Nememiah2_18

Crusty, fun engineer who loves God, my family and rational thought.

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

I understand how Elon Musk built his fortune.

What I still don’t understand is how Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Nancy Pelosi became millionaires on a salary of ~ $175,000 a year.

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

From Genesis to Revelation Scripture establishes an economic order that rests on private property, productive labor, voluntary exchange, investment, profit, contractual responsibility, family inheritance, decentralized stewardship, and voluntary generosity.

Capitalism.

God is the absolute Owner: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). God entrusts particular lands, possessions, talents, and resources to particular people and holds them accountable.

In Genesis He commands humanity to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28). Adam is placed in the garden “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

“You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15) presupposes private property. The tenth commandment forbids coveting “your neighbor’s house… or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17).

God distributed land among Israel’s tribes, clans, and families. “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark” (Deuteronomy 19:14). The Year of Jubilee restored ancestral land to families forced by poverty to sell it (Leviticus 25). It did not nationalize the land or create equal communal ownership. God’s declaration “the land is Mine” (Leviticus 25:23) limits both rulers and buyers; the land is entrusted to families. Inheritance is a blessing: “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children” (Proverbs 13:22).

Work is commanded. “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich” (Proverbs 10:4). “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Paul states: the thief must stop stealing, labor with his hands, acquire something of his own, and then share (Ephesians 4:28). Production first then distribution. Ownership first then generosity.

Scripture assumes employers and wages. “You shall not oppress a hired worker” (Deuteronomy 24:14). “The laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7). Withheld wages are theft. The woman of Proverbs 31 evaluates a field, buys it, plants a vineyard, manufactures goods, and sells them (Proverbs 31:16, 18, 24). Her profit is praised as wisdom.

The master in the parable of the talents distributes different amounts “to each according to his ability” (Matthew 25:15). Those who invest and produce a return are praised; the one who buries the capital is condemned. The owner of the vineyard answers complaints: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” (Matthew 20:15). Biblical justice asks whether property was acquired honestly and used faithfully.

The believers in Acts sold possessions and distributed proceeds “as any had need” (Acts 2:45). This was voluntary generosity, not socialism. Peter affirms: “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” (Acts 5:4). Paul affirms: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion” (2 Corinthians 9:7). Biblical generosity requires ownership and moral agency.

Socialism is coercion. It uses political force to seize what God has entrusted to persons and families and redistributes it according to the will of those in power. It converts the moral command “You shall give” into the political demand “The state shall take.”

Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard. Naboth refused: “The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers” (1 Kings 21:3). Jezebel used state power to kill him and transfer the land. God condemned the seizure. Samuel warned that centralized power would become predatory: “He will take the best of your fields and vineyards” (1 Samuel 8:14).

What is yours has been entrusted to you by God. Work for it honestly. Produce something valuable. Honor agreements. Provide for your family. Preserve an inheritance. Give freely to those in need. And do not take by theft, deception, exploitation, envy, or political force what God has entrusted to your neighbor.

Again sounds capitalist to me.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Every idol is shaped by the desires of the worshipper. Man creates a god who will approve his choices, protect his comforts, excuse his sin, and never command him to die to himself. What appears to be devotion to another is often only devotion to self wearing a religious mask.

“They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man” (Romans 1:23).

Idolatry is not limited to statues, temples, or false religions. We commit it whenever we reduce God to a version of ourselves. We keep the attributes that comfort us, reject the truths that confront us, and then worship the god our own preferences have created.

“These men have set up their idols in their hearts” (Ezekiel 14:3).

This is why self love stands beneath so many forms of rebellion. We may worship success, pleasure, approval, family, politics, ministry, or even our own theology. The object changes, but the throne remains occupied by the same ruler: self.

“For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant” (2 Timothy 3:2).

The gospel does not come to help self become more successful. It comes to remove self from the throne. Christ calls us to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).

Every idol eventually reveals the face of the person who made it. True worship begins only when we stop remaking God in our image and bow before Him as He has revealed Himself.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

The sooner we accept that death will separate us from everything we possess in this life, the sooner we will stop living as though this world were permanent. Our money, home, reputation, achievements, and possessions will all remain behind. Even the spouse we deeply love and the children we have carried in our hearts cannot travel with us beyond the grave.

