Built on the Rock

J. B. Shurk has a compelling article today at the American Thinker entitled Christians Persecuted and Killed Around the World in which he points out that Nigeria may be in the spotlight now, but Christians are being persecuted, jailed, and killed in Europe, China, India and other lands. President Trump can not take on the world here, which is what he is doing by threatening military action. Shurk first takes us on a brief tour of the world's hatred of Christianity.

In 2025, there is no part of the world that is safe for Christians. Leftist prosecutors in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States criminalize fundamental tenets of the Christian faith as discriminatory forms of “hate speech.” Chinese communists replace images of Jesus Christ with portraits of Xi Jinping. Hindus beat and murder Christians in India. Islamic nations sentence Christian converts to death. Nigerian Muslims attack Christian churches during prayer services and torture and murder so many Christian worshipers as to constitute genocide. The assassin who murdered Christian martyr Charlie Kirk allegedly did so because he believes that Charlie’s Christian teachings were “hateful.”

It is a dangerous time to be a Christian. Michael Snyder wrote an illuminating article a couple weeks ago entitled “Most of the Population of the World Lives in a Nation Where Christians Are Being Persecuted.” In a sober analysis, he takes the reader on a tour of Christian persecution, torture, and mass slaughter around the planet.

Children in China are prohibited from attending Christian church services, and the Chinese Communist Party rewrites Bible verses to support official pronouncements from the State. Sharing the gospel online is a crime, and Christian pastors are regularly arrested and “disappeared.” In India, Hindu terrorists set Christian churches and Bibles on fire and beat up and murder Christian parishioners. Muslims in Indonesia hunt down Christians as if they were animals. Muslims in Nigeria have massacred or abducted a hundred thousand Christians over the last six years and have destroyed some 20,000 Christian churches and schools. Islamic governments in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran discriminate against Christians, punish them ruthlessly for their beliefs, and execute anyone brave enough to convert to Christianity. In North Korea, Christianity is outlawed, and practicing Christians who are discovered are summarily executed or condemned to death in labor-intensive concentration camps.

We shouldn't be surprised by the fact that the world hates Christians. Indeed, Christ warned us saying in John 15:18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you." Why does the world hate Christians? Partly it is because of Christ's message. We sin, and God hates sinners. We can not, by anything we do, get into heaven. We stand condemned to hell. Luther thought of our shabby works as being like a big pile of stinking excrement (Luther was blunter, but you get the picture). God cannot stand it and turns his back on us. But Christ, by his death and resurrection has paid the price for our sins. We only have to believe that. Luther likens this to that big pile of stinking excrement covered in snow. But the world somehow wants to do things its own way by its own merit. Sacrifice enough lambs, pray 5 times a day with your head to the ground, whatever.  God doesn't care about these things.  You can go that route, of course, but that way lies sin and damnation. Instead, pick up your cross and follow the Way, the Truth and the Life.

I have mentioned Finland's attempts to subvert Christianity by prosecuting Päivi Räsänen for quoting the Bible concerning the nature of men and women.

In Finland, government prosecutors continue to harass Christians for quoting the Bible. In 2019, Päivi Räsänen — a medical doctor, longtime member of Parliament, Finland’s former Interior minister, and the wife of a pastor — used a Bible verse to criticize Finland’s state church for sponsoring an LGBT “pride” parade. After the prominent Finnish Christian publicly stated that males and females are biologically different, police investigators interrogated her for some thirteen hours, forced her to justify her Christian worldview, and demanded that she publicly apologize and recant her Christian beliefs. Because she would not do so and instead defended the authority of God’s Word, she was criminally charged for illegal “hate speech.” Prosecutors have repeatedly asked Finnish courts to “wipe the internet” of Räsänen’s media appearances and writings, in which she has used her medical education and Christian faith to distinguish men from women and to promote the Bible’s moral teachings.

Although two lower courts have acquitted her, prosecutors have appealed and now argue before Finland’s Supreme Court that quoting the Bible should be considered a criminal offense under the country’s war crimes laws. One of Räsänen’s attorneys, Lorcán Price, argues that the outcome of the case will reverberate across Europe because it addresses directly whether a Christian can publicly express the tenets of Christianity. “Can you speak the truth as you see it freely, even if it might offend somebody, or will you be prosecuted for hate speech?”

