at that congregation. If you’re a women, go to the Women’s group meetings. If there aren’t Bible studies and other kinds of meetings there for men, women, students, or whatever group you think you belong to, go to the pastor and tell him you want to start having such meetings.

Another old saying that comes to mind in this context is “pray as if it all depends on God, but work as if it all depends on you.”

Brothers and sisters, please hear me.

None of us can do everything, and most of us can’t solve the big problems.

But every one of us can do something, and we can all help with the small problems.

If enough ordinary, everyday people do enough ordinary positive things every day, the big problems will begin to get more manageable.

The people who are relatively high-functioning need to become producers of positive things, not just the consumers of positive things. Help the lower-functioning people get their act together so that they can become more high-functioning and eventually they’ll also start becoming producers and not just consumers.

We save the world one small step at a time. A billion small steps in the right direction will add up, and so will a billion small steps in the wrong direction. Be one of the people who takes steps in the right direction, not one of the people who takes steps in the wrong direction. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

So, to conclude, if you want to save the world, make a dent where you're sent, think big but act small and go home and love your neighbors as yourself.

Some Thoughts after two years of war by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 21:27:00 +0000

At the conclusion of the Second World War, US Army General George S. Patton sent a letter to his wife in which he said, among other things, "another war has ended, and with it, my usefulness to mankind."

I don't remember exactly when I first read that quote, or even what history book it was that I read it in. But there's no doubt that it had a powerful effect on me. Like all boys, I had a tremendous desire to grow up and do something heroic. Also, like all boys, I wanted to be just like my dad when I grew up, and since I knew from a very early age that my father had been a soldier and fought in the Vietnam War, I wanted to do the same.

Growing up in America at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, there was a LOT of encouragement for boys like myself to think this way. Most of the TV shows and movies in the 80s had a pro-military theme, and there was also many shows whose characters were Vietnam veterans who spent most of their time solving problems using violence, despite having no legal authority to do so. Anyone who grew up in the 80s will remember movies like "Die Hard" (still my favorite Christmas movie) and the Rambo trilogy, Top Gun, and Red Dawn as well as TV shows like "The A-Team", "Airwolf" "GI Joe" and "Magnum P.I.

These movies and shows made war, killing and violence look glorious and heroic, and it made anyone who objected to these things look weak, cowardly, infantile and stupid.

With a few exceptions, they also made war and violence look safe, as the protagonists rarely died or even got hit, and even when they did, they healed quickly and by the next episode of the show they were as good as new.

So, I grew up thinking it would be fantastic to be a soldier at war, and I consumed thousands of pages worth of history books and watched hundreds of hours worth of movies, including both non-Fiction documentaries and fictional stories. I also read books by men who had been career soldiers, like H. Norman Shwartzkopf and Colin Powell, and they made it sound like SO MUCH fun!

And then of course, there was the collective works of Tom Clancy, who has been called the "poet laureate of the Military-Industrial Complex." Reading his books definitely fed my desire to be a soldier and defend the civilized world against its many enemies, foreign and domestic.

But alas, when the time came for me to enlist...I failed my physical exam.

So, I went to college instead and studied Political Science, Anthropology, International Relations and the Bible, not necessarily in that order.

I WAS able to be part of the ROTC program at my university, and on more than one occasion, I performed tasks better than the regular Army soldiers who were there to teach us how to do things, which REALLY irritated me since those guys had obviously passed the physical exam I'd failed. As I was finishing up my fourth semester, which was as far as a person could go in ROTC without enlisting, the CO of the ROTC battalion, a Lt. Colonel who was a veteran of Gulf War 1, told me it was too bad I had failed my physical because in all other respects I was exactly the kind of young man the US Army was looking for.

That just made it worse.

But time passed, and God put other things in front of me. The vast number of books I'd read and movies I'd watched didn't entirely go to waste, as they were all relevant to the study of international relations, which made up the bulk of my academic work. Later, in my work as a journalist, they would also be useful. In fact, it was as a journalist, rather than as a soldier, that I ended up finally allowing me to experience war and violence at close range (no pun intended.)

The first time I was ever shot at was several years ago when I went down to Sderot (this was before the Iron Dome) chasing a story for the Messianic Times newspaper. The crude rockets I dodged that day seemed like a really big deal at the time, but that all seems laughably prosaic now. In subsequent years, covering subsequent wars, (they really do all run together in my memory after a while) I'd dodge bigger rockets, drones, missiles, etc. while never throwing anything back, not even a paper airplane.

Because the fact is, I am still technically a civilian. Most war movies are about soldiers, but the overwhelming majority of people who experience war do so in the capacity of a civilian, COMPLETELY helpless to do anything to affect the conduct of the war one way or the other, at the mercy of forces beyond their control, just trying to hold on and survive under very difficult circumstances.

This current war, which might be coming to an end in the next few days, has been a very different experience for me in every way. Unlike all the previous wars, which I participated in as a journalist, mostly watching from a safe distance and only occasionally getting close enough to be in any kind of danger, this war came right to my front door.

Two years and two days ago, Hamas attacked Israel and the next day, Hezbollah joined in the attack. This was followed by attacks from the Houthis in Yemen, Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in Iraq and Syria and eventually Iran itself. However, when this war started, I was most afraid that there would be terrorist attacks here in Jerusalem and possibly even against my family's home, just like what had happened in the Gaza border communities.

To prepare for this possibility, I did what a lot of other Israelis did and applied for a license to acquire and carry a pistol. I have no idea why, but there was no way to appeal the computer's decision, so I just carried around a baseball bat whenever I took the dog for a walk until I managed to get some pepper spray.

No terrorist attack ever came against me, but over the past two years I've heard the air raid siren many times, often waking me up in the middle of the night and forcing me to get the kids out of bed so we could grab the dog and run down to the bomb shelter. No missiles ever landed here in Jerusalem, but debris from a few interceptions landed here and also in adjacent communities, so the danger was very real. We also had large fires that threatened some neighborhoods in Jerusalem, which were allegedly deliberately set by arsonists.

The police even arrested a guy trying to set fire to some bushes just a few blocks away from my apartment. When I heard that, I walked over to the place where he was arrested and it blew my mind how he could have been "trying" to set a fire in that spot. If I had be "trying" to start a fire there I could have had a roaring blaze going in about 10 seconds. I can't imagine what stopped this guy, but whatever it is, I'm grateful for it. Other alleged attempts at arson WERE successful, and hundreds of acres in the hills around Jerusalem and other major Israeli cities burned. I must also add that there was also reports that the fires might have been started through simple carelessness, which is kind of hard to believe, but I suppose it's possible.

In any case, my home, the place where my children sleep at night, was in danger in this war, and that was an entirely new experience for me.

Now, as this war is likely coming to an end, I'm sitting here reflecting on everything that's happened, and I'm coming to some conclusions.

War DOES offer opportunities for heroism, and you don't have to be a soldier to take advantage of these opportunities.

My dog was a hero of this war, keeping the children in our building laughing and having fun in the bomb shelter so that they'd forget about being afraid and upset. One of the other dads who lives upstairs told me that he didn't even have to push his children to go down to the shelter during an alert, they were always eager to go because they'd get to pet the dog.

However, whatever chances there might be for a soldier to grab some "glory" during a war, there are no such chances for a civilian.

Beyond that, there's the question posed by a song from the 1960s, "war, what is it good for" and that song actually echoed the question asked by many other artists, notably the great German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, whose towering masterpiece "All Quiet on the Western Front" included a scene in which ordinary soldiers discuss this question and one of the few answers that they come up with that make any kind of sense is that it's good for industrialists, because they get rich manufacturing weapons.

That has always been true, and these days, it's more true than ever. A recent headline caught my eye, in a bad way, because it said "Bangladesh air force gets nod to spend billions on multirole fighters."

REALLY?!

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, with millions of people living in crushing poverty, few natural resources, VERY poor schools, hospitals, roads, etc. and yet, somehow, they've decided to spend billions of dollars on fighter aircraft.

But it's not just Bangladesh. A recent video posted by The Infographics Show gives us a look at how many different countries all over the world, including rich and not-so-rich countries, are spending so much on "defense" that all the things they're trying to "defend" are simply falling apart, raising the question of what the point is.

Here in Israel, as I wrote in a previous blog, there are many people, families and entire communities who are on the ragged edge of financial collapse, and things might be about to get even worse for them as the government will have to both raise taxes and cut services to pay for all the things it has had to spend money on during these last two years of war. To that can be added the hundreds of soldiers killed and wounded, the heartbreakingly high number of divorced couples, domestic violence, substance abuse, household debt, and the list just goes on and on.

There is no question that this was a "war of no choice" for Israel, and there is also no question that the sacrifices we have made, and continue to make, were absolutely necessary. But I am still appalled when I look at all the damage it has done to us, and the price we will be paying for a very long time.

