243 Pentecost 18: A House Divided
“I will freely sacrifice to You; I will praise Your name, O Lord, for it is good. For He has delivered me out of all trouble” ~ Psalm 54
A House Divided
It cannot stand.
That’s no warning—it’s a law of the universe. Put truth on trial, and it will pass. But Satan’s house? It’s crumbling.
The signs are clear: chaos, confusion, blasphemy parading as policy. The carnal mind, severed from the vine, withers. The heart, chained to lies, beats only to die.
Fertility, rights, power—this house built on sand clings to idols. Its brittle core, exposed, worships death and calls it life. Fire and judgment are no relics. They are natural law, the math of justice. Moses’ condemnations cut through the pretense, revealing the hatred festering at the root—hatred of authority, patriarchy, the Father.
A house divided collapses as the storm rises. But just because judgment is twisted by the powerful does not mean the faithful follow them to ruin.
“The King is justice, or there is none.”
He is risen.
Till angel cry and trumpet sound,
R.J.M.F
Births, Deaths and Marriages
Senate Republicans have blocked a Democrat-sponsored bill which would ensure a right to I.V.F. services. Both parties have been vocal in their support for the fertility technology, but G.O.P. Reps say this bill is too broad, with wiggle room to “legalize embryo cloning, gene editing and ‘designer babies’.” Given that the bill was a redux of a vote from three months ago, Senate Republican whip John Thune said, "This is not an attempt to make law…This is simply an attempt by Democrats to try and create a political issue where there isn't one." Meanwhile, Republicans brought their own I.V.F. bill which was rejected by Democrats who questioned “its scope and its enforcement mechanism.” Republican lawmakers aim to protect consciences of Christian hospitals and clinics, but have yet to grapple with the plight of frozen embryos. As ghoulish as it is, Democrats hold a consistent through line from their stance on I.V.F. to radical abortion policy (i.e. the unborn are dispensable and subject to the desire of adults). Republicans, however, seemingly labor under a conflicted mindset. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has highlighted the crux of the issue saying conservatives “cannot support IVF and support fetal personhood.” While environmentalists are granting personhood to rivers, whales and ocean waves, Americans still need to be persuaded that a person is a person, no matter how small! (CBS, Washington Examiner, Public Now, Hakai Magazine) Revisit the moral hazards of I.V.F. here.
V.P. Kamala Harris and abortion advocates have blamed the death of a Georgia mother on Donald Trump and state pro-life laws. The Vice President claimed that Amber Nicole Thurman died because doctors were not allowed to remove her dead babies after she aborted twins using an abortifacient pill under Georgia law, which is false. (Daily Wire, National Review)
Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear has issued an executive order that bans the use of “conversion therapy” on children, defined as “any practice, treatment or intervention that seeks or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.” Scare quotes are usually used around the term “conversion therapy” by activists because it brings to mind extremes such as electroshock treatment, privation, lobotomies or hypnosis. But as conversion therapy bans worldwide have shown, rules often preclude even “spoken therapy and prayer.” Such rules create a chilling effect for counsellors, pastors, educators and also parents who want to speak biblical truth about sexuality, even in the case of a child who wishes to be rid of disordered desires. Of course, there seems to be no ban anywhere on those who actively wish to persuade a child to convert to gay or trans or anything else – such is celebrated every June. It is asserted in our culture that sexual orientation is innate and gender is fluid, yet laws need to be drawn up on the chance that someone could be persuaded otherwise? Now, who’s weird? The executive order sets up a legal clash with first amendment rights and religious liberty. (AP, Statista)
Crime and Punishment
More is known about the man who is alleged to have been trying to kill former president Donald Trump two weeks ago. Ryan Routh, who appears to be a disturbed leftie with an obsession for saving Ukraine, waited about 12 hours outside Trump’s golf course with a “scoped polymer SKS-style rifle”. It is not clear whether he knew Trump would be there or was just hoping so. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis announced he would be running a separate investigation, saying, “[I]t’s not in the best interest of our state or our nation to have the same federal agencies that are seeking to prosecute Donald Trump leading this investigation.” Meanwhile, a poll of 1000 registered voters has found that 28% of Democrats agreed that America would be better off if Donald Trump had been killed. While calling for toning down inflammatory rhetoric is worth a try, it will not be enough – we need to be praying earnestly for our nation. It is easy to conclude that someone who is willing to kill a president is mentally unstuck, but the indifference to violence are also a symptom of our malaise – our biggest problems are spiritual. (Not the Bee, WNG, AP, The Federalist, MDJ Online)
Sean “Diddy” Combs has been arrested and is facing criminal charges. The hip-hop don pleaded not guilty to charges of “sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.” He has been embroiled in scandals of various kinds for years. (The Hill, Time)
