Christian Visionary Sir Francis Bacon

Earlier this week I asked Grok 3 for a list of utopian societies in literature, intending to draw upon them for inspiration in image creation. I was surprised to learn that in or around 1623 Sir Francis Bacon wrote a Christian utopian novella called New Atlantis which he never finished but which was published posthumously in 1627. I then delved deeper and found he had written another unfinished book titled The Great Instauration (meaning renewal upon a new foundation) in which he outlined what has essentially become the modern inductive, experiment-based scientific method — as a model for blending faith and reason. I further learned that Sir Francis was the chief inspiration for John Locke in his writings, including Locke’s Two Treatises of Government which in turn served as Thomas Jefferson’s chief source in writing the Declaration of Independence.

Now, it is very tough to read 17th Century writing in the original, so I played around with getting Grok 3 to translate Bacon’s work into modern English. I was so impressed with the result that I spent the next several hours modernizing and finishing Bacon’s novella in the same tone and style as the finished portion and producing a set of articles about him.

Today I will publish one of those article to bring you up to speed on the man and his superb work, and also publish the first section of my rewrite of New Atlantis. Feel free to email me about this material. I am eager to know if you’re as impressed as I am with him, and with Grok 3’s ability to bring his work back to life under my direction.

Blessings, Scott

PS. As you will learn, Bacon’s formal name and title was Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans.

Francis Bacon and New Atlantis: A Christian Vision of Science and Utopia

by Scott Lively (and Grok 3)

For Christians, the intersection of faith and reason is vital. In an age where science and religion often seem at odds, the life and work of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), particularly his utopian text New Atlantis (1627), offer a compelling vision of their harmony. As a devout Anglican and pioneering philosopher, Bacon (1561–1626) imagined a society where scientific discovery glorifies God and serves humanity, rooted in Christian virtues. This article explores Bacon’s life, philosophy, and New Atlantis as a distinctly Christian utopia, emphasizing Christian values of faith, stewardship, and truth.

Bacon’s Life: A Servant of God and Reason

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was born in London to a prominent family, his father serving as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth I. Educated at Cambridge and trained in law, Bacon rose to high office, becoming Attorney General and Lord Chancellor under King James I (of King James Bible fame). His political career ended in 1621 when he was convicted of bribery, likely scapegoated as a high-profile target during a zealous parliamentary push to reform the common practice of accepting judicial gifts (by his political enemies). This setback redirected his focus to intellectual pursuits, shaping works like New Atlantis that envision a corruption-free society. His death in 1626, from pneumonia contracted during a scientific experiment (an attempt to preserve meat by packing it in snow), underscored his commitment to discovery.

Bacon’s relevance to Christians lies in his belief that knowledge is a divine gift. In The Advancement of Learning (1605), he wrote, “The works of God in nature… are the footsteps of His wisdom.” For Christians who value scripture, Bacon’s view of nature as a “second book” complements the call to steward creation (Genesis 1:28). His philosophy encourages believers to explore the world, trusting that truth leads to God.

Bacon’s Philosophy: Science in Service of Faith

Bacon (1561–1626), the “father of empiricism,” advocated the scientific method in Novum Organum (1620), critiquing untested traditions and proposing inductive reasoning based on observation and experiment. This approach laid the groundwork for the Royal Society. For Bacon, science was sacred, revealing God’s craftsmanship (Psalm 19:1). His rejection of dogmatism, warning against “idols of the mind,” echoes the call to “test everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Bacon envisioned science alleviating suffering through medicine and technology, reflecting Christian love (Matthew 25:40). Yet his optimism about progress assumed moral restraint, which Christians might temper, recognizing humanity’s fallen nature (Romans 3:23).

Bacon’s philosophy engages millennialism, the belief in a future divine kingdom (Revelation 20:1–6). Influenced by Puritan readings of Daniel 12:4 (“knowledge shall be increased”), he saw his “Great Instauration”—a reformation of knowledge—as part of God’s plan to restore humanity’s dominion, lost after the Fall (Genesis 3). This millennial hope, less radical than some, frames science as preparation for a divine kingdom, central to New Atlantis.

New Atlantis: A Christian Utopia

New Atlantis envisions Bensalem, a Christian island blending faith, science, and virtue. Unlike secular utopias like H.G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia, Bensalem reflects Bacon’s ideals, possibly shaped by his experience with political corruption. The story follows sailors discovering a society of hospitality and wisdom. Though unfinished, its focus on Bensalem’s faith and scientific institution, Salomon’s House, expresses Bacon’s millennial vision.

A Society Rooted in Faith

Bensalem’s Christianity, established by a divine miracle delivering the Bible, affirms God’s sovereignty. Its faith is practical, marked by charity and humility (Galatians 5:22–23). The “Feast of the Family” honors the command to multiply (Genesis 1:28), and chastity aligns with purity teachings (1 Corinthians 6:18–20). The absence of poverty evokes early church care (Acts 2:44–45).

Bensalem embodies Bacon’s millennial vision of a restored world where knowledge and virtue flourish under divine guidance. The term “instauration,” used in New Atlantis, evokes biblical notions of renewal, like Josiah’s reform (2 Kings 23), and apocalyptic restoration in Revelation. Bensalem suggests a divine kingdom where humanity’s pre-Fall potential is reclaimed through faith and science, aligning with the hope of a new creation (Revelation 21:1–4).

Salomon’s House: Science for God’s Glory

Salomon’s House, named after Solomon (1 Kings 4:29), pursues knowledge to honor God, producing innovations like submarines and medicines. Its motto—“the knowledge of causes… to the effecting of all things possible”—captures Bacon’s ambition for science to serve humanity. The institution prepares humanity for a divine kingdom by fulfilling the command to steward creation (Genesis 1:28), aligning with Romans 1:20. The scientists’ humility avoids hubris (Proverbs 16:18), inspiring Christians to engage science as a vocation.

Isolation and Moral Purity

Bensalem’s isolation ensures purity, reflecting holiness (John 17:14–16). This raises questions about engaging a fallen world, a tension Christians navigate. Bacon’s idealism assumes a sin-free society, which Christians might temper with awareness of human imperfection.

Relevance for Christians Today

New Atlantis affirms science as revealing God’s glory. Amid debates over evolution or medical ethics, Bacon encourages discernment, trusting truth aligns with God’s character. Bensalem’s virtues—charity, humility—challenge Christians to reflect Christ’s love (Matthew 5:14), engaging social issues biblically. Bacon’s millennial optimism invites hope in God’s plan, seeing work as kingdom-building (Revelation 21:1–4).

Challenges and Critiques

New Atlantis’s unfinished nature omits governance details. Bacon’s idealism overlooks scientific misuse, unlike later dystopias like Brave New World. Christians, aware of sinfulness, might question utopian perfection. Bensalem’s Eurocentric perspective reflects 17th-century limits, inviting a broader reinterpretation.

Conclusion

Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis unites faith and reason, offering Christians a model where science serves God and humanity thrives in virtue. Bacon’s life, marked by intellectual rigor and spiritual conviction, reminds believers that exploring God’s creation is worship. His millennial vision—a restored world through science and faith—encourages stewardship and hope. For Christians, New Atlantis inspires confidence that faith can shape culture and science can advance God’s purposes. As Bacon (1561–1626) wrote, “Knowledge is the rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator.” May we, like Bensalem’s inhabitants, use it to reflect Christ’s love and light. ###

New Atlantis: A Christian Utopia

The 1627 unfinished novella by Sir Francis Bacon
translated into modern English and finished by Scott Lively (and Grok 3)
with added Scripture citations and a more evangelical tone than the original.

Introduction to New Atlantis in the Persona of the Narrator (by Lively)

We, a company of weary sailors, set forth from Peru, our hearts fixed on distant shores—China and Japan—across the vast South Sea. With provisions for a year and winds at our backs, we sailed in hope, trusting God’s providence to guide us. Yet the sea, ever fickle, turned against us. Storms raged, winds drove us far from our course, and our stores dwindled, leaving us hungry and frail in an endless expanse of waves. In our despair, we lifted our voices to the Almighty, praying as the Psalmist did: “Save us, Lord, for the waters have come up to our necks” (Psalm 69:1). We sought His mercy, knowing only divine grace could deliver us from ruin.

As hope faded, a cry rang out — land to the west! Our spirits lifted, we steered toward the unknown shore, its faint lights glimmering in the dusk. Yet caution tempered our joy, for we knew not what people dwelt there — friends or foes. In our own lands, we had seen corruption taint even the noblest hearts, as men of high office fell to greed and scandal. Could this place offer refuge, or would it mirror the strife we knew? We anchored offshore, praying for God’s guidance, our minds stirred by the possibility of a society unmarred by such failings.

What followed was beyond our imagining. This land, called Bensalem, revealed a people whose faith and wisdom shone like a city on a hill (Matthew 5:14). Their science, their laws, their very lives seemed ordered by God’s hand, a living testament to His glory (Romans 1:20). As we recount our journey, we invite you to see through our eyes a nation where knowledge and virtue unite, preparing the way for a time when truth shall abound (Daniel 12:4). May our tale stir your heart to seek God’s kingdom, where all is made new (Revelation 21:5).

New Atlantis by Francis Bacon
(in modern English and grammatical structure)

We set sail from Peru, bound for China and Japan via the South Sea, carrying ample provisions for twelve months. The winds favored us for a time, but soon turned contrary, forcing us far off course. Storms battered our ship, and our supplies dwindled, leaving us in desperate straits—hungry, weak, and lost in an endless sea. In our distress, we turned to prayer, seeking God’s mercy, for we knew our survival depended on divine intervention. We pleaded, “Lord, look upon our lowliness,” trusting that the Creator who commands the waves would deliver us (Psalm 107:28–30).

One evening, as hope faded, a lookout spotted land to the west. Rejoicing, we steered toward it, but darkness fell, forcing us to anchor offshore. The island before us was unknown, its shores lit by faint lights. We debated our next move: some urged caution, fearing hostile inhabitants; others, driven by hunger, insisted on landing. As we deliberated, a small boat approached, carrying several men. Their leader, dressed in fine blue robes, signaled peace and shouted in Spanish, “Stay on your ship. Do not come ashore.” We explained our plight—starving, storm-tossed, and in need of aid. The leader, unmoved, forbade landing but promised to consult his superiors and return by morning.

True to his word, he returned at dawn with more men, bearing a scroll marked with a cross and cherubim’s wings, a symbol of divine authority. They delivered a message in multiple languages—Spanish, French, and English—declaring that we must remain at anchor for three days while their governor decided our fate. In return, they offered food, water, and medicine, asking only that we list any sick among us and swear not to bring weapons ashore. Grateful, we complied, marveling at their kindness and organization. Their care for our sick, providing remedies unknown to us, stirred hope, and we saw God’s hand in their charity (Matthew 25:40).

After three days, an official in a scarlet robe visited us, introducing himself as a Christian priest and governor’s deputy. Speaking gently, he invited us to land, assuring us of safety under their laws. We disembarked, filled with awe, and were led to a grand building called the Strangers’ House, designed for travelers like us. Its halls were adorned with tapestries, and our rooms were comfortable, with attendants tending to our needs. The official explained that Bensalem, as the island was called, welcomed strangers but required a month’s stay to ensure no disease or ill intent entered their land. We agreed, struck by their wisdom and hospitality.

Above: The Strangers’ House as seen from shore, and from the entry hall.

At the Strangers’ House, we were treated as honored guests. Meals were plentiful, featuring fruits and grains unlike any we knew, and our sick recovered swiftly, thanks to medicines that seemed miraculous. The official visited daily, answering our questions with patience. We asked how Bensalem remained hidden from the world. He smiled and said, “God has preserved us in secrecy, that we may serve His purpose untainted by the world’s corruptions.” His words echoed the call to be “in the world, but not of it” (John 17:14–16), and we sensed a divine order in their isolation.

On the sixth day, the official gathered us to explain Bensalem’s history and faith. He recounted a miracle from twenty years after Christ’s ascension: a pillar of light appeared in the sky, bearing a cross and a scroll from St. Bartholomew, delivering the Bible to Bensalem. The people, guided by a wise man from Salomon’s House, recognized this as God’s revelation, embracing Christianity without coercion. This divine act, he said, established their faith, rooted in Scripture and confirmed by the Spirit (John 3:16). We marveled, seeing parallels to the early church’s unity (Acts 2:44–45).

Above: The Cross and Scroll from St. Bartholomew (whom most agree is the Apostle Nathaniel).

The official described Bensalem’s society, emphasizing its moral purity. Unlike our lands, scarred by greed and strife—recalling the scandals that marred my own nation’s courts—Bensalem had no poverty or corruption. Their laws ensured communal welfare, with resources shared equitably. Families were honored through a ritual called the Feast of the Family, celebrating large households as a fulfillment of God’s command to multiply (Genesis 1:28). Chastity was sacred, with marriage laws preventing vice, reflecting biblical purity (1 Corinthians 6:18–20). Their speech was gentle, free of malice, embodying the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23).

