| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Release Int.
.jpg)
Hmm.
New research cast doubts on evidence submitted to help free Lucy Letby.
|
.jpg)
Macron - I Despair.
Macron: Meloni ‘Should Not Comment’ on Beating Death of Conservative Student Quentin Deranque.
Antonio Masiello/GettyThe 23-year-old Catholic activist was killed last week during an anti-mass immigration protest in Lyon in an alleged act of Antifa violence.
|
Second Chances?
Why I disagree that God is the God of 'second chances.'
God desires to make friends with people, even if they have offended Him.
When the first humans transgressed, God immediately reached out and inquired, “where are you” (Gen. 3:9)? Jesus and the apostles emphasized that God always dealt personally, and they noted Him as the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob (Mark 12:26; Acts 7:32). Particularly, Abraham “was called a friend of God” (James 2:23).
God has always taken personal interest in people, “calling as at other times, Samuel, Samuel” (1 Sam. 3:10). So God continues to invite people “to come now and let us reason together ... though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Is. 1:18).
Surely, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Yet God is gracious, and I believe that the beauty of His forgiveness can continue to be manifested in people.
I don’t need to convince anyone of the universal fact that people experience moral wrongdoing, actively and passively. It’s not that we are made to feel guilty by someone’s criterion, or by some moral theory or even a religious dogma, but that we are inherently wired with a conscience that experiences undeniable right and wrong. Humans “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Rom. 2:15). It’s interesting how cultural thought is always ready to finger-point the moral shortcomings of people, while being dismissive of the implicit appeal to objective moral law. Even when theorists speculate that people may be genetically predisposed to certain immoral behavior, the moral law is invoked to identify what is objectively immoral.
So why should it be incredulous that in a world of objective moral brokenness God can remove a person’s sins and create redemptive beauty? What’s so strange about it? Perhaps it’s really about a twisted belief that repentance will result in doing less life, whereas His grace actually provides new beginnings and genuine fulfillment. As the distinguished Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Armand Nicholi, wrote about God’s grace, “I know that he always offers forgiveness followed by the opportunity and the resources to start again.” [1] Nicholi’s essay unpacked psychologically how Christ provides the inner “resources” that fulfill the beauty God intended.
Sin causes emotional weight, and its removal by God’s forgiveness is characterized by inward peace; peace which is not a temporary or therapeutic fix. Neither is this peace a human fabrication, precisely because it doesn’t originate from any human effort or initiative. The American deep Christian thinker, Jonathan Edwards, explained in his Religious Affections: “These are principles which are of a new and spiritual nature, vastly nobler and more excellent than all that is in natural man.”[2] The power of God’s grace is applied by His Spirit and the repentant experience a transition from the heavy burden of sin to the inward peace of forgiveness.
I will never forget the first Sunday that I attended church as a Christian. I returned home with this beautiful sense of peace and emotional lightness that my burden of sin was removed by Jesus. Like the feeling one gets when carrying heavy luggage and then putting it down to relax at a vacation resort. What John Bunyan’s Christian said rhetorically in 1678 when encountering God’s grace has remained relevant: “Must here the Burden fall from off my back? Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest Cross!” [3] Indeed, the experience of God’s forgiveness has transcended time, cultures, and persevered over philosophical and psychological oppositions throughout history.
It's also beautiful how God’s work of grace strengthens the repentant to forgive themselves, for remorse can be burdensome. C. S. Lewis aptly commented in a personal letter to a friend, “I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.” [4]
I remember as a young Christian attending a Bible study where I learned for the first time that the great Apostle Paul was formerly Saul of Tarsus, who persecuted Christians. I honestly couldn’t believe it. Then I realized that if Paul authored all of those inspired letters and taught the world about personal peace with God, then he must have surely forgiven himself. I then took great encouragement and completely forgave myself. When we are at peace with God and ourselves, it’s also much easier to forgive others.
Finally, the beauty of God’s forgiveness is that it’s absolutely free. “Thanks be to God,” exclaimed Paul, “for his inexpressible gift” (2 Cor. 9:15)! So why is God so generous? What’s the catch? What’s in it for Him? Nothing at all. In fact, it’s expressive of how much He loves us unconditionally.
Paul explained, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). God desires that we be regenerated and walk in the path He intended for us, “for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6).
I disagree, however, that God is the God of “second chances,” because I believe that He is the God of innumerable chances, longsuffering and of great mercy. So even in this chaotic and rebellious world people are welcome to experience the beauty of knowing that “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12). CP.
