Tuesday, March 31, 2015

What Easter Doesn't Tell You

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about Easter. This follows this post about Iran. This follows this post about Israel and Blood Moons. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.
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What Easter Doesn't Tell You




Could it be that Easter traditions leave something missing in the story of Jesus Christ?

Basket of decorated Easter eggs.
Source: Martin Poole/Photodisc/Thinkstock
What do brightly colored eggs, rabbits, decorated cakes and sunrise services have to do with the Jesus Christ of the Bible?
There are Christians who believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior who do not observe any Easter traditions. I happen to be one of them. Let me explain why.
I’ve learned that Easter doesn’t tell you the whole story about Christ’s life, death and resurrection. If something is missing—and there is—then it changes the entire story. What’s missing and why is crucial for you to understand!

What do Easter customs have to do with Jesus Christ?

Did you know that Easter as a celebration has nothing to do with Jesus Christ?
The name itself doesn’t mean Jesus’ resurrection, as some might assume. The word Easter actually comes from the name of an ancient Babylonian fertility goddess worshipped long before Jesus was born!
A quick Internet search will reveal the origins of Easter bunnies, colored eggs, hot cross buns and the sunrise service. You’ll find that these traditions associated with Easter for the most part come from ancient, idolatrous, pre-Christian fertility celebrations. They were part of religious rites a long time before the time of Christ, and they have nothing to do with what the Bible instructs or the practice of the early Church.
Perhaps none of this matters to you. Maybe you believe Easter customs are fun as part of your worship of Christ or family traditions. If that’s the case, let me show you from God’s Word why it should matter.

Exchanging truth for lies

The Church Jesus founded had a very clear understanding of who He was and how to worship Him. But over many decades things changed. Early Christians became confused and then lost the plain biblical teaching about God the Father and Jesus Christ.
How could people who believed in God possibly let that happen? One reason is that we all have a natural tendency to forget the things we learn. The early Church learned the true faith by the teachings of Christ and the apostles. But we can tell from the very early writings of the New Testament that heresy was beginning to spread in the Church. False teachings were beginning to gain ground.
The apostle Paul warned that some were already flirting with a false gospel (Galatians:1:6). The apostle Peter warned that “there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them” (2 Peter:2:1).
In the years after the death of the original apostles, other false teachings began creeping into the Church. Among them was a distortion of the truth about the death and resurrection of Jesus.
As we just read, Peter warned that there was a danger of “denying the Lord who bought them”—that is, replacing the clear truth about Jesus Christ and His teachings on salvation and eternal life with pagan myths and falsehood. Yet despite Peter’s clear warning, many bought into the denial.

Pagan myths at the heart of Easter

Easter evolved from a story about an ancient god named Tammuz. The story of Tammuz is at the heart of the pagan world—and at the heart of Easter. It’s a story of a never-ending annual cycle without meaning, direction or purpose. In this myth, Tammuz died every year at the beginning of winter and was “resurrected” in the spring by a goddess named Ishtar.
Did you notice that name— Ishtar? Does it sound familiar?
That’s because the word Easter ultimately comes from the name of this ancient false goddess, Ishtar. So much of what people do today to celebrate Easter is nothing more than customs that come directly from the way ancient people worshipped their goddess Ishtar. Why and how did this happen? People had embraced the Ishtar and Tammuz myths and related stories for centuries. In the decades following Jesus and the apostles, as Christianity spread across the world, people started blending these myths into the true story of Christ.
Eventually the fake stories replaced the true one. For the corrupted church leadership taking control at the time, it was convenient to blend pagan myths into biblical truth to attract more people to the church—the more to hold power over. It’s a recurring story told often in the Bible.
But the life of Tammuz and other pagan gods is meaningless when it comes to salvation and what God is really doing with human life. Only God coming to live in the flesh could open the door of salvation for the human creation. Borrowing from false pagan myths to create a “Christian” story doesn’t work. It’s nothing more than empty, meaningless tradition.
But is it ever popular! Every year there are parades and Easter sunrise services. In America, Easter egg rolling takes place annually on the White House lawn.
People dress in their finest, and for many this is the one of perhaps two or three times a year they actually attend a church service. Easter services, even for casual believers, ease their conscience. Coupled with Good Friday, Easter observance becomes a long weekend of leisure and worship tradition.