Needless to say, this is dwarfed by the massive price that Russia, Ukraine, and all of Europe and America are paying and will continue to pay for Vladimir Putin's war, which was completely unnecessary and which has cost Russia so much and gained it very little, if anything.

So, to sum up, I am both proud and oddly grateful to have lived through this time, and I am also very grateful to God for allowing me to see that I do not, as General George S. Patton did, find that my usefulness to mankind has ended with the conclusion of this war. I am a husband to a marvelous wife who needs me and the father to two sons and a dog who all need me. Being a husband and a father offers many opportunities for heroism on an almost daily basis. They should make a few movies about that.

I am also a journalist in a city where there will always be news that people need to hear about, and that will be true whether there's a war being fought or if there isn't.

Another conclusion I've come to is that, with all due respect to Rambo and Magnum P.I., objecting to war and violence is not weak, cowardly, infantile, and stupid. I am not, and can't imagine ever being, a "pacifist," but I HAVE come to a place in my journey where I am very disgusted at the damage wars cause, the costs they impose and the sheer madness that is a huge part of why so many of them start and continue so long.

One of Jesus' titles is the "Prince of Peace" and I'm very much looking forward to His 1,000-year reign on this earth, when there won't be any wars, and we can all spend our time and resources on more productive pursuits. Until then, whether we like it or not, nations will continue to follow the advice of the Romans, that "if you want peace, you must prepare for war."

Some Thoughts on Apology by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:23:00 +0000

I need to start by saying I'm sorry.

To anyone who clicked on the link to read this blog because they thought it was going to be about "apologetics," I am very sorry, but that's not what this blog is about. Christian apologetics is a VERY important topic, and maybe I'll write the next one about that, but this blog is about something which is also very important so no matter why you're here, I hope you'll read it to the end.

Apology, and the closely related topic of forgiveness, is a VITALLY important part of our lives. It is SO MUCH easier to forgive someone if they've sincerely apologized, and if they haven't, it can be very difficult to forgive them. Out of this difficulty can come other difficulties, including bitterness and resentment, anger and discontentment. Nothing good comes from any of these things.

That is not to say that we're allowed to not forgive people who don't apologize, but it IS to say that if we love one another as Christ loved us, that is "sacrificially" than apologizing is a fairly small sacrifice to make in order to make it easier for someone to forgive us, and to bring reconciliation and peace between brethren and all the rest.

With that in mind, let's take a look at some relevant Bible passages (all taken from the NKJV)

1 John 1:9; If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Psalm 51:3 For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

Matthew 5:23-24 Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

Now, the subject of "apology" and the very closely related topic of "forgiveness" are very much on my mind right now because I'm writing this blog a few hours before the sun goes down here in Jerusalem, and when the sun goes down today, then Yom Kippur will begin.

As most readers of this blog will no doubt be aware, the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called the "days of Awe" and it is during these days that special prayers called "Slichot" are said in order to repent to God for all the sins one might have committed in the course of the previous year which one forgot to repent of, or maybe one wasn't precisely aware one had sinned, or whatever. It is also a time when people go around begging each other's pardon for offences they might have committed against each other during the previous year.

Now, again, "apology" and "forgiveness" are very much on my mind today for a deeply personal reason.

It's because four years ago, I sent an email to an old friend of mine to tell him that I had discovered that he had been dishonest with me about something. It wasn't just any old something either; it had caused tremendous damage to my life, and he had done it deliberately; it wasn't an accident or a slip of the tongue. It was a betrayal of our friendship, an abuse of the power he had over my life at the time and it was just, in general, a really rotten, lousy, despicable thing to do.

All of this, and a bit more, was in the email I sent him, and I was hoping it would make him feel convicted so he'd apologize and make things right between us.

I don't know if he felt convicted or not, because he simply didn't respond. He didn't write back to tell me I had it all wrong and try to make a bunch of lame excuses, or tell me to go jump in the lake, or anything else. He certainly didn't write back to apologize and ask for my forgiveness. He just ignored it, and he has made no effort to communicate with me in any way whatsoever over the four years since, although we have many mutual friends, and it would be easy for him to do so.

So every year as we approach Yom Kippur, I think maybe this year it'll be different. At a time when everyone in Israel is going around begging each others pardon, apologizing, repenting, making amends, reconciling, etc. that at this time, it would occur to him that he should finally call me and sort this out. That is not to even mention Matthew 5:23-24, which contains instructions regarding this kind of situation from the mouth of Jesus Himself.

By not responding to my message, my old friend was doing something called "adding insult to injury." The original injury here had been bad enough, but the insult of his not even bothering to respond when I told him I knew about it made it much worse. What that communicates is that he thinks the sin he committed against me is "no big deal" and there's no need to acknowledge it, much less apologize for it.

But what's worse than that is that this man, who is an ordained pastor and has been working for many years in a very prominent Christian Zionist ministry here in Jerusalem, has forgotten Romans 13:8; Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.

This man owes me an apology, which isn't love, and so he's not only ignoring me, which is disrespectful to the point of being dehumanizing, he is also ignoring the Word of God, which is much worse.

Now, I'm not just writing this blog to splatter my angst about all this to the internet. I'm writing it because this experience of mine is not unusual. Almost everyone owes apologies to others and is owed apologies by others. Apologizing is something we human beings aren't very good at, and that's as true in the Church as it is outside the Church, perhaps even more so. This is, I believe, a leading cause of unforgiveness and all the negative things that follow from it, including bitterness, contentions, and all that other stuff that splits up churches, marriages, families, friendships, musical bands, sports teams, unions, corporations, etc.

So, as a public service, I have decided to give an example of the right way to apologize and a few of the most common wrong ways to apologize.

First, the right way.

When someone comes to you and tells you that you've committed some kind of offense against them, the thing to do is drop everything else and give that individual your full attention and ask them to explain, as precisely as they can, what the offense was, how it made them feel, and what they need from you in order to make things right. All of this has the effect of making them feel seen and heard, and thus, fully human. Anything less will make them feel NOT seen and NOT heard and if that happens, they'll feel disrespected and maybe even dehumanized, and that will add another layer to the original offense and cause all kinds of other problems.

Once they have told you everything, you need to respond by saying something like this; "You're right. I understand why you're upset about this." It was wrong for me to do that and I'm sorry. I will do my best to make sure nothing like this ever happens again and I also want to thank you for bringing this to my attention and not just being angry about it without telling me why."

Now there's two sidenotes here that are very critical.

First, when you say these words, it's important to mean them. Don't just say them as a way of getting the person out of your hair, or getting out of the situation so you can move on and/or get back to what you were doing before they interrupted you. If that is even slightly on your mind, it will show in your tone and your body language, and once again, this will make the offended person feel disrespected and that will just make everything worse. That is the kind of thing that can turn a friend into an enemy for life, and it's the exact opposite of what you want. The person who feels like you're not taking them seriously, not respecting them, and not REALLY sorry at all, might just let it drop and walk away and quietly hate you for the rest of their life, or they might double down on their hostility right away, or worst of all, they might start, at that moment, to believe that they really ARE unworthy of respect, less than fully human, one inch tall, etc. and start acting accordingly. This kind of self-destructive attitude is SO very common in the Church, and the problems it causes take up far too much of every pastors time.

Now I need to say a this point that sometimes people's complaints against us ARE silly, petty, stupid or ridiculous. After all, Proverbs 19:11 says The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook a transgression.

But not everyone is on the same level of maturity, and the thing you want to keep in mind is that we're trying to help each other by being strong where others are weak and bearing each other's burdens. If someone is burdened by being really sensitive in an area so that when they get touched there, even lightly, it hurts, then don't tell them how stupid it is for them to be offended by something you wouldn't be offended by because you're less sensitive in that area. Just tell them you're sorry, and promise them you won't do it again.

The other sidenote is that you should NEVER, and I mean NEVER, EVER, EVER(!) not take someone seriously just because they're a child. If a child comes to you and tells you that you hurt their feelings when you knocked their stuffed animal off the chair and didn't pick it up, don't ignore them, or tell them "too bad" or anything else like that. Apologize for not respecting the things that are important to them, even if you think it's stupid or ridiculous or whatever.

The idea that "children are resilient" is rubbish. Children are VERY sensitive and VERY fragile. They remember having their feelings hurt and being disrespected for the rest of their lives, and it can have devastating consequences. Just stop for a few moments and try and remember something that happened to you before you turned five years old that still hurts when you think about it. You'll probably be able to bring back one of those kinds of memories after thinking about it for less than 30 seconds, and you can probably also think of ways that it is still negatively impacting your life up to this very moment.

So, to quickly review, the RIGHT way to apologize is to stop what you're doing, give the person who is trying to tell you what they need you to apologize for your full attention, listen carefully to what they tell you, and respond sincerely. Don't tell them to "get a life" or "get over it" and DON'T disregard them just because they're a child.