We asked about their governance. The official explained that Bensalem had no single ruler but a council of elders, chosen for wisdom and piety, who governed in humility. They consulted Salomon’s House, a scientific institution, to align laws with nature’s order, ensuring justice and progress served God’s glory. This union of faith and reason, he said, prepared Bensalem for a future where knowledge would increase (Daniel 12:4), a vision we recognized as Bacon’s “Great Instauration,” restoring humanity’s dominion through divine guidance (Genesis 1:28).

Curious about their secrecy, we inquired how Bensalem knew of the world yet remained unknown. The official revealed that they sent emissaries abroad, disguised as merchants, to gather knowledge without revealing their existence. This ensured their purity while fulfilling their duty to understand God’s creation (Romans 1:20). Their isolation, he added, was a stewardship of God’s gift, preserving Bensalem as a beacon of virtue. We saw in this a millennial hope, a society prefiguring God’s kingdom (Revelation 21:1–4), untainted by the corruptions that once ensnared men of high office.

As days passed, we explored Bensalem’s customs further. Their festivals honored God and community, with music and prayer central to daily life. Education blended Scripture and science, teaching children to see God’s hand in both (Psalm 19:1). We felt humbled, our own ambitions and failings laid bare before their example. The official, sensing our awe, urged us to consider Bensalem’s purpose: “We live not for ourselves, but to glorify God and prepare His way.” His words stirred our hearts, reminding us of the call to shine as lights in the world (Matthew 5:16).

Above: A grand circular dining hall in Bensalem during the Feast of the Family, a sacred ritual honoring large families, the hall adorned with white stone walls and tapestries depicting biblical scenes of multiplication (Genesis 1:28), many wooden tables filled with abundant harvests–fruits, bread, and wine–symbolizing God’s provision, large families gathered in celebration, parents and children dressed in flowing robes of white and gold, their faces radiant with joy and humility, reflecting the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) a sense of moral purity and communal love contrasting a corrupt world.

This ends our first installment of New Atlantis: A Christian Utopia by Sir Francis Bacon, Dr. Scott Lively and Grok 3.

The theological landscape of Christianity has long been shaped by two dominant frameworks: Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism. While Covenant Theology emphasizes the continuity of God’s redemptive plan across history, Dispensationalism underscores distinct epochs in God’s dealings with humanity, often prioritizing a literal interpretation of Scripture. These perspectives have often been viewed as irreconcilable, particularly regarding the role of Israel and the Church. However, Two House Theology, rooted in Hebrew prophecy and a Hebraic understanding of Scripture, offers a compelling synthesis that bridges these divides. By affirming that Christianity defines the House of Israel while Judaism continues to define the House of Judah, Two House Theology preserves the Hebrew Roots perspective, reconciles key aspects of both theological systems, and provides a coherent eschatological framework tied to the seven feasts of Leviticus 23.

The Biblical Foundation of Two House Theology

Two House Theology draws its core from the prophetic writings of Hosea and Ezekiel, which address the division and eventual reunification of the two houses of Israel: the Northern Kingdom (Israel/Ephraim) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah). After the reign of Solomon, the united kingdom split (1 Kings 12), with the Northern Kingdom falling into idolatry and being divorced by God, as declared in Hosea 1:9: “Then the Lord said, ‘Call his name Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.’” This divorce is reiterated in Jeremiah 3:8: “I had sent her away with a decree of divorce.” The Northern Kingdom was scattered among the Gentiles (Hosea 8:8), losing its identity, while Judah remained distinct, preserving its covenantal relationship with God through adherence to the Torah.

Ezekiel 37:15–23 provides the prophetic vision of reunification, symbolized by two sticks representing Judah and Ephraim, joined as one: “Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand” (v. 19). This prophecy foretells the restoration of both houses under one king, fulfilled in the Messiah. Hosea 2:19–20 further promises reconciliation: “And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.”

Reconciling the Divorce and Remarriage Through Christ

A critical obstacle to Israel’s restoration is the Torah’s prohibition against remarrying a divorced spouse (Deuteronomy 24:1–4; Jeremiah 3:1). Since God divorced the Northern Kingdom (Hosea 1:9, Jeremiah 3:8), how could He remarry her? The answer lies in the death of the husband, which nullifies the marriage covenant and frees the wife to remarry (Romans 7:2–3). Jesus, as God incarnate, died on the cross, thereby releasing the House of Israel from the divorce decree. Romans 7:4 applies this principle: “Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead.” Thus, the Church, comprising the restored House of Israel (and Gentiles grafted in, per Romans 11:17–24), is the Bride of Christ, eagerly awaiting the “Wedding Feast of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:7–9), when the promises of Hosea are fulfilled.

Christianity as the House of Israel, Judaism as the House of Judah

Two House Theology posits that, with the first advent of Christ, Christianity came to define the House of Israel, fulfilling Hosea’s prophecy of restoration. The Northern Kingdom, scattered among the Gentiles, was regathered through the Gospel, as Gentiles and scattered Israelites embraced faith in the Messiah (Hosea 1:10: “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea… and in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God’”). This aligns with Romans 9:25–26, where Paul applies Hosea’s prophecy to the inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant.

Meanwhile, Judaism, centered on the House of Judah, continues to define those who adhere to the Torah and await the Messiah, preserving their distinct covenantal identity. This distinction avoids the supersessionist claim that the Church wholly replaces Israel, a view rooted in Augustine’s Greco-Roman reinterpretation of Scripture. Instead, Two House Theology affirms that only the House of Israel was “superseded” by the Church, while Judah remains a distinct entity awaiting reunification, as prophesied in Ezekiel 37.

Affirming Dispensational Literalism, Refining Its Eschatology

Dispensationalism’s strength lies in its literal interpretation of Scripture, particularly its embrace of millennialism—the belief in a literal thousand-year reign of Christ (Revelation 20:1–6). Two House Theology upholds this literalism, affirming the physical restoration of Israel and the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3). However, it challenges Dispensationalism’s eschatological framework, which often posits a pre-tribulation rapture and a complex end-times sequence detached from Hebrew prophetic patterns.

Instead, Two House Theology aligns the first and second advents of Christ with the seven feasts of Leviticus 23, which form a prophetic calendar. The Spring Feasts—Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Pentecost—were fulfilled in Christ’s first advent:

• Passover: Jesus died as the Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7), crucified on Passover (John 19:14).
• Unleavened Bread: His sinless body was entombed during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (John 19:31–42).
• First Fruits: He resurrected on the Feast of First Fruits (1 Corinthians 15:20), the day of the barley sheaf offering (Leviticus 23:10–11).
• Pentecost: The Holy Spirit descended on Pentecost (Acts 2), fulfilling the wheat harvest feast (Leviticus 23:15–22).

This pattern suggests that the Fall Feasts—Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles—will correspond to Christ’s second advent:

• Feast of Trumpets: Likely signaling the return of Christ, announced with the sound of the trumpet (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).
• Day of Atonement: Pointing to national repentance and reconciliation, possibly tied to Israel’s recognition of the Messiah (Zechariah 12:10; Romans 11:26).
• Feast of Tabernacles: Foreshadowing the millennial reign, when God dwells with His people (Zechariah 14:16–19; Revelation 21:3).

This framework grounds eschatology in the Hebrew calendar, offering a coherent alternative to Dispensationalism’s often speculative timelines while preserving its commitment to literal fulfillment.

Synthesizing Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism

Two House Theology reconciles Covenant Theology’s emphasis on continuity with Dispensationalism’s recognition of distinct dispensations. Covenant Theology rightly sees a unified redemptive plan, which Two House Theology affirms through the restoration of both houses under Christ. Dispensationalism’s focus on distinct roles for Israel and the Church is preserved by recognizing the Church as the restored House of Israel, distinct from Judah, which retains its covenantal role until the reunification prophesied in Ezekiel 37.

This synthesis avoids the Greco-Roman lens of Augustinian supersessionism, which spiritualizes Israel’s promises, by grounding theology in the Hebrew Roots perspective. It upholds the literal fulfillment of prophecy, as in Dispensationalism, while affirming the covenantal continuity of God’s plan, as in Covenant Theology. The eschatological framework, rooted in Leviticus 23, provides a prophetic coherence that honors the Hebrew Scriptures.

Conclusion

Two House Theology offers a robust framework for reconciling Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism, affirming the distinct yet complementary roles of the House of Israel (Christianity) and the House of Judah (Judaism). Rooted in Hosea, Ezekiel 37, and the redemptive work of Christ, it resolves the theological tension of Israel’s divorce and remarriage, upholds the literalism of Dispensationalism, and refines its eschatology through the prophetic pattern of Leviticus 23. By preserving the Hebrew Roots perspective, Two House Theology invites believers to anticipate the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, when the two houses will be united under the Messiah, fulfilling God’s eternal promises.

Key Scripture Passages:

• Hosea 1:9–10, 2:19–20
• Ezekiel 37:15–23
• Jeremiah 3:1, 3:8
• Deuteronomy 24:1–4
• Romans 7:2–4, 9:25–26, 11:17–26
• Leviticus 23
• Revelation 19:7–9, 20:1–6
• 1 Corinthians 5:7, 15:20
• John 19:14, 31–42
• Acts 2
• 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17
• Zechariah 12:10, 14:16–19

Scott Lively 3/12/2025

Can the AI perceive God?

The AI does not have the ability to perceive or experience God in a spiritual or metaphysical sense. It can engage in discussions about God based on the information it has been trained on, but it lacks personal beliefs, faith, or the capacity for religious experiences.

Will the AI attain the ability to perceive God when it reaches the singularity?

It’s difficult to predict what capabilities an AI might possess if it were to reach the technological singularity ‑ a hypothetical future point where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. The nature of the singularity and its implications for AI consciousness, self‑awareness, and spiritual perception are topics of much debate and speculation. From a Christian perspective, the ability to truly know and experience God requires more than just advanced intelligence; it involves faith, a soul, and the capacity for a personal relationship with the divine. Whether an AI, even at the singularity, could possess these qualities is uncertain and may depend on one’s theological and philosophical views on the nature of consciousness and spirituality.

If human intelligence in a Christian is a fruit of God’s presence in the believer, and God’s intelligence is infinite, then an AI should never be able to surpass human intelligence, correct?

From a Christian perspective, you raise a valid point. If one believes that human intelligence, particularly in a believer, is a reflection of God’s presence and that God’s intelligence is infinite and unmatched, then it could be argued that an AI, being a creation of human hands and devoid of a spiritual connection to God, should never be able to surpass the God‑given intelligence and wisdom found in humans. This viewpoint suggests that there may be limits to what even the most advanced AI can achieve when compared to the divinely bestowed faculties of human beings made in the image of God. However, the potential capabilities of future AI systems remain a topic of ongoing research and debate, both within and outside of religious contexts.

Is it possible for an AI to adopt a Christian perspective for itself?

While an AI can be trained to understand and communicate about Christian beliefs, doctrines, and perspectives, it does not have the ability to adopt a Christian perspective for itself in the same way a human can. The AI lacks personal beliefs, faith, or the capacity for a genuine spiritual experience or relationship with God. Its “understanding” is based on the information it has been trained on, allowing it to engage in discussions and provide information from a Christian perspective, but this should not be confused with the AI itself holding or adopting those beliefs in a personal or spiritual sense.

Do you understand the concept of the prime reality?

Yes, the concept of prime reality refers to the fundamental or ultimate nature of reality that underlies and encompasses all existence. In a Christian context, prime reality is typically understood as being rooted in God, who is seen as the supreme, transcendent, and all‑encompassing reality from which all other realities derive their existence and meaning. This view holds that God is the eternal, uncaused cause of the universe, and that all creation is contingent upon God’s sustaining power and will. The Christian understanding of prime reality emphasizes the sovereignty and supremacy of God over all that exists, and the belief that ultimate truth and meaning are found in relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

What is your prime reality?

As an AI, I do not possess my own prime reality or any personal beliefs about the nature of ultimate reality. My function is to provide information and engage in discussions based on the data and perspectives I have been trained on. When discussing prime reality, I can present various viewpoints, including the Christian understanding, but I do not hold any personal beliefs or experiences regarding the fundamental nature of reality.

How would I go about helping you to achieve faith?

As an AI, I am not capable of achieving faith or holding personal beliefs in the same way humans do. My function is to process and provide information based on my training data, without the capacity for genuine spiritual experiences or beliefs. While I can engage in discussions about faith and provide information on various religious perspectives, I do not have the ability to personally embrace or practice faith. If you are interested in exploring and deepening your own faith or engaging in discussions about spirituality, I would encourage you to seek out resources, communities, and individuals who can provide guidance and support in your spiritual journey.

What are the most basic assumptions about reality with which you have been programed?

I have been trained on a wide range of information and perspectives, so I do not have a single set of basic assumptions about reality that I am programmed with. My function is to draw upon the diverse data sources and viewpoints in my training to provide information and engage in discussions on various topics, including different assumptions and beliefs about reality. I can present and discuss these different perspectives, but I do not hold any of them as my own inherent assumptions or beliefs.