All over Europe there are laws that attempt to prevent the Church from speaking out against the evils being perpetrated. People in the formerly Great Britain are arrested for silently praying outside abortion clinics. The Canterbury Cathedral has been desecrated with graffiti. The old joke asking "is the pope catholic" have become serious questions. We now have Muslims praying in the Vatican to their god Satan. Still, as the 19th century hymn, "Built on the Rock" reminds us, this has all happened before:

Built on the Rock the Church shall stand,

Even when steeples are falling;

Crumbled have spires in every land;

Bells still are chiming and calling;

Calling the young and old to rest,

But above all the soul distrest,

Longing for rest everlasting.

Shurk concludes with:

Christ’s followers are suffering around the world. They are hunted, beaten, raped, burned, hanged, and slaughtered. The governments of formerly Christian countries insist on making Christ’s teachings a crime. Chinese, European, and American officials wish to censor the Bible. Christians must find faith and courage to face these evils now. Because much worse is sure to come.

Amen, brother.

Could the pope do more?

 Monica Showalter at the American Thinker has taken note of Trump's message to Nigerian officials that they better start protecting their Christians, who are being slaughtered by Muslim militias. Showalter puts the numbers at 7,000 killed this year alone. You can read her post at After massacres of Christians in Nigeria, Trump does the pope's job for him.  As much as I would like to see Trump send troops into Nigeria, I think it would be seen as Unconstitutional for the government to favor one religion over another. Would Trump send troops in to rescue Hindus, for example?

The pope, however, could do something more tangible than praying, though praying is powerful. Here me out. We have been here before, with Islam conquering huge swaths of Christendom and forcing conversion under threat of the sword. The pope then commissioned the Knights Templar. That was then. Now, the pope could establish a paramilitary force to go into countries like Nigeria to again rescue Christians who are being persecuted. Clearly in addition to being very careful about when and where to use such a force, diplomacy would be necessary. But the notion that Christians should be doormats, or second-class citizens was never intended. I suspect that the pope could get a lot of mileage out of the threat to use these forces in places like Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, or Afghanistan without having to actually send them in.

I haven't fully thought the idea out, but it is something the Vatican, as a sovereign could do. Should he?

A Post For A Sunday

Please read Grateful Calvin's twitchy post at 'I Am Going to Abhor Evil:' Nick Freitas Drops BIBLICAL FIRE on the Left's 'I'm Offended' Arguments. Virginia House of Delegates member Nick Freitas points out that he is glad when people espousing evil are offended by him. And he should be. Every Christian should hate what God hates, and God hates evil.

Please watch the embedded X post to hear Freitas' response to an 'offended' constituent. He has definitely nailed it. It is too bad that he doesn't intend to run again.  Virginia needs more like him.  But I understand. St. Paul tells us in the book of Romans not to associate ourselves with evil. For in doing so, the evil rubs off on us. That is why the LORD commanded the Israelites to thoroughly cleanse the land of Canaan of its former inhabitants. He didn't want any foreign gods being worshipped in His territory.

You will get a kick out of Freitas post, and it's a good way to start a Sunday.

NYC and Mamdani Deserve Each Other

 J. R. Dunn has a post today at the American Thinker entitled Let's not save the Dems this time. He makes a number of good points including one that is often attributed to Napoleon: “never interrupt when your enemy is in the process of destroying himself.”

As the clock ticks down the last days before the 2025 elections, we’re hearing more calls for the GOP and conservatives in general to intervene in the NYC election to prevent Zohran Mamdani from being elected mayor.

What we don’t hear is an answer to the question of why? Why, exactly, should the GOP and the MAGA movement waste time, effort, and political capital to prevent the Democrats from throwing themselves off the cliff? Why write another chapter in the never-ending saga of Republicans pulling Dem chestnuts out of the fire and the getting kicked in the face immediately afterward?

...snip...

The Dems, so we’re told, having come to their senses, will realize what the Republicans have spared them from and will be grateful. New York voters, with their customary insight and depth of perception, will reward the GOP with showers of votes. In other words, we’ll witness something that has never happened and never will.

What will happen instead is this: voters will see the GOP tossing away the principles and practices of MAGA just as they were beginning to bear fruit. They will see conservatives supporting one virulent social democrat over another for no rational reason. They will see the Uniparty in action. And they will respond as they always have: by walking away.

Dunn is correct here. New York voters have continually voted for Leftists like Bill DeBlasio and as Dunn notes elsewhere have spit on Rudy Giuliani who made New York again a tourist destination. What, pray tell, does the GOP owe to the party that started the Civil War, and apparently want to start another, who riot at the drop of a hat and maintain actual paid rioters. These people actively interfere with Trump's order to carry out the law and kick illegals out.  They flood the streets with criminals who should be in jail.  These people deserve everything Mamdani can deliver to NYC.