Now, let's get into some of the WRONG ways to apologize.

We can start with the example my old friend gave me of just ignoring the complaint that gets brought to you. Once again, even if you think it's "no big deal," don't ignore it. That will NOT make the problem go away. The person who told you that you've offended them won't just forget about it. Instead, it will be an open wound in your relationship with that person that will get harder and harder to heal the longer it goes unattended. Something that could have been resolved with a five-minute conversation, if it gets sorted out immediately, will be much more difficult and possibly expensive to fix later on.

Next, there's the infamous "I'm sorry, but..." routine.

This non-apology starts with the right words but quickly gets into the weeds of all the reasons why it wasn't the fault of the person who is supposed to be apologizing; it's the fault of the person who feels like they're owed an apology. Once again, this does absolutely nothing to soothe the wounded feelings of the offended party and just adds another layer of disrespect to the original offense, fanning the flames of anger, bitterness, resentment, and outrage.

Maybe there WERE some legitimate reasons why the other person wasn't completely blameless in escalating the situation to the point where it eventually got to. So the way to talk about that is by saying, "can you do me the kindness of thinking twice before you say or do X next time? That will help me not make this mistake again."

Remember, it's not about who is "right" and who is "wrong," it's about who is already acting like a mature Believer and who needs help to become more mature.

We're not here to win arguments, we're here to win PEOPLE to the Kingdom. Never forget that!

With that in mind, by far, the worst of these non-apologies is the "I'm sorry you..." routine.

I'm sorry YOU feel that way.

I'm sorry YOU have a root of bitterness.

I'm sorry YOU didn't like what I said.

I'm sorry YOU had a bad experience.

I'm sorry YOU see things that way.

See, by saying this, you're not apologizing for the thing you did, which was out of order; you're merely expressing regret for a situation which you implicitly blame on the other person. You're saying, in effect, "there IS something wrong here, but you're the source of the problem, not me."

It's not hard to figure out when someone is doing that, and once again, it just adds insult to the original injury; it adds another layer of offense and does nothing to soothe the wounded feelings of the other person and put out the flames of the dispute between you and them. Quite the opposite, in fact, it actually pours gasoline on the flames.

So...don't do that.

To sum this up, if someone comes to you and tells you that you've done or said something to injure or offend them, you should be very grateful that they value your friendship enough to take that step instead of simply dropping you, or quietly resenting you. So don't get defensive and start making excuses, or dismissing their concerns, or telling them to "get over it" or otherwise not taking them seriously.

Instead, thank them for taking the brave first step of letting you know there's a problem, thank them for trusting you enough to expect that you'll do your part to solve it, give them a sincere apology that let's them feel like they've been seen and heard and otherwise taken seriously and respected, and THEN, actually try to not make the same mistake again.

Needless to say, this works both ways. If someone has offended or hurt YOU, take a moment to think about whether it should be overlooked. Are you ready to "be the bigger person" and just forget about it?

If not, or if you don't think this is something that even the bigger person should simply overlook, but rather it's a problem that needs to be dealt with, then go to that person privately and let them know what they did that you think they owe you an apology for. Don't expect them to know, because many times they don't realize they did something that violated your boundaries. Everyone has different boundaries, and they might be genuinely unaware that they did anything out of order.

So tell them, politely but firmly, what they did that you feel they owe you an apology for, and then be willing to accept their apology when they offer it. Forgive them, and forget about it, as best you can. Don't hold on to something once it's been resolved.

Doing all this will bring blessings to your own life, as well as the life of your family, your community, and ultimately, to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ that you belong to.

Colossians 3:12-13 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

In Defense of the Feasts

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 08:42:00 +0000

The Temple Mount in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, courtesy of Ritmeyer

We're in the midst of the fall High Holy days, having just celebrated Yom Teruah (Rosh Hashana) last week and will soon be observing Yom Kippur. The Biblical holy days are on my mind!

I was reading the book of Ezra this week when I came across something I hadn't noticed before. In chapter 3, Ezra describes the first order of business when Israel returned to the land. Here it is:

When the seventh month arrived and the sons of Israel were settled in the towns, the people gathered together as one man in Jerusalem. Then Jeshua son of Jozadak, his fellow kohanim, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and his associates began to build the altar of the God of Israel, in order to offer burnt offerings on it as written in the Torah of Moses, the man of God. They set up the altar on its fixed resting place despite their fear of the peoples of the lands and they offered burnt offerings on it to Adonai, both the morning and the evening sacrifices. They also kept the Feast of Sukkot as it is written and offered the prescribed number of daily burnt offerings according to the requirement for each day.

A few things jump out at me in this passage.

First, it was of prime importance to the Israelites that they resume the sacrifices. Their business was rebuilding enough of the Temple to resume the sacrifices to God. They did this even though they were surrounded by hostile people. Why were sacrifices so important? I think it's because sin had to be dealt with. Sin state and purity were of utmost importance to restoring God's presence to Israel.

Secondly, Israel resumed sacrifices on the first day of the seventh month: Yom Teruah (Rosh Hashana). And this may contribute to why it is now called rosh ha-shana ראש השנה, head of the year. It might officially mark the end of the exile and the beginning of Israel's renewal. It is not likely a coincidence that God allowed for this to happen on Yom Teruah.

This might explain part of the mystery of Yom Teruah. The Torah commandment for Yom Teruah is that it be a zichron teruah זכרון תרועה, a memorial [shofar] blast. What are we memorializing? What are we remembering? The Torah doesn't say. Perhaps because this very act is the thing future Israel would remember: the rebuilding of the Temple, the resuming of sacrifices, and the end of the exile. (And, if I might put on my Judeo-Christian thinking cap, it may one day signal the return of Messiah.)

Thirdly, Israel observed and celebrated the Holy Days.

This is noteworthy because I have often heard Christian critiques of Messianic practice saying, the Kingdom of God is not about eating or drinking (Rom. 14).

Well, yes.

But the Kingdom of God is about God's holy days. That too is part of the Kingdom of God.

The prophets of the Bible foretell the arrival of Messiah where all the nations of the world will go up to Jerusalem to keep Sukkot (Zech. 14) -- that is Kingdom of God stuff. And it involves celebration with eating and drinking.

Paul's words about the Kingdom of God being more than eating and drinking must not be a polemic against the Biblical holy days.

Nehemiah 8 gives more details to what went on when Israel returned from exile:

Ezra the kohen brought the Torah before the assembly, which included men and women and all who could understand what they heard. This happened on the first day of the seventh month...Ezra opened the scroll in the sight of all the people for he was above all the people. When he opened it, all the people stood up. Ezra blessed Adonai, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, amen!” as they lifted up of their hands. Then they bowed down and worshiped Adonai with their faces to the ground...Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the kohen-scribe, and the Levites who were teaching the people said to all the people, “Today is holy to Adonai your God. Do not mourn or weep!” For all the people had been weeping when they heard the words of the Torah... So he said to them, "Go! Eat choice food, drink sweet drinks, and send portions to those who have nothing ready. For today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of Adonai is your strength."

Taken together, we can sum up Israel's priorities when they returned from exile:

Rebuild the Temple
Resume sacrifices to God
Hear the Torah read
Humble themselves
Worship God
Celebrate the Feasts

There is more to God and the Kingdom than Feasts and Holy Days. But those Feasts and Holy Days were of great importance when the exiles returned to Israel. Maybe they should be important for us too.

Have an easy fast, dear Kineti readers. More importantly, turn your hearts to Him and get sin out of your lives. That's a fast that's pleasing to God (Is. 58)

Some thoughts on Catechism, Dogma, Excommunication and Tucker Carlson by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 22:00:00 +0000

Most people associate the words "Catechism," "Dogma," and "Excommunication" with the Catholic Church, and there are some excellent historical reasons for this.

The Protestant Reformation, which started on October 31st, 1517 was in large part a (long overdue) reaction to the abuse of power by the Roman Catholic Church and these three concepts were widely perceived among the Reformers as devices that were, on the one hand, unsupported by Scripture and on the other hand, were making it far too easy for the Catholic clergy to abuse their power.

Because of this, the Protestant churches which emerged in Europe and later in other parts of the world largely did away with these things, and today, the results, for better and for worse, are all too evident for all to see.

I want to go through these three concepts one by one, and talk a little but about how each one applies to the fourth thing mentioned in the title of this blog, and that's Tucker Carlson.

First, Catechism.

The dictionary defines this word thusly;

catechism [kat-i-kiz-uhm]

noun

1. Ecclesiastical,

a. an elementary book containing a summary of the principles of the Christian religion, especially as maintained by a particular church, in the form of questions and answers.

b. the contents of such a book.

2. a similar book of instruction in other subjects.

3. a series of formal questions put, as to political candidates, to bring out their views.

4. catechetical instruction.