Jeremiah 1:5.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Saturday, February 21, 2026
Scum Who Do Not EVER Deserve A Single Vote.
Outcry as Green Party say they want to legalise ALL drugs - including crack cocaine, heroin and date-rape chemical GHB.
Drugs including crack cocaine and heroin should be legalised for recreational use because they 'enhance human relationships', according to the Green Party's official policy.
Zack Polanski's party plans to create a 'direct partnership' between the Government and South American drug cartels to introduce a 'sustainable supply of coca and cocaine' to Britain, it adds.
Newly unearthed policy proposals show the Greens want to see cocaine drinks brought to the high street and Class A drugs including ecstasy and psychedelics sold at nightclubs and music festivals.
The policy adds that children 'starting in primary school' should be taught how to take drugs safely in Personal, Social and Health Education (PHSE) lessons to 'enhance the safety of all who use drugs'.
The plan to legalise drugs comes despite the policy proposing a simultaneous crackdown on alcohol and tobacco - including heaping more tax on beer and cigarettes to 'reflect the cost of harm caused by alcohol use on society'.
The internal Green policy, seen by the Mail, states that heroin and crack cocaine should be legalised because 'adults should be free to make informed decisions about their own drug consumption'.
It adds: 'The Green Party recognises that in the majority of cases the limited use of drugs for recreational purposes is not harmful and has the potential to enhance human relationships and human creativity.'
Labour last night slammed the proposals and claimed that 'Zack Polanski's blueprint for a drug-ridden Britain would turn children's playgrounds into crack dens'.
Blogger: In countries where this abomination has been tried - even in a much less extreme way - the results have invariably been catastrophic.
Don't believe me - spend a weekend in San Francisco today and you will be horrified by what you see.
There are 37,500 established as addicts, possibly enough, as yet unidentified, to make the figure above 100,000!
A mere handful of addicts can wreck a district in any town or city!
Cause For Pride.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Agreed, Melanie.
Fight! Fight! Fight!Jewish victimisation shouldn't be dismissed as unbeatable. It must be fought harder and better
| |||||||||||||||||||
A lively debate is underway in the Jewish world about whether Jews are wise to present themselves as victims.
In the Jewish Journal, Rabbi Amitai Fraiman has written that Jewish victimisation is now an outdated paradigm. Jews are no longer seen as vulnerable and marginal, but ever since Israel’s iconic victory in the 1967 Six-Day War they’ve been associated with force, power and agency.
The Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on October 7, 2023, may have slaughtered innocent people, says Fraiman, but this was met by a “ferocious response from a Jewish army”. Portraying it as a story of pure victimhood is therefore “a conceptual failure”.
At the beginning of this month, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens argued in an address at New York’s 92nd Street Y that antisemitism isn’t just a prejudice but a neurosis that can never be eradicated.
So rather than engaging with it, he suggested, Jews should ignore it. The millions of dollars that community leaders had devoted to fighting it had been mostly wasted and would be better spent on reinforcing Jewish education, culture and identification.
Both Fraiman and Stephens said that Jews shouldn’t expect people to feel compassion for them. It was wrong to assume that if the world was reminded of Jewish suffering, moral clarity would follow. Nor would Jewish virtues or successes move hearts; constantly seeking to prove ourselves worthy to win the world’s love was a fool’s errand.
Victimhood has certainly figured hugely in the way diaspora Jews have viewed themselves. In America, where Jews are less focused on synagogue life and religious observance than they are in the United Kingdom, the Shoah has become a central pivot of Jewish identity with an explosion of Holocaust memorials, museums and educational tools.
Jews reflexively depict Israel as having been the permanent target and victim of the Arab and Muslim world ever since the rebirth of the Jewish state in 1948. They also point to the antisemitism that mars the West itself, and which has been around for as long as there have been Jews in the world.
Clearly, none of these indisputable facts has prevented the current tsunami of hatred and bigotry from inundating the West. Diaspora Jews are being abused, harassed, vilified, intimidated and attacked — targeted over their identity, whether this is couched in the exterminatory language of anti-Zionism or in the paranoid tropes of Jew-hatred.
Jews in Britain, Australia and Canada are being accused of “killing babies” in the Gaza Strip. Groups of “anti-racists” are going from house to house in British cities, writing down the names of anyone who refuses to support a boycott of Israeli goods to create “Zionist-free” zones.
People shrug aside chants for the death of Jews on Western streets. After brief periods of performative shock when Jews were gunned down on Sydney’s Bondi Beach or at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, nothing serious was done by the Australian or British governments to address the anti-Jewish incitement now rampant in their societies.
