France's response to Terror: Teach Arabic in middle school

In the last 19 months, France has been the stage for three major terrorist attacks: the Charlie Hebdo/Kosher Market in January 2015, the Bataclan in November 2015 and now the Bastille Day rampage on July 14, 2016. More than 230 innocent people lost their lives at the hands of bloody murderers who all appear to have…

France: The Coming Civil War

France: The Coming Civil War

The Camp of the Saints - Jean Raspail - English subtitles

Blogster note: A prophetic novel published in 1973. As a novelist he imagined the scenario of one million immigrants on boats anchored in the waters of the French Riviera. He was right.
His writing caused a furious reaction from the French government. He was brended a racist, xenpphobe and was ostracized for years. For years, I searched for the book in French but could remember, neither title nor author. 
The book´s 1973 original edition is on sale at Amazon.com

A Rabid Nation | Lamb & Lion Ministries

Via servehiminthewaiting.com

By STLloyd October 14, 2015 America Bible prophecy Christian News

This article and video are re-posted From Lamb & Lion Ministries and a good analogy of what we are seeing happen in America and how it feels to born-again followers of Christ to watch it take place.  Perhaps you will relate, as I did.—S.T. Lloyd  (The below article is essentially a transcript of the first half of the video.  Video 28 mins)

Is the United States Suffering from Spiritual Rabies?

[Note: Our guest author is Al Gist, the founder of Maranatha Evangelistic Ministries in Longville, Louisiana. Al is a former petroleum engineer and pastor who decided in the year 2000 to commit himself full-time to the preaching and teaching of Bible prophecy.
In July 2015, Lamb & Lion Ministries held a Bible conference with the theme Messages for a Rebellious Nation. Al was one of six outstanding speakers at the conference, and he presented a powerful message titled “A Rabid Nation.” The following is a portion of that message.]

Al Gist
I want to begin with a little story about my own personal life. When I was just a kid back in the late 1950’s, my Dad took me to see a movie called Old Yeller. It was made in 1957. I’ll never forget it, because not only was it an awesome thing for us just to get to go to the movies anyway, but this is the only time in my life that I can remember that my Dad took me to the movies. It was not something that he would normally do. He was a very stern man. But, my Dad took me to see this and so Old Yeller made a really emotional impact on my life. I guess that’s the reason why I remember it so well even to this day.

The plot of the movie goes something like this. A young boy from the 1860’s named Travis is given the responsibility by his dad of caring for his mom, his younger brother, and their ranch while his father was away on a cattle drive. During that time, a yellow mongrel dog shows up at the ranch. At first, Travis didn’t care anything for the dog. He thought of him as only a nuisance, but soon he named the dog Old Yeller and they became the best of friends. He actually saved the life of the young lad on one occasion from a bunch of wild hogs. They became very, very close to one another.

Later in the story, Old Yeller has to protect the family from a rabid wolf who makes his way onto the ranch. In that fight the dog contracts this terrible, terrible disease called rabies.
When Travis first realized that Old Yeller had gotten rabies, he was heartbroken. To protect his family, and in hopes that for some reason maybe the dog hadn’t actually gotten the disease, he locks the dog up in the corn crib. Each day he would go out and he would pet his dog and he would tell him how much he wanted to release him to go back out on the ranch.

The dog looked perfectly well. He looked fine for many days, but on that last day when Travis thought that he’d go out and release his dog, he is met with a different animal. Instead of his beloved Old Yeller, Travis finds a dog that is foaming at the mouth and growling at him.

Travis knew what he had to do. To protect his family, he had to put down Old Yeller. I can remember the scene so well as Travis is crying and he lifts the gun to shoot his beloved dog, because I was crying too. It really touched my heart.

I guess this was probably the first exposure I ever had to the disease of rabies. I didn’t really understand it when I was young. It didn’t really make sense to me. How could something so minor as a few little bites on the dog cause him to change this way and have to be put to death?

Rabies, if it’s left untreated, is a 100% fatal disease. It is most often transmitted to its human victims by a bite from a skunk, or cat, or a dog, or a fox, or raccoons. The virus is carried in the saliva of an infected animal and can get transferred to its human victim. The result is that rabies causes the person to begin to change in a very terrible way.

According to the encyclopedia, rabies is defined as:
“After a typical human infection by bite, the virus enters the peripheral nervous system. It then travels along the nerves towards the central nervous system. During this phase, the virus cannot be easily detected within the host, and vaccination may still confer cell-mediated immunity to prevent symptomatic rabies. Once the virus reaches the brain there is no treatment. As the virus progresses to the brain, the symptoms may include: slight or partial paralysis, cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, hallucinations, progressing to delirium.”

Rabies is a horrible disease! Most people probably have seen animals that have contracted rabies. In their state of cerebral dysfunction, they stagger about foaming at the mouth, and they are confused and easily agitated. Their abnormal behavior produces a kind of paranoia of terror and hallucinations that leads them to the point ultimately of delirium.

