As my Grandma might've said when presenting me - upon my 16th birthday - with my forever after beloved Concise Oxford Dictionary...so's I could henceforth 'get the last word in every argument'...
...they say that sometimes it pays to lose an argument and keep a friend, or - in this case - to lose a battle and ultimately win the war (by choosing one's battles wisely)...
Having had a little experience in the same, yet not remotely equating the present situation between Israel and Iran with such personal 'trivia', nevertheless...
with the ongoing Israeli airstrikes upon Iranian military targets in Syria (amidst its ongoing, multifaceted, multidimensional, multinational *'civil war')...
...let's just say - without being overly dramatic or sensational or wild-eyed or cynical or pessimistic - that an all-out - potentially nuclear - war in (at least) the Middle East is not just 'on the cards', it actually, really seems to be drawing inexorably closer and closer...
...as the famed Doomsday Clock moves ever nearer towards that fateful midnight hour...
May God save us from the shortsighted stupidity of men (**for men are almost invariably calling the shots)...for only the LORD Almighty can possibly do so...
*However inherently self-contradictory such a thing obviously is.
**Although the Israeli military (and Government itself) doubtless has ***any number of hawkish women in its ranks as well; whereas vis-a-vis Israel's patron-state, the United States of America, noted investigative journalist John Pilger argued (in the run-up to the 2016 American presidential election) that the world had more to fear from a hawkish Hillary Clinton presidency...endlessly 'upping the ante' against the likes of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran...than from a Trump presidency, however distasteful the latter may well be to the refined and cultured sensibilities of the 'average man [and woman] in the street'...
***And no, though Israel's celebrated leader Golda Meir, like her generational contemporaries Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, would hardly be classified or categorized as a dove, she was at heart a measured and sensible person who ****'had an understanding of the times, to know what ought to be done.'
****To paraphrase the great Older Testament prophet Daniel, in regards, admittedly, to 'the people of God' in truth...i.e. not those who may be considered such purely by dint of their happenstance birth, but because they truly, genuinely follow in the footsteps of their forefather of faith, 'father' Abraham.
****Said verse being 1 Chronicles 12:32 - any version, esp. The (Authorized) King James Bible.
(Quite unexpected) Epilog(ue) - a couple days on (Friday, January 25th NZ-time, in fact):
The truth is usually odder than fiction, as they say, and thus and so would'ya believe that I just heard (on RNZ National's regular weekdays' 'World Watch' programme) a reference to this selfsame doomsday clock...and - believe it or otherwise - in connection with none other than the now former Californian Governor Jerry Brown ('incidentally' subject of my previously posted blogpost no less!)
Apparently the */**Institute of Atomic Science has recently decided to keep said doomsday clock at the two minutes to midnight setting it has been on over the preceding year. Unsure at this stage if Mr Brown has since leaving office been appointed to this agency, but anyhow, in regards to this announcement and vis-a-vis the cognitive dissonance between humanity's natural desire to avoid said doomsday and present global policies, Brown himself suggested that 'regional conflicts' and 'climate change' in particular presented a 'rising incompatibility with the natural environment' and berated global leaders for effectively 'fiddling while Rome burns'.
Though, from regularly listening in to the Pacific edition of the New York City-based 'Democracy Now' weekdays radio show, I note that they and their various commentators frequently lambasted Governor Brown himself for his own ineffectualness over that selfsame 'global warming'/'climate change' dilemma...and that despite making all the usual 'proper' noises thereabouts over recent years...
*As reported by World Watch. **According to https://www.bbc.com (etc) Jerry Brown is currently ***serving as the executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a (monitoring) organization established in 1947. Incidentally the famed Doomsday Clock has only been at selfsame setting once before, i.e. in 1953 when the USA and the (then) USSR tested 'highly destructive hydrogen bombs'.
***And why (is the recently retired Governor of America's largest state now acting in such an interesting (and theoretically influential) quasi-scientific role? Why indeed? Can I respectively suggest that it may perhaps have somewhat to do with his distinguished pedigree as a longtime member of the rather exclusive and (historically infamous) Jesuit Order...
...whose extremely small - 12,000-some - global membership has an influence way ****disproportionate to their relative numbers...
...yet whose selfsame membership - or arguably a goodly proportion thereof - have ever managed to worm or wheedle their way into various and sundry positions of great political influence all around the world...
And though our supposedly 'enlightened' but seemingly wilfully historically ignorant, superficial as, mainstream media-led modern-day Western society intuits/apprehends no problem or worries whatsoever about the centuries-old 'Society of Jesus', let me readily assure one and all that statesmen and stateswomen down through history (from Queen Elizabeth the First through to America's (generally considered) all-time greatest president, Abraham Lincoln) did not so regard this insidious Roman Catholic order...
...but - whether explicitly or implicitly - as pretty well the greatest single threat to human autonomy and religious liberty the world had ever seen...