With all due respect to the dictionary's thoroughness, most people think of the word "catechism" to mean essentially the constitution of the Roman Catholic Church. Some Mainline Protestant denominations have a catechism, but they usually don't call it that. The Anglicans, for instance, have a "book of common prayer" which is very comparable to the Catholic catechism.

Be that as it may, everyone who attends a Catholic church receives a tremendous amount of instruction (especially if they're a child being raised by parents who regularly attend Mass) in the "catechism" so that they will know what it means to be a Catholic and just as importantly, what it means NOT to be a Catholic.

So, what does that entail? To answer that question, we need to take a look at the next term, "dogma."

The dictionary defines this term thusly;

dogma [dawg-muh]

noun

1. an official system of principles or tenets concerning faith, morals, behavior, etc., as of a church.

Synonyms: philosophy, doctrine

2. a specific tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down, as by a church.

Synonyms: law, canon, tenet

3. prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group.

4. a settled or established opinion, belief, or principle.

Synonyms: certainty, conviction

So, the "catechism" is the canonized list of "dogma" that an organization, movement, etc. holds to.

Once again, this term is mostly used when talking about the Catholic Church, although it also gets used quite a bit in reference to politics.

What does all this have to do with Tucker Carlson?

EVERYTHING!

Tucker has been in the news a lot lately because he spoke at the funeral of Charlie Kirk in Arizona on Sunday and told a "story" about a bunch of wicked, evil, corrupt Jewish people "sitting around eating hummus" and plotting to murder Jesus Christ in order to stop the spread of His message. It was very obvious that Tucker was making a comparison to that situation and his ludicrously absurd theory that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk because Charlie was starting to say some unflattering things about Israel, after years of being an ardent supporter of the Jewish State.

This follows an interview Tucker did a few months ago with Texas Senator Tes Cruz. Cruz said during the interview his support for Israel derived partially from his Christian faith, and Tucker responded with his trademark faux bewilderment, mixed with some really ugly expressions of scorn and contempt, asking Cruz to explain what he'd just said Biblically. Cruz badly flubbed his response, which was embarrassing for him and infuriating for millions of Christian supporters of Israel who would have loved to have watched Cruz give a coherent defense for Christian support for Israel.

Now at this point, I have to make a little side note, and I'll put it in the form of a question.

What IS the Biblical answer to Tucker Carlson's question to Ted Cruz about why Christians should support Israel?

Do you know? Can you open your Bible and find the passages that are most relevant to this discussion Has anyone ever taught or explained this material to you?

In other words, have you been "catechized"? Are you familiar with the "dogma" in regards to this issue?

Are you starting to see where I'm going with all this?

Back to Tucker Carlson, people who know him and know his family say that his father was a great friend of Israel and had many Jewish friends. It is very likely that he has, at some point, asked sincere questions about why Christians should support Israel from some very serious people.

There are therefore two possibilities.

Either he never got a good explanation from anyone, which is possible, but unlikely, or he DID get a good explanation and he rejected it, which I think is much more likely.

That brings us to the third term on my list, "excommunication."

Excommunication was (and still is) an official dogmatic rite of the Catholic Church and it was specifically abolished by the Reformation along with indulgences, Papal infallibility, etc. and I have long thought that this was a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Unlike some of that other nonsense, I think Excommunication absolutely IS not only supported but MANDATED by Scripture (specifically and most forcefully in I Corinthians chapter 5) and the result of its not being retained by the Reformation has been absolutely catastrophic. We can start with the fact that there are over 30,000 recognized Protestant denominations, which is bad enough. But then there's the fact that many of these denominations teach things that are mutually exclusive to what other "Protestant" denominations teach. I'm not talking about small issues either.

Words mean things, and the more specific their meaning is, the more useful they are, and the opposite is also true.

The word "Protestant" almost doesn't even mean anything anymore, because we've got a situation where there's no King and "everyone does what's right in their own eyes."

Some might say that the terms "Mainline" and "Evangelical" are somewhat helpful in this context, but leaving that aside, let's focus on the Evangelicals, because that's what Charlie Kirk called himself and that's what most of the people who came to his memorial service in Arizona would call themselves too, including Tucker Carlson.

Charlie Kirk was a fearless advocate for Israel, and he was very clear about his reasons, which were firmly rooted in the Scriptures. Not only was he strongly catechized and familiar with the dogma on this topic, he delighted in catechizing others and explaining the dogma to them.

In fact, I would imagine Charlie Kirk probably tried to explain it to Tucker Carlson at some point, as well as Candace Owens, as they were all good friends.

So, if Charlie Kirk was an "evangelical Protestant," and he was a supporter of Israel because he believed that the God described in his Bible expected him to be, and Tucker Carlson is also an "Evangelical Protestant" but he doesn't read that in his Bible and he feels free to be anti-Israel and some would even say anti-Semitic, then what's the explanation?

Obviously, something is very wrong with this picture.

If anyone is not sure where I'm going with all this, here it is in plain language.

It's long past time for "Evangelical Protestant" Christianity to agree on some principles of Dogma and establish a Catechism of our own. We need to set up some parameters and standards so that people know what it even means to be an "Evangelical" Christian, and just as importantly, what it does NOT mean to be an "Evangelical" Christian.

It is also long past time to bring back the principle of "Excommunication," so that anyone who wants to call themselves an "Evangelical" Christian but habitually violates the Dogma that is defined and codified by the Catechism can be dealt with in the way that the New Testament very clearly and unambiguously instructs us to deal with them.

The reason this is so important is that the Church of Jesus Christ is not just a social club that needs some bylaws to prevent feathers from getting ruffled.

The Church of Jesus Christ is the most important institution that exists, and it is engaged in the most important work that is being done in the world today.

There are many reasons we aren't doing such a great job, but one of the core reasons is that the "freedom in Christ" that the Apostle Paul talked about in Galatians 5:1 has been taken much too far and we've all but forgotten about something else he said on this topic in I Corinthians 6:12; "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any."

Because of our lack of Dogma, and because what few things we do mostly agree on have never been codified into any kind of Catechism, and because everyone feels free to just do their own thing without having any fear of excommunication or almost any other consequences, a LOT of people don't take us seriously. What's much worse is that they don't take the Gospel we have to share with them seriously either.

There's one group of people who are less likely than most others to take us seriously, and that's Israeli Jews.

The proof of that is in the coverage of Charlie Kirk's memorial service in the Israeli media. Tucker Carlson's speech was portrayed as the main event at this service, even more so than the speech given by President Trump. Erika Kirk's beautiful (and Dogmatic!) message about forgiving her husband's killer was largely ignored, unless it was being contrasted with President Trump's message about hating his opponents and not wanting the best for them, which I'm sad to say resonated pretty strongly here, in the media and also on the street.

Despite the fact that Evangelicals have been supporting Israel for decades and, in fact, were on the ground supporting the Jewish community in this country for over 100 years before the State formally came into existence, there is still a great deal of distrust and contempt for Evangelicals here. Many people point to Tucker Carlson's speech as proof that there's no such thing as "good" Christians because they're all the same, they all hate Jews, they'll all turn against us in the end, etc.

Brothers and sisters, I really don't know what the solution is to all this. I know that it's probably far too late in the game to try and work out Evangelical Protestant "Dogma" and canonize it into a "Catechism" of some kind. But I don't think it's too late to excommunicate people who express unapologetic contempt for the Scriptures. That ought to be a perfectly legitimate reason for casting someone out of the Assembly, unless they repent and recant.

In Tucker Carlson's case, this step is long overdue, and not only because he's taken to speaking out against Israel publicly and often. He's not the only one, but he would be a good place to start.

If you've read this far, I have a bonus for you. There is a video on YouTube which you can watch by clicking HERE.

This video is entitled "Why Israel" and it's a teaching by Derek Prince, one of the greatest Bible teachers of the last 100 years. I commend it to everyone, and I encourage you to share it widely.

Charlie Kirk's Death and Radical Forgiveness

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 06:21:00 +0000

Charlie Kirk was a devout Christian and dear friend of Israel. He called on his fellow Christians to honor the Bible's command to love Israel and the Jewish people. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu grieved the loss of Kirk, calling him a "lion-hearted friend of Israel who stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization." Kirk's final book set to be released in two months, Stop in the Name of God, is how Christians can find blessing in honoring the Sabbath.

The assassination of Christian conservative Charlie Kirk has impacted me deeply.

I don't know why it's impacted me so. I don't care much for celebrities, and I try to keep my head out of politics wherever possible. But Kirk's death has had me crying twice now in private, praying to God for answers and grieving over the people celebrating and laughing about his death. I've been angry at the cowards who have justified his assassination in the name of politics.

The morning before Charlie Kirk died, I was talking to God about the stabbing of the young girl on the train in what appeared to be a racially-motivated attack. The train security footage was gruesome and showed her bleeding out and no one helping. I was asking God about it and how this nation can heal in the face of such terrible brokenness. How do you fix a nation like that?