I bring this to your attention because in my humble opinion I think that the United States has contracted spiritual rabies and that has led to our cerebral dysfunction. Our leaders, both political and religious, seem so confused that their decisions border on delirium.
Like the early phases of rabies, decades ago our nation started out as something very innocent, but our great nation contracted this terrible spiritual rabies that has now led to cerebral dysfunction. Rabies leads to behavior that is totally abnormal. If allowed to continue, it will end in delirium and, I’m afraid, of a state of death even for our nation.
It started out innocently enough with the desire to be less offensive. It’s a good thing for society to be, right? We should be less offensive to one another.

In the realm of religion, we had the Seeker-Friendly Movement in churches which started as an effort to make unchurched people feel welcome to our churches and feel less uncomfortable in the setting of a traditional church. But, it went too far! Now we have churches whose services are more like a Broadway production than a worship service. It eventually led to the Emergent Church, which is completely apostate, denying the miracles of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and even avoiding at all cost the mention of that terrible “S” word — Sin. Our churches no longer say “Sin” lest it offend someone.
In the political realm, the government also began to encourage us as a society to change our speech so that we be less offensive. We called it being Politically Correct, or PC for short. We’ve been encouraged by our government to change our vocabulary in order to be less offensive and more politically correct.

For example, at one time it was thought that a person who was not able to walk was simply crippled. But, that seemed to describe something more harsh. So, the term “crippled” was deemed to be too degrading and it was changed to handicapped. But, this too was eventually thought to be offensive and it was changed to disabled. And then finally, they declared, “No, no! That is too harsh, so now we have to say they are ‘physically challenged'”.

With the extreme efforts these days to separate Church and State in public institutions, we had to remove all words that are of a religious nature. I read of a story from a few years ago, and you may remember seeing it in the newspapers, about a teenager in Seattle who volunteered at a local elementary school to do a community-service project in which she desired to hand out to the little children those little plastic eggs filled with jellybeans — Easter eggs. In asking the teacher for permission, the student reported and I quote, “She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat ‘spring spheres.’ I couldn’t call them  Easter eggs.” Spring spheres?! I can’t even hardly say it without spitting. It’s horrible!

I don’t want my vocabulary to be offensive, but I’m not sure I know how to talk without it being offensive. I’m not politically correct, and to be quite honest, I have no desire to be.
As a society we have changed things. We’ve changed things to the point that people are becoming paranoid about everything, just like rabies. We’ve reached the state of paranoia. It seems like everybody is offended about something these days. Everybody is angry about something.

I remember something that Jesus said, He said, “And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.” Hey, you better watch out! The PC police are watching and they are liable to betray you and turn you in!

My point is this — just like rabies, which starts out as relatively innocuous, we’ve gone to the extreme and to the point of paranoia. People don’t want to be heard in public because they are afraid that somebody will accuse them of being politically incorrect.

It seems that our national leadership, both politically and religiously, can no longer see clearly and discern the difference between reality and fantasy. They are in a hallucination state. Level-headed common sense has been replaced with hysteria and over-reaction. Now we’ve reached a point of absolute delirium and as a result our original political and religious foundations that made this country great are crumbling right before our very eyes.
It breaks my heart! I’m so sad to see the direction our country is going in.

Of Islamists, Illegal Immigrants, words, and The Word

Reposted from Elizabeth Prata´s the-end-time.blogspot.com

Islamist is now a forbidden word, at least in Associated Press journalism.

The Associated Press Revises Another Politically Charged Term Stylebook entry for 'Islamist' revised two days after 'illegal immigrant' dropped
"Following on the heels of the Tuesday decision by The Associated Press to discontinue use of the term "illegal immigrant," the news agency on Thursday revised its stylebook entry for another politically charged term. The term "Islamist," the AP clarified in a Thursday afternoon alert to online stylebook subscribers, should not be used as "a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals."

This is being done because the term "carries a negative connotation" according to the article. The term Islamist has been in the AP Stylebook since 2012 but an Islamist group lobbied for the AP to remove it. Apparently they have been successful. This comes on the heels of another linguistic swap. The term 'illegal immigrant' was also dropped last week. The article continues by saying, "The AP's decision to discontinue "illegal immigrant" was part of an ongoing process of "ridding the Stylebook of labels."

Heavens to Betsy that someone reading the news should feel any discomfort over what they read!

Propaganda and Perception of Reality

Language manipulation is an important part of altering the reality that is presented to citizens through media. Language is the filter through which we connect with the world, think about what we see, know, and understand, and communicate to others.

photo credit: tochis via photopin cc

In the academic paper by Christopher J. Dorsey, The Ethics of Shaping Perceptions of Reality: What Journalists Can Learn From Cartographers and Shamans we read in the abstract,

"Journalism has the unique ability to shape the public’s perception of reality. Because humans are limited in experience and knowledge, an understanding of the world is shaped by what information is available to each individual. As a major societal institution, journalism has a public forum with which to release relevant, timely and useful information that can influence these perceptions. When it comes to building perceptions of reality, there are potential harms that can arise such as enhancing fear, confusion, stress, and building a worldview that can lead to uninformed or destructive decisions. Essentially, a journalist has as much ability to disable as enable, to inhibit as empower, and to befuddle and confuse as inform or educate. ..."

