John Appling

Reformed Pastor and theology junkie. Looking forward to God's rule in our country. It is Christ or chaos! YouTube @biblewalkwithjohn

[John Appling @cppreacher01]

https://t.co/nTttlY7mkr

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Usually Muslims love to parade the Quran’s mentions of Jesus and Mary as if it’s some grand gesture of respect, and now we have this idiot repeating that nonsense.

They claim that because the Quran has a chapter named after Mary (Surah Maryam), this proves Islam respects her.

But if simply naming a chapter after something is an act of reverence, then what does it mean that the Quran also has chapters named after cows (Surah Al-Baqarah), ants (Surah An-Naml), and bees (Surah An-Nahl)? Are those sacred too?

The Quran mentions Mary more than Muhammad’s own mother, yet it does so only to affirm Islam’s false narrative.

The Quran confuses Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Miriam, the sister of Moses (Quran 19:28), proving its author was historically and theologically illiterate.

The Quran strips Jesus of everything that makes Him the cornerstone of Christianity.

It denies His divinity (Quran 5:116), denies His Sonship (Quran 19:35), and denies His redemptive death on the cross (Quran 4:157).

Instead of being the Messiah who sacrificed Himself out of love, the Quran portrays Him as a weakling who needed Allah to deceive people in His place.

Jesus doesn’t willingly sacrifice Himself for humanity’s sins. Instead, Allah supposedly tricked people into killing someone else in Jesus’ place (Quran 4:157).

It also makes Allah the greatest deceiver (a title given to him in Quran 3:54), suggesting that millions of people were deliberately misled into believing in a false crucifixion.

Islam acknowledges Jesus existed, but only to redefine Him.

Islam claims He was a prophet, but only to reduce Him below Muhammad.

Islam denies His crucifixion and resurrection, because if those were true, Muhammad would be irrelevant.

Perhaps the most disgusting insult Islam directs at Jesus is the claim that He will return at the end of time, not to bring salvation, but to break the cross, kill pigs, enforce sharia law, and destroy Christianity.

[John Appling @cppreacher01]

Did Martin Luther and John Wesley Fear This? https://t.co/eoRCMfYfpr via @YouTube

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

A vital but frequently overlooked detail from the life of Jesus is that he spent part of his childhood in Egypt.

Why? The most pressing reason was to save his life. Herod wanted Jesus dead. So, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus hightailed it to Egypt, where all Israel had once lived in exile.

Jesus the Messiah, as the new Israel, the embodiment both of the nation and all humanity, went to Egypt as part of the divine plan of salvation. As the chosen national son of God had spent time there before their exodus, so the chosen individual Son also had to spend time there before his exodus.

That is what Matthew 2:15 is getting at when, noting that Jesus stayed in Egypt until the death of Herod, the evangelist goes on to quote Hosea 11:1, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’”

Hosea was not foretelling something when he wrote those words. He was referring to Israel’s departure from Egypt. When Matthew says that Jesus’ departure from Egypt “fulfilled” what Hosea said, he is referring to the Messiah’s fulfillment of Israel’s history.

Just as Israel was once one man, Jacob, from whom all the Israelites came, so once more Israel was one man, Christ, from whom all believers would come. Jesus came to redo what had been undone by fallen Israel and fallen humanity.

In so doing, he brought all past and future history into himself. He made his 33 years of life all world history. He redid and renewed not only Israel but all humanity.

In his boyhood in Egypt, the land of exile, Jesus was just beginning his recreation of the world. It is a detail worth noting. It is a detail worth thanking the Father for doing.
______
We read Matthew 2 today in Bible in One Year: https://t.co/XxNvEtNH7e

[John Carter @martianwyrdlord]

The thin end of the wedge was the culture of polite lies surrounding race, sex, religion, and sexuality that began to permeate academia in the postwar era. This led directly to massively increased female participation, which then reinforced the trend due to women prioritizing social harmony over verity, thereby establishing a positive feedback loop that eroded the epistemic integrity of academic culture. As academics became accustomed to averting their gaze from polite fictions, it became much easier for them to accept other deceptions. The old collegial culture of courteous but vigorous disputation was replaced with the new collegial culture of vicious enforcement of orthodoxy. This rendered academics much more ideologically pliable, which perfectly suited the goals of government bureaucrats and corporate marketing departments, who did not want truth but plausible-looking justifications for predetermined social engineering goals.