The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking $100 million in damages from the owners of the Dali ship which struck and destroyed a Baltimore bridge earlier this year. (Marine Log)
Coming to America
A former Border Patrol chief has testified that under the Biden administration, he has been muzzled from releasing critical information about the number of terrorists apprehended at the southern U.S. border. (ZeroHedge)
Thunderdome 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris has said she will happily to debate Donald Trump a second time next month, on CNN. Trump has said he will not debate again, but never say never. Rumors that the Vice President had help from ABC during the last debate only intensified after a whistleblower claimed to have recorded evidence. We’ll see. (Just The News, Spectrum News)
Robert Kennedy Jr has been caught in a “sexting” scandal. A New York Times journalist claims she and RFK exchanged illicit texts, but he has denied it. (New York Post)
The F.B.I. has revealed that Iranian agents hacked Donald Trump’s campaign and sent the information to Harris’ HQ. It’s not clear whether the Vice President’s team saw the emails or not. (ZeroHedge)
Could it be that both presidential campaigns are too online? “At this moment, neither campaign seems to be talking to the American people about what they keep telling us they care about. Instead, they’re competing over vibes.” (The Spectator)
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has declined to endorse either presidential candidate, saying there was no definitive consensus amongst its members. Some polls revealed Trump as the favorite, others, Harris. At its heart seems to be the absence of specific policies which specific policies around right-to-work laws and assurance that immigrants won’t replace them. (WNG, Pirate Wires via X)
Georgia’s election board has ruled that ballots in the upcoming presidential election must be hand counted. (The Hill)
Politics
Whistleblowing members of the D.C. National Guard have testified that they were ready and willing to control the Capitol crowd on January 6th, 2021 but were ordered by the Pentagon to stay put. “They sat stunned watching in the Armory while for the first time in its 219-year history, the D.C. National Guard was not allowed to respond to a riot in the city.” (The Blaze)
A signature-gathering effort to put ranked choice voting to the public in Arizona has been found to be bloated with duplicates ballots. (The Federalist)
Could you pass a U.S. citizenship test? (AP)
The Digital Age
Meta said it will ban Russian state media outlets from its apps around the world. The announcement comes after right-wing influencers were allegedly duped into making content paid for by Russia Today. Incidentally, a D.O.J indictment which spurred Meta’s decision is odd in that it appears to be raised purely to tie conservative media to Putin. (Yahoo, The Federalist, MadPxM)
Meta said it will soon make accounts of any under 16s on Instagram private. A new teen version of the platform will include the option for parental controls. (Engadget)
Anduril’s Palmer Luckey is teaming up with the U.S. military to create a more lethal Force by integrating augmented reality systems into soldiers’ gear. (Wired)
Starlink is facing a mounting backlog of orders after United Airlines announced it will use the network to provide free wi-fi on all its flights. (CNBC)
One specialist is sounding the alarm about archived digital music: about one fifth of songs archived to hard disk drives in the 1990s are unreadable. (Mix Online )
Opinion: “Language models won't create bioterrorists any more readily than celebrity cookbooks have created Michelin star chefs.” (Dream of Machines)
Money, Markets and Jobs
The U.S. Fed cut interest rates by half a percentage point last week. Although it will bring some relief to those with credit card debt, car loans and mortgages, skeptics are puzzled by the timing. Although head of the Fed, Jerome Powell, says he made a biggish cut because the economy is so strong, online buzz decreed that to be nonsense. Either “Jerome Powell and his cadre of elite economists see the U.S. economy falling off a cliff” or he is “playing politics” before the election. (CBS, ZeroHedge)
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to pass a stopgap spending bill, to avoid a government shutdown weeks out from the presidential election. All but one Democrat opposed the bill, which includes an Act that would require proof of citizenship to vote. Republican defense “hawks” opposed the Bill, saying that anything less than a six month continuing resolution puts national security at risk (presumably in terms of securing funding for conflicts abroad). Other lawmakers expressed a desire to hammer out a proper budget, rather than limping along to the year end, when passing an omnibus full of pork becomes inevitable. But that is unlikely. “The last time Congress went through the proper appropriations process was 1996.” Maybe a shutdown is in order? (The Hill, The Blaze)
A new report says the gross interest on the U.S. national debt has crossed the $1 trillion barrier. (WNG)
A proposed bill from The Biden-Harris administration has narrowed which products qualify for de minimus duty exemption. Millions of small packages (valued under $800) arrive in the U.S. everyday and the White House says new data requirements and tariff coding will expose more illicit and dangerous products shipped under the current exemption. But given that many textile products will now be included under the new legislation, some commentators believe it is designed to penalize Chinese fast-fashion giants Temu and Shein, who take advantage of the small packages rule to the tune of $400 million in missed import taxes. Temu and Shein are already bolstering themselves against it, with U.S.-based warehouses and logistics likely to mitigate any impact. (Holland and Knight, Supply Chain Dive)
