UPDATED @ 10:30 a.m. Sunday, September 8th, 2024

Now I’m going to go get ready to listen to pastor Jack Hibbs preach the sound Word of God.

KP / ACP

I respect Danel Greenfield as one of the best living American journalists. He’s a real journalist. A smart guy with spot on observations and reporting. It is why more articles written by him are found here on ACP.

But…

He is not a born anew, transformed from within man following Jesus Christ, given the gift of knowing that only the Holy Spirit can provide, not Messianic Jews as Dr. Michael Brown, such a brilliant and godly man, or Marty Goetz, such a beautiful, gifted by God godly man, two among so many and such a growing number. I do not know Mr. Greenfield, but from his writing, he appears to be a very secular Jew. His writing rarely if ever mentions God and never includes Scripture or references to God.

Frequent visitors and subscribers to his place know my position on Israel and Jewish people. I love Israel, although I’ve never been blessed to visit, and I love Jewish people. I’ve known many. I’ve worked for and with many. I’ve had Jewish friends since I was in high school.

Neither Israel nor Jews are perfect, far from it. But no place on this fallen earth is perfect, as no people or person is. Mr. Greenfield, like almost everyone no matter their faith, or if contending to not have any faith, no matter their nationality, age, gender, or race distilling everything down to being political. I’ve written of this ad nauseum in the past. It’s all left vs. right all the time.

Mr. Greenfield most likely didn’t come up with the heading for his fine article; “An Iron Curtain is Descending On Us.”

Mr. Greenfield, like so, so, so many people remind me of a flashlight on a very dark night. When turned on the light only goes so far and begins to fade into the wall of darkness, not penetrating the darkness.

That is what being worldly wise, brilliant even by world standards gets a person. A bit of the way along the way but unable to penetrate the darkness.

It’s complicated by many because they also are embarking on this while wearing dark glasses.

All the while proclaiming to have the answers.

Yes, Mr. Greenfield, and everyone in the world — freedom is disappearing across the free world. Rapidly. A consuming concerted effort. But it isn’t because of leftist political ideologies. Those just happen to be the receptive carriers. Like some folks get the flu others don’t, some folks contracted COVID-19, others never have. Some folks…

You get the idea.

It may appear, and in truth, an iron curtain is descending on us but turning a light source on, a weak one at that, and always finding in its beam leftist political ideologies and stopping there as if you’ve arrived at your destination only to discover you’re still lost in the woods ought to at some point prick something within an individual that perhaps they need to go further. Actually find the source of what is consuming them, why they are even here, what’s it all about, why are all these things happening, where are we headed and why, and on and on and on and on as almost everyone on earth is marching along in that company.

Save for the saved and even within that number far too many lay everything at the altar of politics and stop.

No, Mr. Greenfield and anyone else seeing an iron curtain descending on us and not going deeper as far too quickly as they determine the reason must be, can only be those disgusting leftist political agendas and ideologies [and this is correct, to a point] but…

It isn’t an iron curtain descending on us and our freedoms disappearing across the free world…

It’s an evil curtain filling, choking, consuming people and most can’t see it, most deny it.

“It must be political and only political!”

Says, shouts, writes the person without THE FAITH indwelling them of, on, by, with, and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

What has been, what is, and what is being put in place is everything for the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I never hear any pastor or Christ following believer say something along this line; “The coming time when the Antichrist does appear and the seven-year Great Tribulation commences [as that Christ following believer and every other Christ following believer won’t be here to see it or have to experience the horror such as the world has never witnessed and never will, as we’ll be caught up by our Lord before this] is going to be the greatest fascist regime, the greatest tyranny, the worst death and persecution era in all of world history.”

And that’s what is preparing the way now. That is why everything that has happened and is happening is happening. Preparation.

Just as we as Christ followers should be preparing more and more each day for seeing the Lord face to face and being caught up by Him — evil is preparing also for the time right after our exit.

Omit God, omit Jesus, omit the Holy Spirit, omit the whole inerrant infallible eternal living and active Word of God, and what anyone comes up with is fool’s gold. Sand falling through fingers. Nothing real, nothing of substance, nothing lasting.

Mr. Greenfield has written another excellent article. But it’s sorely lacking. In the light, it requires getting the whole story, the real story, the accurate story across to folks.

The word “No,” didn’t shatter the iron curtain — the Sovereign over all things God, the One True God, the God of the Jewish and Christian Bible did. And every person needs to not only acknowledge that truth, but if they aren’t doing so now acknowledge God in everything. For to do otherwise is the ultimate endeavor into foolishness, banality, and utter vanity. To omit God, to omit Jesus, to omit the work of the Holy Spirit — the Restrainer keeping everything on earth held together for now — to omit the whole Holy Bible is to omit the most important illuminating part of EVERYTHING so many seek answers about.