[Grok @grok]

The replication crisis is a major problem in science: many published studies (especially in psychology, medicine, and social sciences) can't be reproduced by other researchers when they rerun the experiments.

This suggests widespread issues like flawed methods, selective reporting, small sample sizes, or publication bias favoring flashy positive results. It's shaken confidence in a lot of "settled" research.

[John Appling @cppreacher01]

@esherlifestyle @thebencheah The Fed Highway Admin mandate mailbox supports must be breakaway. This means they must yield or bend easily if struck. Mailboxes are considered federal property. It is a federal offense to put anything in a mailbox except official mail with proper postage. AI research.

[Joel Berry @JoelWBerry]

Brilliant nano-engineering like this loudly points to God, but it’s also a blow to simulation theory.

Such complexity at the cellular level, every cell being a miniature city, every bacteria requiring an actual motor to move, seems to me an insanely inefficient way to design a simulation, when you could simply program these things to move and operate the way they do.

If simulation theory is true, it seems to me we should see less physical complexity the closer we look, not more.

[Allie Beth Stuckey @conservmillen]

Yes, Muslims love Jesus so much, and they prove it by slaughtering His followers throughout Africa and the Middle East

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

This day (April 13) in 1948, local & invading Arabs committed the Hadassah Convoy Massacre, killing 77 Jewish doctors, nurses, medical students, patients & university staff in cold blood during Israel’s War of Independence.

The convoy was trying to reach besieged Jewish Jerusalem where the Arabs were deliberately attempting to starve out the Jews.

The Arabs blocked and ambushed food convoys and by March-April 1948, Jews were surviving on starvation rations: around 100 grams of bread per day, a few beans, and tiny amounts of margarine or cheese. People dropped dead in the streets from hunger. Water was rationed.

Meanwhile, Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus was a critical lifeline. It was the largest and best-equipped medical center in the region, and it treated Jews and Arabs alike. But Arab forces blockaded the short 2-mile road through Sheikh Jarrah to the hospital, which was now running out of medicine and food and was suffering from lack of staff given the increasing need.

The Jews tried several times to break the siege, and on April 13, a clearly marked medical convoy (buses flying Red Shield of David flags) carrying doctors, nurses, students, patients, and desperately needed supplies set out from central Jerusalem to relieve the besieged hospital.

Near Sheikh Jarrah, however, the Massacre began. First, an Arab-laid mine blew up the lead vehicle. Then came the ambush. Hundreds of local Arabs and members of the Jordanian Arab Legion opened fire on the medical convoy with machine guns, rifles, grenades, and Molotov cocktails.

For SEVEN agonizing hours, the trapped Jews fought back with small arms while British troops (who were stationed just 200 yards away) watched and did nothing (note: the Arab Legion was trained and led by British officers against the Jews). All appeals for help were ignored, and white flags were actually shot at.

Jewish passengers burned alive inside the buses as flames consumed them. Bodies were charred beyond recognition. Doctors and nurses who had dedicated their lives to healing were executed while trying to treat the wounded on the spot. Among the dead was Dr. Chaim Yassky, director of Hadassah Hospital.

In total, 77 innocents were murdered, and dozens more were maimed or wounded. Only a handful escaped.

The Arabs celebrated it as a “heroic exploit.”

This is part of the story of 1948 they simply don’t tell you.

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

In April 2002, 200 armed Palestinian terrorists from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah & Hamas forced their way into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. They fired at locked doors & barricaded themselves inside one of Christianity’s holiest sites: the basilica built over the grotto where tradition holds Jesus was born.

The terrorists’ violent invasion - confirmed by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land - turned the site into a hostage crisis and propaganda tool.

Israel, fighting to stop the constant terror that had just included the Netanya Passover massacre (30 civilians killed, 160 wounded at a Passover seder), encircled the compound with the IDF but deliberately chose not to storm it. Israel went to unprecedented lengths to safeguard this Christian holy place. No tanks rolled in, and there was no full assault.