“For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either” (1 Timothy 6:7).

This truth is not meant to make us careless about earthly relationships. It should make us cherish them rightly. Love your spouse faithfully. Raise your children with tenderness and truth. Provide for your family and enjoy the gifts God has given. But do not turn temporary gifts into eternal gods.

Death exposes how foolishly we cling to things we were only permitted to hold for a little while. The grave does not recognise bank balances, titles, property deeds, influence, or applause. It strips every person down to the condition of his soul before God.

“So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

Contentment does not come merely from knowing that we will lose everything. It comes from knowing that Christ cannot be lost. The believer may leave possessions, family, health, and the body itself behind, but he does not leave the Lord who redeemed him.

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25).

Hold earthly blessings with gratitude, but hold them with open hands. Your spouse is a gift. Your children are entrusted to you. Your possessions are tools. Your life itself is temporary stewardship.

Only Christ is the lasting portion of the soul. The sooner we understand that everything else must eventually be released, the freer we become to enjoy God’s gifts without worshipping them and to live prepared for the day when He calls us home.

[Robert W Malone, MD @RWMaloneMD]

This "proof of life" photo sums up the situation perfectly.

[The Wonder of Tolkien @TolkienWonder]

A note about what I just read in "In The House of Tom Bombadil" -

So many people have differing opinions about Tom Bombadil and whether he was an unnecessary divergence in the story or a very important and quirky character. I want to share what Professor Tolkien wrote about him in Letter 144 -- it is very insightful:

"Tom Bombadil is not an important person – to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a ‘comment’. I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in the Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function. I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control, but if you have, as it were taken ‘a vow of poverty’, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless."

It makes me think of Frodo and Goldberry's conversation in the begenning of Chapter 7 when Frodo asks 'Who is Tom Bombadil?' She answers:" 'He is the master of wood, water and hill,' and Frodo responds: 'Then all this strange land belongs to him?' This seems like a very natural question to follow. But Goldberry responds: "No indeed!...That would indeed be a burden. The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves."

I think one of the reasons why Tom is in this story is to contrast the idea of being a master who takes possession of things. This is what the Ring does and what Sauron does. But Tom, though a "master," relinquishes control and does not need to dominate things. He delights in the thing itself, for what it is, as Tolkien says, and not for what it can give him. This is probably why the Ring cannot work upon him like it does upon others. He is not dominated by the ring because he does not choose to dominate or exercise power over the natural world and its creatures -- therefore creating a strange protection to the Ring's pull. What a lesson to us today!

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is one of the most beloved paintings in America, and it puts its finger on something we all pass through, first as the child, and one day as the parent left behind...

The painting is Breaking Home Ties, by Norman Rockwell, on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1954. A father and his teenage son sit side by side on the running board of a battered farm truck, waiting at a railway stop. A single track runs along the bottom of the picture. A ticket pokes from the boy's pocket. His suitcase is stacked with schoolbooks and wears a "State U" pennant. The train is coming to carry him off to college, away from home, for the first time in his life.

Everything is in the way they sit.

The son sits upright, scrubbed and dressed in his best, eyes fixed on the horizon, on the track, on the future rushing toward him. He is already half gone. For him that train is the beginning of everything.

His father sits beside him in worn work clothes and scuffed boots, looking the other way, down the line, as if he cannot bear to watch it arrive. The same train means the opposite thing to him. For the son it is the start of a life. For the father it is the day the house grows quieter, the chair at the table sits empty, and the person he built his world around walks out into a life that no longer has him at its centre.

Look at his hands. He is holding two hats. His own battered one, and resting on top of it, his son's crisp new one, held carefully together, because it is the last small thing he can still do for the boy...

And then the dog, its head laid in the son's lap, gazing up, refusing to look away. Rockwell knew exactly what that was for: "The father couldn't show how he felt about the boy's leaving," he said. "The dog did."