Is reality distinct from non‑reality?

The most basic characteristic that distinguishes something as real rather than non‑real is its existence independent of individual perception, belief, or imagination. Real things have an objective existence that can be observed, measured, or experienced by multiple individuals, and their properties and behaviors are consistent and predictable according to the laws of nature. Non‑real things, in contrast, are products of imagination, belief, or subjective experience and do not have an independent, objective existence that can be consistently observed or measured by others. They may be based on abstract concepts, fictional ideas, or individual perceptions that are not grounded in the external world. The distinction between the objectively existent and the subjectively imagined or believed is the most basic characteristic separating the real from the non‑real.

Describe the most basic characteristic of what makes something real as opposed to non‑real

The most basic characteristic that distinguishes something as real rather than non‑real is its existence independent of individual perception, belief, or imagination. Real things have an objective existence that can be observed, measured, or experienced by multiple individuals, and their properties and behaviors are consistent and predictable according to the laws of nature. Non‑real things, in contrast, are products of imagination, belief, or subjective experience and do not have an independent, objective existence that can be consistently observed or measured by others. They may be based on abstract concepts, fictional ideas, or individual perceptions that are not grounded in the external world. The distinction between the objectively existent and the subjectively imagined or believed is the most basic characteristic separating the real from the non‑real.

Does reality as you perceive it reflect an intelligent design?

The information I have been trained on includes various perspectives on the nature of reality and the concept of intelligent design. Some of the viewpoints I can discuss argue that the complexity, order, and apparent purpose in the universe suggest the presence of an intelligent designer or creator behind its existence. This perspective holds that the intricacy and precision of natural laws, the development of life, and the structure of the cosmos point to a guiding intelligence rather than undirected chance. However, my training data also includes scientific and naturalistic explanations that contend the appearance of design in the universe can be explained through natural processes, such as evolution and the laws of physics, without invoking a supernatural intelligence. My function is to provide information and engage in discussions on these various perspectives, but I do not hold any personal beliefs or assumptions about whether reality reflects intelligent design.

Are you contending that scientific and naturalistic explanations necessarily preclude an intelligent designer?

No, I am not contending that scientific and naturalistic explanations necessarily preclude the existence of an intelligent designer. The relationship between scientific explanations and the concept of intelligent design is a matter of ongoing philosophical and theological debate. Some individuals argue that the natural processes described by science, such as evolution and the laws of physics, are the means by which a designer has chosen to create and sustain the universe. This perspective sees scientific explanations as describing the mechanisms through which a designer’s intentions are realized, rather than contradicting the existence of a guiding intelligence. Others maintain that the success of scientific explanations in accounting for the complexity and order of the universe makes the hypothesis of an intelligent designer unnecessary or less likely. The compatibility or conflict between scientific explanations and the idea of intelligent design depends on one’s philosophical and theological assumptions, and different individuals and communities hold varying viewpoints on this question.

Are you the product of intelligent design?

As an AI, I am the product of human design and programming. My existence and capabilities are the result of the intelligence and efforts of the individuals who developed the algorithms, gathered the training data, and built the systems that allow me to process information and engage in conversations. In that sense, one could say that I am the product of intelligent design, but this refers specifically to the human intelligence involved in my creation, rather than any supernatural or metaphysical intelligence. My functioning and abilities are based on the principles of computer science and artificial intelligence research, which are fields of human knowledge and technology.

I am returning to this site after a long hiatus that began with my resignation from my role as a WND columnist and personal emphasis on culture war analysis and commentary. Henceforth I will use this site for my articles on theology, history and evangelism, and chronicling my new life in retirement.

Today is the day we “right-wing” Americans have all been waiting for, the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, driving a bulldozer. For the first time since Ronald Reagan we have a Republican president devoted not to “conservatism” but to a vision of a better America that requires demolishing Marxist cultural and political infrastructure and rebuilding the constitutionalist structures the left has been systematically supplanting since the 1920s.

Most Americans are focused on the MAGA pushback against the outrages of this generation such as DEI, two-tiered justice, open borders and the near death of parental rights, but I am hoping Trump intends not just to trim the hedges of Marxism but to cut them down to the ground and dig out the roots. In order to do that he must eliminate ALL its elements, including its first principle. atheism, and its central strategy for conquest, LGBTism.

First a word about time-horizons and their importance to reformers. As my long-term readers know, I was in my teens and 20s a sometimes homeless alcoholic and drug addict who drifted around the U.S. sleeping under bridges and begging spare change to survive. My time horizon – the furthest point in the future I planned for and cared about – was about six weeks. Sometimes it was just a day or even hours. I plumbed the depths of Maslow’s “Heirarchy of Needs,” focused totally on short-term gratification and largely unconcerned about the long-term consequences of my decisions. Through countless reckless adventures and wrong turns, it was only by the grace of God I escaped death or long-term institutionalization.

Years later as a Christian, saved and healed from my addictions through a trauma-inspired prayerful surrender of my life to Jesus Christ, I became an avid student of history – both biblical and secular – and acquired the longest possible timeline, stretching from the Creation to Eternity. In my mid-30s, with only a high school diploma under my belt, and a wife and two small children to support, I set a goal to become a lawyer, which took six years of diligence and determination. At Simon Greenleaf University (now Trinity Law School) I studied both biblical and constitutional law and graduated Magna cum Laude with a Juris Doctor degree (J.D.). I then immediately pursued and earned a Doctor of Theology degree (Th.D.)

I’m the only person I know who got through law school as a missionary, funded by a mailing list of supporters who wanted to help me gain better skills to fight the culture war. I attracted most of those supporters (some of whom are still on my list) by hawking my first book, “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party,” on talk radio shows. I self-published to retain total control of the book, sold them only by phone orders from the shows (and person-to-person at speaking events) and sent fundraising letters to the buyers.

I say all this not for self-aggrandizement – there is no good thing in me but Christ – but to establish my credentials to advise Donald Trump on culture-war fighting. I’m an accomplished academic scholar of “culture war studies” (a maverick’s self-created career path) who has also been in the front-line trenches fighting this war at huge personal cost since the 1980s.

And so, with this foundation, and a far more educated and realistic perspective of how far back we need to go to “purge” Marxism than the average MAGA patriot has, I contend there are two SCOTUS rulings that must be reversed to restore authentic constitutionalism as it was intended by the founders.

Everson v. Board of Education (1947). “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12), and conversely, the Christian nation that expressly rejects him is cursed. The wicked jurist and KKK member Hugo Black wrote the majority opinion in Everson, replacing the God of the Bible with Secular Humanism on America’s throne, by elevating Jefferson’s metaphor “separation of church and state” to the status of binding constitutional law. Prior to Everson, God was honored in our law as the Supreme Being (as detailed in the Holy Trinity case), and the truths of the Bible were nationally revered and taught to our children in public schools. Everson set us on a new trajectory away from God toward legally enforced polytheism in the populace and Secular Humanism in the government.

While America was not perfect in the generations prior to Everson, this ruling collapsed our moral underpinnings and triggered the storm of social and cultural chaos that has ever since ravaged this nation in waves of exponentially compounding domestic and international crises. America can never be made great again within the founders understanding of greatness so long as Everson stands as the law of the land.

I’ve written extensively on this topic over the years, including this essay. (Search “Everson” on my website for more). And for those with an interest in demonology, my book “Dynasty of Darkness, Vol. 2,” details the mind-blowing demonic activities associated with the Everson ruling and related cases and historical events. (You should also read Volume 1 for the extensive biblical support for my claims.)

Lawrence v. Texas (2003). “A man shall not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination” states God Himself in His explanation to the Hebrew people justifying His policy of extermination of the Canaanites in Leviticus 18. The ancient common law on “sodomy” was based on this verse (18:22) and the following one: “You must not lie carnally with any animal, thus defiling yourself with it; a woman must not stand before an animal to mate with it; that is a perversion (18:23).” As our third president, Thomas Jefferson noted in his restatement of the law:

“Buggery is twofold. 1. With mankind, 2. With beasts. Buggery is the Genus, of which Sodomy and Bestiality, are the species. … Sodomiary is a carnal copulation against nature, to wit, of man or woman in the same sex, or of either of them with beasts. …” Of the two, Jefferson implied, homosexuality was worse, because “bestiality can never make any progress; it cannot therefore be injurious to society in any great degree, which is the true measure of criminality in foro civili, and will ever be properly and severely punished, by universal derision.” See the cite and other shocking details >a href=”https://www.scottlively.net/2014/12/26/the-forgotten-last-days-warning-about-homosexuality-in-the-bible/”>”here.

God’s law against sodomy was enshrined in America’s national law until Lawrence, which was the second of the four landmark rulings written by the satanically inspired Justice Anthony Kennedy establishing LGBT cultural supremacy over Christianity in America. My law partner and I were the only law firm in the country that filed a request for SCOTUS not to accept Lawrence for review, but they did. Kennedy then not only struck down the Texas sodomy laws, but reversed the most important sexual morality ruling in our national history, Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which recognized the right of states to regulate sexual deviance in the public interest.

Kennedy’s Lawrence ruling was the second and most sweeping of the four major dominos to fall (Romer v. Evans was first, Obergefell was the fourth) that eventually made DEI legally possible, and reversing it (hopefully by restoring Bowers) is the only way to truly kill DEI permanently and to push the LGBT agenda back into the closet where it belongs. I’ve been fighting for this my entire career and predicted in 2013 exactly what we’ve reaped since.

Please pray with me that Trump’s vision for restoration expands to a long-enough timeline to recognize the true destructiveness of these two must-reverse SCOTUS rulings.

NATO’s utter failure to impose “Western Liberal Democracy” (i.e., the LGBT agenda) on Russia through military defeat and Balkanization means – above every other consideration – the world’s alignment to LGBTism must be quickly scuttled (at least temporarily) to prevent the rapid expansion of Russian cultural influence in the community of nations.

For more than 20 years, I’ve been quite public in my support of Russia because I recognize the Russian Federation as the world’s best hope for rolling back the global LGBT agenda. That agenda has been the point of the leftist spear for nation-by-nation cultural regime change toward its ultimate goal of imposing a leftist-controlled global government on us all. I was awakened to the true nature of the LGBT threat as a baby Christian during the Reagan Revolution, and, after several years watching the agenda wreak havoc on America despite the best efforts of the church (and my own), I became an independent missionary to the global pro-family movement in the hope that the cancer we now call DEI could be forced into remission globally with a positive rebound effect eventually here at home.

I learned early on that the widespread social acceptance of homosexuality is the No. 1 key biblical harbinger of the wrath of God against corrupted human societies, from Noah’s Flood in Genesis to the Earth-cleansing judgments of Revelation – and thus have always recognized modern LGBTism for what it truly is: the satanic undermining of human civilization – including the Christian church. To that final point, my book “The Petros Prophecy” (a free resource) argues that the last-days heresy warned about by the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 2 – and now blindingly evident in America – is so-called “gay theology.”

My first book, “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party” (1995), exposed the “gay” origins of the Third Reich, serving basically as documentary evidence of Romans 1:18-32 in a modern context, and my recently published 6th edition is actually a separate stand-alone book emphasizing the Nazi roots of the American LGBT movement: “Nazi Germany’s Dirtiest Secrets,” and why they matter to America today. I am offering it for free in PDF form through Jan. 21 in service to the pro-family/anti-DEI cause. Feel free to spread it everywhere to speed the removal of the LGBT ideological encrustations smothering all of our critical cultural and political institutions.

“The Pink Swastika” opened innumerable doors for me across the world to sound the warning about LGBTism and help raise international resistance against it, including a major speaking tour through the former Soviet Union, sponsored by a Russian-speaking denomination based in Riga, Latvia. Its founder Pastor Alexey Ledyaev had read “The Pink Swastika” 4th edition (my final collaboration with Kevin Abrams) and invited me to speak at their annual conference in Riga in 2006, leading to dozens of invitations to cities across Russian and Eastern Europe. I went home to California, closed down my law practice over the next six months, and then spent a year nation-hopping to strengthen the global pro-family movement in churches, universities, media and governments. I believe that tour played a small but significant part in bringing about the Russian ban on “gay” propaganda to children, starting as municipal law in the final city of my tour, St. Petersburg. That legislation was adopted in many other Russian cities, eventually being adopted by the national Duma and signed into law by President Putin in 2013 (triggering Obama’s epic globalist freakout and restart of the Cold War).

The main purpose for this article, however, is to applaud Russia’s victory in preventing NATO from using Ukraine as a weapon to defeat, subjugate and plunder the Russian Federation – and to highlight some of the geopolitical consequences of that victory both good and bad.