Easter non-existent in the record of the early Church

About now you may be thinking, “All of this really doesn’t matter because I do it to honor God.” But it does matter. Something is missing in this story. What’s missing is truth!
What’s missing is understanding of the way to eternal life through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus came in the flesh and showed us, through His death and resurrection, the way into the Kingdom of God. He made possible the most awesome reality—the potential for you and me to become the very children of God in the family of God, entering eternity crowned with infinite glory and honor.
You may be surprised to learn that Easter is nowhere found in the story of Jesus and His followers. The book of Acts, which tells the story of the apostles and the Church in its first decades, has no account at all of Easter. The apostles constantly preached the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But they put this in the context of the true biblical festivals they already knew and observed.
These festivals were central to the life of the Church of God in the first century. As recorded in Acts:2:1, the Church was gathered and given the Holy Spirit on the biblical feast of Pentecost. Later, in Acts:20:6, Luke referred to key events taking place during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Another festival, the Day of Atonement, is also mentioned in Acts:27:9. The weekly Sabbath, another Holy Day of the Bible, is featured several times as the apostle Paul taught both Jews and gentiles (non-Israelites) alike on that day (Acts:13:14, Acts:13:27, Acts:13:42, Acts:13:44; Acts:16:13; Acts:17:2; Acts:18:4).
On another occasion, Paul told the gentile Christians in the city of Corinth to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (1 Corinthians:5:8). He told them to keep these days “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”—that is, bearing in mind the underlying spiritual reality these days represent.

Resurrection taught, but no Easter

Easter celebrations were nowhere in the picture during the early days of the Church. But Jesus Christ’s resurrection as found in the Bible was.
Notice the first sermon that Peter gave on the feast of Pentecost. Speaking of the prophecies about the Messiah that King David gave, Peter said: “He, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades [the grave], nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up of which we are all witnesses”(Acts:2:31-32, emphasis added throughout).
When he was called to task for healing a lame man, Peter was “filled with the Holy Spirit” and said, “Let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole” (Acts:4:8-10).
Paul preached to a city in Greece for three straight Sabbaths “that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying ‘This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ’” (Acts:17:2-3). Again, throughout the New Testament, it’s the resurrection of Jesus Christ that was taught. But it is never found in connection with an Easter service.
Christ’s death and resurrection are clearly connected with the Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. Jesus was killed as “our Passover” (1 Corinthians:5:7). He was buried just as the Days of Unleavened Bread began in that year. Three days and three nights later He was resurrected during this seven-day festival. And He appeared to the disciples the morning after His resurrection on the same day that He was accepted by the Father.
All this was clearly understood by the Church. It was part of the apostles’ doctrine or teaching in the early days. Celebrating Easter was not part of the story. When it did come, it introduced doctrinal error!
Easter enters the picture long after the apostles. The story of how it became inserted into the teachings about the resurrection is preserved for us in history.
Decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, as the apostles began to pass from the scene, the Christian faith began changing. Before long it was transformed into something they wouldn’t have recognized. The false teachers that Peter warned about introduced false teaching about Christ’s death and resurrection, with some elements taken from pagan myths, and a great uproar resulted.
This is known in history as the Quartodecimen Controversy. That’s a big word, but the name really means the 14th day of the month, referring to the day the Passover was observed. Some were beginning to keep an Easter tradition borrowed from pagan myths instead of the biblical feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread.
The controversy became so intense that some church leaders excommunicated others who wouldn’t go along with them and the newer teaching about Easter. History records what happened next.