Tupperware is seeking a buyer after declaring bankruptcy last week. The iconic plastic container brand has seen flagging sales over the last few years due to cheaper competitors but also due to the fact that there are less stay-at-home wives who might attend sales parties. (AP)
America has never been great at shipbuilding. “Many of the most important advances in ship technology, such as nuclear-powered ships, container ships, LNG carriers, ore/bulk/oil carriers, and large-block construction were all developed in the U.S. But in turning these innovations into competitive industries, America has come up short.” (Construction Physics)
Religion and the Church
When it comes to good works, is waiting for the right motivation overrated? “The lack of motivational techniques in Paul’s exhortations..is not an oversight or a gap that needs filling by the eager preacher or writer, but an element of Christian freedom.” (Mockingbird)
100 years of Lutheran radio: a KFUO retrospective. (Lutheran Witness)
Arts, History and Sport
“Our biggest competitor is silence” – an interesting taxonomy of background music. Composer Erik Satie is credited with first composing “for the purposes of not being listened to.” Satie wanted music that would tone down the clamor of daily life. It is notable that the author writes, “constant access to music appears in descriptions of heaven.” That reminded us that in contrast, the sound of music and singing is removed from the streets of cities under God’s judgement! “For most of history, music has been a rare thing. Every performance was fleeting” but “anything can become background music. All it takes is a century of exposure.” (Dirt)
Last week in history:
1793 George Washington lays the cornerstone of the Capitol building. (Daily Fly)
1824 Although disputes about when photography began continue, one esteemed journal is calling the bicentennial of the invention for last week. (PetaPixel)
1893 New Zealand becomes the first country to give women a vote. (NZ government)
1981 The world’s biggest mall, in Edmonton, Canada opened it 20,000 space car park. (History)
Health, Medicine and Food
According to a new report, America has worse healthcare outcomes than other similarly wealthy nations, despite outspending them. “Differences in overall performance between most countries are relatively small, but the only clear outlier is the U.S., where health system performance is dramatically lower." (CBS)
Health experts say dairy products may help stave off diseases. “Researchers say that all saturated fat isn’t alike, and there may be factors that make dairy fat less worrisome.” One expert says the “bigger culprit in heart disease is the consumption of refined carbohydrates.” (Barrons)
One neuroscientist has made herself the subject of a one-woman study. Liz Chrastil had her brain scanned many times before, during and after pregnancy, discovering that the brain goes through an amazing metamorphosis as the body prepares to bring a little human into the world. Some changes persisted after birth and researchers hope to expand the study to help understand postpartum depression. (UC Santa Barbara)
A new headband which delivers an electrical pulse to the brain is touted to become a non-invasive, non pharmaceutical treatment for ADHD. (New Atlas)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the new Apple watch’s sleep apnoea detection function. “Apple is quick to note that the addition is not a diagnostic tool. Rather, it will prompt users to seek a formal diagnosis from a healthcare provider.” (Tech Crunch)
Scientists believe they know why some folks lack a particular antigen in their blood. The rare condition can lead to fatalities if the wrong blood is infused, but newly identified blood types should help protect patients who lack the antigen. (Wired)
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Science
Chinese researchers have developed a small nuclear battery with incredible efficiency. “Micronuclear batteries harness energy from the radioactive decay of radioisotopes to generate electricity on a small scale, typically in the nanowatt or microwatt range.” Harnessing energy from the decay of radioactive waste has long been considered too inefficient to be bothered with, but this new design may prove a game changer. (Interesting Engineering)
Firefighters have used 50,000 gallons of water and a waterbombing plane to extinguish a burning Tesla electric semi truck. (Road and Track)
A calendar you can tailor to your location to see what astronomical wonders are appearing in skies near you. (Nights on Earth)
Scientists think they know how static electricity works, after 2600 years. (PopSci)
A teenage coder has combined augmented reality tech and machine learning to help translate sign language to text. (Nice News)
Hearts and Minds
Vagueness in language is less mentally taxing to process, but it’s worth stopping sometimes to ask, “what does that mean?” (Psychology Today)
God’s Green Earth
Scientists fly ahead of flocks of endangered ibis to teach them how to migrate. (My Modern Met)
You can determine the health of your soil by listening to it. (Atlas Obscura)
Where the earth’s water goes. (Information is Beautiful)
War and Rumors of War