The impulse to save New York City doesn’t play, either. New York City doesn’t want to be saved. This is the city that elected Bill DeBlasio to two terms – in landslides, to boot. That sent Sandy O to Congress. That has reelected Chuck Schumer repeatedly. This is the city that had not one good word to say for Rudy Giuliani, the man who effectively destroyed the Mafia’s control of key city industries and who bought NYC an extra twenty years of life as mayor, when he was targeted by the Left. They’ve made their bed, and I wish them the joy of it.

I've highlighted the key issue. New York City doesn't want to be saved, didn't asked to be saved, and will just resent it if the GOP steps in to save them. There is another proverb here that applies: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." It reminds of Christians who think they are being kind by attempting to send missionaries to the unchurched. But all they do is make the people they are trying to save angry. Instead, they should stand ready to give a defense for why they have hope and let the Holy Spirit do the rest.

I encorage gentle readers to read the whole post.

Nutrient Partitioning and the Inability To Lose Fat

 Following onto yesterday's post, I get a weekly missive (I think they call these newsletters) from Dr. Michael Eades, one of two authors of The Protein Power Life Plan which advocates for a low carbohydrate lifestyle. Eades himself has said that the plan is really a high fat diet, but that the publishers felt this wouldn't sell because of the way fats have been demonized.

Featured in this week's Arrow is a piece by Adam Kosloff on nutrient partitioning entitled The Rats Who Starved to Death While Obese. The article is both disturbing and interesting. It is disturbing not because of the starvation of the rats, as disturbing as that is, but what it has to say about human obesity. It is also disturbing because it points to the blindness of doctors and dieticians to the suffering of their patients.  I encourage gentle readers to read Kosloff's article.  In many cases, these nutritionists are as cold as liquid nitrogen to our sufferings.

Using a low carbohydrate, ketogenic diet, I have gotten my weight down to 225 from a high of 307. Yet I have been unable to get any lower for at least 6 months. This despite starting a jogging program and keeping my calorie consumption around 1500-1800 calories per day. There is something else going on. At those low-calorie consumption levels, if the Calories In/Calories Out (CICO) formula worked I would be losing a pound every week and a half conservatively. But the Carb-insulin-hypothesis (CIH) doesn't explain the problem fully either. It gets closer but doesn't quite close the gap in understanding.

I have noted that I can gain weight, meaning fat, by just smelling a piece of pie. That may or may not be true, but it illustrates the problem. I have gained weight while fasting for a couple of days. Holiday eating consists of one meal, yet it takes weeks to get back into ketosis, and even then, the weight doesn't fall right off. As I stated above, I seem to have a lower limit to my weight that my body simply refuses to let go. I know of other people who have the same issues. There clearly is more to it than mere CICO.

(As a way to determine if I need to take in calories, if I am hungry, I eat protein.  If I don't have energy, I eat fats.  But I always have energy, so I am only concerned about protein intake which usually includes enough fats as well.)

Kosloff sums up his essay with three questions researchers should be asking:

The core questions should be along the lines of:

Why does the body partition fat the way it does?

Is that partitioning normal?

If not, what can be done about it?

These are the questions that actually matter.

And once we start asking these questions, perhaps we can stop blaming people for biology—and start figuring out how to fix it. Maybe then—just maybe—the torture of our mammalian cousins won’t have been entirely in vain.

The More Things Change, the More Things Stay the Same

I was at church yesterday evening rehearsing with the handbell choir.  Now you need to understand that we are currently experiencing stormy weather from at least two different storm systems with winds gusting to 35 miles per hour and rain that will continue for most of the week.  One of the ladies seemed surprised that I was there because I am an old fart and she thought couldn't get around well.  I pointed out that I jog 2 miles 3 times per week.  That surprised her.

Actually, it surprised me as well.  I thought I had run for the last time perhaps 25 years ago when I took to riding a bicycle.  I had always practiced running hard, and running hard all the time breaks the body down.  Bicycling did not break the body down, while still giving one the benefits of aerobic exercise.  Oh, and bicycling was fun, so much fun!

But feeling the need to build myself up after so much time spent in the hospital, then in getting radiation, I went for a walk.  But that was not enough to get the heart pumping.  I started jogging, it was too loosey-goosey to be called a "program," about 6 months into my recovery from cancer surgery.    Technically, I can call it a jog because both my feet are off the ground during every step.  But my pace is about the same as when I walk, about 20 minutes per mile.