A powerful defense of God’s truth

A bishop of Rome named Victor, who was advocating for Easter, got so bold as to put out of the church another minister named Polycrates, who was standing up for the biblical teaching regarding Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Polycrates gave one of the most spirited and inspiring defenses of truth ever recorded. He was not about to abandon his conscience or faith for a pagan myth. At great cost, he rose in defense of the faith. His words are recorded for us:
“We, therefore, observe the genuine day [of Passover]; neither adding thereto nor taking therefrom. For in Asia great lights have fallen asleep, which shall rise again in the day of the Lord’s appearing, in which he will come with glory from heaven, and will raise up all the saints . . .”
The great lights in Asia that he was talking about were members and leaders of the first-century Church who first received the truth and kept it. They died in the faith and they await the resurrection. Among those Polycrates mentioned were the apostle John and other early men and women.
Polycrates went on to say this:
“All these observed the fourteenth day of the Passover according to the gospel, deviating in no respect, but following the rule of faith. Moreover, I, Polycrates, who am the least of all of you, according to the tradition of my relatives, some of whom I have followed. For there were seven, my relatives [who were] bishops, and I am the eighth; and my relatives always observed the day when the people threw away the leaven.”
Here Polycrates mentions the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He was the eighth generation of his family to keep these biblical feasts, and he wasn’t about to abandon what he knew to be biblical truth. Notice how he concludes:
“I, therefore, brethren, am now sixty-five years in the Lord, who having conferred with the brethren throughout the world, and having studied the whole of the sacred Scriptures, am not at all alarmed at those things with which I am threatened, to intimidate me. For they who are greater than I, have said, ‘we ought to obey God rather than men.’”
This is an inspiring but little-known story about how one man stood up against the Easter traditions that crept into the Church of God and overturned the true faith.

Does it matter to God?

But what does this matter? So many times on these issues we encounter the reasoning, “But if we have turned a pagan idea into a Christian idea, isn’t that acceptable to God?” And sometimes we hear: “Christ conquers paganism.” People reason around the issue, and as ideas are repeated again and again, they eventually become accepted.
But this doesn’t square with God’s instructions, which are actually crystal-clear: “Do not be trapped into following their [the pagan nations’] example in worshiping their gods. Do not say, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ You must not do this to the Lord your God. These nations have committed many detestable acts that the Lord hates, all in the name of their gods. Carefully obey all the commands I give you. Do not add to them or subtract from them” (Deuteronomy:12:30-32, New Living Translation, 1996).
It’s hard to get plainer than that. God says He hates the mixing in of pagan practices to worship Him!

Easter obscures important truths

What Easter doesn’t tell you is that you are missing out on the wonderful meaning of Passover and reconciliation through the death of Jesus—as Easter focuses only on part of the story and then mixes it with error.
What do you need to know? You need to know that Christ died according to the Scripture as our Passover Lamb, in fulfillment of the many prophecies that foretold His coming, His suffering, His death and His resurrection.
You need to know that the Passover observance, as instituted by Christ the night before He died, fills this need.
You need to know that the Feast of Unleavened Bread shows the life of the resurrected Christ, the true Bread of Life of which we are to partake, and His power today. Because He was resurrected, we have the power to live a life of hope and meaning with the power of God in you. It is that spiritual power, God’s Holy Spirit, that can fill the emptiness in your life, giving you meaning and understanding in the midst of a confusing world.
It is this festival that Paul taught the gentile world to observe. This Festival of Unleavened Bread is what you can observe today to realize the full meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
You need to know that Easter misses all of these vitally important truths about Jesus Christ!

No room for error

Paul said in 1 Corinthians:15:19 that without Christ’s resurrection, we are of all people most pitiable. The truth of the resurrection must be told, sticking to what the Bible actually reveals. There is no room for error and myth in this most important event.
Look at what you know, or what you think you know about the resurrection. The truth about the resurrection is a key to opening a relationship with Christ and the Father based on fact and truth. (Be sure to read “ Saved by His Life ,” “ Christ’s Resurrection: Key to Our Salvation ” ).
Paul said, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians:15:20).
Because Christ was resurrected from the dead and lives today, you have assurance that you, too, can enter eternal life. No humanly devised holiday can teach you what God reveals through His Holy Days. You need to educate yourself with the full story!

Going in to fight against licenses for illegals and need backup‏

An interesting article from www.alipac.us about ALIPAC's leader in N.C. This follows this post about Jeb Bush's stand on immigration. This follows this post about Texas immigration bills. This follows this post on HOW amnesty is funded in ways other than the DHS. Remember, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! Also, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
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Going in to fight against licenses for illegals and need backup‏

ALIPAC Activists,

I'm heading to the NC General Assembly right now and I need your backup. We learn how to win in NC and then export what we learn to other states.