And though some (including readers of this, I daresay) may well perceive no obvious or other threat to our hard-won liberties from this rather obscure and clandestine, numerically minute outfit - at least in any but some rather old-fashioned religious conflict sense/s - let me assure you that it has been suggested - and through centuries of the infamous Dark Ages it was deeply believed by adherents of pretty well all the reformed churches, including the eminent Quaker, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, George Fox (*****I've little doubt) - that this mysterious order has been implicated in the background of many events, surreptitiously 'stirring the pot' and fomenting trouble wherever its presence has been unsuspected or least suspected...pretty well like its infamous leader - no, not the 'meek and mild Jesus', as one might assume, but His cruel and implacable foe, the devil or Satan.
****And a couple other well-known Jesuits presently bestriding the world stage? Well, how about French President Emmanuel Macron for one, and Pope Francis for another...in case you're curious.
*****Incident to his well-established belief, yea conviction, like these other nonconformist (and sometimes later 'disestablished') Protestant Reforming churches, that the biblical antichrist was none other than that pointed out so cogently and specifically and clearly by the Revelator...and echoed so articulately and eloquently by all the leading reformers, from Martin Luther on down...
******For those still unconvinced, I could doubtless refer you to any number of historical sources, but if you're only interested in *******recently-written tomes, you couldn't do worse than traverse either Elizabeth the Last? [An Expose of the Hidden Power behind the Drive for Republicanism] (1997) by Bruce McMillan & Evan Sadler, or George and Eileen Anderson's (1988) Beyond Magic.
Even the noted tomes - In God's Name [An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul 1] (1984) (by David Yallop of Beyond Reasonable Doubt fame, as well as of a noted biography of Pope John Paul 11) and ********Malachi Martin's (1990) The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul 11, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West contain the briefest of, but nevertheless pointed allusions to/snippets of/glimpses into this order's sometimes more overt, but no less nefarious interactions with various 'players' on this temporal scene and activities in advancing their overall agenda...
However for all those interested in more classical works thereabouts, you couldn't go worse than peruse such books as Ellen G White's (1888) The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan - which contains some of the most explicit and damning unveiling of this order and its inner machinations as has ever been given; or Christopher Hill's (1971) Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England, which, though only containing a few rather brief and shadowy references, leaves the reader in no doubt whatsoever as to the unsavoury character of this dark group.
******By which I refer to anything written within the last few decades or so...
********And although I've yet to come across, let alone read it, one of Martin's many other books sounds like it'd have much to say in every way. Perhaps it even explains the reason, as with Pope John Paul 1, for his rather 'expeditious' demise... Its title? Simply The Jesuits...nuff said!
...they say that sometimes it pays to lose an argument and keep a friend, or - in this case - to lose a battle and ultimately win the war (by choosing one's battles wisely)...
Having had a little experience in the same, yet not remotely equating the present situation between Israel and Iran with such personal 'trivia', nevertheless...
with the ongoing Israeli airstrikes upon Iranian military targets in Syria (amidst its ongoing, multifaceted, multidimensional, multinational *'civil war')...
...let's just say - without being overly dramatic or sensational or wild-eyed or cynical or pessimistic - that an all-out - potentially nuclear - war in (at least) the Middle East is not just 'on the cards', it actually, really seems to be drawing inexorably closer and closer...
...as the famed Doomsday Clock moves ever nearer towards that fateful midnight hour...
May God save us from the shortsighted stupidity of men (**for men are almost invariably calling the shots)...for only the LORD Almighty can possibly do so...
*However inherently self-contradictory such a thing obviously is.
**Although the Israeli military (and Government itself) doubtless has ***any number of hawkish women in its ranks as well; whereas vis-a-vis Israel's patron-state, the United States of America, noted investigative journalist John Pilger argued (in the run-up to the 2016 American presidential election) that the world had more to fear from a hawkish Hillary Clinton presidency...endlessly 'upping the ante' against the likes of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran...than from a Trump presidency, however distasteful the latter may well be to the refined and cultured sensibilities of the 'average man [and woman] in the street'...
***And no, though Israel's celebrated leader Golda Meir, like her generational contemporaries Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, would hardly be classified or categorized as a dove, she was at heart a measured and sensible person who ****'had an understanding of the times, to know what ought to be done.'
****To paraphrase the great Older Testament prophet Daniel, in regards, admittedly, to 'the people of God' in truth...i.e. not those who may be considered such purely by dint of their happenstance birth, but because they truly, genuinely follow in the footsteps of their forefather of faith, 'father' Abraham.
****Said verse being 1 Chronicles 12:32 - any version, esp. The (Authorized) King James Bible.
(Quite unexpected) Epilog(ue) - a couple days on (Friday, January 25th NZ-time, in fact):
The truth is usually odder than fiction, as they say, and thus and so would'ya believe that I just heard (on RNZ National's regular weekdays' 'World Watch' programme) a reference to this selfsame doomsday clock...and - believe it or otherwise - in connection with none other than the now former Californian Governor Jerry Brown ('incidentally' subject of my previously posted blogpost no less!)