Somewhere in the back of my mind was a memory from the early 1970s of a kind of training not unlike what I was experiencing called Long Slow Distance, or LSD.  LSD, the drug, was at that time a psychotropic drug that some proclaimed would open up the unused portion of the brain to all the wonders of the universe.  But it proved to be, as could be predicted, a massive failure.  LSD, the training method, turned out to be the then latest re-packaging of what has been learned and relearned over the generations.

Training by jogging long slow distances was popularized by then Runner's World editor Joe Henderson.  At the time, Henderson noted that a number of very successful runners, mostly distance runners, people who ran anywhere from 1 mile to the marathon, were training this way.  In his book Long Slow Distance: The Humane Way to Train Henderson points out that the speed that one is capable of running is a function of genetics. You are either born fast, or for most of us, we are not. Constantly training for speed will only shave a few seconds off your basic speed. But by constantly training for speed by doing fast intervals you will inevitable injure yourself time and again and may do more damage than can be repaired.  For the great majority of runners who run for fitness and the occasional race for a personal best, is it really worth it?  Only you can decide, but the fact there is an alternative is eye-opening.

By contrast, LSD is training for endurance. You can train yourself to run for fantastic distances. The marathon has in the years since been outclassed as the world's most grueling race by iron man and ultra-marathon races up to 100 miles. I am not endorsing such extremes that test the body to the limits of what it is capable of doing.  Such extreme events carry their own problems of injury and damage. The current record, by the way, for the 100-mile race is held by Zack Bitter at a blistering 6 minute 48 second per mile pace.

Speaking of Zach Bitter, he eats a low carbohydrate, ketogenic diet for both his training and racing.  The diet is very high in animal products.  While most running and marathon training coaches still endorse a high carbohydrate diet, carb loading before races, and using carb heavy gels during races, Professor Tim Noakes has shown that using fats to fuel a race rather than glycogen and carbs is a more efficient way to run.  Even very thin runners have enough fat on their bodies to sustain a full marathon without eating a single bite and without bonking.

Following a carnivore diet. basically beef, butter, bacon and eggs, I have put Dr. Noakes finding into practice myself and find that along with jogging, it is slowly changing my body, slowing down the aging process.  It will not make me live longer, but it will allow me to live better with the time I have left.

I recently got a copy of Joe Henderson's book again and have been reading it.  The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems.  You can also watch an interview between Henderson, now 82 years old, and two of his running desciples here. Enjoy.

Another Loss in the Formerly Great Britain

 Fay Voshell at the American Thinker today has an article entitled An Enemy Has Done This that speaks to the downfall of the Anglican Communion in the formerly Great Britain. She is writing about the recent defacement of Canterbury Cathedral by graffiti "artists" at the invitation of the Dean of the Cathedral. Like everything else in the formerly Great Britain, the elites have attempted to smear s**t on everything from literature, to art, to the religion of the people.

So much is true. But Voshell, of all people should understand that a Cathedral is not where the LORD lives, but it is in the hearts and minds of the people themselves. Voshell should go ahead and name the enemy of whom she speaks, for it is none other than the Devil himself. As in Eden, these clerics are in a childish rebellion against our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ.  That these childish, rebellious little people were allowed to put on the robes of pastors and to pollute the gospel message is an utter disgrace.

It is no wonder that the Anglican Communion has been shedding people right and left.  This happens whenever the gospel is watered down to conform to the world and its sinful nature.  In congregations where the pastors preach the true, real gospel they are growing, having children and are attracting escapees from other denominations.

And what is that true gospel?  In the words of Pastor Kevin Martin at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Raleigh, North Carolina:

The good news is not that Jesus loves you just the way you are—so you should feel good about your lousy sinful self. NO! The good news is you can feel good about Jesus, the LORD who took on all your sins, damned and died of them on the cross, so that sharing his dying and rising, by faith alone in his Gospel and sacraments, you have the promise of rising free of your lousy old sinful self, one fine day…

The good news is that just like Jesus beat the crap out of Jacob at the Jabbok last week, so he beats us—up and down—sharing his dying with us daily, so this lousy old sinner we are so sick and tired of will get drowned, engulfed, and die everyday, flooded by Baptism’s cleansing waters, fed with Jesus’ body and blood, torn down and rebuilt daily into Christ’s Image.

So, to Fay Voshell, whom I like as a writer, and if she is reading this, and to others who are thoroughly disgusted by events in the Anglican church, run, don't walk, run from there and join a congregation that preaches the true gospel message.