A targeted attack on Hezbollah which killed hundreds and injured thousands is being attributed to Israeli intelligence. One day after pagers exploded, walkie talkies used by Hezbollah fighters also detonated. Iran and its proxies have used old school tech to avoid being surveilled and tracked. Many questions remain about the complicated plan that led to explosives being placed in devices sold to Hezbollah, but reports say Israel manufactured the pagers through shell companies. Iran has denied that members of its Revolutionary Guard located in Syria were killed in device explosions, but a senior Iranian official has suggested that a helicopter crash which claimed the life president Ebrahim Raisi in May, may have been caused by the pagers. The leader of Hezbollah vowed to keep up daily strikes on Israel and Israel has returned fire, striking sites in Lebanon. So, it’s probably good to never let a hostile country manufacture important items for you. Oh wait.. (ZeroHedge, Daily Wire, Times of Israel, AP, CNN)
Yemen’s Houthis have fired their new hypersonic ballistic missile into Israel, covering 1270 miles in under 11 minutes. Israeli authorities said the missile was intercepted and broke into fragments. (Reuters)
The United Nations voted last week on a non-binding resolution that Israel retreat from Gaza and the West Bank within a year. The U.S. voted against the resolution while 43 nations absented. A “State of Palestine” was added to the U.N. line up six months ago as a permanent non-member observer. (AP, Front Page Mag)
A Russian military site has reportedly gone up in flames after a Ukrainian drone strike. The facility at Toropets is almost 300 miles from Russia’s border with Ukraine. BBC: “This latest attack by Ukraine is the kind it has been wanting to carry out with missiles supplied by its western allies. However, in the absence of approval from the US and UK, it has once again hit Russian targets with drones it has made itself.” (BBC)
Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelensky, says he has a peace plan he wishes to run by Washington. “There cannot be any…freezing of the war or any other manipulations that will simply postpone Russian aggression to a later stage," he said. (Ukraine Independent)
Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered 180,000 soldiers to be added to the regular army, creating the second largest army in the world after China’s. (Reuters)
Stories from Far Away
🇱🇰 Sri Lankans have voted to take a chance on Marxist presidential candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, after years of rising poverty and debt. Dissanayaka has taken a commanding lead with the majority of votes counted. Dissanayaka promised to tackle government corruption and renegotiate the terms of an International Monetary Fund bailout, under which tax hikes and other measures have increased financial hardship. (France 24)
🇧🇷 Brazil has threatened to fine X almost $1 million per day, after accusing the social media platform of trying to evade its nation-wide ban. X shut down operations in the country rather than cooperate with government requests to censor certain speech and particular users, but it appears some Brazilians have been able to access the site which began using a Cloudflare server with dynamic IP addresses. (CNBC)
🇨🇭 European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will end its collaborations with “all specialists affiliated with Russian research institutes”, following a year of internal debate over whether to exclude Russian access to the facility. (Dagen)
🇨🇦 Canadian prime minster, Justin Trudeau is facing pressure from within and without, after losing a formerly safe seat in Montreal. Bloc Québécois candidate, Louis-Philippe Sauvé beat out his opponents for the spot after a Liberal legislator quit. (The Guardian)
🏴 Two London hospitals have agreed to use drones to ferry urgent deliveries of blood back and forth between their respective sites. Drones can cut the delivery from 30 minutes using motorbike courier down to two minutes. (Tech Crunch)
🇨🇱 Google is reconsidering its plan for a massive data center in Chile after community outcry over the intensive water needs of the facility. Chile is experiencing an awful drought. (AP)
🇨🇳 A Chinese zoo has admitted it painted dogs to pass them off as pandas. (New York Post)
🐕 Who doesn’t like a freshly cut lawn?
🛂 Americans can now renew their passports online
🎸 Where the term “heavy metal” came from
🐋 Airbus Beluga lands at Heathrow airport
☕ Perfect fireplace mugs
🇪🇸 Barcelona artist builds tiny house sculptures from wire rods
🏴 A print found at an English rubbish dump turns out to be a 500-year-old Albrecht Dürer engraving
✏️ Artist carves designs on pink erasers
🎲 This is geek deep.. No Rolls Barred YouTube channel envisions different versions of Monopoly. Monopoly but Communist? but Cthulu?
On Starfall2029, Jonathan and Meridith discussed the marvelous way Scripture unites Christians. There were also great insights for parenting, wielding power and fighting fear. Watch on YouTube or Rumble, or listen here. Show links:
The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz
Professor Horner’s Bible reading plan
The Courage to be Protestant by David Wells
Has American Christianity Failed? by Bryan Wolfmueller
Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers by T. David Gordon
If you missed it, Meridith put out a call for anyone who would like to make a quilt for men who stay at the Hebron Collegium. If that is something you would be interested in helping out with, please reply to this email or send a message through madpxm.com/contact.
Our disclaimer: These are some resources the Fisks have found edifying, but when dealing with human-authored texts, apply discernment liberally!
This Week Preached:
Podcast Release:
Let us pray. O God, whose strength is made perfect in weakness, grant us humility and childlike faith that we may please You in both will and deed; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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