This onslaught has been fuelled by the demonisation of Israel through wall-to-wall lies and vicious distortions. These have been widely believed to be true, and because of that have cast Israel and its supporters as the worst people in the world.
The driving force behind all this is the Islamists, who have mounted a globally organised and funded campaign of propaganda and psychological warfare.
The acceptance of this malicious and false narrative, however, rests upon far deeper Western cultural pathologies about the Jews and Jewish suffering.
This was obvious in the reaction to the October 7 attacks, with a widespread refusal to acknowledge the depraved, sadistic and psychopathic way in which the Israelis were slaughtered, raped, tortured, kidnapped and otherwise abused.
The obvious reason for that is that any evidence of Jewish victimisation by Palestinian Arabs gets in the way of the default narrative of Western liberals that the State of Israel is the colonialist oppressor and the Palestinian Arabs are its victims.
But there’s a still deeper reason — the widespread resentment that the Jews are considered victims at all.
In the world of “intersectional” victim culture that has created overlapping categories of “the oppressed,” Jews are viewed as oppressors because they are seen as capitalists in key positions in finance, the media, the law and other professions.
Ludicrously, as a result of the special status afforded by Western society to the Holocaust, the Jews have also been accused, in this writer’s hearing, of “sucking up all the victimhood in the world, leaving none for us”.
This is closely allied to resentment at the very idea of antisemitism. People believe the Jews use the claim of Jew-hatred not only to sanitise the “crimes” of Israel. They believe Jews also use it to sanitise themselves by making it impermissible to express “legitimate” dislike of Jews as hateful, devious, grasping and the embodiment of other classic antisemitic canards.
They are baffled by, as well as jealous of, the Jews’ conspicuous and disproportionate success. Since they can’t understand the source of this unsurpassed record of achievement, they assume the Jews must have hidden powers. Israel’s very real military power confirms them in the paranoid view that the Jews embody some kind of demonic cosmic force.
In other words, the Jews make them feel frightened. And people who frighten them, they think, can’t themselves be victims of anyone.
This is all obviously a form of cultural derangement. So how should Jews deal with it?
It’s certainly beyond foolish to believe that the world will ever feel sorry for the Jews because of their victimisation. But that’s not a reason for remaining silent about the abuses they are facing.
Jews have a duty to stand up for truth over lies and for justice over injustice. It would also be insane for them not to protest against the systemic incitement and indifference that is turning them into sitting ducks for genocidal fanatics roaming the streets of Western cities.
And it’s essential for the safety and security of everyone to call out the moral bankruptcy of inverting victim and oppressor — the mind-twisting obscenity at the core of the demonisation of Israel.
Plenty of people in the West aren’t anti-Jew, but they might tumble down this rabbit-hole unless they’re hauled back from it by Jews sounding the alarm.
Similarly, Jews themselves must be prevented from believing such lies, which is causing increasing cultural demoralisation as well as turning so many young Jews against both Israel and Judaism.
Antisemitism and anti-Zionism need to be fought, but harder and better. Diaspora Jews have never combated them properly. They’ve assumed the default position of exile — the nervous belief that they exist at the pleasure of their host community, which must therefore be appeased and never challenged.
As a result, their stand has always been defensive. Sucked into arguing on the ground designated by their tormentors, Jews have found themselves struggling to answer accusations that are so preposterous they are innately unanswerable — and then they wonder why they always lose.
As I explain in my new book Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege, to be published next month by Wicked Son, Jews must go on the offensive and take the fight to the enemy.
Jewish history teaches that the ancient Israelites did precisely this—fighting and defeating their enemies with a clear-sighted understanding that anything short of doing so decisively would lead to the extinction of their people.
Israel today similarly fights its enemies on the battlefield of kinetic war. Diaspora Jews must fight their own enemies with equivalent tenacity and courage on the battlefield of the mind.
Release Int.
Fri 20 Feb at 18:28 DONATE Please Pray The Middle East One of Release International’s partners works to plant and establish churches and net...
-
Franklin Graham preached in Glasgow, launches new fund to defend religious freedom in the UK. Staff writer Franklin Graham preaching at ...
-
7 ) ... Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8) But even if we or an ang...
.jpeg)
SIR – Amid the deeply troubling reports regarding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, let’s not forget two aspects of this affair in which we can take great pride.
The first is that, in this country, no one – however senior or well-connected – is above the law.
The second is the standard of selfless service, set by the King and Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and the Princess Royal and Vice-Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, which remains the envy of the world.
Christopher Jary
Frampton, Dorset. DT.