I felt God show me that it will take radical forgiveness. I felt God showing me that it would take a victim forgiving the perpetrator of an attempted murder. Going public about the forgiveness and telling others to do the same. That would change many hearts and minds and begin to heal the nation. That's what I felt God showing me.

Hours later, I heard that Charlie Kirk was shot. My first thought was, "Oh no, he's dead - God was warning me about it this morning." My next thought was, "Wait, was God trying to show me that Kirk will survive and forgive his attempted murderer?" Kirk would certainly be a great candidate to do that. He has a huge platform, and he always made his Christian faith the center of all he did.

Hours later, news broke that Kirk had succumbed to his injuries and died. I was so grieved when I first heard it. I cried.

Today, Charlie Kirk's murderer is in custody. A young man from Utah confessed his crime to his father, a former police officer, who eventually got him to turn himself in.

Whenever a tragedy occurs in the US, it's immediately politicized. Guns are the problem. No, access to weapons isn't the problem, evil people are the problem. But guns make it easier to murder people. But if guns are the only problem, what about the man who just stabbed a young woman on a train? Do we ban knives too?

Oh, and then it gets really political. Was the shooter trans? Black or white? His ammunition was inscribed with leftist antifa slogans and a reference to a possible LGBT community. But wait, his parents were Republican? And there's a photo of this young man sitting on a Trump blowup for Halloween? Maybe the shooter was MAGA? And the alt-right will tell you that Israel (of course!) had Kirk killed. New information comes out that the shooter was a member of antifa Discord channels, and his X profile shows pro-Palestinian slogans and anti-Israel propaganda. Maybe that's why he murdered Kirk?

So many theories and everyone's arguing.

It gets worse. Certain fools began saying Kirk deserved to die for his anti-LGBTQ stance. Others said he got what he deserved since he was in favor of gun ownership. Numerous teachers, nurses, political commentators, high school admins, professionals and more were fired in the last 24 hours for saying evil things about Charlie Kirk. Businesses didn't want to be associated with the backlash against one of their employees.

It goes on forever, friends, and it makes it all worse.

It happens every time there's a tragedy.

I keep circling back to what I felt God showed me about healing this nation. How can this nation be healed of its deep brokenness? Radical forgiveness.

I suspect Charlie Kirk, if he had survived, would be the first to forgive the perpetrator. He would ask us to do the same and to pray for the man who tried to kill him. It's what we signed up for when we became Christians: to love your enemy; to desire to see his highest good.

But Charlie Kirk is dead.

Maybe the task, then, falls to us, the Christian public, to forgive this man. We lost a godly man, a bold ambassador of the Gospel, and a gentle soul who sought to turn the US back to God. We lost him because of hatred. It won't be healed by more politics and fighting about guns. But we can start the healing process now, by forgiving this man who killed Charlie Kirk, seeking this man's highest good, asking God to turn his heart back to himself that he might be saved.

Friends, will you join me in praying for this man who murdered Charlie Kirk? I think it matters. Pray that God would change his heart. Pray that he'd turn to the Lord. Pray for his highest good: that he'd repent to Kirk's widow and children. Justice will be served, but we can forgive as a step towards healing this nation. I think Charlie Kirk would be overjoyed if we did.

What can be done in this terrible situation, by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 15:59:00 +0000

Brothers and sisters, the world we live in is in very bad shape.

I am writing this in Jerusalem on the evening of September 11th, 2025. It is the 24th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in human history, and like most people who were alive on September 11th, 2001, this day always brings with it memories of that terrible day and everything that came afterwards.

But, with all due respect, the 9/11 terror attack is starting to be something that happened kind of a long time ago, whereas there's plenty that's happened just in the last month, or even the last week, that's got me feeling sad and also very worried for my own future and even more so the future of my two young children.

This week started with a deadly terrorist attack here in Jerusalem that left eight people dead, including the two attackers, as well as many others wounded.

Then the very next day, we got news that our government had hit a meeting of Hamas bigshots in Doha, Qatar. As of this afternoon, the news reports are saying that it's likely most of these bigshots survived, and even if they didn't, there are going to be some downsides to this move.

For instance, scanning the headlines this morning, I see that Canada(!) is "evaluating" their ties with Israel and senior officials in the Spanish government are making statements lamenting that they don't have nuclear weapons so they can't defend Hamas against Israel.

I'm not making that up. Senior elected officials in Spain actually said that.

Then of course, there are the threats by several other European countries, Canada, and Australia to recognize a Palestinian State at the UN General Assembly later this month.

Then there's the whole Greta Thunberg flotilla thing.

Last but certainly not least, I woke up this morning to the horrifying news that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated.

Again, this was just in the last week, and there were many other things that happened this past week, which I could add to this list, including a staggering number of natural disasters, economic problems, wars and rumors of wars. the rising number of cases of various infectious diseases with the potential to explode into a new pandemic, and the list just goes on and on.

Anyone who watches the news regularly will be able to make their own list of scary, sad, ghastly, depressing and even terrifying things that are going on in this world.

The headlines just get gloomier and scarier with each passing day. Social media can make us even more gloomy, as we see the reactions to some of these headlines by people we thought we knew, but they show a side of themselves we never suspected was there, and wish we had never learned about.

If we focus on the gloominess, we can be overwhelmed with despair and start to feel hopeless.

Here's what I suggest as an alternative.

First, let's take a look at one of my favorite passages of Scripture, 1 Timothy 2:1-3; Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,

When we read this passage, we are reminded that every single one of us can "do something" about the terrible situation this world we live in has gotten itself into.

You and I are not victims or helpless bystanders. We might not be able to decide for ourselves who the political leadership of our country, state, city, or even local community council is going to be, but we CAN pray for those who are in those positions of authority. This is always important but its even more important if the people in positions of authority are people we didn't vote for.

In my humble opinion, it is just as important to pray for the local leadership as state and national leadership. Many people will pray for the President or Prime Minister. Very few people even know the name of the mayor of the town you live in, the principal of the school your children attend, the coach of your kid's baseball team, etc. These people might not have vast authority over big things but they have IMMENSE power and influence over your life and the lives of your friends and family.

So pray for the mayor of the city you live in. Pray for the superintendent of schools, the principal at your children's school and the teacher in charge of the classroom where they spend their day. Pray for the parents of all the other children in the class, that they will be good, loving parents who set a good example for the children your child spends most of their time with.

Pray for the police and fire chiefs, the person in charge of the ambulance service and the hospital where you'll be taken in an ambulance if you ever need it. Pray for your boss if you're blessed to have a job. Pray for the person in charge of the store where you get your groceries and any other store where you get things you need on a regular basis.

I know some of you might think I'm going a little overboard here, but remember, 1 Timothy 2:1-3 says to pray for ALL those who are in positions of authority!

Last but certainly not least, pray for the pastor of the congregation you attend, and pray for the pastoral leadership and elders of all the other congregations in the city, state and country you live in. These pastors and elders, deacons and deaconesses, have so much to do, and they have so much expected of them, and they are only human beings. Pastors have one of the highest rates of burnout of any profession. Many pastors struggle with depression and anxiety, and not a few turn to substance abuse and other bad behavior in search of relief.

That's because the enemy targets them relentlessly, and most of them have little or no prayer support, much less practical support, from their congregation or anyone else. They feel all alone in their struggles, and sadly, many of them are.

Brothers and sisters, if you want to know why the world is falling apart, a big part of the reason is that the Church of Jesus Christ is not praying enough.

Remember Ephesians 6:12; For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

If that doesn't ring any bells for you, then you need to check your pulse to make sure you're still alive.

Now at this point, I want to throw out an old saying that "all politics is local."

That principle applies to everything, really.

"Local" is where you spend the overwhelming majority of your time. Of course, there are things that affect your life and mine that are happening on a state and national level, and so of course, you should spend time praying for those issues. But most of your prayer time and almost all of your practical efforts should be directed at improving the situation in whatever "local" area you live in.

Beyond praying, I would strongly urge you to get directly involved in doing whatever you can to strengthen your local congregation. Go to the prayer meeting. Volunteer to teach the Sunday school. If you aren't tithing yet, start tithing. Give as much of your time, resources, efforts and energy to your congregation as you can. Local congregations are the foundation of a healthy community. If you take care of your local congregation, your local congregation can take care of the community you live in, and if enough communities get their act together, they'll take care of the problems at the state and national level.

I'll close with another old saying from the world of fitness (you should be taking care of your health too, because there's nothing more "local" than the body you'll be living in as long as you're on this earth) and it goes like this; "The best time to start eating healthy and exercising is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now."

That's true of praying for those in authority and investing in your local community as well. It would have been better if we all started doing these things in earnest 20 years ago, but it's too late for that, so all we can do is start getting serious about it right now.

As a post-script, since the new school year just started in most countries where this blog will be read, I HIGHLY recommend that you check out "Moms in Prayer" which is an organization that helps parents organize themselves into groups to pray for their children and schools.