Please 1. Read, understand, and help distribute today's press release. 2. Call the members of the NC Judiciary I committee to oppose Rep. Harry Warren's HB 328 'Licenses for illegal aliens bill" 3. Connect with your state groups and scan for local license and tuition for illegals bills.

release
GOP Lawmakers Push Licenses for Illegal Aliens, Rejected by Large Majorities
http://www.alipac.us/gop-lawmakers-push-licenses-illegal-aliens-rejected-large-majorities-3541/

"Im calling to ask Rep. ____ to oppose Rep. Harry Warren's HB 328 that would give licenses to illegal aliens which more than 77% of all American oppose."

ChairmanRep. Daughtry 919-733-5605
Vice ChairmanRep. Burr 919-733-5908
Vice ChairmanRep. Jackson 919-733-5974
MembersRep. Arp, 919-715-3007
Rep. L. Hall, 919-733-5872
Rep. Hardister, 919-733-5191
Rep. Howard, 919-733-5904
Rep. G. Martin, 919-733-5773
Rep. McNeill, 919-715-4946
Rep. Robinson, 919-733-5931
Rep. Steinburg 919-733-0010

Our directory of state level groups that can help you...
http://www.alipac.us/f8/list-state-national-groups-fighting-against-illegal-immigration-amnesty-314291/



Going in now personally!

William Gheen and The ALIPAC Team
www.alipac.us

Monday, March 30, 2015

Editorial: Whose side is the U.S. on in the Middle East?

Editorial

After attacking the ally of the U.S., Israel, the U.S. seems indecisive about whose side to be on in the Sunni vs. Shi'ite war in the Middle East! Or even if we should be there at all.

Pro-Abortion Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid Retiring, Flip-Flopped on Abortion

An interesting story from www.lifenews.com about Harry Reid. This follows this post about abortion and human trafficking. This follows this post about Loretta Lynch. For two very interesting books click HERE.
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Pro-Abortion Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid Retiring, Flip-Flopped on Abortion

National Steven Ertelt       Washington, DC



Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, an ardent abortion advocate, announced today that he is retiring from the Senate and will not seek re-election in 2016. His retirement paves the way for pro-life advocates to elect a pro-life replacement in Nevada, where his seat would be a competitive race.
Harry Reid started his career in Congress as a supposedly pro-life lawmaker — voting often for pro-life limits on abortion in the years following Roe v. Wade. But he flip-flopped as he ascended the ladder to Democratic Party leadership in the Senate and turned into a reliable abortion advocate who voted in favor of a statement supporting Roe v. Wade and the 57 million abortions on unborn babies that have resulted from the Supreme Court decision.
“I have had time to ponder and to think,” he said in a video released by his office, referring to his recent time off as a result of an injury. “We’ve got to be more concerned about the country, the Senate, the State of Nevada than us and as a result of that, I’m not going to run for reelection.”
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!


“The decision they I’ve made has absolutely nothing to do with my injury, it has nothing to do with my being minority leader, and it certainly has nothing to do with my ability to be reelected, because the path to reelection is much easier than it probably has been any time that I’ve run for reelection,” he said.
The abortion advocate is clearly worried about republicans winning his Senate seat.
“We have to make sure that the Democrats take control of the Senate again. And I feel it is inappropriate for me to soak up all those resources on me when I could be devoting those resources to the caucus, and that’s what I intend to do,” he said in the video.
Reid’s retirement will pave the way for another abortion activists to lead Democrats in the Senate. Possible contenders for his leadership post include Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, Vice Chair of the Conference Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate Democratic Conference Secretary. each of those Democrats are stridently pro-abortion.
For Reid’s seat, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval is a possible Republicans and Democrats may include former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, and former Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller.
Republicans have a sense that they could pickup the seat.
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“On the verge of losing his own election and after losing the majority, Senator Harry Reid has decided to hang up his rusty spurs,” said NRSC Executive Director Ward Baker in a statement. “Not only does Reid instantly become irrelevant and a lame duck, his retirement signals that there is no hope for the Democrats to regain control of the Senate,” he added. “With the exception of Reid, every elected statewide official in Nevada is Republican and this race is the top pickup opportunity for the GOP.”
As LifeNews previously reported, pro-abortion Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid lost his position when pro-life candidates took over the U.S. Senate. This is very good for the pro-life movement because Reid has repeatedly supported pro-abortion President Barack Obama. He’s also refused to allow pro-life bills to come to a vote in the Senate.
Thomas Jefferson said that the care and protection of human life was the first order of business for any decent government, but Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has a fundamentally different opinion of the pro-life bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks. He called it America’s “worst nightmare.”
In 2013, after the passage of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R 1797) through the U.S House of Representatives, Reid said that we shouldn’t focus on “fringe issues” like late abortion. However, he failed to realize it is those who support late abortion that are on the most radical fringe of the pro-abortion movement.
Even Reid’s own Mormon bishop has taken him to task.
In November, Mark Peredes, a Mormon bishop, wrote in his blog, “Good Riddance to Harry Reid, the Mormon Senate Leader,” that his support of abortion rights runs contrary to church positions and are an “embarrassment”.
He elaborated, “Of all of yesterday’s election results, the one that made me dance a jig was the ousting of Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. The Senate’s most powerful perch will no longer be occupied by a man who does not take his religion seriously.”