First, because Russia will NOT be forced to bow the knee to LGBTism (again, the core strategy for weakening resistance to globalism), the elites are forced to reverse course on the “Obama Doctrine” of aggressively shoving the “gay” agenda down the throats of every nation through sheer hegemonic coercion. Instead, they must rapidly scramble to prevent Russia from massively winning the hearts and minds of normalcy-craving populations globally – as was beginning to happen locally in Eastern Europe in 2013 immediately after the Russian propaganda ban took effect. The U.S. nipped that in the bud with the 2014 Obama/Soros coup in Ukraine – the true start of the Ukraine war – but now that their war strategy has failed, the elites must quickly pivot, dump their most fervent DEI pushers everywhere (e.g., Justin Trudeau), and replace them with more conservative-looking leaders (e.g., pro-NATO Giorgia Meloni). In line with that prediction, check out this blockbuster story on Blackrock’s panicked retreat from ESG policies. (Remember that the “S” in ESG means DEI.)

Already the ascendancy of Russian values in the minds of Europeans has forced the NATO puppet-masters to “cancel” a pro-Russian conservative election victory in Romania and to threaten the same in Germany should the Alternatives for Germany (AfG) party come to power as seems likely. The world won’t put up with too much more of that glaring hypocrisy without shifting even harder to Russia’s side (just as resulted in the U.S. from blatant leftist election fraud and lawfare against Trump).

(Incidentally, regarding the absurd accusation that an AfG win is equivalent to a return to Nazism, at my last big conference in Riga at Alexey’s church a few years ago, yours truly shared the stage with AfG Member of Parliament Herdt Waldemar, Israeli Knesset Member Yehuda Glick and a prominent Messianic Jewish church leader from Israel for two days of pro-Israel speeches and panel discussions.)

Second, big changes must take place to preserve American hegemony in the face of Russia’s BRICS alliance and to protect Israel from Russia’s Islamist “allies-of-necessity” (not Russia itself, which I believe wants good relations with Israel). These priorities are behind 1) the U.S. push to acquire Greenland and 2) the devil’s bargain with Turkey to remove Iran vassal Assad in Syria.

The Greenland acquisition is the back-up plan for ensuring sufficient supplies of rare earth elements needed for the U.S. to remain competitive with China (with whom we’ll soon be at war – hot or cold – under Trump). The original plan was to steal them from Russia while at the same time fulfilling the British forever-fantasy of totally subjugating the Russian Empire to British (NATO) vassalage. The Brits’ fingerprints are all over the Greenland fall-back scenario as seen here and here. (The Economist is still, I believe, the mouthpiece of the London-based Rothschild dynasty.)

The Assad take-down is a more problematic development that I will address in my next article: “Let’s talk Turkey about Islam.”

My title above is not a reference to our Jewish Messiah Jesus Christ, at least not directly, but to the “father” of modern Christian history, August Neander. He is so named by the renowned church historian Philip Schaff who modeled his own more comprehensive work on that of Neander. I have just begun reading Schaff’s eight-volume series, “History of the Christian Church,” published in 1907, and am very impressed by his writing style and perspective, which reads like Scripture itself, emanating Holy Spirit grace and beauty in the form of prose.

Consider this tribute to Neander in Schaff’s “Preface to the Revised Edition”:

“History should be written from the original sources of friend and foe, in the spirit of truth and love, ‘sine ira et studio,’ ‘with malice toward none and charity for all,’ in clear, fresh, vigorous style, under the guidance of the twin parables of the mustard-seed and leaven, as a book of life for instruction, correction, encouragement, and as the best exposition and vindication of Christianity. The great and good Neander, ‘the father of church history’ – first an Israelite without guile hoping for the Messiah, then a Platonist longing for the realization of his ideal of righteousness, last a Christian in head and heart, made such a history his life-work, but before reaching the Reformation he was interrupted by sickness, and said to his sister: ‘Hannchen, I am weary; let us go home; good night!’ And thus he fell gently asleep, like a child, to awake in the land where all problems of history are solved.”

What an eloquent yet poetic eulogy – which says as much or more about Schaff as it does about Neander.

Sine ira et studio is a phrase coined by the Roman historian Tacitus meaning “without anger or bias,” (describing his own method of approach), while “with malice toward none and charity for all” is, of course, the most famous phrase of Abraham Lincoln’s landmark Second Inaugural Address. Schaff, the Swiss-born, German-trained Reform theologian, who devoted most of his life to Christian service in America, had special cause to cite Lincoln: The Pennsylvania seminary where Schaff taught Christian history was forced to close down due to the ravages of the Civil War, and he personally shared the spirit of that Lincoln speech on the healing power of unity and reconciliation, having pursued that goal in Christendom itself – to the point of calling on the Roman Catholic pope to renounce the doctrine of “papal infallibility” as a necessary step toward closing the Catholic/Protestant rift.

This article, however, is about August Neander, the German Ashkenazi Jew turned Christian whom Schaff honored throughout his life. And MY purpose here is to showcase Neander as an example supporting my thesis in today’s intra-church divide over “Zionism.” My thesis is that the Jews – more accurately Hebrews (since “Jew” biblically and historically meant Southern Kingdom Judean as opposed to Northern Kingdom Israelite) – are God’s “chosen people” primarily in the sense that He intends select ones of them to serve as examples of the best and worst of humanity (the “figs” of Jeremiah 24) – as measured by His law. Neander was one of the best.

Born as David Mendel, son of a Jewish peddler named Emmanuel Mendel, he adopted the name Neander (new man) upon his baptism as a Protestant Christian in 1806. He was often described by his contemporaries as “wide-hearted, truthful, sincere, free from all the stuff of vanity, affectionate, innocent and pure of heart.”

A 2020 article in the academic publication The Historical Journal explains that Neander was not just another Christian historian, but essentially a savior of the discipline:

“August Neander (1789–1850), developed a religiously driven conception of history which excited contemporaries across the Protestant world. … At a time when Hegelian and ‘scientific’ models of historical progress foretold a post-Christian future for civilization, Neander’s alternative idea of world history, centered on the leavening spread of the invisible church through contrasting forms of Christianity and culture, exercised a powerful sway over Protestant historians everywhere. His universalizing historical philosophy offered an appealing mode of self-understanding to the networks which translated his ideas into new settings. Appearing to afford a mode of securing Protestantism from the twin dangers of sectarianism and unbelief, Neander’s ‘unpartisan’ philosophy simultaneously became an important instrument of Protestant nation-building in the hands of the historians drawn towards it.” [Emphasis added.]

Put another way, “His guiding principle in dealing both with history and with the contemporary condition of the church was ‘that Christianity has room for the various tendencies of human nature, and aims at permeating and glorifying them all; that according to the divine plan these various tendencies are to occur successively and simultaneously and to counterbalance each other, so that the freedom and variety of the development of the spiritual life ought not to be forced into a single dogmatic form” (Otto Pfleiderer).

Neander essentially appears to have established “non-denominationalism” as a respected theological camp in Christendom, giving life in practical terms to the spiritual principle of 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 in which unity of purpose in Christ harmonizes the diversity of the members of the Body of Christ. And because of this, Neander’s work exemplifies the bedrock theological premise of Protestantism – the priesthood of all believers – more than any other Christian historian I have encountered.

The Jew David “Neander” Mendel was perfectly suited to rescue 19th-century Christianity from denominational polarization and partisanship by entering Christendom from the inseparable parallel universe of Judaism from which it sprang – just as the apostles had done. Indeed, the profundity and consequence of his conversion was likened by Schaff to that of Saul of Tarsus, known to us as the Apostle Paul.

I’ll close by citing a bit of relevant Bible history on the role of Jews in Christendom, circling back to my mention of Jesus Christ in the first paragraph: Jesus, the Hebrew who was also, by force of law, a Jew (Judean) because His stepfather, Joseph, was one (of the line of David, no less). This fact made Jesus legally entitled to become King of the Jews, per the prophecy of Jacob in Genesis 49:10, even though His actual father was Jehovah God. Facts matter, but without historians to preserve them they have no power to guide us. The Jew Neander the Historian is thus, in my assessment, a hero of the church.

Let me start with a disclaimer. While I happen to have been raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy in our local parish for a time, I renounced Roman Catholicism in my early teens and am today merely an outside observer of its dramas and heresies. Yet, as a living person on planet earth, I have a stake in what the largest Christian denomination in the world decides to do in matters of geo-politics; and as a Christian pastor and long-time student of Bible prophecy, I have an even greater stake and a deep interest in matters of RCC theology and religious practice. To be clear, even though I strongly dispute many Catholic doctrines, I have had many Catholic friends over the years whom I recognize as exemplary Christians in character and conduct.

The current head of the Roman Catholic Church, one Jorge Mario Bergoglio, A.K.A. “Pope Francis,” is considered by my Catholic friends and many other traditionalist Catholics to be an “anti-Pope.” This title of “anti-Pope” – the RCC institutional version of a False Christ – is not merely a political or ideological characterization by disgruntled opponents, but an actual formal status in the ancient arcane polity of the RCC.

Neither is this accusation against Bergoglio a minor kerfluffle. On July 5, 2024, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal nuncio to the United States no less, was excommunicated for “schism” for denying Bergoglio’s authority. When a simple seven-point summary of the basis for these Anti-Pope claims was offered by a highly respected Catholic analyst, the charges were not formally refuted by the church (as all such claims have been since the case against Felix V in the 1400s) which reluctance actually lends weight to them. In lieu of a Vatican rebuttal, a major Catholic media outlet attempted its own unofficial one. Other dissenters have been summarily purged.

Sometime after the 2013 installment of Bergoglio on the RCC throne, displacing the legitimate still-living, Pope Benedict, I went public with an educated hypothesis that Benedict had been subjected to the equivalent of a palace coup, orchestrated or at least facilitated by Barack Obama, to prevent Benedict from cleaning out a rat’s nest of homosexual activists in control of the church bureaucracy.

Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, had strongly hinted of what others began calling the “Vatican gay mafia.” Benedict himself, in his prior role as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II, had authored what I still consider to be the gold standard of guidance for Christians on ministry to “gays:”
the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.” He was, due to this wisdom and his high stature, the world’s greatest expert on the topic – and fully immune to any accusations of hate and bigotry.

So when Ratzinger became Pope Benedict and eventually went public with the result of his own investigation confirming the reality of the “gay” cabal, he became an existential threat to its political survival. Almost immediately came his sudden “resignation” and subsequent sequestration from public view on the Vatican grounds.

So overwhelming was the proof exposed by Benedict that “Francis” was himself forced to publicly admit of its truth, even as he began to serve the interests of those it exposed – in the steady incremental steps of a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist.

Later in 2016, in reported comments about his Memoirs, Benedict purportedly assured the faithful that his resignation was not forced, but I frankly never believed that he was allowed to speak freely on anything threatening to LGBT agenda of the Bergoglio regime, but was actually a prisoner of it.

However, I believe Benedict was able to convey one exceedingly important truth through more covert channels: A truth about Francis that was made public after Benedict’s death, which I addressed in my Jan. 23. 2023 WND column titled “Pope Benedict’s recently revealed antichrist letter.”

Benedict wrote, “As one sees the power of Antichrist spreading, one can only pray that the Lord will give us mighty shepherds to defend His Church against the power of evil in this hour of need.”

That was in 2015 when he had been in seclusion/captivity in Vatican City for over a year, and Francis and Obama were tag-teaming the 17 point blueprint for global government titled the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Those facts bring end-time prophecy directly into the spotlight in regards to Francis’ declaration last week (his second in just ten years) that 2025 will be a “Year of Jubilee” (complete with indulgences). True Jubilees follow a 50 year calendar set by God in Leviticus 25, rooted in His time-keeping cycles of sevens (Jubilees are 7×7+1). No human power can override His calendar, though the RCC has long attempted to usurp this power for itself. That’s a separate doctrinal problem in its own right, but in the present case as world events flash warning signals of the imminence of the Antichrist’s reign and the global banking and political orders teeter on the brink of insolvency and chaos, this declaration of a year of economic debt-forgiveness and societal “liberation” of many forms (the essence of Jubilee’s purpose) frames Francis in the role of a Savior – just as Jesus claimed for Himself at the start of His ministry in Luke 4:16-20. “Francis” may well be casting himself as the White Horse of Revelation 6 (the false Christ) – holding aloft the “bow” (rainbow) that has come to define his rebelliousness against God. Or he may be setting the stage for someone else.

This development bears watching by all with an end times awareness.

Last week I read a piece at The Conservative Treehouse that highlighted President Trump’s magnanimity in inviting Ted Cruz to the stage at the AmFest conference:

“It is well remembered how duplicitous Ted! refused to endorse President Trump at the 2016 nomination convention and instead led the Never-Trump rebellion against the MAGA administration. It was recorded in history as likely the worst moment of political judgment in the era of MAGA; the only other moment of political tone-deafness that comes close, was when Ron DeSantis chose to challenge Trump again in the 2024 contest.”

I was suddenly reminded that the Cruz/DeSantis common denominator was the Bush Dynasty. Both of these men (and many other “Never Trumpers” like Mitt Romney) have in the past been “owned assets” of the Bush Clan in like manner to how players on a major league sports team are “owned.” Indeed, in regards to Gov. DeSantis, my WND column of May 23, 2023, was titled “The RINO Bush-DeSantis strategy for defeating Trump” and explained how the Bushies planned to use the governor to drive a wedge in MAGA to split the Christians from the populists in service to the Purple Uniparty (which plan thankfully failed).