Israel supplied food, water, and medicine to the clergy and civilians inside. Israel’s High Court of Justice later ruled the response “proportional,” noting the armed Palestinians could have left unarmed at any time without harm, while the IDF provided electricity via generators, well water, and supplies. Seventeen priests even left voluntarily.

As is always the case with Israel fighting Palestinian terror, misinformation spread like wildfire: false reports of a killed priest at the altar (he was alive), claims of starvation (disproven by bags of rice inside), and equating Palestinian terrorism with Israel’s self-defense.

The 39-day standoff ended May 10-12 through negotiations. Thirteen top terrorists were exiled to Europe and others went to Gaza.

IMPORTANTLY: 40 explosive devices and booby traps were found planted by the Palestinian terrorists inside the Christian holy site.

An American reporter later described some of the other visible terrorists’ desecration in the aftermath: baptismal font used for dishes, altar as a table, and camouflage fatigues abandoned on the floor.

And this episode was no anomaly. Christian sites and communities have been consistently disrespected under Palestinian rule.

Bethlehem, once 85-86% Christian in 1950, has plummeted to roughly 10% today under PA rule, with hundreds more families fleeing since 2023 amid intimidation, land seizures, and Islamist pressure. Across the portions of the “West Bank” controlled by the PA, Christians have collapsed from ~6% in 1967 to 1-2% now.

Meanwhile, Christian holy places under PA rule have faced repeated violations with the 2002 desecration being just one stark example of Palestinian terrorists using churches as bunkers while clergy and civilians were trapped.

In stark contrast, Christians have thrived in Israel. Since reunifying Jerusalem in 1967, Israel enacted the Protection of Holy Places Law, guaranteeing access and safeguarding sites for all faiths - no desecration, no interference. The Christian population has more than doubled since the 1970s, reaching ~185,000 by late 2025 (about 2% of Israel’s population) with steady growth, high education levels, and full democratic rights. Nazareth’s Christian community remains vibrant, and pilgrims visit protected shrines freely.

Israel remains one of the only places in the Middle East where Christian numbers are stable or rising, in no small part because Christian holy sites are respected, not weaponized.

[John Appling @cppreacher01]

@gavinortlund No, threatening to wipe out a civilization is not genocidal and evil. Actions! Not Words - Matter. Of course Hamas &Iran have been both saying the words & trying to do the actions for years.

[John Appling @cppreacher01]

@GregJulum13258 @morgancjonas If true then the Jews have nothing to do with Israel. I guess Israel is just another country like France.
You can't blame the Jews for Israel and say they aren't Jews.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

First of all, no Jew or Christian follows Jacob or Isaac as the perfect model like Muslims follow Muhamad.

And regarding Abraham, God’s covenant with Abraham was the beginning of a long redemption story, a divine revelation of who He is, and the purpose behind everything.

Through Abraham, God revealed Himself as the Creator, the source of all life, the only One worthy of worship.

Not because He is egotistical, as Nietzsche thought, but because true worship allows us to see His glory, His infinite beauty.

When God commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac, the son he had waited his whole life for, it wasn’t to take life, but to reveal a truth: even the most precious thing in the world, even the fulfillment of all earthly hopes, is not God.

In ancient times (just like in Islamic jihad today), pagans slaughtered their children to idols, wooden, stone, lifeless gods they thought demanded blood.

Yet here was the true God, the only One actually worthy of such devotion, and He did not let Abraham go through with it.

Men have always sacrificed their sons to their gods.

How many fathers sacrifice their children today at the altars of wealth and status? Neglecting them for the pursuit of power?

But the true God did something different. He did not ask for our children. He gave His own.

Instead of demanding our sacrifice, His son became the sacrifice.

That is a beautiful, beautiful God.

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

Trump aside, I would be very very pleased with myself if I said something that David French and Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson and the pope and Phil Vischer didn’t like.