Wknd Box Office: Get Hard, A Girl Like Her, The Salvation, Wild Tales

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Get Hard, A Girl Like Her, The Salvation, Wild Tales


By Debbie Schlussel
Can’t really recommend any of the new movies in theaters, this weekend. (I did not see “Home.”)
gethardagirllikeher

salvationwildtales

* “Get Hard“: Absolutely awful. This disgusting, racist (anti-White), Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart vehicle, is a complete waste of time. And, for a comedy, it’s remarkably unfunny. I laughed about 3-5 times. Mostly it’s just gross, unless your idea of funny is Will Ferrell trying to practice oral sex on a gay stranger in a bathroom stall–complete with dangling penis front and center on the screen. If this is what now defines comedy, count me out. Ditto for at least two scenes of Will Ferrell’s naked butt. Um, no thanks. No thanks, also, to the numerous scenes of topless women gratuitously inserted “just ‘cuz.”
The sub-text–no, actually, there’s nothing “sub” about it; it’s quite overt–of this movie is that White people are rich, privileged, and racist against Blacks. Oh, and don’t forget that White people are pigs with money who callously preach “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” to Black people (and that advice is wrong because . . . ?) and assume that all Black men have served time in prison.


Ferrell plays a very rich higher-up at an investment fund. He’s engaged to marry the boss’ daughter and lives the charmed life. He lives in a mansion in Bel-Air, is building a larger mansion, and has a full staff of Hispanic servants. Everything is handed to him and he doesn’t seem to work too hard. But, then, he’s accused of a Madoff-style scam and defrauding lots of average people of their retirement money. He’s innocent and fights the charges, but gets ten years in prison. So, with 30 days until he’s due to report to San Quentin, he hires Kevin Hart, the guy who washes his expensive car, to train him and get him in shape for survival as a White guy in prison. Hart has never been in prison, but Ferrell, being your “typical” White person (in the movie’s eyes), assumes that Hart, being a Black man, has served prison time. So, Hart, desperate for cash to pay to move his family to a better neighborhood so his daughter can go to a better school, assumes the role and agrees to do the job for $30,000.
Get it? The Black guy is a decent, smart, hard-working man working hard and struggling to get his nuclear family (a wife, one daughter) a better life. The White man is a racist idiot who doesn’t work hard, has lots of naked sex with his hot fiancee in front of his minority servants, and has had an easy life. Fiction that could’ve been written by Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Blah, blah, blah.
Hart consults his cousin (played by real-life recurring prisoner and rapper T.I.), a gangsta resident of South Central L.A., for advice on how to get Ferrell into shape. But after weeks of trying to train Ferrell how to fight people and be tough, he finally tells Ferrell to learn how to give oral sex in order to avoid being anally raped in prison, so they go to a gay restaurant where Ferrell picks a random gay man and tries to practice oral sex on him (the aforementioned bathroom stall scene). Yes, this is what passes for a movie in 2015 America.
In the end, Hart is Ferrell’s only friend and helps him prove his innocence and avoid jail time.
As I watched this movie, I thought of the story of James Robertson, a Detroit man who worked hard and walked 21 miles to and from his factory job every day, just to make ends meet on a meager two hours of sleep each night. I thought about how Robertson finally got a car and $350,000 in donations online to get a better life, all because a White investment adviser befriended Robertson and got the story into the Detroit media, and all because a White college student set up the online GoFundMe endeavor. I thought about all the mostly White people who donated the money to this man, the White-owned car dealership that gave Robertson a free car, and the White advisory team which is working gratis to advise Robertson and manage and invest his new-found wealth.
That’s an inspiring story I would love to see on film–a hard-working Black man helped by an army of good, decent White people. But you’ll never see that on the silver screen. It doesn’t fit Hollywood’s narrative of race in America in 2015.
Instead, we get this garbage.
FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR ISIS BEHEADINGS
karlmarxmovies.jpgkarlmarxmovies.jpgkarlmarxmovies.jpgkarlmarxmovies.jpgplus.jpgobamasmilingsmallerobamasmilingsmallerobamasmilingsmallerobamasmilingsmallerplus.jpgisisbeheadingisisbeheadingisisbeheadingisisbeheading
Watch the trailer . . .