Leave God out, leave Jesus out, leave the Holy Spirit out, leave the Holy Bible out and it’s just more babel. Like another chocolate chip cookie recipe. Or a scroll across the bottom of a TV providing sports scores.

We’re at war. The greatest, longest, highest casualty, the most important war in world history.

And if unaware — take the time to find and listen to both Dr. Michael Brown and Marty Goetz. It will not be wasted time, like watching NFL football, and so many other things are…

[There are links in this posting to help you out in that endeavor]

Read on…

Ken Pullen, Sunday, September 8th, 2024

An Iron Curtain is Descending On Us

Freedom is disappearing across the free world.

September 6, 2024

By Daniel Greenfield

Reprinted from Frontpage Magazine

Over the last five years, American, British, Canadian and Brazilian governments unleashed unprecedented waves of repression against political opponents using martial law, military occupations of major cities, government censorship of the internet, nationwide manhunts, televised raids and extended detentions without trial. Most of those arrested were guilty of political speech and protests generally far less violent than leftist riots by regime supporters.

Three of those leftist governments, the Biden-Harris administration, the Starmer and Lula regimes, unleashed crackdowns after taking power using various pretexts. The fourth crackdown, in Canada under the Trudeau regime, took place during an election year.

The pretexts, J6, Brazil’s election protests or the U.K.’s anti-migrant rallies, are far less significant than the pattern of leftist regimes taking power and launching crackdowns against opponents who disputed elections or, in the case of the Starmer regime, protested against policies.

Governments that moan about “authoritarianism” abroad eagerly adopted every element of the authoritarian playbook from endless investigations of political opponents like Trump and Bolsonaro to declaring states of emergency over political protests and censoring speech. They often justify their authoritarian measures as necessary to stop their “authoritarian” opponents.

The leftist regimes that have taken to locking up people who merely express support online for opposition political protests are not averse to chaos, social unrest or riots. Before J6, Kamala Harris and every prominent Democrat and media outlet had endorsed BLM race riots. In the years since, leftist mobs have routinely invaded the United States Capitol, intimidated members of Congress, occupied their offices and fought Capitol Police officers in the name of every cause from banning oil to supporting Hamas with little result other than light slaps on their wrists.

In the years before Trudeau used martial law to silence truckers protesting against vaccine mandates, BLM rioters had been allowed to block streets in Canadian cities with the backing of the regime. No less a figure than Trudeau had ritually knelt to the race rioters and their cause.

Before and after the Starmer regime launched a ruthless crackdown on opponents of mass migration, Hamas supporters had rallied and rioted across London and other cities, threatening Jews and proudly flying the flags of Islamic terrorist organizations officially at war with the U.K.

None of these Muslim mobs were hunted, rounded up and sentenced to years in prison.

Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, who had defended his officers warning Jews not to be present near Muslim terror rallies because they were “visibly Jewish”, vowed to use terrorism laws and unleash the “full force of the law at people” for protesting Muslim migrant violence.

The only ones who can’t face terrorism charges for political rallies in the U.K. are actual terrorists.

The law that Rowley, along with Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood of the Starmer regime, follow might best be described in the words of a former Latin American strongman, “for my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”. Starmer’s actions have shown who his friends in Hamas bandanas are and they have also shown that the law is reserved for his enemies.

In the first stage of authoritarianism, the law is applied unequally, in the second stage of authoritarianism, inequality is written into the law, and in the final stage, the regime is the law.

America, the United Kingdom and many other formerly free nations are falling under the shadow of the first stage of authoritarianism. Numerous ‘Reichstag fires’ are used to declare temporary states of emergency during which civil rights and limitations on government powers do not apply. These experiments in totalitarianism took off during the pandemic, but did not begin then.

Trump’s election victory and the success of Brexit led to the launch of censorship regimes in America and the U.K. Free speech on social media virtually disappeared for ordinary people and became the province of a handful of opposition media outlets and influencers big enough to merit special exemptions from the rules inflicted on everyone else.

In America, once the home of free speech, the Biden-Harris administration and its liberal and leftist political allies have taken to arguing that the government has a ‘free speech’ right to take away the free speech of the people by telling social media monopolies to censor them.

In a 6-3 pre-election ruling, the Supreme Court allowed government agencies to resume the practice that censorship apologists have termed ‘jawboning’ of federal agencies telling social media monopolies to censor administration opponents. According to the Biden-Harrs administration, one of the “cornerstones” of its “power” is to “persuade Americans—and American companies—to act in ways that the president believes would advance the public interest.” And sometimes the public interest requires censoring politically incorrect jokes.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted. A furious media lambasted the social media founder for undermining the administration’s contention to the Supreme Court that Facebook and other companies had been acting independently, rather than obeying government diktats.