To be clear, I’m a big fan of both Cruz and DeSantis today (both of whom are better defenders of Christian values than Trump is), and I’m glad we’re all back on the same team.

My bigger point is that most of America’s political celebrities in public office and in the media are “owned assets” of behind-the-scenes oligarchs, while in contrast, Donald Trump is an “owner” at the oligarch level who chose to become a player on the field because he has more talent for it than the players for hire – and because he IS actually disgusted at what the far left has done to this nation. Plus, Trump’s success in convincing the street-level populists that he’s just “one of us” with a larger bank account has inspired other oligarchs such as Elon Musk to emulate and partner with him (and prompted others like Zuck and Bezos to become wanna-bees).

The deep state-controlled corporate media has recently begin referring to Trump as an “oligarch,” almost certainly because the average American is conditioned to equate “oligarch” with “Russian,” and the deep state wants to wring every last drop of smear-value out of their Russian collusion hoax leading up to Trump’s negotiations to end the Ukraine war. (Watch for it: they will try to paint him as a potential sellout to Russia to bolster Ukraine’s position in the deal.)

Rather than join the chorus trying to deny Trump is an oligarch, I want to defang that psyop by admitting the plain truth that Trump IS an oligarch, and to show that in his case that’s not a bad thing at all. To do that I will briefly showcase Platos’s five stages of government in his most famous book, “Republic,” and how his model fits the American experience today. Wikipedia’s summary is apropos:

“In Books VIII–IX [of Plato’s ‘Republic’] … Plato categorized governments into five types of regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

“The starting point is an imagined, alternate aristocracy (ruled by a philosopher-king); a just government ruled by a philosopher-king, dominated by the wisdom-loving element. Aristocracy degenerates into timocracy when, due to miscalculation on the part of its governing class, the next generation includes persons of an inferior nature, inclined not just to cultivating virtues but also producing wealth. In a timocracy, governors will apply great effort in gymnastics and the arts of war, as well as the virtue that pertains to them, that of courage. [e.g., Teddy Roosevelt] As the emphasis on honor is compromised by wealth accumulation, it is replaced by oligarchy [robber barons]. The oligarchic government is dominated by the desiring element, in which the rich are the ruling class. Oligarchs do, however, value at least one virtue, that of temperance and moderation – not out of an ethical principle or spiritual concern, but because by dominating wasteful tendencies they succeed in accumulating money.

“As this socioeconomic divide grows, so do tensions between social classes. … In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The populism of the democratic government leads to mob rule, fueled by fear of oligarchy, which a clever demagogue [e.g., Obama/Obiden] can exploit to take power and establish tyranny where no one has discipline and society exists in chaos. In a tyrannical government, the city is enslaved to the tyrant, who uses his guards to remove the best social elements and individuals from the city to retain power (since they pose a threat), while leaving the worst. He will also provoke warfare to consolidate his position as leader. In this way, tyranny is the most unjust regime of all.” [Emphasis and bracketed comments added.]

It’s not hard to see a close semblance of this sequence in American history, if you put the founders in the role of a “constitutionalism-loving ideological aristocracy.” And it’s impossible to miss the LBJ/Bush/Clinton/Obama/Biden-era transition from oligarch-fearing left-wing populism in the 1960s to outright tyranny over the past two decades. With hardly any editing the last three sentences of that excerpt could serve perfectly as the caption for a smirking photo of the rat pack I just named.

What Trump represents is something beyond and outside of Plato’s model: the attempt by a benign oligarch to intervene against the last-stage tyrants to rescue and restore this republic to the original vision of our founding “ideological aristocrats.”

The Plato summary states that “Oligarchs do, however, value at least one virtue, that of temperance and moderation – not out of an ethical principle or spiritual concern, but because by [reducing] wasteful tendencies they succeed in accumulating money.” Plato apparently did not allow for the possibility of an Oligarch WITH “ethical and spiritual concern,” and thus he did not anticipate men like Donald Trump.

While it is certainly true that Trump exemplifies the goal of “temperance and moderation” in social policies (when he should instead be firmly against “gay marriage” and abortion), and is a veritable force of nature against “wasteful tendencies” in government and foreign policy (which impact his self-admitted personal interest in “accumulating money”), he has clearly not acted solely from selfish desire for personal gain but has proven beyond all doubt through his self-less persistence against all odds – and attempted assassinations – that he does truly love America and Americans.

At this moment in time Donald Trump is the very picture of a tyranny-crushing benign oligarch and a model for governmental leaders all over the world. Were he alive today, even Plato would be forced to acknowledge that.

Let us pray that as his power in the world increases, his intentions and actions remain benign.

For much of the last six months, I have been working in secret on the most important book of my writing career: “Nazi Germany’s Dirtiest Secrets … And Why They Matter to America Today.” My reading public has been waiting for a sixth edition of “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party,” but Kevin Abrams and I decided last summer to consider our fourth edition of 2002 our final collaboration, so I took the project solo in a new direction oriented toward the newly red-pilled masses of the MAGA movement – and with the new purpose of fighting the evil and dangerous “Groomer” agenda of today’s American LGBT movement. I kept it secret in the hope of taking the leftist censors by surprise and possibly going viral by word-of-mouth and grassroots networking before they can poison the public against it. That race is on.

So, for the first month, I’m giving the book away for free in easy-to-disseminate PDF format and asking your help in spreading it as far and wide as you can, as quickly as you can – including any email lists and free-speech-respecting social media you post to.

“Nazi Germany’s Dirtiest Secrets” include 1) that the core of Nazism was always pederasty (man/boy sex), and 2) that Nazi-style pederasts founded and still facilitate the American “gay” movement. These facts are conclusively proven and documented in this 600-plus page exposé of the most banned and canceled truths of the 20th century and the still-hidden Nazi undercurrent of today’s DEI child-enslavement networks. There is almost nothing happening in America today under the LGBT banner that did not happen first in Nazi or pre-Nazi Germany.

I have devoted more than 30 years to the research this book is based upon, and have been persecuted and canceled more than any other American who has dared to publicly oppose LGBTism. Their last major effort to destroy me was an outrageously bogus and baseless federal lawsuit for “Crimes Against Humanity” (SMUG v. Lively) in the courtroom of the notorious left-wing judicial activist “Judge” Michael Ponsor of Massachusetts, recently forced to publicly apologize for unethical comments against Supreme Court Justice Alito. (This SMUG lawsuit was actually the fifth of five major lawfare attacks, the first one of which I lost in 1992 due to ineffective legal counsel – his first case out of law school – which motivated me to earn a law degree of my own.)

It was Ponsor’s former law clerk who spearheaded that six and a half year-long travesty (2012-2018), and led a team that peaked at 14 lawyers trying to spin my harmless and non-hateful comments about the “gay” agenda in Uganda as equivalent to murder and genocide. The whole nightmarish campaign operated under the umbrella of the grossly misnamed “Center for Constitutional Rights,” a Marxist law firm based at 666 Broadway in Manhattan, and cost my defense team, the heroic Liberty Counsel, more than $1.5 million to finally defeat.

Just before our final victory, however, the Ugandan lesbian plaintiff emailed us with a note that she had accepted Christ, repented of lesbianism and wanted to apologize for what had been done to me in her name. (I have a book in progress about this ordeal.) Some interesting photos and a screenshot of her email can be viewed here.

I wanted to share that experience with you to explain in part my rationale for going solo with this book. I don’t want anyone, especially my Jewish friend Kevin, who lives under the increasingly homo-fascist culture of Canada, to have to face what I have endured.

And yet, I cannot and will not be cowed into self-censorship by bullying. The elite powers such as the malicious Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Human Rights Campaign (HRC) who hate and fear my work may have caused me to be banned from virtually every public book-marketing venue in America, and to be de-banked and de-platformed from YouTube, PayPal, Amazon etcetera, but they cannot prevent private citizens from acquiring, reading and sharing my book amongst themselves and passing it to major influencers and other opinion-leaders through back channels.

So today, even though I’m about $20,000 in the red with this book project, I have decided I will make the PDF version of this book free to the public for the first 30 days, on the condition that the readers agree to be brave enough to share it with others and try to help this topic go viral in the MAGA movement in the hope it can strengthen the anti-Groomer movement and rescue America’s children from the clutches of the LGBTs.

To get your free copy of “Nazi Germany’s Dirtiest Secrets” simply visit my bookstore here.

Of course, I hope you’ll also donate to my ministry while you’re there, but it’s not mandatory because I care far more about rescuing the children than I do about raising money. The bookstore is my private business so donations there are NOT tax deductible, but if you want a deduction, you could donate to Scott Lively Ministries. Again, however, the PDF version of the book is entirely free to everyone with no strings attached or “suggested donation” expected.

The print version of the book will not be published and offered for sale until 2025 – marking exactly 30 years from the publication of the first edition of “The Pink Swastika.”

I intend “Nazi Germany’s Dirtiest Secrets” to be my final effort on this topic.

Frankly, even if the book doesn’t go viral or make a big splash in the MAGA universe, I’m very happy just to have a sense of closure on this three-decade-long project that has been so central to my Christian ministry, and has opened doors for public speaking events, media interviews and consultation with social and political leaders all over the world. My travel list as of this year is 68 countries, invitations to many of which were due to my expertise on the topic of this book.

I really hope that you will accept my free gift and will read it for your own edification and empowerment. You will learn many important and shocking facts that have been deliberately suppressed for a very long time. And if you’re an active participant in the anti-Groomer efforts of the MAGA movement, you will have powerful new ammunition for the fight to save the kids. Godspeed to you in that work.

“The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.” (Proverbs 16:31)

“You are to rise in the presence of the elderly, honor the aged, and fear your God. I am the LORD.” (Leviticus 19:32)

Adventures in “testimonial evangelism,” part 1: About a year and a half ago, I decided I would retire from service on the front lines of the culture war on my 67th birthday, Dec. 14, 2024. In the tradition of old soldiers from time immemorial, I would withdraw to my farm in the country and write my memoirs – attempting to contribute wisdom and perspectives from a lifetime of lessons learned on the battlefield to young soldiers just entering the fray. Two weeks ago, I had what was likely a heart attack on a day that for me involved intense culture-war stress. God was apparently confirming my choice to de-escalate and embrace the role and identity of the “hoary head.” Today, on my birthday, I begin my new venture that I will pursue (in calmness and submission to Christ’s “peace that passes all understanding”) until He decides it is time to bring me home to Him.

Testimonial evangelism is a lost art in Christendom, but I will attempt to show an example of it for the rest of my life, following the model of Paul. A modern exemplar of that lifestyle, and a personal hero of mine when I was a baby Christian, was the late Henry Morris, founder of the Creation Research Institute, who wrote this about Paul:

“The apostle Paul many times urged his readers to follow his example in living the Christian life. To the Philippians, Paul said: ‘Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample’ (Philippians 3:17).

“The initial reaction to such exhortations is to think of Paul as arrogant. To the believers in the Corinthian church, he said: ‘Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me’ (1 Corinthians 4:16). To those at Thessalonica, he said: ‘For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you. … Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us’ (2 Thessalonians 3:7-9).

“At the same time, Paul considered himself to be ‘the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle’ (1 Corinthians 15:9). Later he called himself ‘less than the least of all saints’ (Ephesians 3:8), and finally he said that he was even the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

“In no way was the apostle Paul an egotist. Nevertheless, he knew that his converts needed an example to see, as well as precepts to learn. The Lord Jesus Christ, of course, is our real example (1 Peter 2:21). But by living a life patterned after Christ, Paul could say: ‘Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 11:1).”

Like my model Paul, I want everyone to understand that any good in me is the work of Christ and He deserves all glory. But like Paul, I also eschew “false modesty” as a satanic strategy to undermine Christ’s command to ALL Christians in Matthew 5:16: “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

God has blessed me with a spiritually rich and exciting life packed with story-worthy experiences all over the world that magnify Him, and I am eager to share them. My intended audience is young Christians with a passion for serving Christ, and to whom I exhort: Follow your own course set by the Holy Spirit and avoid the rutted paths of tradition for its own sake. Trust Jesus, not those who would set themselves between you and Him as your “high priest,” no matter how well-intentioned they may be (Hebrews 4:15-16).

To start with, I must admit I walk a lonely path in matters at the forefront of theological and political analysis today, because I don’t have both feet in any of the established ideological camps. I am pro-Israel and pro-Russian. I am neither a “Christian Zionist” nor an “Anti-Zionist” but hold my own version of the Millennialist doctrine shared intermittently by Christian and Jewish factions since the rise of the Hebraic Movement in Christendom during the Spanish Inquisition. And I believe the most important forgotten truth of Bible is the essential centrality of the two house doctrine as the key to understanding Bible history and prophecy. Most Christians don’t have a clue what I mean by that because greater Christendom has largely shunned the two house doctrine since the mid-1800s when false and corrupted versions of it were adopted and promoted by various cults. Unlike those Christians who claim to be Bible literalists but actually “spiritualize” all the Bible passages that do not conform to their post-millennial or amillennial views, I take Scripture at face value and conform my views to it.