* “A Girl Like Her“: I’m not sure if this “Made in Michigan” movie was funded by the Michigan taxpayers via the Michigan film tax credits. But I certainly hope not. It was long, slow, and boring. While I sympathize with the character in the movie, who is constantly bullied by the popular girl and her “posse” of friends, this has been done before in two recent movies, with almost the exact same story line.
The story: a high school student tries to commit suicide, after being constantly harassed and bullied by the popular girl in school. The bullied girl is in a coma for most of the movie and then it flashes back to what happened. Done in a faux-documentary style, the movie interviews her friends and the lying, bullying popular girl. The victimized girl has a male best friend, who convinced her to wear a secret camera, disguised as a pin, to capture the bullying, and he shows the video to the woman doing the documentary.
Like I said, this same story line–about a sensitive, nice, innocent high school student being harassed and bullied by the popular kids, both in person and online, and then trying to commit suicide–has been done in two recent movies, “Disconnect” (read my review) and “Men, Women & Children” (read my review). And the outcome is almost exactly the same. This wasn’t bad, but it was too slow-moving, and I felt I’d seen it a few times before (and I had). Nothing objectionable but also nothing new here, and I wouldn’t pay ten bucks to see it.
HALF A REAGAN
halfreagan.jpg
Watch the trailer . . .

* “The Salvation“: I like a good western, so I was excited to see this. But I can’t recommend this movie at all, despite its suspense. This Danish western, which takes place in small-town America in the 1870s, is very violent, very dark, and very depressing, and there is little payoff at the end. Watching the endless, senseless, brutal, up-close, bloody killing of innocent people was painful. Watching the man at the center of it try to make things right and get the bad guys simply didn’t satisfy much, when, in movies like this, it should. The excessive violence and killing by the bad guys was long, slow, and disturbing. The payback was far too little and far too fast.
And it seems clear to me that this deeply troubling movie is a deliberately negative portrayal of the American West and Manifest Destiny by hateful Europeans. All of the Americans in this movie are either pure evil (driven, of course, by business desires for oil-rich land) or feckless cowards. The heroes are tough Danish soldier immigrants. Oh, and by the way, one of the cowardly townspeople is both a sheriff and a priest. Yet, he’s involved in aiding and abetting the evildoers in the movie. Many of the evildoers in this movie are no different than ISIS, and I think that was supposed to be the message about America, here.
The story: a Danish immigrant (Mads Mikkelsen) in a small American Western town is reunited with his beautiful wife and young son, who’ve come to live with him in the American West. Traveling in a stagecoach to their home, their two fellow stagecoach passengers terrorize them and destroy the family forever. At gunpoint, one of the men throws Mikkelsen from the stagecoach. Then, they rape his wife and kill her and the son. Mikkelsen finds them and kills them. But Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the gangster brother of one of the killed men, comes to town and tells the town’s sheriff that he and the town must find his brother’s murderer and first provide two townfolk to be killed if the murderer isn’t found by noon. It turns out that Morgan leads an outlaw gang which has terrorized the town for years. He demands exorbitant protection fees from the poor town every month.
The town’s sheriff, who is, again, also a priest, convinces an old lady and forces an amputee to be sacrificed and killed at noon. Morgan arrives and shoots them in the head, then murders a third person. He also murders others, and tells the townfolk they must turn in his brother’s murderer or he will charge them double their protection fees and kill even more people. The fearful, weak residents of the town turn Mikkelsen in to Morgan, who ties him up and leaves him outside to die, after he’s been severely beaten. But, soon, Mikkelsen’s brother shows up to rescue him, and they fight back . . . or try to. It turns out that all of the terrorizing and all the murder committed by Morgan is to acquire the land of the town and force everyone out, so that an oil company can have the valuable land.
Not worth ten bucks, not worth wasting 1.5 hours of your life you’ll never get back, not worth sitting through brutal, gratuitous, pointless violence, and not worth subjecting yourself to European filmmakers’ dark view of America when they’ve got plenty to look to in their own backyards.
This could have been a great action film in which the evildoers get theirs and things end happily. Instead, it’s just a naked snuff film. I liked Viggo-Mortensen-lookalike Mads Mikkelsen for his excellent portrayal of a man falsely accused of child abuse in “The Hunt” (read my mini-review). He’s handsome and a great actor. Mikkelsen’s very likable in this movie as well, despite the unlikability of the movie. But shame on him for taking a paycheck to participate in this violent, brutal, unnecessary propaganda.
THREE MARXES PLUS THREE OBAMAS PLUS THREE ISIS BEHEADINGS
karlmarxmovies.jpgkarlmarxmovies.jpgkarlmarxmovies.jpgplus.jpgobamasmilingsmallerobamasmilingsmallerobamasmilingsmallerplus.jpgisisbeheadingisisbeheadingisisbeheading
Watch the trailer . . .