Meet the new war, same as the old war, by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 19:31:00 +0000

Brothers and sisters, can I be vulnerable with you for a moment?

There are two compulsions I have that are often in conflict. The first is a very powerful drive to provide for my family and the second is a very powerful drive to not be a burden to anyone.

The reason these two powerful drives within me are often in conflict is that here in Israel, it's REALLY hard to provide for a family all by oneself.

Most families struggle to pay for everything they need, even with both parents working. That was true even before this war (which shows signs of being close to being over, thank God) and in the last 22 months that the war has continued, it's gotten harder and harder for families to make ends meet. There is every indication that this is going to continue, because the government has warned that it will have to raise taxes and cut services in the months ahead. This war has cost Israel's government money in all kinds of ways, and the costs are going to stay high for a long time. They will filter down to households and individual citizens, far beyond the taxes and cuts to services I've already mentioned.

Let me tell you a short story that will help you better understand just how difficult the situation already is.

As I said, I have these two compulsions, which are often in conflict, and recently, the first one won out over the other when I finally decided to ask a certain Christian Zionist organization that operates here in Jerusalem for help in paying some of my bills. The person I reached out to is an old friend of mine, and he told me right away that he couldn't give me money, but he COULD give me a pre-paid gift card, which I could use at the grocery store. I could tell he wanted to give me more than that, but I told him, truthfully, that it was a big help.

However, these cards are mainly used at a store I don't go to very often because the nearest outlet is kind of a long way away from my apartment, and I usually do my shopping at a store that is much closer. But I couldn't use the card at my usual place, so I gratefully took it to the store where I could use it to stock up on essentials.

Now here's where the story gets more interesting and maybe even a little shocking.

There were four checkout lanes operating that evening and I was in the second one from the left. This allowed me to turn around and observe everything that was going on in almost all four lanes, which is something that my training and experience as a journalist compels me to do (I do NOT have a conflicting compulsion to "mind my own business" because journalists who do have that compulsion don't remain journalists very long.)

After a few moments, something clicked in my brain as I watched one person after another pay for their groceries with pre-paid cards just like the one I had in my pocket.

After I'd paid for my stuff, I was on my way out of the store and I saw a manager, who I know from past visits is an English-speaker, being the offspring of parents who made Aliyah from South Africa many years ago. So I caught this individual's eye and when he walked over to me, I asked him about what I'd seen.

He informed me that this is quite normal to see many people paying for their groceries with these pre-paid cards. He added that there are several organizations in Israel that use donations from around the world to buy enormous numbers of these cards so they can distribute them to people who need help. He had been a checkout clerk for years before being promoted to manager, and he told me that before the war, he would see perhaps one or two shoppers paying with one of these cards in a typical 8-hour shift. But these days, a solid majority of people, probably close to 70%, use them.

I stood there for a moment, taking that in, and then he took a deep breath and blurted out "I don't even want to think about what would be happening in this country right now if people in other countries weren't donating to these organizations so they could give people these cards. I mean, we would be in REALLY big trouble if Israel weren't getting so much help. This store probably would have closed by now, I'd be out of a job, and who knows what else."

He then started on a big, long, meandering rant about all the things he's angry at the politicians for, and I was starting to get nervous because I agreed with some things he was saying and disagreed strongly with others. On top of that, I had some cheese and milk I wanted to get home so I could put them in the refrigerator.

Happily, before too much time had passed, one of the checkout clerks needed his help with something so I was able to get away and go home. But I have not been able to get what he said out of my mind for the last few days.

So, this afternoon, I sat down to write this blog to let my readers know about this situation, which most of you probably have some idea about, but I doubt most of you have any real idea of just how severe the problems have become.

If you're a supporter of Israel, I'm sure you're happy to see how successful the IDF has been in this war. It is miraculous, and even very secular people are acknowledging that. I am hopeful that it will lead to some spiritual breakthroughs in Israel and there are many other positive things that are in the pipeline.

One positive thing we're looking forward to is a large number of Jewish people making Aliyah to Israel from Western countries, where anti-Semitism is on the rise. This will bring a lot of blessings into the country, but it will also require the government to spend a lot of money, adding to the strain on the economy that I mentioned earlier.

All of that is to say, brothers and sisters, that Israel needs your help. Please continue to pray for us and if you are contributing financially to a ministry or charity organization that operates here, please don't stop. If you can, increase the amount you're giving. Remember what you've read in this blog, that there are many families who would be underwater already if it wasn't for all the help these organizations are able to give to people, because they're receiving donations from other countries.

The kinetic war to defeat Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and all the other enemies that have come against Israel in the last 22 months is almost over. The war at home, to simply put food on the table and otherwise live in dignity here in the Land of Israel, is just beginning, and Israel is going to need all the help it can get for a very long time.

I released a worship song! Break Forth in Joy

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 01:04:00 +0000

Dear Kineti readers, I'm pleased to announce the release of my first worship song. Give it a listen?

It's a cover of a 1970s song by the pioneering Messianic music group, Lamb. It's one of my personal favorites that has inspired me in life and drawn me closer to God.

This song is a collaboration between my old friend Troy Mitchell and a new friend from Israel, Eli Ben Moshe. Troy is a veteran Messianic musician, cantor, and talented songwriter. Eli is a musician himself and audio engineer; his father is Marc Chopinsky from the pioneering Messianic music group Israel's Hope.

For this song, Troy sings the first verse and plays piano and guitar. I sing the second verse, background vocals, and play guitar. Eli is on bass and percussion. Eli also mixed and mastered this track.

A huge thanks to Troy and Eli for adding their skill and talents to this track. A huge thanks to Eli for helping me get started in the recording and audio engineering world.

The song is based on Psalm 98 and Isaiah 52:

All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation [Yeshua] of our God.
Shout joyfully to Adonai, all the earth.
Break forth, sing for joy, and sing praises.
Sing praises to Adonai with the harp,
with the harp and a voice of melody.
With trumpets and sound of the shofar
blast a sound before the King, Adonai.

Break forth in joy, sing together,
you ruins of Jerusalem,
for Adonai has comforted His people.
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
Adonai has bared His holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations.
All the ends of the earth will see
the salvation [Yeshua] of our God

Both command God's people to break forth in joy, sing, and praise God because all humanity will see the salvation of our God. These verses are linked and they are made true only in one person, Yeshua.

The album art is based on a photo I took in Jerusalem a few years ago. A man played guitar, then another man joined on violin. Soon, people gathered around and started dancing. An IDF soldier came by and we lifted him on our shoulders as we danced. It was so joyful, I thought it a fit as album art for this song. 🙏

The album art

The photo I took in Jerusalem, used as an inspiration for the album art

May this song amplify the name of Yeshua, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah and Savior of humanity. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved!"

Why I'm Still Torah-Observant

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 03:59:00 +0000

"Judah, why are you still following all that Jewish stuff?"

I attend a Sunday church. While my calling is in the Messianic Jewish movement, I'm currently more involved with the Christian world. My wife is neither Messianic nor Torah observant. One of the contributors to this blog, Aaron Hecht, isn't Torah-observant (yet 😉).

My kids have sometimes complained that I forbid them eating certain foods. Why can't they have a bacon cheeseburger when they go out with their friends?

And while we as a family make time for erev Shabbat with a special meal, Bible discussion and blessings on each person at the table, Saturdays often fill up with activities, including my own. I'm not leading my family in keeping Shabbat well.

Last week I was talking theology with my father-in-law, and he asked whether my eating kosher is just tradition. He mentioned the vision God gave to Peter, with unclean animals coming down from heaven with a voice saying, "Rise, kill, and eat!" Doesn't that mean all food is clean in the age of Jesus?

And didn't Jesus say he came to fulfill the Law? If the Law is fulfilled, do we really have to keep it anymore? Isn't the Law written on our hearts, and thus we don't have to work it out in our actions?

I've also witnessed lots of problems among Torah-observant believers: Torah terrorism, demonizing our Christian brothers, conspiracy theories, and lots of nonsense unrelated to Torah-keeping. I used to do those things myself. And because of all that ugly behavior from Torah keepers, some friends have come out as no longer Torah observant.

One Christian friend keeps asking me why I'm following those old rules anyways when I'm already saved in Jesus. What's the point of following those all those Jewish things when you're already going to heaven?

It'd sure be easier to fit in with my Christian friends if I just gave up pursuit of the Torah. I could join them for Friday nights out on the town. Why am I still following those old rules, anyways?

I also struggle with sin in my own life. Sometimes, Torah keeping feels like it's putting lipstick on a pig. I am the pig. How can I worry about kosher when I engage in lustful thoughts or lose my temper with my kids or fight with my wife?