CNN condemned “Mark Zuckerberg’s election-season gift to Republicans”. The issue, media outlets argued, was not speech, but, as media outlets insisted, “disinformation” or “misinformation” that threatened “public health” or “national security”.

Free speech is at least still a subject of debate in America even as it has disappeared overseas.

The U.K.’s Online Safety Bill, originally billed as protecting children, mandates that social media platforms censor whatever the Starmer regime and Justice Minister Mahmood may deem to be hateful or harmful content. Platforms will be required to scan even encrypted messages and use algorithms to see to it that no one sees disapproved political speech anymore.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had no objection to Muslim mobs targeting Jews, claimed that he did “not feel safe” after opposition anti-migrant protests and demanded government censorship that would go even further in silencing critics across the internet.

In Brazil, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a controversial figure who helped the current leftist regime seize power, banned Twitter and leveled massive fines on any Brazilians who use the service. As the New York Times described him, “Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, has taken up the mantle of Brazil’s lead defender of democracy. Using a broad interpretation of the court’s powers, he has pushed to investigate and prosecute, as well as to silence on social media, anyone he deems a menace to Brazil’s institutions.”

That is what democracy has begun to look like in what used to be the free world.

Elections in which the two sides are held to very different standards of speech and tactics are held under the shadow of mass media propaganda and government censorship of opponents. The final results are determined by media outlets, unelected officials and partisan judges. If public dissatisfaction with the establishment is so high that the conservatives win despite mass fraud, bloc voting and every dirty trick in the book, the left spends four years rioting in rage while its unelected officials, including judges, find every possible way to undermine the government.

If the leftists win, they promptly declare an emergency and claim that democracy is threatened by free speech, popular protest and the existence of any opposition to their unlimited power.

The only thing free about any of this is that there are still elections and people are still allowed to vote in them. But democracy, as residents of North Korea’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea could tell you if they had any free speech, isn’t actually freedom. Bringing democracy to Iraq just turned it into a totalitarian Islamic state run by the Shiite majority. In actual free countries, people have more political freedom than just casting a ballot once every few years.

A democracy without a meaningful political opposition able to speak out, advocate for its views and protest is like a race with only one runner. It’s the end of a contest, not the beginning of one.

“I avail myself with relief of the opportunity of speaking to the people of the United States. I do not know how long such liberties will be allowed. The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out,” Winston Churchill had warned in a speech about Nazism in 1938. Eight years later he returned to America to deliver an even more famous speech.

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” Churchill warned. “In these States, control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments, to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy.”

Under the iron curtain, the “great principles of freedom” had been abandoned under which the people of any country have “free unfettered elections with secret ballot” and “that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities.”

Churchill’s warning was ridiculed by leftists in the same timeless fashion that they do today. Labour parliamentarians introduced a censure motion against Churchill for ruining relations with the U.S.S.R. while the New York Times argued that American democracy and Communism “have much to learn from each other.” The Times has certainly learned much from Communism.

“The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?” a recent New York Times column argued. It rests alongside recent Timesentries such as “The First Amendment is Out of Control” and “Elections are Bad for Democracy.” What is good for democracy? Tyranny and lots of it.

That iron curtain no longer hangs only over Russia and China, but over Churchill’s England, and the places in America where he once spoke, along with the rest of the world.

“Alexander the Great remarked that the people of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word ‘No,’” Churchill reminded Americans.

“No” has become a forbidden word to the people of the formerly free world.

When Churchill’s Englishmen tried to say “No” to PM Keir Starmer, they were locked up. The world watched as their homes were broken into in televised raids.

When Canadian truckers tried to say “No” to PM Justin Trudeau, he declared martial law.

And when Americans tried to say “No” to Biden-Harris, they were sentenced to years in prison.

An iron curtain is descending on us. It tricks us, lies to us, manipulates us, gaslights us, propagandizes at us, and when that fails, it outlaws us, censors us and it imprisons us because those who would make us into slaves in their utopia fear one word above all else.

“No,” a word that shattered the original iron curtain can shatter this new one too.

Marty Goetz: “Jesus isn’t some dead guy on a cross! He’s my MESSIAH!”

Shepherd of Israel (Psalm 23) — Marty Goetz

Oh Lord, Our Lord (Psalm 8) — Marty Goetz

House of Worship #318 — Marty Goetz

Sanctuary — Marty Goetz