* “Wild Tales [Relatos Salvajes]“: This long, slow, boring Brazilian/Argentinian film with English subtitles is supposed to show six short stories of distressed people or stories about revenge (these were the explanations in two different descriptions of the movie I read before watching it). Normally, I would like something like this. But the stories, except maybe for the first one, were mostly slow, boring, and uninteresting. Although the ideas for the plots were intriguing, the follow-through–not so much. The first, in which passengers on a plane, all learn why they are on a flight when it is too late, is well done. The rest, not so much. Even a story about a waitress serving a mobster who destroyed her family earlier in life, isn’t, as she doesn’t want his food poisoned. I wouldn’t pay money to see this, and I’m sorry I paid two hours of my life to watch.
HALF A REAGAN
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Watch the trailer . . .






Friday, March 27, 2015

People Mean What They Say Even in Iran!

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about Iran. This follows this post about Starbucks race together campaign. This follows this post about Israel and Blood Moons.This follows this post about Easter. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.
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People Mean What They Say


When Iran's religious leaders says "Death To America" it might be good to listen.


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[Darris McNeely] People mean what they say. I was always taught that words have consequences. I was listening recently to the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, talking to a group of supporters in a kind of a big, mass gathering, and he was talking about the Iranian nuclear efforts that they are making to develop a nuclear bomb, the talks that are going on with western nations to deal with this issue, when someone in the audience shouted out, “Death to America!”. “Death to America!” And of course he said, of course, “Death to America!”, because of what they are doing and trying to strangle Iran. And I’m wondering, are people listening? Are leaders and negotiators at the table in Switzerland and wherever these talks are going on really listening and understanding that sometimes in the world, people do mean what they say? This has been brought home to us in the talk of late. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came and spoke before Congress a few weeks ago, and he sounded a clear warning of what a nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East would be like. And the danger’s not only for the State of Israel but for the other nations and even the western nations in Europe and the United States.
What’s taking place in the Middle East right now is a great, dangerous place. Iraq is in flames with ISIS and Iranian involvement there. Syria has been undergoing its civil war. Yemen has also been overtaken by some insurrection. Libya and other places, and then of course we have this matter of Iran, who’s really acting like the ancient Persian Empire, and that has not escaped the attention of people who understand history and what’s taking place today.
And so, when you look at this and you see pictures that people have had in Iran of the Statue of Liberty with a death face on it, you have to realize that, hey, this is sometimes very serious, and people do mean what they say. And we should listen to what their words are really telling us.
In Psalm:55:20, the psalmist is talking about being betrayed by those that he knew and he was close to. And it says, “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart; His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.” Kind of reverse that, as you apply it to what’s being said in Iran today, that their mouth is not very smooth – in fact, their war is on their tongue. And their words are not soft like oil – their words are like drawn swords if what they say is “Death to America” or “Death to Israel”, or France, or England, or any other nation that doesn’t subscribe to their particular worldview.
It’s a dangerous world, and we should at least understand that as we pray for God’s Kingdom, and certainly to pray for a bit of wisdom and discernment among those that do have the responsibilities of leadership in the world today.
That’s BT Daily . Join us next time.
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