It has moved people for 70 years because every leaving is a beginning for one person and an ending for another. The child steps out into the world, as they should. And someone stays behind, watching them go, and loving them enough to let them go anyway...

[Mel Gibson @_melgibson1_]

The Cross still stands above every storm, and the heavens still declare the glory of God.✝️🙏

No matter how dark this world becomes, Christians must never stop shining the light of Christ.❤️

Are you proud to stand for Jesus?

[LifeNews.com @LifeNewsHQ]

They left him like he was nothing—just a few days old, abandoned and crying inside a dumpster.

But fate had a different plan for Freddie Figgers.

A passerby heard the cries and called the authorities. Police rushed the baby to the hospital.

Just 13 days later, Nathan and Betty Figgers, a humble couple from Quincy, Florida, saw the story on the news.

They already had a daughter, but when they saw that tiny boy… they knew they had to do something.

They brought him home.

His childhood wasn’t easy. Kids bullied him, calling him “trash baby.” The words cut deep.

Years later, he sought out his biological mother—only to learn she was battling serious addiction.

He never saw her again.

“The people who raised me are my real parents. They gave me love… and a new life.”

When Freddie was 9, his dad bought him a broken $25 Macintosh computer. Freddie took it apart, fixed it using pieces from a radio—and it worked.

That’s when his love for technology was born.

By 13, he was repairing computers for the local government.

At 15, he launched Figgers Computers.

He built his first systems in his parents’ living room.

He invented medical devices so doctors could remotely monitor patients.

At 19, he sold one invention for $2.2 million.

He even designed GPS shoes to help track his father, who had Alzheimer’s.

By 25, Freddie held five patents and had developed over 80 software programs.

But he never forgot where he came from.

Today, he runs a foundation that provides scholarships, emergency aid, and food for the homeless.

“I started it with my own money. You can be successful and lose your soul—I don’t want that.

I want to make a difference. What you give always comes back.

And there’s no greater reward than knowing you’re doing good.”

From being thrown away… to building a legacy with purpose.

Freddie Figgers’ story proves: Where you start doesn’t define how far you can go.

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

We make a mistake when we treat Noah like a hero from an ancient storybook. He wasn’t a legend to admire, he was a prototype.

The defining difference between Noah and you is not nature. It is assignment.

Noah’s territory was the whole known world. Yours is your street, your office, your family, your 1-kilometer radius.

We are called to be Territorial Noahs. You are the Noah of your ground.

And you carry an Ark, one that is both completely finished and still being built.

Noah was declared righteous before he ever picked up a hammer. His building didn’t save him. It was the proof of the faith he already had; that’s Christ. He is our finished Ark. Our salvation is settled.

But our active faith, how we show up, love, and speak right where we live, builds the visible frame of that Ark. The frame the people around us can actually see, actually approach, and walk inside.

Yet we panic when they don't flood in immediately. We forget that Noah did not have a movement. He had a household and a hostile world, and for decades he kept building while nothing happened and nobody came. His faithfulness was not credentialed by visible results; it was proved by whether he kept lifting the hammer.

The modern believer is not as alone as Noah was. We are surrounded by a global network of other Noahs building in their own radius, on the same foundation, and toward the same end.

Which means the only real excuse is the one you have been rehearsing: that your ground is too small to matter, that a person with serious gifts deserves a larger stage first.

That is the lie that keeps your ground uncovered.

The stage you are waiting for is the ground already under your feet.

Build before the rain.

[Wolf Bernhardt @bernhardtwl]

God is with us, in the midst of desperate times. “You have shown your people desperate times, …. But for those who fear you, you have raised a banner to be unfurled against the bow.”
Psalms 60:3-4

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

I'm not a racist. I'm a culturalist

I believe some cultures are superior to others

For example, I prefer cultures that do not encourage wife beating, paedophilia, clitorectomies, stoning and constant inflation of the male ego

I am also aware of the difference between Islamoscepticism and Islamophobia

Notice that hate does not come into this

Only moral preferences

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Many imagine the judgment of God only in visible disasters such as earthquakes, famine, disease, and fire. Those judgments are terrible, but Scripture reveals something even more frightening: God may judge people by withdrawing His restraint and allowing them to pursue the corruption they have chosen.

“Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (Romans 1:24).

Romans 1 repeats this dreadful sentence three times. Humanity rejects the truth, worships created things, dishonours the body, and refuses to acknowledge God. Then God hands sinners over to the desires they insisted upon having.

“For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions” (Romans 1:26).

“And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper” (Romans 1:28).

This does not mean that God forces innocent people into evil. He removes restraints and allows rebels to become increasingly governed by the sinful desires they already love. The punishment is not merely what comes after the sin. The growing slavery to sin is itself part of the punishment.

“But My people did not listen to My voice, and Israel did not obey Me. So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart, to walk in their own devices” (Psalm 81:11-12).

When this judgment deepens, the conscience grows dull, shame disappears, truth becomes offensive, and evil is no longer merely practised but openly celebrated. People become convinced that their rebellion is wisdom and their bondage is freedom.

“For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12).

A nation may still possess wealth, technology, entertainment, and outward stability while already experiencing divine wrath. The absence of visible catastrophe does not prove divine approval. Sometimes the clearest evidence of judgment is that people can no longer recognise what should make them ashamed.

“So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satiated with their own devices” (Proverbs 1:31).

The most terrifying judgment is not always when the ground opens beneath us. It may be when God allows us to have exactly what our rebellious hearts demanded, and we become too blind to realise that being left to ourselves is itself the judgment.

[Les Mileistes Français 🦁🇫🇷 @Mileistesfr]

Milei choque le monde avec une première mondiale!

Désormais, si l'Etat entre en déficit et que ce déficit n'est pas résolu en quelques semaines, alors ne seront plus payés les salaires:

- du président
- des ministres
- des principaux fonctionnaires du pays
- des députés
- des sénateurs

Et toutes les dépenses non-essentielles de l'Etat seront purement et simplement gelées.

Une mesure forte, brutale mais tellement logique.

Avec ce système, les dirigeants et les bureaucrates n'auront plus le choix que de maintenir un budget à l'équilibre.

Il est temps qu'ils arrêtent de jouer avec notre argent et notre futur en nous endettant sans limites.

[MAGA MomMom 1776 🇺🇸🌻 @magagrandmom]

I woke up and as I had my morning coffee, I realized that everything is about to change. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, something evil has invaded our nation, and our lives are never going to be the same.

I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life--so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think that I may well have entered the Twilight Zone.

You can't justify this insanity. We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind!

• If a man pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.

• Somehow it’s un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.

• Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.

• It was cool for Joe Biden to "blackmail" the President of Ukraine, but it’s an impeachable offense if Donald Trump inquires about it.

• People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves.

• People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees.

• Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.

• Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang-bangers who jump the southern fence are welcome.

• $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care is not.

• If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.

• People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.

• We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan to us.

• Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.

• Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it's a violation of THEIR rights.

• And pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us "racists"?!

Nothing makes sense anymore, no values, no morals, no civility and people are dying of a Chinese virus, but it racist to refer to it as Chinese even though it began in China.

We are clearly living in an upside down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong, but killing innocent babies is right.

Wake up America, the great unsinkable ship Titanic America has hit an iceberg, is taking on water, and is sinking fast. The choice is yours to make. What will it be? Time is short, make your choice wisely!

Feel free to copy and paste. I did.

Time for our government to wake up you either work with and for America or get the hell out .. we're tired of paying taxes and you incredibly selfish people don't give a damn for the people you work for... you should all be ashamed of yourself !!!!

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

The orcs are at the gate.

Not a metaphor. Not hyperbole. The images coming from Ceuta, from the Canary Islands, from Lampedusa, from the Greek islands, from the streets of Paris and Malmö and Brussels – these are the images of a civilization that has left its walls unguarded and is watching, in real time, what happens next.

Tolkien knew. He had seen it. A generation that went to the trenches and came back — those who came back — understanding that the darkness was not an abstraction, that the Shire could be scoured, that the things worth defending required actual defense by actual people willing to stand at the actual gate. He encoded it in myth because myth is the only language large enough to carry that weight.