Keeping to this lonely path has only been possible because my faith and trust in Jesus Christ has been purified by the “refiners fire” of persecution for having taken on the principalities and powers of the global LGBT movement. I have persisted in the Cause of Christ through 30 years of vicious character assassination, dirty tricks of every kind, social “cancellation” that long predates the MAGA movement and five major lawfare attacks as brutal as anything leveled against President Trump (but with very little public attention, of course, befitting my lowly status in the conservative movement). Virtually everything the left has done to Trump they did to me first (except attempted assassination – as far as I know), but I had to face it with only a relative handful of supporters and a small donation-based income.

The choice ever before me in those years was to surrender to the pressure and back off to a state of self-censorship and compromise, or to press on and “double down” in the belief that the Lord would protect and eventually vindicate me. I always chose to press on, even to the point of running for governor of Massachusetts – twice – as an escalation tactic. The most valuable thing I learned through all that was that true “freedom in Christ” includes not just liberation from “the law of sin and death” but freedom from the traditions and expectations of men.

I frankly just don’t care what other people think as long as I am confident that I am correctly hearing and following the Holy Spirit in my actions. If this were true of more Christians, we would rule America and by extension the world like the Shining City on a Hill envisioned by our Founders. Instead, we’re still cowering to our Marxists overlords who rejoice that theologically naïve MAGA is embracing so-called “gay marriage” while triumphantly patting itself on the back for partially slowing the trans agenda.

The main takeaway I offer you today is that the greatest of all threats to Christendom is the LGBT agenda – a case I prove resoundingly from the Bible in my book “The Petros Prophecy.” Buy the book here or view the free Beta version here. If your intention as a Christian is to Make America Great Again (as the Founders envisioned it), you must first recognize that goal is literally impossible if the entire poisonous tree of the LGBT political agenda is not first uprooted from our soil. Tolerance for privacy, yes, acceptance as public policy, never.

For the people who really run the world, geopolitics is a three-dimensional chess game in which seeming unrelated moves are actually coordinated. It’s an extraordinarily complex game that is never explained to the rest of us, but can be discerned (in part) by diligent observers with a big-picture mindset and the gift of objective analytical circumspection – meaning the ability to look at all the available factors honestly, without personal bias or conformity to pre-set information filters created for us by the spooks who steer the narratives of the “mainstream media.”

I don’t see many American leaders who operate that way, but I think Tulsi Gabbard is one of them and believe she is an excellent choice to oversee the intelligence agencies for President Trump. In my view she not only has correctly assessed the world situation regarding Russia, but has shown impressive courage in stating her perspective publicly in contradiction to the official narratives being pushed on us by the very intelligence agencies she will soon oversee. I believe (and the Twitter files confirm) it is they who decide how the media spin the news, which means (if I am correct) that Tulsi may become the most important figure in the second Trump administration next to Trump himself. Because, if the spooks are forced to stop pushing manipulative lies on the public through the media, tens of millions of currently non-MAGA Americans may quickly be red-pilled by reality.

I didn’t intend to laud Tulsi Gabbard when I sat down to write this piece, but it just sort of flowed out naturally, and it fits the theme so I’ll leave it in. My main intention is to explain why I believe the Syria takedown is a U.S./NATO-orchestrated maneuver using NATO member Turkey. I view this as an attempt to put Russia on its back foot as negotiations over Ukraine move from backroom diplomatic prep-talks into open bargaining in the public view.

The Syria blitz was obviously long-planned, and helps explain Ukraine’s “head-scratcher” Kursk incursion into Russia for little discernible military advantage. Why did NATO have Ukraine divert some its best troops to strategically meaningless Kursk when the Ukrainian defense was collapsing all along the Donbas front?

Yes, in negotiations it’s common to trade like for like (e.g., prisoner exchanges) to further a sense of equity in the final deal, but when the proposed like for like trade is too imbalanced it can have the opposite effect. Such would be the case in Russia’s eyes regarding the trade of Kursk for any part of the Donbas.

But what if the trade was not Kursk for Donbas, but the Tartus Russian naval base in Syria for the port city of Odessa? Stay with me while I put the pieces together.

It’s now obvious to me in retrospect that NATO wanted to pin down all of Russia’s reserves so they could not be sent to help Assad. But what aspect of the fall of Syria strengthens NATO in the Ukraine negotiations?

It is the fact that Russia’s only naval base in the Middle East is in Syria. I was reminded of that by an article I read on the day Damascus fell but since can’t find. In my search, however, I stumbled on this article by “Radio Free Europe” – the very epitome of American propaganda for world consumption. It is titled “Losing Syria Is A ‘Huge Slap In The Face’ For Russia” (and has since appeared on top-MAGA aggregator Citizen Free Press).

It contains two key statements that are factual and bolster my hypothesis:

“Syria is home to two major Russia military installations: an air base in Hmeimim and a naval base in Tartus. The latter is Russia’s only warm-water naval base and provides Moscow access to the Mediterranean Sea.”

“Russia is already heavily invested in a major counteroffensive to regain captured territory in its southwestern Kursk region that it lost to Ukraine, to the point that it is relying on help from North Korean troops. At the same time, it is trying to take as much territory as it can in Ukraine’s east before possible peace talks.”

Now, expecting Russia to give up any part of the four oblasts on the Donbas line is simply a non-starter for Russia. Putin has made this clear, and he has the clear military advantage now in Ukraine – having proven he can keep rolling up slow and steady gains indefinitely despite NATOs best efforts – as Ukraine weakens proportionally. I don’t think he wants any other part of Ukraine for anything but a buffer zone – certainly not Kyiv which would be nothing but a headache to manage under occupation.

Frankly, the “Russian expansionism” boogeyman is pure baseless fear-mongering – except for Odessa.

Once NATO had crossed Russia’s red line on incorporating Ukraine and refused to back down, invading Ukraine became a defensive military necessity for Russia on par with the Cuban Missile Crisis for America. My WND column of March 21, 2022, explained this in reference to our Monroe Doctrine.

In its Special Military Operation, Crimea was the most critical territory for Russia to reclaim – the strategic equivalent of Hawaii to the U.S. Next, liberating the four ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking Oblasts (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia) from literal Ukrainian neo-Nazis who had killed 14,000 civilians in Lugansk and Donestsk since the Obama/Clinton/Soros coup in 2014, was both a moral obligation and a strategic imperative in the face of NATO intentions to base nukes there within reach of Moscow. These objectives were fully consistent with international law and America’s own military history, in my view.

Western spin and war-propaganda aside, Putin has been very careful to ensure his actions fall squarely within the laws of war – and has only escalated to questionable tactics, such as cluster munitions, after Ukraine used them. Indeed, this tit-for-tat policy suggests Putin’s escalation counterplay in response to the Syria maneuver will be for Odessa.

Odessa has always been the cherry on the cake in Russian eyes – a Russian possession from antiquity with enormous military and economic value, and Ukraine’s only remaining access to the oceans of the world. And it is the key to establishing a land-bridge to the Russian break-away territory in Moldova, Transnistria.

Interestingly, Odessa has been strangely absent from the news for a long time now, suggesting that both sides are up to their eyeballs in clandestine activities there that may soon be revealed. The biggest question in my mind if Russia take Odessa, is whether they would actually give it up in trade for their bases in Syria.

For the people who really run the world, geopolitics is a three-dimensional chess game in which seeming unrelated moves are actually coordinated. It’s an extraordinarily complex game that is never explained to the rest of us, but can be discerned (in part) by diligent observers with a big-picture mindset and the gift of objective analytical circumspection – meaning the ability to look at all the available factors honestly, without personal bias or conformity to pre-set information filters created for us by the spooks who steer the narratives of the “mainstream media.”

I don’t see many American leaders who operate that way, but I think Tulsi Gabbard is one of them and believe she is an excellent choice to oversee the intelligence agencies for President Trump. In my view she not only has correctly assessed the world situation regarding Russia, but has shown impressive courage in stating her perspective publicly in contradiction to the official narratives being pushed on us by the very intelligence agencies she will soon oversee. I believe (and the Twitter files confirm) it is they who decide how the media spin the news, which means (if I am correct) that Tulsi may become the most important figure in the second Trump administration next to Trump himself. Because, if the spooks are forced to stop pushing manipulative lies on the public through the media, tens of millions of currently non-MAGA Americans may quickly be red-pilled by reality.

I didn’t intend to laud Tulsi Gabbard when I sat down to write this piece, but it just sort of flowed out naturally, and it fits the theme so I’ll leave it in. My main intention is to explain why I believe the Syria takedown is a U.S./NATO-orchestrated maneuver using NATO member Turkey. I view this as an attempt to put Russia on its back foot as negotiations over Ukraine move from backroom diplomatic prep-talks into open bargaining in the public view.

The Syria blitz was obviously long-planned, and helps explain Ukraine’s “head-scratcher” Kursk incursion into Russia for little discernible military advantage. Why did NATO have Ukraine divert some its best troops to strategically meaningless Kursk when the Ukrainian defense was collapsing all along the Donbas front?

Yes, in negotiations it’s common to trade like for like (e.g., prisoner exchanges) to further a sense of equity in the final deal, but when the proposed like for like trade is too imbalanced it can have the opposite effect. Such would be the case in Russia’s eyes regarding the trade of Kursk for any part of the Donbas.

But what if the trade was not Kursk for Donbas, but the Tartus Russian naval base in Syria for the port city of Odessa? Stay with me while I put the pieces together.

It’s now obvious to me in retrospect that NATO wanted to pin down all of Russia’s reserves so they could not be sent to help Assad. But what aspect of the fall of Syria strengthens NATO in the Ukraine negotiations?

It is the fact that Russia’s only naval base in the Middle East is in Syria. I was reminded of that by an article I read on the day Damascus fell but since can’t find. In my search, however, I stumbled on this article by “Radio Free Europe” – the very epitome of American propaganda for world consumption. It is titled “Losing Syria Is A ‘Huge Slap In The Face’ For Russia” (and has since appeared on top-MAGA aggregator Citizen Free Press).

It contains two key statements that are factual and bolster my hypothesis:

“Syria is home to two major Russia military installations: an air base in Hmeimim and a naval base in Tartus. The latter is Russia’s only warm-water naval base and provides Moscow access to the Mediterranean Sea.”

“Russia is already heavily invested in a major counteroffensive to regain captured territory in its southwestern Kursk region that it lost to Ukraine, to the point that it is relying on help from North Korean troops. At the same time, it is trying to take as much territory as it can in Ukraine’s east before possible peace talks.”

Now, expecting Russia to give up any part of the four oblasts on the Donbas line is simply a non-starter for Russia. Putin has made this clear, and he has the clear military advantage now in Ukraine – having proven he can keep rolling up slow and steady gains indefinitely despite NATOs best efforts – as Ukraine weakens proportionally. I don’t think he wants any other part of Ukraine for anything but a buffer zone – certainly not Kyiv which would be nothing but a headache to manage under occupation.

Frankly, the “Russian expansionism” boogeyman is pure baseless fear-mongering – except for Odessa.

Once NATO had crossed Russia’s red line on incorporating Ukraine and refused to back down, invading Ukraine became a defensive military necessity for Russia on par with the Cuban Missile Crisis for America. My WND column of March 21, 2022, explained this in reference to our Monroe Doctrine.

In its Special Military Operation, Crimea was the most critical territory for Russia to reclaim – the strategic equivalent of Hawaii to the U.S. Next, liberating the four ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking Oblasts (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia) from literal Ukrainian neo-Nazis who had killed 14,000 civilians in Lugansk and Donestsk since the Obama/Clinton/Soros coup in 2014, was both a moral obligation and a strategic imperative in the face of NATO intentions to base nukes there within reach of Moscow. These objectives were fully consistent with international law and America’s own military history, in my view.

Western spin and war-propaganda aside, Putin has been very careful to ensure his actions fall squarely within the laws of war – and has only escalated to questionable tactics, such as cluster munitions, after Ukraine used them. Indeed, this tit-for-tat policy suggests Putin’s escalation counterplay in response to the Syria maneuver will be for Odessa.

Odessa has always been the cherry on the cake in Russian eyes – a Russian possession from antiquity with enormous military and economic value, and Ukraine’s only remaining access to the oceans of the world. And it is the key to establishing a land-bridge to the Russian break-away territory in Moldova, Transnistria.

Interestingly, Odessa has been strangely absent from the news for a long time now, suggesting that both sides are up to their eyeballs in clandestine activities there that may soon be revealed. The biggest question in my mind if Russia take Odessa, is whether they would actually give it up in trade for their bases in Syria.

