Rev. Derek C. Jones

Husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, saved, called of God to pastor a great church, Christian author

[BRICS News @BRICSinfo]

JUST IN: 🇮🇷 Magnitude 4.9 earthquake strikes Iran.

[Kosher @koshercockney]

Even MORE footage has come out of the barrage of Iranian Ballistic missiles on US Troops stationed in Iraq earlier this evening.

Most seemed to have been intercepted.

[America Millitary @MillitaryStan]

🚨 Breaking: Major attack on Iran

US Army airstrikes are ongoing.

Iran made a mistake by violating the ceasefire.

Iran will remember this night forever.⚠️

[Byron Donalds @ByronDonalds]

To you, it's just a Cracker Barrel parking lot. To me, it's where I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

I was 21 years old. I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee after some of the worst years of my life. I'd made mistakes. Real ones.

I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a mom who worked hard and didn't accept excuses. But I made decisions that should have ended my story before it ever really started. By the grace of God, they didn't. But every day, I was carrying them.

One afternoon, a church group came into the restaurant, just back from a revival. I served them their meals like I served any other table. But something happened while I was serving them. I can't fully explain it to you. The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Stop running from Me.”

It knocked me back.

I went to find the table, and they were all gone. I could see through their windows that they were getting on their bus, and I knew deep down that if I let them drive away, I was going to keep running. So I went outside. The last woman, just as she was stepping onto the bus, turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?”

I told her, “No ma’am, I’m not okay.” I told her the Lord was telling me to stop running.

That whole bus emptied out, stood with me in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee, Florida, and prayed over me right there.

I gave my life to Christ that day. Right there.

I still get emotional about it. Because I know what I was before that moment, and I know what He's done since. He gave me a wife who shares my faith. He gave me three sons. He gave me a career, a community, a calling I never would have dared to ask for. He took a kid from Crown Heights who’d run out of chances and gave him a life that doesn't make sense apart from grace.

People ask me sometimes why I talk about it. Why I bring up the parking lot. Why I don't just keep that part private and let folks see the polished version.

I'll tell you why.

Because there's a young man out there right now — maybe in Tallahassee, maybe in Tampa, maybe in Miami, maybe in a small town in the Panhandle — who thinks his story is already over. Who thinks the mistakes he's made disqualify him from the life he could have had. Who thinks God doesn't want anything to do with somebody like him.

I'm here to tell him: that's a lie.

In life, you're not who you are at the lowest point. You're who you choose to become after.

The Lord met me in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. He'll meet you wherever you are.

You just have to stop running.

[Israel Defense Forces @IDF]

🎥FIRST FOOTAGE: Watch IDF strikes targeting aerial defense systems in Iran, which housed missiles intended to target aircraft.

[Rev. Derek C. Jones @RevDerekCJones]

@tariqnasheed No, we just expect common decency

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 LMFAO!! President Trump just dropped this absolute banger on Hussein Obama

“The Barack Hussein Obama Library, in 10 years, when fully matured!” 🤣

Hussein has even infuriated the residents of Chicago! It’s FILTHY.

[Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec]

BREAKING: Butler Sheriff Sent Two Emails to Thomas Crooks Before Trump Assassination Attempt

https://t.co/ZcOUq7oDCf

[Shane Cashman @ShaneCashman]

There’s literally nothing weird about Thomas Matthew Crooks emailing a deputy from Butler, PA before the assassination attempt. It’s not weird that he practiced shooting at the same range Homeland Security used. It’s not weird that the local police and Secret Service spotted Crooks with a rangefinder, photographed him, and texted about him for over an hour and still let him climb the roof with a rifle. It’s not weird that the Secret Service wasn’t flying drones that day, but Crooks was. It’s not weird that Butler was the first Trump rally of the year with Secret Service anti-sniper agents on the roofs. It’s not weird that Crooks’ house looked like a sterile lab with no trash or silverware. And it’s not weird that his body was cremated ten days later before Congress could see it. This is like when people say the CIA was shadowing Oswald before he, and he alone, shot JFK.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.