Apparently the */**Institute of Atomic Science has recently decided to keep said doomsday clock at the two minutes to midnight setting it has been on over the preceding year. Unsure at this stage if Mr Brown has since leaving office been appointed to this agency, but anyhow, in regards to this announcement and vis-a-vis the cognitive dissonance between humanity's natural desire to avoid said doomsday and present global policies, Brown himself suggested that 'regional conflicts' and 'climate change' in particular presented a 'rising incompatibility with the natural environment' and berated global leaders for effectively 'fiddling while Rome burns'.
Though, from regularly listening in to the Pacific edition of the New York City-based 'Democracy Now' weekdays radio show, I note that they and their various commentators frequently lambasted Governor Brown himself for his own ineffectualness over that selfsame 'global warming'/'climate change' dilemma...and that despite making all the usual 'proper' noises thereabouts over recent years...
*As reported by World Watch. **According to https://www.bbc.com (etc) Jerry Brown is currently ***serving as the executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a (monitoring) organization established in 1947. Incidentally the famed Doomsday Clock has only been at selfsame setting once before, i.e. in 1953 when the USA and the (then) USSR tested 'highly destructive hydrogen bombs'.
***And why (is the recently retired Governor of America's largest state now acting in such an interesting (and theoretically influential) quasi-scientific role? Why indeed? Can I respectively suggest that it may perhaps have somewhat to do with his distinguished pedigree as a longtime member of the rather exclusive and (historically infamous) Jesuit Order...
...whose extremely small - 12,000-some - global membership has an influence way ****disproportionate to their relative numbers...
...yet whose selfsame membership - or arguably a goodly proportion thereof - have ever managed to worm or wheedle their way into various and sundry positions of great political influence all around the world...
And though our supposedly 'enlightened' but seemingly wilfully historically ignorant, superficial as, mainstream media-led modern-day Western society intuits/apprehends no problem or worries whatsoever about the centuries-old 'Society of Jesus', let me readily assure one and all that statesmen and stateswomen down through history (from Queen Elizabeth the First through to America's (generally considered) all-time greatest president, Abraham Lincoln) did not so regard this insidious Roman Catholic order...
...but - whether explicitly or implicitly - as pretty well the greatest single threat to human autonomy and religious liberty the world had ever seen...
And though some (including readers of this, I daresay) may well perceive no obvious or other threat to our hard-won liberties from this rather obscure and clandestine, numerically minute outfit - at least in any but some rather old-fashioned religious conflict sense/s - let me assure you that it has been suggested - and through centuries of the infamous Dark Ages it was deeply believed by adherents of pretty well all the reformed churches, including the eminent Quaker, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, George Fox (*****I've little doubt) - that this mysterious order has been implicated in the background of many events, surreptitiously 'stirring the pot' and fomenting trouble wherever its presence has been unsuspected or least suspected...pretty well like its infamous leader - no, not the 'meek and mild Jesus', as one might assume, but His cruel and implacable foe, the devil or Satan.
****And a couple other well-known Jesuits presently bestriding the world stage? Well, how about French President Emmanuel Macron for one, and Pope Francis for another...in case you're curious.
*****Incident to his well-established belief, yea conviction, like these other nonconformist (and sometimes later 'disestablished') Protestant Reforming churches, that the biblical antichrist was none other than that pointed out so cogently and specifically and clearly by the Revelator...and echoed so articulately and eloquently by all the leading reformers, from Martin Luther on down...
******For those still unconvinced, I could doubtless refer you to any number of historical sources, but if you're only interested in *******recently-written tomes, you couldn't do worse than traverse either Elizabeth the Last? [An Expose of the Hidden Power behind the Drive for Republicanism] (1997) by Bruce McMillan & Evan Sadler, or George and Eileen Anderson's (1988) Beyond Magic.
Even the noted tomes - In God's Name [An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul 1] (1984) (by David Yallop of Beyond Reasonable Doubt fame, as well as of a noted biography of Pope John Paul 11) and ********Malachi Martin's (1990) The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul 11, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West contain the briefest of, but nevertheless pointed allusions to/snippets of/glimpses into this order's sometimes more overt, but no less nefarious interactions with various 'players' on this temporal scene and activities in advancing their overall agenda...
However for all those interested in more classical works thereabouts, you couldn't go worse than peruse such books as Ellen G White's (1888) The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan - which contains some of the most explicit and damning unveiling of this order and its inner machinations as has ever been given; or Christopher Hill's (1971) Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England, which, though only containing a few rather brief and shadowy references, leaves the reader in no doubt whatsoever as to the unsavoury character of this dark group.
******By which I refer to anything written within the last few decades or so...
********And although I've yet to come across, let alone read it, one of Martin's many other books sounds like it'd have much to say in every way. Perhaps it even explains the reason, as with Pope John Paul 1, for his rather 'expeditious' demise... Its title? Simply The Jesuits...nuff said!
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