Posted on 10/22/2024 1:19:57 PM PDT by Heartlander
Aspiring tyrants are now brazen in their crusade against free speech. John Kerry, Tim Walz, Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kentanji Brown Jackson, Letitia James, and their allies in academia and the media have been unequivocal in their calls to usurp the protections of the First Amendment.
These threats are not hypothetical. The West has weaponized the judicial system to punish Steve Bannon, Julian Assange, Mark Steyn, Douglass Mackey, VDARE, Roger Ver, Pavel Durov, and others for their disobedience to the Washington establishment.
But beyond these political persecutions, a more insidious – and far less reported – assault on free expression is taking place.
Christianity is under attack in the West, yet the statement sounds hyperbolic because our news media shuns the subject.
In England this week, a British Army veteran named Adam Smith-Connor was convicted for praying silently on a public street. Police approached Smith-Connor and told him they were there to “inquire as to [his] activities.” “Well, I’m praying,” he explained in an exchange captured on video.
The officer followed up, “What is the nature of your prayer today?” “I’m praying for my son,” he responded.
Smith-Connor was praying silently near an abortion facility, which the British police ruled violated censorship laws in the United Kingdom. He prayed with his back to the facility “to avoid any impression of approaching or engaging any women entering or leaving the facility,” his lawyers wrote.
His legal fund explained, “According to the rules of the censorship zone in which he was praying, if Adam were thinking about any other issue – the economy, immigration, or healthcare, for example – he wouldn’t have been fined. It was the nature of his thoughts, his silent prayer, that got him in legal trouble.”
The Judge found Smith-Connor guilty because his “hands were clasped, and his head was slightly bowed.”
While British authorities warp the legal system to attack peaceful, silent prayer, Canada’s government has been complicit in the mass destruction of homes of Christian faith.
In Canada, arsonists have torched dozens of churches since a 2021 hoax spread that there were mass graves of Indigenous children buried under Canadian churches. At the time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that anger against the Catholic Church was “fully understandable.”
Three years later, the claims have been debunked, yet the arson continues. Notably, Trudeau and allies like Kerry and Clinton have nothing to denounce the disinformation that spawned this destruction.
From the Jacobins in France to the Bolsheviks in Russia, Christianity has long been the target of revolutionaries and society’s nihilistic malcontents. America long considered itself an exception to the religious persecutions of Europe, but the Covid response disproved this point of pride.
In May of 2020, Kentucky State Police arrived at an Easter service to issue notices that attendance was criminal. They recorded the congregants’ license plate numbers and issued warnings that violators were subject to further sanction. In Mississippi that year, police issued citations to a church congregation that hosted a drive-in service despite attendees remaining in their vehicles for the entire service.
In Idaho, police arrested Christians for removing their masks to sing psalms outdoors in September 2020. “We were just singing songs,” said Christ Church Pastor Ben Zornes. But that was no excuse for the sin of violating an irrational and unscientific cloth commandment. “At some point in time you have to enforce,” the local police chief explained.
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo threatened residents with $1,000 fines for attending “drive-in” services in May 2020. “We’re not trying to be rebellious,” said Pastor Samson Ryman. “We’re just trying to be safe and reach our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ in these difficult times when people are having anxiety, worry, different mental concerns, and they want to get some spiritual help, through the word of God.” On May 3, 2020, Ryman held his first drive-in service in upstate New York with 23 attendees in 18 vehicles. The next day, Cuomo’s police force issued a cease-and-desist letter.
In California, the Santa Clara Health Department used GPS data to monitor congregants at a local evangelical church. The government partnered with a data mining company to create a “geofence” (a digital boundary) around the church’s property, monitoring over 65,000 mobile devices to record any citizens that spent more than four minutes in the area.
Governor Gavin Newsom limited church attendance to 25% of capacity and banned singing. In Nevada, the Governor allowed casinos to hold 500 gamblers while churches were limited to 50 congregants, no matter their respective capacity limits.
Around the country, governors deemed churches “non-essential” and barred them from opening their doors. Meanwhile, marijuana dispensaries, liquor stores, abortionists, and lotteries received the protection of the arbitrary label of “essential services.”
The Supreme Court – as a result of Chief Justice John Roberts’ decisive fifth vote – upheld the attacks on religion until the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020.
Notably, leaders had a much different approach to the George Floyd riots that June. When asked about the double standard, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responded, “When you see a nation, an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seeded in 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or devout religious person who wants to go back to services.”
The message to that “devout religious person” was clear: there is a state religion that supersedes your First Amendment right to worship. They anointed secular saints and banished heretics.
In Washington, DC, the Mayor renamed Christmas Eve “Dr. Anthony S. Fauci Day” in 2020, a declaration only rivaled by President Biden’s proclamation naming Easter Sunday “Transgender Day of Visibility” in 2024.
Christianity threatens the regime because it demands faith in something greater than the state and devotion to a creed more defined than the ever-changing slogans of socially fashionable talking points. The assault on religion is not collateral damage in the war against free expression; suppressing worship is fundamental to the cause of tyranny.
Satan has the appearance of being in control.
Scary reality Bump!
(Satan has the appearance of being in control.)
Well he IS the god of his world 🌍.
For now; but not forever. /preaching to the choir
2 Corinthians 4:3-4
King James Version
3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
4 In whom the god of this World hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, Who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Corinthians%204%3A3-4&version=KJV
He’d better enjoy his power while he can. The lake of fire won’t be so enjoyable.
Amen 🙏🏻!
Christians have survived in hostile environments before. Do we cave under the legal and cultural pressure? No. As Peter reminds us, we are to obey God rather than man in matters of living out our faith. God has claim to our primary allegiance. Read about the martyrs and confessors from the earliest days of the Church until the present time.
Top Archbishop Endorses Trump, Warns Catholics Who Don’t Vote Are ‘Allying with the Enemy’
Slay News ^ | 10-22-2024 | Frank Bergman
Posted on 10/22/2024, 2:23:54 PM by alexandria
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has announced his endorsement of President Donald Trump, warning that a vote for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris “is morally inadmissible and constitutes a very grave sin.”
(Excerpt) Read more at slaynews.com ...
The fact that Christianity is under attack is proof that it’s legit.
John 15:18-27
The Wrath of God is upon us.
We were warned!
I’ve read the Old Testament, so I get it. The ancient Israelites had to be taught the same lesson over and over again. Human nature hasn’t changed.
And no, we are not smarter than our forbearers. Quite the opposite, in fact.
John 15:18-27
King James Version
18 If the World hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.
19 If ye were of the World, the World would love his own: but because ye are not of the World, but I have chosen you out of the World, therefore the World hateth you.
20 Remember the Word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also.
21 But all these things will they do unto you for My Name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me.
22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had Sin: but now they have no cloak for their Sin.
23 He that hateth Me hateth My Father also.
24 If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had Sin: but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father.
25 But this cometh to pass, that the Word might be fulfilled that is written in their Law, They hated Me without a cause.
26 But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me:
27 And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.
👍
Whether or not Trump wins the election, the slide towards tyranny will continue. It's progress may be slowed down but eventually it will happen.
I pray that all of my Christian brothers and sisters will remain strong during this time of trial. I also pray that I never have to see it. Whether by death or the Rapture, I hope I'm gone. But if someone from the government puts a gun to my head and says I have to choose between it or Christ, it is Christ all the way.
bump
There, fixed it.
Preach it!
IMO, even if Trump wins, it’s only a reprieve, putting off the day of evil.
I do not see enough of a turn around to take us back morally to where we were decades ago.
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