And what is Torah observance, anyways? Is it the Orthodox Jewish Torah observance, with separate kitchens for meat and milk, eating only at rabbinically-certified kosher restaurants and growing out your sidelocks? Or is it the Hebrew Roots Torah observance, wearing multicolored tzitzit tied to belt loops and sounding shofars on every upbeat chorus? Or is it Christian Torah observance, feeding the hungry, giving to charity and standing for the unborn?

I've been thinking a lot about these things.

Why am I still pursuing Torah in my own life and family?

And my answer is this: the Bible.

What I mean is, I'm convinced -- still! -- that the Bible repeatedly demonstrates that God wants his people to keep the Torah as much as we're able.

The New Testament records Jesus keeping the Torah.
We have no record of Jesus, the disciples, or the apostles actually breaking the Torah.
Jesus tells his disciples that anyone who does the Torah will be considered great in the coming age. (And, those who tell others not to keep the Torah will be considered least.)
The New Testament records Jesus telling his followers to keep the Torah.
Many of Jesus' commands are above and beyond the Torah. The Torah forbids adultery, but Jesus says even looking at a woman in lust is a kind of adultery. How can we say the Torah is done away with when Jesus' tells us to observe a stronger, more stringent version of it?
The New Testament records the disciples keeping the Torah.
After Jesus heals a man with leprosy, he tells the man to observe the Torah's commandment about healed lepers. Why would Jesus do that if the Torah was done away with?
The New Testament records Paul keeping the Torah in order to publicly put to rest rumors to the contrary. "That way, all will realize there is nothing to the things they have been told about you, but that you yourself walk in an orderly manner, keeping the Torah." (Acts 21:24) How is it that modern Christianity now claims the Paul did not keep the Torah? It's the opposite of the plain meaning of this verse.
The New Testament explicitly affirms the Torah is good, holy, and righteous.
God punished Israel for not keeping the Torah. If the Torah is no longer applicable, logically God would need to repent to Jewish people for punishing them for something He no longer requires of them.
The Torah issues a warning against any prophet or leader who claims the Torah need not be observed.
Many of the commandments of the Torah have an explicit clause about its eternal nature. "This commandment is for you and your descendants forever, no matter where you live." If the Torah is done away with, parts of the Bible become false.
By claiming Jesus broke the Torah or teaches his followers to break it, Christians are inadvertently making Jesus into the false prophet of Deuteronomy 13.
When the Israelites returned from Babylonian captivity, Nehemiah had to correct people breaking the Torah, telling them that their disobedience is the reason God sent them into captivity in the first place. I remain unconvinced God is OK with his people doing things he previously punished us for.
Jesus tells people that God created the Sabbath for humanity. Why have his followers discarded something God created for our benefit?
When Jesus is falsely accused of breaking the Torah (e.g. healing on the sabbath), He responds not by saying the Torah is done away with. He responds by saying what God intended for the Law (e.g. it's lawful to do good on the sabbath).
By claiming Jesus broke the Torah or did away with it, Christians are inadvertently confirming his religious critics.
When Jesus returns, He will (still) be Jewish; the Lion of Judah. Shouldn't the followers of the Jewish Jesus emulate His way of life?
A Jewish Jesus will live in a way consistent with his first appearing: an observant Jew who shows us how to properly keep the Torah.
Jesus is returning to Jerusalem, not to any other city. That implies that Israel, Jews, and Torah still matter to God.
The Bible says when Messiah returns, He'll require all nations to go up to Jerusalem to keep the Biblical holidays. Anyone who refuses will have no rain. This implies Messiah wants all people to be Torah observant.
The New Testament commands the Gospel "to the Jew first, then the Gentile". This implies Israel and Jewish people still exist. Jewish people remain because of the Torah.
I'm unconvinced of the claim that Peter's vision means the food laws have been abolished. I find Peter's own interpretation of the vision more persuasive and powerful: God has made Gentiles clean through Messiah.
The remaining anti-Torah statements in the New Testament, like Paul in Galatians, appear not to be wholesale rejection of the Torah, but relying on the Torah to be saved. Christianity today claims Paul is rejecting the Torah altogether, but this runs counter to Paul's own actions in Acts 21.
Christians often appeal to Jesus' statement, "I have come to fulfill the Law", but they don't consider the full quote: "I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill the Law." Christianity has not made a practical distinction between abolishing and fulfilling.
Modern Christianity has thrown out all food laws, even though the apostles ruled that Gentile converts to Christianity must follow certain food prohibitions from the Torah.
I remain unconvinced of the superficial divisions of the Law into moral, civil, and ceremonial; the division doesn't appear in the Bible itself. How can we say, then, that God abolished two of those three divisions?
Keeping the 10 commandments but not the other parts of the Law strikes me as inconsistent. On what basis should we keep the 10 but discard the 600+ summarized by the 10?

Another reason I keep the Torah is, I don't trust myself to make better moral judgments than God.

God gave us commandments governing how we live. I can throw those out at my discretion. But, "trust in the LORD wholeheartedly and lean not on your own understanding."

Part of trusting God is believing He's right even if I don't understand Him. I don't understand some commandments God gave us. But I won't lean on my own understanding. I trust that God is wiser than I am.

If I throw out the Torah, I'm already taking steps towards a progressive and humanistic religion. Throw out the Torah? Why not throw out the New Testament too? Progressive churches have done exactly this. Pastors of such churches are even free to criticize Jesus's own teachings - and why shouldn't they? If God can do away with the Torah, why can't we do away with things from any part of the Bible we don't like? Don't like the laws prohibiting lesbian and gay relationships? Just discard them. Don't like the laws about preserving life? Just discard them. Don't like the laws prohibiting men pretending to be women? Just discard them. Much of the culture war is a natural outcome of discarding the Torah.

I don't want to go down that path. I think the better option is following God to the best of my ability.

A big part of that is just doing the things God told us to do, including the Torah. And doing those things in light of how Jesus kept the Torah.

There are other reasons to keep the Torah. Jews who follow the Jewish Messiah should not cease being Jewish. God doesn't want Jewish people to disappear, and Jews who do not keep the Torah tend to assimilate and disappear within a generation or two. God has used the Torah to preserve the Jewish people. The Torah is the Constitution of the people of Israel.

Another reason to keep the Torah is because the early Christian communities did. The Didache, an early Christian writing dated to the late 1st century, tells the believers to fast twice a week, weigh the cost of faith, observe basic Torah morality, forbid abortion. It spends most of its time advocating for the way of life, repeating many of the basic commandments from the Torah.

Those are valid reasons to keep the Torah.

But for me, I come back to the Bible. I cannot in good conscious stop doing what God commanded. I cannot un-convince myself that the Torah is righteous, good, holy, part of the living Word of God. Powerful and sharper than a sword, piercing the soul, judging the thoughts and intentions of the human heart. The Torah is part of the whole counsel of God.

I don 't know how to keep all the Torah. I know I'm not keeping all of it. I'm undoubtedly mistaken in how I'm keeping some of it. I'm not doing the Torah life very well in some areas of my life.

I don't know which is better: the Hebrew Roots version of Torah observance or the Orthodox Jewish version of Torah observance. I'm failing at many parts of Torah observance in my own life and in my family and home life. And I know lots of people in the Torah-and-Yeshua world are doing things poorly and generally showing that they're just sinful humans.

Despite all this, I'm going to keep pursuing God's Torah. This means keep learning. Keep reading the Scriptures. Keep knocking on the door in prayer for more wisdom. Keep asking the Lord to turn me to Himself. "Enlighten my eyes with Your Torah." Keep asking God to sanctify my life, make it align more with His image.

The Big Bang is Christian

noreply@blogger.com (Judah Gabriel Himango) — Thu, 08 May 2025 06:34:00 +0000

Dubbed the "Pillars of Creation", this photo was taken in 2022 by the James Webb telescope, showing massive columns of gas -- 66 trillion kilometers tall! -- in the Eagle Nebula, about 6,500 light years from earth. The nebula is called a stellar nursery, as new stars are actively forming within it. View the full res (70MB) photo.

Today I came across this post by well-known Christian conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey:

I’m reading a book written by an evolutionary psychologist, so I’ve been thinking about the claims of evolutionists a lot recently.

Obviously there’s the absurdly illogical belief that the universe was initiated by a big bang. But I also find it strange that many progressives… https://t.co/C0aSukIdTp
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) May 7, 2025

The part that got me was, "absurdly illogical belief that the universe was initiated by a big bang."

This is a common sentiment in the conservative Christian world. I suspect many in the Messianic and Hebrew Roots world feel the same.

But a dirty little secret about the Big Bang theory is, it's Christian.

The Big Bang theory was developed by a devout Christian and the theory itself supports the Biblical idea that the universe had a beginning. It was initially combatted by atheist scientists because it too closely aligned with the Bible.

A devout Catholic priest and physicist by the name of Georges Lemaitre proposed the theory in 1927.