The problem comes when an entity decides to alter our collective reality by changing word definitions or dropping words from the public sphere that they deem unacceptable. By what standard may do they do this? Who decides? What about others who who wish to continue using the term? They will soon find it outdated.

On a lighter note, if you listen to George Carlin's riffs on the absurdity of language changes, and I don't recommend listening to George Carlin as a rule, he makes some devastatingly insightful comments. (If you do listen to the one I'm referring to below, be advised he uses the word BS four times but there are no other profanities). In his 8-minute commentary on the increasing use of soft language, titled "Euphemistic Language" he reminds us of the changes we older folks already have lived through but may have forgotten. He shows the evolution of the WWI term shell shock into soft, euphemistic language describing the exact same condition in each succeeding generation but diluting the human quality of it:

Wikipedia

• Shell shock (2 syllables. simple honest direct language, 100 years ago)
• Battle fatigue (4 syllables, nicer to say, not as abrupt)
• Operational exhaustion (8 syllables, humanity removed, this sounds like something that would happen to your car)
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (still 8 syllables, but a hyphen has been added, the personal pain is buried under jargon)

"It is soft language that takes the life out of life." Carlin continues with reminding us of other linguistic swaps-

toilet paper = bathroom tissue
sneakers = running shoes
false teeth = dentures
medicine = medication
motel = motor lodge
dump = landfill

It's a sneaker! Wiki pic.

information = directory assistance
house trailers = mobile homes
used cars = previously owned
riots = civil disorder
zoo = wildlife park
drug addiction = substance abuse
soaps = daytime dramas
prostitutes = sex workers
wife beating = domestic violence
constipation = occasional irregularity

Carlin sagely said, people have been "suckered into believing that if you change the name of the condition somehow it changes the condition."

Using softening language eventually takes the life out of language and thus out of life. Of the decision to drop the use of the term 'illegal immigrant', Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, told U.S. News he objected to efforts "to soften the crime of entering illegally."

What is the recommended term instead? "Undocumented". Sounds nicer, doesn't it? Softer.

In the classic novel of government revisionism and propaganda as a means to mind control, 1984 by George Orwell, Wikipedia states of the protagonist, "Winston Smith works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents so they match the constantly changing current party line. This involves revising newspaper articles and doctoring photographs...The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect."

Sounds eerily like the AP's rulebook changed to drop terms labeling people in a negative way they decide should be a positive, or at least a neutral, doesn't it? Winston's job was to create Newspeak. Newspeak is a reduced language with fewer words which are constantly shifting. Undesirable concepts are erased.  Wayne Grytting wrote a book titled, "American Newspeak: The Mangling of Meaning for Power and Profit" which addresses this topic. Its blurb reads, "brings doubletalk up to date for the 21st century. ... [T]he book is sure to awaken whole new audiences to the grim but gripping reality of how far our culture has gone in the direction of Orwell's 1984."

A common language

Christians have a language contained in our stylebook which will never change. It is the bible. The cross is our focal point, the bible is the word by which we learn about our Commander in Chief and receive our marching orders, and love is the unifying factor as we go forward.

Think of how important it is for secular culture to control words and language, because it controls thought. Attempts to control language are impossible, though. People redefine morals, love, behavior, crime, law, and everything else as it suits.

You may be way ahead of me by now, but here is a certain scripture for us to consider:

"Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world." (Hebrews 1:1-2).

God speaks. He used pictures and symbols. He used events. He used prophets. But now He uses His son, aka, "THE WORD."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God." (John 1:1)

Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." (Luke 21:33)

It is language in the bible, the Word, that transforms us. We are in spiritual battle for souls but the entry point is the mind. Look what Paul says in Romans 12:2-

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

The world tries to conform us by altering the reality it is presenting to us via language. The bible's power through the Word transforms us. It is not a battle of flesh but through the mind. Look how often the mind, or thought, is mentioned:

Philippians 4:8, 1 Peter 1:13, Colossians 3:2, 1 Corinthians 2:16, Ephesians 4:20-24.

George Carlin was so right when he said that changing the language drains the life out of life. When we see constant changes in words and concepts in not just newspaper and media, but in bible translations, it is a direct spiritual attack going straight to the minds of those who read it.

Carlin also said that they think that by changing the words, they change the condition. Dropping the word 'homosexuality' from new bible translations and erasing its concept will not change the sinful condition of those who life that life.

Secular thought cannot transform, only the Word can transform! In one sense, we can pity the people and organizations that vainly try to control and transform through language. It is as vain as every lofty opinion. We are grateful that the Lord spoke to us in the word, and the Word will never pass away. It transforms, enlightens, and grows us in His likeness.

So...read it!