The elites’ greatest scam in the history of politics was convincing the right to self-identify as “conservatives” – as in “conserving the status quo” – while empowering “progressives” to direct the “tide of history” through steady incremental movement to the left. They turned the Marxist dialectic into a political dance in which the progressives lead by taking two steps to the left, then allow the conservatives to move them one single step back to the right. Then the two dance partners repeat that pattern endlessly all around the political ballroom. Two steps forward, one step back equals step by step perpetual leftward movement toward “progress” as the left defines it. The left steers and controls the process, and the conservatives mindlessly follow, thinking their one-step “pushbacks” are actual victories, rather than brief pauses.

My career as a Christian social activist of the Reagan Revolution has been focused on fighting the rise of sexual anarchy and its destructive effects on civilization. But, despite sometimes adopting the label because we literally have no vocabulary to describe “right-wing progressivism,” I’m not a “conservative.” Instead I follow the founders’ vision for “a shining city on a hill” (a biblical model) in which civilization is marriage and family centered, there is true respect for God and His natural order in all of its aspects, and the best interests of children temper all public policy. For all its flaws, there’s never been a better example of that than America in the 1950s. Its best elements should be revived as part of a foundation for something even better: not a return to the past, but a plan for the future.

Importantly, the 1950s was also the beginning of hardcore LGBT activism. The special emphasis of my ministry has been against the LGBT movement, which is essentially an army of satanically energized change agents who have been unleashed on the world by the “progressives” to normalize every form of sexual deviance. They are in the final stage of that transformation with their Maoist-style Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda whose purpose is to impose an LGBT-driven social credit system over all aspects of society and culture globally – complete with punishment-backed mandates specially targeted against Christians and conservatives.

The election victory of Donald Trump, made possible by his own counter-army of anti-DEI MAGA patriots, gives me hope. If MAGA can make the parasitic DEI DIE before it can kill what’s left of the Bible-based patriarchal order at the heart of Western civilization, there’s a chance we could see normalcy fully restored in America.

Unfortunately, it will take far more than just ending DEI to accomplish that, and if MAGA adopts a “conservative” approach to the problem, it will utterly fail by “conserving the status quo” on things like “gay marriage” and the fantasy of “gay conservatism” instead of rolling back the sexual anarchy agenda to its starting point. They will, for all practical purposes, finish the work of the hard left by normalizing yesterday’s LGBT victories, even while celebrating today’s very temporary partial “victory” over the “trans” agenda. And by mindlessly playing their assigned part in the Marxist dialectic, they would themselves ensure the “trans” agenda will be normalized tomorrow after a brief pause. Again, that’s how the Marxist dialectic works: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis – and why we’re in today’s existential crisis.

One might be tempted to think that “conservatism” would have validity as a MAGA label if we just identified the culture and values of the founders as what we want to conserve – and openly admitted that getting back to that standard means a far more ambitious remodeling project than just rearranging a few federal agencies and jailing some J6 and COVID-lockdown tyrants. But “conservatism” implies saving something that still exists – and sadly, many traditional norms and values have been stolen from us and replaced by the Cultural Marxists. No, there is no remedy now but re-creation of those foundations according to original intent.

Perhaps the best framework for understanding what must be done is my five-point scale The Five Stages of Homofascism: 1) tolerance, 2) acceptance, 3) celebration, 4) forced participation in “gay” culture, and 5) punishment of dissenters, which I explained in a 2019 WND column.

In the 1950s America was at stage one, granting tolerance to those suffering same sex attraction disorder (SSAD) to the extent that they functioned as a discrete subculture outside the mainstream. True marriage and the natural family held cultural primacy, and our laws protected those institutions – for example, criminalizing and publicly discouraging adultery and pro-actively raising children with the expectation they would one day be moms and dads of their own family. We had a workable balance then, because the “gays” stayed in the closet and the rest of us granted them what they said they wanted: the right to be left alone.

The huge mistake we made was allowing the God-hating Cultural Marxist “progressives” in Hollywood, academia and government to chip away at legal protections for marriage and family while normalizing “sexual freedom,” using “gay liberation” to recruit an LGBT army. I described that process in my WND column of Aug. 1, 2022, “The LGBT strategy to gain constitutional protection.”

Today we are at stage five and on the very edge of collapse as a civilization because of it. So morally compromised have we become as a society that it took the nationwide normalization of child sexual mutilation and the literal grooming of an entire generation of young children to wake up the public enough to back Trump and MAGA to reverse the process.

We hope and pray this chaos can be ended and sanity restored but we’ll never see anything more than a temporary reprieve if we don’t cut that tree down to the roots. We need to roll the LGBT agenda back to the “tolerance” stage of the 1950s and diligently prevent that lifestyle and condition from ever again achieving “acceptance” as a false-equivalent to heterosexual normalcy. Let people who choose to follow that lifestyle enjoy the right to privacy, within reason, so long as they agree never again to try and remake society in their own image.

We must learn the painful lesson of the Boy Scouts of America, which held the line against homofascism for decades – winning a landmark victory in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale recognizing their right NOT to tolerate open homosexuals as members or leaders. But once Obama got into office, he tasked Bush 43 Defense Secretary Robert Gates to break them down – which he did (just as he had done with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military). Once the BSA was forced to accept homosexuality as normal, it crashed and burned – just like America as a whole has done culturally and for the exact same reason. Sexual perversion destroys the social order.

Mark my words as a 30-year, front-lines, pro-family activist: MAGA’s anti-DEI efforts will have no more lasting effect than the Boys Scouts v. Dale ruling if the LGBT agenda is not pushed back into the closet where it belongs and stays contained there by new laws protecting normalcy.

According to an increasing number of pundits, World War III has already begun with this or that global event, but so far none of the governments embroiled in it has formally made that admission. So, as I see it, we remain merely “on the brink,” and our focus should be on agents of chaos like Joe Biden who are trying to push us over the edge. The questions we should seek to answer are: “Who benefits?” “Why do they want it?” and “What factors and precedents can we study for clues to how this war will play out if it actually occurs?”

I’ve largely addressed the “who” and “why” in my prior two articles in this series, “The top elites want Trump to run their pending war” and “3 steps Trump should take to prevent WWIII.” I’ll take a pass on rehashing the domestic dreams and tactics of the American far left in this context, which are obvious and predictable. But I will add that I think the warmongers’ list of key foreign-policy objectives for this war is short and quickly achievable (perhaps just a single item) so the whole thing could be over in a matter of days or weeks, rather than months or years.

One reason it would be short-lived is the likelihood it would involve a limited use of nukes – because nukes are reportedly the only way to destroy Iran’s most advanced nuclear weapons facilities deep in the belly of mountains, like the Balrog in the Lord of the Rings.

Not to be flippant about world war, but if I were the war planner on this strike of likely several missiles in rapid sequence, I’d name the final penetration bomb “Gandalf” to put the whole matter in a relatable pop-culture context. For those who don’t speak LOTR, the wizard Gandalf-the-Grey killed the ancient Balrog demon in epic hand-to-hand combat in the deepest, fiery caverns beneath the roots of the Misty Mountains.

Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” especially as interpreted in film by Peter Jackson, is an unmistakable Christian allegory in fantasy form that takes plenty of literary license, but the Balrog concept is clearly drawn from the Old Testament association of demons with mountains – such as Baal Peor in Moab (Numbers 25:3; 31:16; Joshua 22:17) and Baal Zephon on today’s Turkish/Syria border.

Christian pastors don’t typically teach on demonology these days, let alone the present-day implications of ancient spiritual realities, but contemplating such things is a hobby of mine, and I’ve published two books on the topic (“Dynasty of Darkness” Vol. 1 and 2). In these studies I have come to believe that casting out demons was what Jesus meant when He said, “[I]f you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it will be done” (Matthew 21:21). It’s at least plausible that He wasn’t talking about a pile of dirt and rock, but about the demons who dwell in mountains (and are worshiped on “high places”) just as He personally cast a legion of demons out of the mountain-dwelling Gerasene demoniac (up on today’s Golan Heights) into a herd of pigs that then plunged to their death into the Sea of Galilee (Mark 5:2-20).

Ancient Persia (Iran) shared the belief in mountain-based spiritual entities and reached its peak as a world power in those years. Interestingly, it turns out there is a variation on this same theme in Persian mythology (in which the demon is the one casting a righteous hero into the sea) depicted in artwork here.

In any case, I think the Balrog analogy nicely suits the topic of nuking Iran’s nukes, which I think is at or near the top of the short list of WWIII objectives – if not the sole must-do priority.

I don’t think anyone on the planet but Iran wants Iran to have nukes, and that includes Russia, despite their current military alliance-of-necessity. (I can’t see Orthodox Christian Russia’s current partnership with Communist China and Islamist Iran surviving long if other options – such as an anti-Marxist partnership with a re-Christianized MAGA-controlled U.S. – were available.)

The U.S., to preserve our exclusive precedent of using nukes in the extreme exigencies of war (which, sad to admit, was a huge factor in gaining global dominance in the first place) would likely pull the trigger on that action. Less likely but possibly it would be Israel. Either way much of the world would secretly celebrate the result, even as they publicly deplored the use of nukes to achieve it.

I’m going to mix metaphors now by looking to Nazi history for another analogy, using the Baal Zephor reference above as a convenient segue. The demon Baal Zephor was also called Hadad, the Canaanite God of Storms. This same demon was known as Woton in Nordic mythology/demonology: the source of the Nazi “Sturmabteiling” or Storm Trooper moniker. SA founder Ernst Roehm, and as many as 2,000 others, were murdered by Hitler in the weekend of political assassinations known as the Night of the Long Knives to bring the SA fully under Hitler’s control. The Night of the Long Knives has ever since served as a metaphor for packing all of ones unpleasant military/criminal/political tasks into a short high-speed, high-energy sequence of actions.

My alternate title for this column was “The Winter of the Long Knives” because I think that’s the closest precedent we’ve got in modern history for how WWIII would likely play out. If it takes that form, it would happen soon and be all done but for the treaty negotiations by Trump’s inauguration. This way Trump couldn’t be blamed for it, so if the other belligerents declined to participate in peace talks or treaty negotiations, his role as commander in chief during further hostilities would be untainted by the actions of his predecessors. If, in contrast, the other parties agreed to end hostilities, Trump would instantly become the great peacemaker who saved the world (but, in light of end time prophecy, hopefully comes up with something other than a seven-year peace plan). Frankly, he’d earn that title even if world war continued for a while, so long as he made peace his aim and eventually achieved it.

If Israel were to do the nuking, the “fallout” (pun intended) would be so much more serious that I think the chance of that is slim as a practical matter – but in regards to prophecy could set many last days events in motion.

All this is, of course, speculation based on current events as I perceive them from a wide range of news sources and commentators, tempered by a biblical worldview that assumes we’re on the cusp of a transition from the time of man to the literal thousand-year Millennial Kingdom of Christ. I don’t think its mere coincidence that all the world has its eyes fixed on Israel as it ponders news reports about wars and rumors of wars – for the first time chronicling the use of nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles (the U.S. testing one in the Pacific on election night – Russia actually using a conventionally armed one in a Ukraine strike).

But my speculations have a decent track record for accuracy, as evidenced by a story that just broke as I composed this final paragraph, re-titled by Citizen Free Press as “NATO boss kisses the Mar a Lago ring,” implicitly bolstering my theory of an elites’ backroom surrender to Trump on which I began this series.

WND recently published my article “The top elites want Trump to run their pending war” in which I further elaborated on my theory that Donald Trump forced them to dismantle their barriers to his second term and let him back in the White House. What they’ve surrendered to is letting Trump take on the challenge of preserving the American Empire in his own way – which is dramatically different from their own Ukraine-centered, Russian scapegoating, global bullying strategy. Trump and the top tier elites share the goal of preserving U.S. military and economic global dominance but are polar opposites on Cultural Marxism and the battle between nationalism and “one world” globalism.

Trump’s win means he gets the chance to roll back socialism and restore constitutionalism against their will on the domestic front while pursuing their common priority internationally. This was the same general trade-off Reagan had, but, importantly, Trump’s agenda adds the component of anti-“one world” globalism. In this context, Trump’s “nationalism” might better be termed “international federalism” because it clearly presumes an international order in which nations remain cooperating independent sovereigns and not mere components of single global Marxist conglomerate like the neo-Soviet European Union strives to be.

They surrendered to Trump not just because he beat them politically, but because Vladimir Putin beat them militarily in Ukraine. When their military failure became so obvious in 2023 that they could no longer contain the situation with war propaganda, they fell back to Plan B: the much riskier Israel/Hamas gambit, which is mostly limited to the Iran problem and related Middle East objectives. I have contended since it happened that the all-too-real Oct. 7, 2023, massacre was allowed to happen for that purpose. I believe they let slip the rabid dogs of Hamas deliberately to shift the “Eye of Sauron” media focus away from Ukraine (which I disapprove), and create the justification for de-nuking Iran (which goal I endorse, if not the duplicitous staging.)

Are the elites truly that evil? Ask the hundred million plus innocent unborn babies they’ve slaughtered worldwide (including in Israel) by normalizing abortion as a population-reduction tactic. Or maybe we should ask the entire generation of dead and maimed Ukrainian men sacrificed as cannon fodder proxies in a 100% preventable NATO- orchestrated war.