The orcs are not evil because they are foreign. They are the organized force of a different civilization, operating by different rules, advancing because the defenders of the gate decided that having a gate was itself the problem. The walls came down not because the orcs breached them. They came down because enough people inside decided that walls were offensive, that gatekeeping was discrimination, that the very concept of inside and outside was a form of violence against those on the outside.

Saruman is the intellectual who made this argument compellingly. Grima Wormtongue is the advisor who whispered it to the king. The king who listened is every European leader of the last thirty years. And now the Shire is being administered by Sharkey, with new rules, new residents, and a bureaucratic apparatus to explain why what you are seeing is not what you are seeing.

Poland stands at the gate. Not perfectly. Not without its own contradictions and failures. But with the specific, hard-won, historically expensive understanding that a nation which does not defend its borders does not remain a nation. That the Shire, once collectivized, is very difficult to restore. That the orcs, once inside the walls, do not leave because you ask them nicely or because a committee issues a resolution.

Sobieski rode down the hill because he understood what was at stake. Because if Vienna fell, Poland was next. Because someone had to hold the gate when everyone else was calculating their own position.

We are at the gate again.

The question is the same as it always was: who is willing to ride?

[War Correspondent @warDaniel47]

🚨 WOW! Charlie Kirk NAILED IT when this woman tried defending Islam. We miss him.

WOMAN: I'm worried about Islamophobia!

KIRK: Are you Muslim?

WOMAN: Yes.

KIRK: What is the best model for a Muslim country? Do you enjoy not having to cover yourself in public?

WOMAN: Yeah, I guess.

KIRK: So you don't like Islam very much, then? Because majority of Islamic countries would require you to have full garb in public.

WOMAN: That's not fair to say that.

KIRK: You literally could not dress like this in the streets of Riyadh, as a woman. This is way too provocative, way too much skin. You, as a woman, you don't have freedom of speech, you can't run for public office, you can't own property.

"Islam is against Western values, it's incompatible with Western values, and we in the West actually think you should have the rights that you have right now, to speak, and to be able to show, you know, the skin you show here, and, you know, be able to have a happy life!"

🫳🎤

[John @MagaGrunt1]

🇺🇸Absolutely ridiculous being taxed on something you own.🇺🇸

[ItsmeTrae🇺🇸 @Littletrae64]

New York Resident Responds to Zohran Mamdani on Reparations:

“If Mamdani would like me, a white New Yorker who never owned slaves, to pay a black New Yorker who never was a slave, then I propose:

Every Muslim in NYC starting with Mamdani, should pay us for 9/11.”

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

RFK Jr. fights through Fox News' commercial break music to expose Dr. Fauci for funding research designed to HIDE human fingerprints on lab-created bugs.

Kennedy says Fauci paid Ralph Baric to develop a technique called "no-see-em," which makes pathogens more dangerous and covers up the evidence of human manipulation.

Baric went on to teach this technique to the "Bat Lady" at the Wuhan Lab.

Fauci knew this. Then spent years telling the public COVID came from a "natural origin."

RFK JR: "He was lying about the origins from day one. Why was he lying? Because he funded those studies at the Wuhan lab, and he funded the studies at the University of North Carolina that developed the techniques for weaponizing COVID-19."

"And then [he] gave those to Ralph Baric, his funded scientist at the University of North Carolina, gave those to Shi Zhengli, the scientist, the 'bat lady' scientist in the Wuhan lab. And he taught her a technique that Anthony Fauci had paid him to develop called seamless ligation, which is also called 'no-see-em.'"

"It's a way of manipulating the virus to make it deadly to human beings and then covering up the evidence of human manipulation."

"And why would anybody spend NIH money developing that kind of technology?"

"It's bioweapons technology. It has nothing to do with public health. It's the opposite. It's the inverse of anything you would want to do with public health."

"Well, he took that, and he gave it to the Chinese military lab at Wuhan."

HANNITY: "Mr. Secretary, it's chilling what you're describing. Chilling that this all happened."