They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.

Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.

They lost them for two reasons.

The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.

In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.

Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.

That fight dragged on for years.

The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.

Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.

So now it's all gone.

The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.

Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.

Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.

But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.

Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.

And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.

Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.

Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."

There it is. "Billionaire-owned."

That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.

Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.

Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."

When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.

They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.

Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.

But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."

Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.

Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.

Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.

[AwakenedOutlaw⚒️ @AwakenedOutlaw]

Ummmmm.... Why would the Butler, PA Sheriff's Dept. be exchanging emails (plural) with the assassin... BEFORE the day of the assassination attempt?

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

84 years ago today, a pilot running out of fuel made a decision that won the Pacific War. Most Americans have never heard his name.

June 4, 1942. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan's navy is undefeated. Four of the carriers that burned Pearl, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, are steaming toward Midway to finish off the US Pacific Fleet.

At 7:52 AM, Wade McClusky launches from USS Enterprise leading 32 Dauntless dive bombers. Here's the detail nobody mentions: McClusky is a fighter pilot. He'd been given the air group weeks earlier and had barely flown a dive bomber in combat. Now he's leading every SBD the Enterprise has at the most important target in the Pacific.

9:20 AM. He arrives at the intercept point where the Japanese fleet is supposed to be.

Empty ocean. Nothing for miles.

The Japanese had turned. Nobody knew where. And now McClusky owns the worst math problem in naval aviation: his fuel is bleeding away, and every minute he keeps searching, he condemns more of his own pilots to ditch in open water where nobody will find them.

Doctrine is clear. Turn back.

McClusky keeps going. He works a search pattern, squeezing miles out of dying fuel tanks.

9:55 AM. Far below, a single Japanese destroyer is cutting a white scar across the ocean at flank speed. It's the Arashi, racing to rejoin the fleet after depth-charging the American submarine Nautilus. Think about that. A failed sub attack is about to give away the entire Japanese navy.

McClusky reads the wake like an arrow and follows it.

10:02 AM. The horizon fills with the entire Japanese strike force. Four carriers, their decks crammed with planes being refueled and rearmed. Fuel lines snaking everywhere. Bombs stacked in the open.

And here's the miracle: the sky above them is empty. Minutes earlier, American torpedo squadrons had attacked at sea level and been annihilated. Torpedo 8 lost all 15 planes. One survivor, Ensign George Gay, watched what came next while hiding under his seat cushion in the water. Those doomed pilots dragged every Japanese fighter down to the waves. The door upstairs was wide open.

10:22 AM. McClusky pushes over from 14,500 feet. Both squadrons follow him down onto Kaga. It's actually a mistake, doctrine said split the targets, but Lt. Dick Best catches it mid-dive, pulls out with two wingmen, and goes after Akagi alone. His single bomb pierces the flight deck into the packed hangar. It's enough.

By 10:28, Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu, the third hit simultaneously by Yorktown's bombers, are floating infernos. Six minutes. Three carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor, gone. Hiryu follows them to the bottom that evening.

The cost of McClusky's gamble was real. Many Enterprise bombers never made it home, some shot down, others swallowed by the sea when their tanks ran dry. McClusky himself was jumped by two Zeros on the way out, took five bullets through his shoulder, and still flew his shot-up Dauntless back to the Enterprise.

Admiral Nimitz said McClusky's decision "decided the fate of our carrier task force and our forces at Midway." Japan never won another major battle.

One borrowed pilot. One destroyer's wake. One choice to keep flying when every gauge said go home.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

The man at the hardware store called me "boss."

I do not work there. I want to be clear about that from the beginning, because of what followed.

I had only asked where the nails were. He pointed and said, "aisle six, boss."

Boss.

I stood very still. A title is not given lightly. In my country, to be named the head of a house is a ceremony that takes a full day and three witnesses. This man had done it in half a second, over nails, and walked away.

But done is done. I had been appointed. I would not dishonor the appointment.

So I assumed my duties.

I began arriving early. I learned where everything was. When a customer looked lost, I guided them, because a boss does not abandon his people. When two boxes fell, I restacked them. When a child cried, I gave the child a small respectful nod, and the child stopped, because authority comforts.

