The Russia Ukraine Conflict: Metanarrative, Narratives and Mini-narratives

The quote above comes from Arthur Ponsonby's book, “Falsehood in War-time, Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War” (1928). The epigram at the start of the book is from an almost identical line spoken in 1917 by the United States Senator Hiram Johnson: "The first casualty when war comes is truth."

And His disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable might be. And He said, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, in order that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.”

~ Luke 8:9–10 NASB

What is interesting about Jesus’ explanation as to why He spoke in parables is that they are given so that the remaining non-believers would not understand. I am convinced that the reason people believe in false narratives is that in our fallen nature, we enjoy being lied to. This fault hearkens back to original sin, and the story of the serpent in the garden who tempted the man and woman saying, “Your eyes will be opened. For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). From the beginning, human beings have always desired to spin their own truth. Yet there is also a yearning to return to the original story — the metanarrative that will explain everything correctly.

Read more

Will China's Christian population become the majority?

I asked the Chinese AI app, “Deep-Seek, whether the growth of the Christian population in China could become majority by the end of the 21st century. This is a common claim made by Christian missionaries to China. The first answer took into account government suppression of the Christian churches and current growth rates. The response was not as optimistic. I then asked what would happen if more Christians became wealthier and due to their growing influence in business and politics and what would happen if this would allow them to support larger families. What this means is that the task for the Chinese church, and missionaries sent to China is to train Christian leaders in the idea that Christians ought to be taking dominion of the Civil arena, especially in business, education, media, and politics.

Here is the response.

Read more

The Great Power Order

Video: The Great Power Order
The Great Power Order
Click play to connect to youtube

It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was an anomaly. It was the product of the end of the Cold War. But eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world with great powers in different parts of the planet…. So now more than ever, we need to remember that foreign policy should always be about furthering the national interest of the United States and doing so to the extent possible avoiding war and armed conflict which we have seen two times in the last century be very costly. They’re celebrating the 80th anniversary this year of the end of the Second World War. If you look at the scale and scope of destruction and loss of life that occurred it it would be far worse if we had a global conflict now and may end life on the planet.

We recently heard Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently refer to the end of the “unipolar order,” which is a term popularized in 1989 by pundit Charles Krauthammer. In his State of the Union Address speech in 1991, President George H.W. Bush began to speak of a New World Order (NWO) after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bush spoke of the end of the Cold War, which was a long era of division between the communist world and the West (or the “free world”). This is sometimes referred to as the bipolar world order. 

Read more

Is Zelenskyy really a "dictator without elections"?

President Donald Trump recently posted on Truth Social that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continually refused to negotiate an end to the conflict with Russia calling him a “dictator without elections.”

This brought a backlash from the legacy media, including many politicians, even some in Trump’s own party, and spurred numerous posts on social media.

Is Zelenskyy really a dictator?

Or is he the heroic Churchillian figure he is made out to be?

Who is Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

Video: Is Zelenskyy really a "dictator without elections"?
Is Zelenskyy really a "dictator without elections"?
Click play to connect to youtube
Read more

Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?

Video: Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?
Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?
Click play to connect to youtube

The date of Christmas was not determined by Church Fathers by copying the date of a pagan Roman winter solstice festival. Instead, the date was calculated from the Jewish calendar using the date of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, September 22nd, 6 BC, when Gabriel appeared to Zecharias in the Temple according to Luke 1:5. The conception of John occurred “immediately after that” when Zecharias returned home to Elizabeth to the hill country of Judea, by calculation on September 24th, 6 BC.

The conception of Jesus was calculated to have occurred when Elizabeth was “in her sixth month” (Luke 1:26,36) on March 25th, 5 BC, which was also the first day of Passover in that year. John’s birth was June 24th, 5 BC, followed by Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem on December 25th, which was also the first day of Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, in that year. The Church Father, Hippolytus of Rome, in his work Chronicon, saw that each date had allegorical significance.

So why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?

Read more

Suggested products