"Although all Israel was assembled together against [the Benjamites in Judges 20] without any dissension or rebellion as though they were all one man, yet they never obtained the victory against their enemies until they humbled themselves before God by fastings and prayers and asked pardon for their sins and placed their pride and their glory in the dust (Judg. 20:26).
"And then, when they had wholly rejected their own power and might and had placed all their trust in God instead of in their great multitude and in their horses and weapons and gave Him all the glory, they learned by experience that He is not without good reason called the Lord of Hosts. For, though they had a righteous cause, and though God was with them and they had every advantage—even according to worldly standards—yet God desired to humble them. For He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Pet. 5:5; Jas. 4:6).
Now the Israelites were so prideful before they humbled themselves that it seemed to them that they could swallow their enemies whole and do whatever they wanted with them.
Therefore God willed to show them that victory lies neither in force of
arms nor in the multitude of men,
nor even in a righteous cause,
but in Him alone. For we can indeed take a cause which is righteous before God and make it a wicked one by our guilt and sins and by what we add of ourselves."
Pierre Viret (1510 – 1571), Swiss Reformed theologian, evangelist and Protestant reformer
--James 2:12
GK Chesterton on adultery:
"The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words - ‘free-love' - as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free.
"It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favored grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. ...
Opinion by Lau Vegys:
America's problems aren't fixable with patriotic sentiment. They're mathematical realities that don't care about your flag-waving.
The national debt recently hit $37 trillion. By 2033—the same year Social Security's trust fund runs dry—we're looking at debt exceeding $50 trillion. Interest payments alone will consume nearly half of all tax revenue.
At that point, the Federal Reserve will have no choice but to print tens of trillions of dollars to bail out the Treasury. The resulting inflation will make the early 1980s look like a picnic.
And of course, as I mentioned in a recent piece, whether it's $37 trillion now or $50 trillion in about eight years, the headline number is just the tip of the iceberg.
Add it all up—Medicare, Social Security, federal pensions, and other off-the-books promises—and the real financial hole the U.S. government faces is closer to $150 trillion. That’s nearly $1 million per taxpayer.
The Guardian reports that 15,000 Afghans were relocated to the UK in a secret scheme, while Breitbart reported that nearly 24,000 Afghans were brought in, with the British government earmarking £7 billion to secretly house and import them.
The UK taxpayer has no choice but to pay up, while government transparency was lacking.
Whether all these Afghans were vetted remains unknown. Given the reputation of the UK along with many Western countries, the vetting process for migrants is nearly nonexistent, and highly questionable in this case in particular.
Also, in the spring of 2023, while Rishi Sunak was prime minister and many UK military families had no heat or hot water, the government continued to host illegal migrants in plush hotels, at the cost to taxpayers of $8.5 million USD a day and rising. And while homelessness was up over 27% in Britain, illegal, mostly Muslim migrants from the Middle East and Africa, were royally served in those plush hotels. Now it comes to light that in...