A real employee found me straightening the paint cans. He asked what I was doing. I told him, simply, "my job."

He called his manager. The manager arrived. I bowed and prepared to receive my first performance review.

The manager said, "Sir, you can't be back here."

I understood. A new boss must earn trust. I accepted the demotion with grace. I returned to the floor and continued serving the people, now from a humbler station, which only deepened my resolve.

By closing time I had helped forty customers, reunited a man with the correct drill bit, and been thanked, by name, as "boss," four more times.

Four more appointments. I now hold five titles at a store that does not employ me.

A weaker man might find this confusing.

I find it an honor I never asked for, and cannot return, so I have simply decided to be worthy of it.

The manager walked me out gently and said, "have a good one, chief."

Chief.

I stopped at the door.

That is a promotion.

So I will be back tomorrow. Earlier. There is clearly a path here for a man willing to work, and I intend to climb it, one kind stranger's word at a time, until I have earned every title this generous country keeps handing me for free.

I do not know what I am the boss of.

But I will protect it with my life.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

According to artificial intelligence, the statistical probability of Spencer Pratt getting 0 out of 24,000 votes in last nights late night Los Angeles ballot drop is “1 in trillions”

California Democrats are rigging the election

[Rev. Derek C. Jones @RevDerekCJones]

@GioBruno1600 No, Wilson’s wife was after he had a stroke

[Rev. Derek C. Jones @RevDerekCJones]

Excellent point

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

When I was Muslim, I would argue & say we had the same prophets as Christians.

But this one broke me:

Surah 17:101: Allah gave Moses 9 clear signs.

I knew the list. The staff. The shining hand. The drought. The flood. The locusts. The lice. The frogs. The blood.

I held onto those 9 signs like proof I had the real story.

But bro, you know what shook me?

There’s a night missing.

After all nine signs, right before Israel walks out of Egypt, something happens that the Quran goes completely silent on.

A lamb is slaughtered.

Its blood painted on the doorposts.

And death passes over every house covered by that blood.

The Passover.

I grew up hearing the whole Exodus story. But nobody ever told me about the blood on the door.

Islam just skips it.

And here’s what wrecked me.

The Bible, the book I was taught was corrupted, mentions the Passover over 70 times.

Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. The Psalms. The Prophets. The Gospels. Paul.

70 times.

So I had to ask myself the honest question:

If men corrupted this book, why would they obsess over the same story for 1500 years? Across dozens of authors who never met?

You don’t forge a document 70 times.

That’s just not corruption.

That to me is preservation.

And then I read the line that finished me off.

1 Corinthians 5:7.

“Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.”

That’s when it hit me.

The whole story was never just about Moses.

It was always pointing to a King.

The final lamb. Whose blood, when applied to your life, makes death pass over you.

Forever.

The Quran gave me 9 signs but hid the one night that explains why any of them happened.

Because the moment a Muslim understands the Passover…

he’s one step away from the cross.

[Greg Price @greg_price11]

BESSENT: "Sen. Wyden has slandered the Treasury building to cover up his son having an investment with Jeffrey Epstein."

WYDEN: "Nobody is interested in the rambling of a capo in the most corrupt regime in American history."

BESSENT: "Your son's largest investment position was Rick's Cabaret. Did your son and Epstein talk about poll dancing?

[Western Lensman @WesternLensman]

My favorite interview genre right now is watching Democrats attempt to run on superior morals and higher standards of conduct, then get asked about Platner.

The immediate switch to dodge and deflection mode is hysterical.

Behold CO Gov candidate Michael Bennet:

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

Finally getting over the asthma - and here's the org chart of the Newark protests, as promised. A few are missing, particularly the Catholic NGOs. But this is the basic template for how mass protests are coordinated so quickly.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

"60 Minutes" is the most prestigious TV news program in America. But a new review of the last 20 years of its reporting reveals serious inaccuracies and partisan bias on immigration, transgenderism, climate change, Covid, Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop, and more.