Prior to this time, the scientific consensus was that the universe was eternal; it had always existed. But working off the theories of his contemporaries Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein, Lemaitre theorized that the universe is expanding, with a definite point in time and space where it came into existence. In other words, the universe had a beginning.

Lemaitre's theory, which he called the primeval atom theory, was initially rejected by many atheist cosmologists. British astronomer Fred Doyle mocked the idea and coined the term "big bang" as a pejorative, claiming the theory too closely resembled the Book of Genesis.

But today, nearly 100 years later, scientists almost unanimously agree the Big Bang theory accurately describes the beginning of the universe.

What changed their minds?

A number of discoveries with powerful evidence:

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. In the 1960s, scientists discovered faint radiation left over from the beginning of the universe. This radiation has been since observed to be stretched out due to the expansion of the universe, shifting visible light to different frequencies, aligning with predictions of an expanding, finite universe.
Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe. Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving farther apart, suggesting the universe originated at a single point in space. This couldn't be true of an eternal universe.
Abundance of light elements. The Big Bang predicted formation of precise amounts of hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Observations of old stars confirm these predictions.
The reality of a dark sky. If the universe were eternal, the night sky should be very bright. Instead, it's mostly dark, suggesting a finite past.
Distant galaxies' difference from our own. Observations of galaxies far away -- and thus, very old -- are made up of extremely bright stars, suggesting that the universe was much different than it is today, and suggesting that it had a precise beginning, not an eternal past.

The Big Bang is probably true, and it is Christian in its origins and Biblical in its implications.

It's painful to me, then, that many uninformed Christians today reject the Big Bang categorically, as if it implies atheism. It does no such thing. It theorizes that the universe suddenly exploded into existence.

In Biblical terms, "Let there be light!"

The universe isn't eternal, it had had a beginning: an instant of creation. And doesn't an instant of creation imply the existence of a Creator?

Some Thoughts on Miracles by Aaron Hecht

noreply@blogger.com (Aaron Hecht) — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 15:36:00 +0000

We have just come through Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This year, as sometimes happens, it coincided with Holy Week in the Orthodox Christian calendar, which starts with Palm Sunday and then goes through Good Friday and ends with Resurrection Sunday (known in some circles as "Easter.")

These two holidays are not in competition with each other, just like the Old Testament is not in competition with the New Testament. They are two parts of the same story, written by the same Author and serving the same purpose, which is to bring reconciliation and peace between God and the Human Race, which He created.

Beyond that, these occasions all have something in common, and it's not just that they are all about setting people free from bondage and the blood of a lamb covering us and all the rest. On a more basic level, they all have in common that on the first Passover in Egypt, and then later on as we move through the Exodus story and then again on the first Palm Sunday and the first Good Friday and above all on that first Resurrection Sunday, these were all occasions when God was very visibly moving in human history my performing miracles.

Now, before we move on, we need to ask ourselves what a "miracle" is.

A "miracle" is, simply put, an incident in which something happens in the natural world that should not be naturally possible.

The Ten Plagues of Egypt were all examples of this, as were the events that followed it with God appearing as a pillar of cloud over the people of Israel by day as they walked through the desert and as a pillar of fire by night to give them heat and warmth. Then of course, there's the parting of the Red Sea and the Children of Israel walking through it on dry land and then the Pharoah and his army following them and being killed when God stopped holding back the waters so they came down and destroyed them.

As tfe story continues, God does more miracles, including bringing the Israelites Manna and quail to eat, providing water from rocks, and much later, splitting the Jordan River so the people can pass through, just as He split the Red Sea.

Still later, God did more miracles, including my personal favorite from Joshua chapter 10 where He made the Sun stand still over Gibeon in the Valley of Aijalon so that Joshua and his soldiers could finish the battle. With all due respect to parting the Red Sea, this miracle would have involved changing a lot more things going on in this physical universe, including the motion of the entire galaxy, and maybe more than just our galaxy. All throughout the Book of Judges there are more stories about God giving Israel the victory in battle after battle, often against much more powerful and well-organized armies.

As we continue reading through the Bible, God continues to move in human history and there continue to be miracles but they are seldom as highly visible and dramatic as what we read about in the Books of Exodus and Joshua. Think about the victory of David over Goliath and Ballem's donkey speaking to him audibly.

But these miracles, while still being examples of events occurring in the natural world that would seem to be naturally impossible, do not seem to be as big of a deal as the parting of the Red Sea. Keep this in mind, it's important for what comes later.

Skipping ahead to the New Testament, Jesus' being born of a virgin was a pretty dramatic miracle, but only a small handful of people knew about it, probably just Mary and Joseph and of course Jesus Himself. When He grew up and began His earthly ministry, it was accompanied by many miracles, starting with turning ordinary water into wine and then moving to healing people of various diseases simply by touching them, casting demons out of people and even bringing people back from the dead.

Once again, these were miracles that only a few people would have personally witnessed and even to those few people, they might not have compared to the stories they knew about from their ancestors who saw the Red Sea parting.

Nevertheless, in John 10:37-38, Jesus says "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”

Also of relevance is Luke 7:18-23; Then the disciples of John reported to him concerning all these things. And John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to Jesus, saying, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” When the men had come to Him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to You, saying, ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’ ” And that very hour He cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits; and to many blind He gave sight. Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”

In both of these passages, Jesus is saying that if the people hearing His teachings weren't impressed by their supernaturally brilliant logic and undeniable truth, they should at least be impressed by the fact that He was doing things that would be impossible for Him to do if He wasn't acting in the power of God.

My favorite scene in Cecille B. DeMille's classic movie "The Ten Commandments" is when Pharoah Ramses II (played by Yul Brenner) returns from seeing his army destroyed by the Red Sea and his wife asks him for proof that he defeated Moses, but all he can say in reply is "his God, IS God."

Of course, this was a Hollywood scene, not a Biblical scene. The Bible tells us that Pharaoh died with his soldiers in the Red Sea. But nonetheless, I think it's powerful because it's a demonstration of the fact that seeing great miracles SHOULD be enough to convince someone that they're dealing with a very real God. It's not a "fairy tale" or a delusion or anything else like that.

As a sidenote to this, the story of the golden calf is such a heartbreaker. These people who had seen the Red Sea parting with their own eyes, witnessing the power of God first hand in such a dramatic way, nonetheless believed that a statue made with human hands, our of gold they themselves had given Aaron for the purpose, was as he said to them in Exodus 32:4 "“This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!”

Scholars and ordinary people have been asking the question of how these people could have been so foolish for hundreds of years, but maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge.

In my own short lifetime, I've seen many events that fit the definition of a "miracle," including seeing personal friends of mine healed from diseases, injuries and other medical conditions that the doctors had said there was no hope for them being healed from. That's a kind of small-scale miracle like most of the miracles Jesus performed in the Gospels. But I've seen other things that were bigger and more dramatic.

A year ago this month, the Iranians launched a large barrage of drones, cruise, and ballistic missiles at Israel. When the sirens went off, my family and I ran down into the bomb shelters, but even as we were running, I knew the attack wouldn't be successful. Some of my neighbors who live upstairs in the building ran down into the shelter with me and my family. They were scared, but they saw me not scared and asked me why. I replied that I had no doubt that God would do a miracle and prevent this attack from doing any serious damage. One of them told me later that he had gone from being an atheist to an agnostic that evening and I encouraged him to keep going.

A few months later, in October, the Iranians tried again with a much larger barrage of ballistic missiles. Once again, they didn't do any serious damage.

Now the Iranians are threatening to try once more and, according to them, this time they REALLY mean it! This time, they're serious and they're going to launch a serious attack that will do serious damage.

If the Iranian leadership were to ask me if I'm scared of this threat, I would remind them of Proverbs 16:9 "A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps" and the Yiddish saying which is derived from this, which simply says "Man plans and God laughs."

But all laughing aside, when Jesus said we should believe the miracles He does even if we don't believe what He says I commend to everyone the history of the modern State of Israel. As we approach Israeli Independence Day in a few weeks, many people take Israel for granted. But the truth is, this country is a miracle of God.

The story of how this country came into existence on May 15th, 1948, is long and complicated and involves hundreds of people doing all kinds of different things in dozens of countries all over the world over many years leading up to that event. If a mathematician were asked to calculate the odds against all of these things happening, the mathematician would be forced to admit that there's no natural way it could have happened.

When Israel advocates try to make the case for the modern State of Israel being worthy of Christian support, we often do so by showing the prophecies in the Bible that point to it. This is good to do and I've seen more than a few people convinced by this. But I've also encountered people, including people who emphatically declare themselves to be "Bible-believing Christians" who are not convinced by the hopelessly unambiguous words of prophetic Scripture. To these people, I think we can and should point out the miracles that accompanied (and still accompany) the formation and the continuation of this country. There might still be some "stiff-necked" and/or hard-hearted people who won't get it, but there are some who might.