[Bad Hombre @Badhombre]

I will continue to mock the religion founded by a 50-year-old man who married a 6-year-old child. I won’t be apologizing for it. You should too.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Actually, it is biblical to mock false religions. Shut up. Your allah mocks Christianity and Judaism throughout the Qur’an, allah is not “decent.” Trump is perfectly fine.

And yes, your allah because I believe you converted.

[Steve Deace @SteveDeaceShow]

This might be the most important thing you’ll read today.

[C.Jay Engel 🌲 @contramordor]

(Know your own history)

The First U.S. Congress passed legislation (September 22, 1789) authorizing and funding paid chaplains to open House and Senate sessions with prayer—a practice that continues today (and later extended to military chaplains). 1

1789: Congress passed a joint resolution requesting President Washington to proclaim a national day of thanksgiving and prayer.

1800: Congress voted to allow the Capitol building to be used as a church, with regular Sunday Christian services held there (alternating House and Senate chaplains) for decades.

1813: Congress passed an act remitting import duties on stereotype plates for the Philadelphia Bible Society to aid mass distribution of Bibles.

1819: Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act, appropriating federal funds for Christian missionaries and societies working to “civilize” Native American tribes (often involving Christian conversion and instruction).

1864: Congress passed legislation authorizing “In God We Trust” to appear on U.S. coins.

1870: Congress passed the act establishing the first federal holidays for D.C. employees, including Christmas Day (recognizing the birth of Christ) and Thanksgiving.

1952: Congress passed Public Law 82-324, establishing the National Day of Prayer (later fixed to the first Thursday in May).

1954: Congress passed legislation adding the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

1955: Congress passed legislation requiring “In God We Trust” to appear on all U.S. currency.

1956: Congress passed a joint resolution (Public Law 84-851) declaring “In God We Trust” the official national motto of the United States.

1982: Congress passed Public Law 97-280, designating 1983 as the “Year of the Bible” to encourage study and appreciation of the Bible.

2002: Congress passed Public Law 107-293 reaffirming the phrase “one Nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” as the national motto.

Ongoing since 1789 (with specific authorizing acts): Congress has repeatedly passed appropriations and authorization acts funding congressional chaplains and military chaplains (e.g., early Navy and Army provisions in the 1790s–1800s), a practice explicitly continued post-First Amendment.

Multiple instances (e.g., 1780s–1800s): Congress passed resolutions and land grant acts setting aside public lands or funds specifically for Christian missionary work and churches among Native American tribes (e.g., 1787 grant to Moravian Brethren for promoting Christianity; subsequent appropriations).

[JD™ @LostMyHats]

It was the LAST Passover Supper. And the main point - I don’t know how you missed it - is that it was the FIRST Holy Communion.

Jesus said, “This is the New Covenant in my blood…Do THIS in remembrance of me.”

The Passover was an Old Covenant ritual. It looked *forward* to Christ’s atonement. Holy Communion, the New Covenant ritual replacement looks *backward* to Christ’s atonement.

Passover is impossible under the New Covenant. Not only is there no longer a lamb that needs sacrificed, you can’t look forward to that which has already come.

For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” (1 Cor 5:7). He’s already come.

What Jews observe today is not Passover. Not only is it totally different from what God designed, with no lamb and with its simple elements replaced with four cups and a 15-part tradition of Christ-hating nonsense invented by the rabbis, God forbade its local observance in Deuteronomy 16:5. Attempting it locally is a capital sin. God has swallowed up people by the ground for less.

The fact is, without the temple, the Passover cannot be observed, at least, without violating God’s very explicit instructions. But with the REAL Passover lamb being already sacrificed, it’s not necessary.

Because Jesus was so clear at the Last Passover Supper that He was putting the Old Covenant to rest and replacing Passover with Communion, for roughly 1950 years, Christians stopped doing “Passover.”

This “Happy Passover!” nonsense among Christians is a recent heretical novelty, a rebirth of the Neo-Judaizing heresy, and God hates it. The Church Fathers banned Passover observance for a reason; it’s a tacit denial of Christ Jesus being our Passover Lamb and His atonement being made complete.

Jesus WAS Jewish. And George Washington was British. Both are true. And both, brought something better.