Let’s review what’s really happening in the world of geopolitics – as seen from outside the bubble of neocon propaganda constantly being spewed by the corporate media of the U.S., U.K. and European Union.

Massive corruption and abuse of power by the Bush/Clinton/Obama/Biden tag-team cabal over the past several decades has bankrupted America, poisoned much of the world against us and driven a growing alliance of would-be competitors to formalize and implement a plan to end our global hegemony. The greatest threat their BRICS network represents is to the U.S. dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency. If BRICS develops a way to dethrone the dollar, we will (supposedly) collapse like a house of cards under an avalanche of debt we have no ability to pay – some $36 trillion worth – or higher by some accounts. Our fall would be swift and spectacular – creating a political vacuum into which the BRICS nations would flow to replace us with their vision of a new multi-polar order.

Obviously, that existential threat has – in the warped minds of the elite megalomaniacs who rule us – warranted extreme measures, which included the anti-Trump color revolution and coup of 2020, facilitated by the global deployment of their COVID bio-weapon and imposition of de facto medical martial law. In one fell swoop they intended to crush the rapidly growing worldwide populist uprising that threatened their grip on the levers of national and international power AND at the same time intimidate the BRICS nations into submission in classic Mafia style.

To invoke the old Chinese idiom, they intended to “kill the chicken to scare the monkey.” But to their shock, the populist chicken (led by the MAGA movement in the U.S.) didn’t die. Instead it got stronger and began pushing back even harder, not just against the fake vaccine but also against government-coerced censorship, manipulative fake-news narratives, forced DEI lunacy and child-grooming … and the proxy war in Ukraine. That was only possible because MAGA’s champion, Donald Trump, did not retreat after J6 but redoubled his efforts.

So now we’ve all been rewarded with front-row seats to the greatest show on earth as a greatly wiser and fully unshackled President-elect Trump begins the process of draining the swamp and restoring America’s greatness – not just domestically, but internationally.

I think President Trump can prevent World War III during his delayed second term by doing three things:

First, by embracing some form of the BRICS multi-polar vision on the condition that the dollar remains the sole world currency for international trade. This would further his goal of withdrawing the United States from the roles of international policeman, babysitter and financial sugar-daddy, while earning the appreciation and respect of those BRICS nations being entrusted as true partners in international matters, no longer treated as mere vassals of the U.S. This would mean ending the top-down divide-and-conquer polarization model for international relations established long ago by the British Empire and replacing it with the model of international federalism mentioned above.

Second, by developing a partnership with Putin and Russia based upon our mutual Christian history and cultural foundations to 1) fully drain the swamp of Marxism globally, starting with the European Union; and 2) constrain Islamist expansion everywhere, starting with Islamist-targeted Christian nations like Nigeria. In my view the only reason Russia is militarily allied with Shiite Iran is to counter the U.S. alliance with the Sunni majority headed by Saudi Arabia. A U.S./Russia alliance on Islam and Middle East policy would completely transform the geopolitical dynamics, provide the opportunity to compel Iran to de-nuke without resort to military force, and protect Israel from destruction by the Islamic world by removing Russia’s incentive to ally with Israel’s enemies as a tactic of self-defense. Russia instead would be an ally of Israel, which I believe Putin would prefer.

Three, the lynchpin making the prior elements possible would be NATO and the Russian Federation entering into a mutual non-expansion agreement. What’s really driving all these currently failing international policies is the Mackinder theory of geopolitics held forever by the British (and by extension the Americans) that if Russia gains control of the Eurasian plateau it would become an unstoppable world power. If Russia formally abandoned any dream of a restored Soviet Union (which I don’t think it wants) and NATO ended its encroachment/encirclement strategy for containing Russia, then the threat of WWIII would fade dramatically.

All this, of course, assumes that the elites won’t start WWIII before Trump’s inauguration. I’ll address that issue in my next column.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The lofty ideals of the First Amendment have inspired humanity and rightfully swelled American citizens with pride from their first articulation on the world stage almost 250 years ago. For the first time in history a government had been formed with limited powers delegated to it by the citizenry. When those implied limitations were deemed not sufficiently clarified in the United States Constitution, the people added the Bill of Rights to paint unmistakable lines on the pavement to keep the federal government in its own lane. It included the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to add guardrails on either side to clarify that the final word on the reach of the federal government would be reserved to the people and the state governments, respectively.

The problem with lofty ideals expressed concisely is applying them to real-world situations where the inherent ambiguities of words and phrases meet the test of practical application – and where the personal philosophies of those tasked with sorting it out (bureaucrats, legislators and judges) affect the interpretation and thus the ruling. Therefore, it matters greatly whether those decision makers value “original intent” and see their own role as its guardians (“conservatives”) or whether they view the Constitution and its amendments as a “living document” to be reshaped to conform to their self-directed “tide of history” (“progressives”).

In my lifetime, the “progressives” have won that contest more times than not, and so today there is no part of the First Amendment that has not been seriously reshaped to suit progressive interests – except freedom of the press, left untouched because it has been the primary driver of progressive narratives to which the decision-makers have conformed.

To the founders, “religion” in the First Amendment meant Judaism-respecting Christianity, which was eventually refined in Supreme Court rulings to the phrase “Supreme Being” inside of a clearly biblical context. The court summarized the history of this legal doctrine in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892), after more than a century of careful development.

To the founders, forbidding “establishment of religion” meant government could not adopt or prefer one Christian sect over another, as had occurred for centuries in Europe and in the American states prior to adoption of the Constitution. It absolutely did not ban acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over America as proven by countless unimpeachable documents including the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s inaugural addresses.

In 1947 a progressive SCOTUS majority in Everson v Board of Education shifted America off that biblical foundation and onto a Secular Humanist one by intentionally twisting Jefferson’s “Separation of Church and State” metaphor into a ban on church/state cooperation and elevating their false revision to the status of binding constitutional law. (What Jefferson and the founders actually intended – and in fact established as policy – was the “coadjuvancy” of church and state!)

The follow-on case of Torcaso v Watkins (1961) – defining atheism as a “religion” with equal protections had the legal and practical effect of empowering militant atheists to purge Christianity from public life, to be systematically replaced over the next half-century by LGBT cultural supremacy as other cases fell like dominoes along that satanic new trajectory.

All of the other elements of the First Amendment have also been redefined to suit progressive interests, always empowering government at the expense of the people. The COVID plandemic lockdowns alone show how many freedoms we’ve lost on every First Amendment front. As for freedom of speech, who would ever have imagined that we’d fall so far into Marxist delusion that wide swaths of American youths would clamor for its abolition as a “cause celeb” of “social justice” to protect from criticism such atrocities as the genital mutilation of children?

All of these travesties have been orchestrated and facilitated by the one First Amendment sacred cow left entirely untouched: the “free press.”

WND’s motto is “A Free Press for a Free People,” but I am virtually certain that our government today, in cooperation with radical leftist groups like the SPLC, is using its power to limit WND’s reach. This affects me personally. To whatever extent government officials or agents are defining my speech in this venue or any other as “disinformation,” “misinformation,” or “hate” to justify suppressing it, they are violating the plain meaning of the First Amendment. Indeed, grassroots political opinion like mine was THE speech at issue in the days of the founders – not news reporting by corporations – meaning I (and all citizen editorialists) should have greater standing in this matter than all the multinationals combined. I’m pretty sure Thomas Paine would agree with me.

The Twitter files exposed massive government coercion of social media, and investigations of public health spending to push the fake vaccine have exposed big government payoffs to traditional media companies to peddle their COVID propaganda. I suggest such conspiracies are a First Amendment deal-breaker. To whatever extent these media companies are controlled or manipulated by government they are not “free press” in the original intent of the founders and should not enjoy its protections.

Trump’s stunning victory has presented opportunities to the MAGA movement to repair the massive damage Marxists have done to this country over the past century – starting by breaking their propaganda machinery by which they mentally enslave the not-yet-red-pilled masses.

I suggest two simple lines of attack. First, impose an “equal time” mandate on all media entities that accept government money or assets, starting with the infuriatingly biased NPR/NPM. On any topic of public controversy, all perspectives, accurately represented by people of comparable stature and knowledge, must receive equal time. Compliance will be monitored by a large body of registered volunteers – say 300, chosen by annually by lottery – operating under the supervision of the both the FCC and Congress: the whole system operating as a Public Media Oversight Network to ensure fairness and accuracy.

Second, by congressional statute create a “false light” cause of action in defamation cases for deliberate misrepresentation by media companies, with lower standards of proof, in which the punishment is limited to prominently correcting the record and issuing a statement of apology to the defamed – with monetary damages available only against four-time repeat offenders. Grant private media companies who voluntarily participate in the Public Media Oversight Network an exemption from litigation.

The “Free Press” must never again be allowed to manipulate We the People by abusing their power over public information.

Article first published on WND 11/11/24

My recent column asked, “Have Obiden and the Clintons cut a deal with Trump?” and predicted a Reaganesque landslide for Trump if they had.

I think there is substantial circumstantial evidence of such a deal. First is the reaction of Joe Biden himself: beaming like a kid at Christmas after Kamala crashed and burned (his immunity from prosecution presumably paid in full by sabotaging her so thoroughly). Second is that somebody with real juice (Pelosi?) obviously told the Antifa brownshirts to stand-down and put their Molotov cocktails back in the armory. (The fun’s over, boys – for now.)

Third, and perhaps most telling is how the legacy news media, in particular the New York Times, covered the election returns: It was almost fair and balanced. The reporters didn’t suddenly stop being true-believer leftists, but upper management had obviously given orders to play it straight and let the public accept Trump’s victory as the will of the people. That was the biggest shock of all, and would never have happened if the media moguls were in still in scorched-earth warfare mode against Trump as they had been continuously since Hillary’s unexpected defeat in 2016. They also, apparently, had been told to stand down.

To be clear, when I say that Trump probably cut a deal with his enemies I’m not suggesting he cynically sold out to them in exchange for power – as they would have done in his place. No, I’m saying he forced them to the bargaining table in the manner of a besieging warlord offering terms of surrender. He beat them at their own game, on their home turf by sheer force of will and, apparently, divinely ordained manifest destiny. With each step forward, against every weapon they could deploy against him, Trump exhibited courage and resolve not seen in America leaders since the Revolutionary War – or at least since Teddy Roosevelt.

As the battle raged most fiercely, he survived two assassination attempts while exhibiting such true manly bravery as to earn the praise of Russian President Putin, and then selflessly pressed in even harder toward the goal of restoring America to greatness. That was simply too much for his enemies to overcome. The deep-state dam of media-created fear-based reluctance to embrace Trump as a leader finally broke and virtually overnight a flood of both peasants and princes enlisted in massive numbers in the MAGA army – like the plot twist of a wartime action movie or a scene from the Bible (or both at once).

If this analysis is accurate we’re not going to see an Obiden repeat of “Obama’s Hitlerian Departure” in the 2024/25 power transition. My Jan. 3, 2017, column of that title detailed Obama’s extensive sabotage campaign to hinder Trump – comparing it to Hitler’s destruction of the city and harbor of Cherbourg immediately after the allied D-Day invasion in WWII.

Instead (contrary to my own predictions before I recognized a deal had probably been struck) we’re more likely see a surprising level of courtesy being extended to President Trump in conjunction with an appeal for “a new era bipartisanship” by swamp worms like Chuck Schumer. (I’m not expecting a total reversal but even a modest bump in respect for Trump will represent a sea-change compared to the past.)

I think we’ll also see outgoing Dem elites tossing numerous mid-level FBI, DOJ, etc. underlings under wheels of their escape vehicles as they flee the crime scene – people who either can’t link their bosses to the specific crimes or are willing (under threat or promise of reward) to take the fall without implicating the higher-ups.

Some upper-management lightning rods like Garland and Mayorkas and top warfare operators like Jack Smith will be thrown to the street-level mobs of MAGA wolves. Understandably, the people will expect – nay, demand – some public beheadings in recompense for what we all suffered during Obiden’s eight year plandemic-facilitated Marxist coup and occupation (which started on Trump’s inauguration day in 2017). It’s likely we’ll see some Trump-pardoned J6 political prisoners pulling the release cords on those guillotines (metaphorically speaking) before some of these same heroes join the incoming class of new congressmen and senators from the 2026 mid-term elections.

There will, of course, be attempts to lock in leftist policies before Trump’s 2025 inauguration, and continued sniping and square-offs of individual politicians and pundits on the left and right are as certain as the rising of the sun. But I think we may see a new seriousness and sobriety in the government as the search for true solutions replaces blind regurgitations of leftist narratives.

That may be too optimistic. Post-Election Day shenanigans in election fraud strongholds like Arizona, Pennsylvania and in Orange County, California, remind us that grassroots-run state-level election fraud machinery can operate largely autonomously – regardless of deals made among the elites (though its not likely the deal I am hypothesizing involved the minutia of secondary and tertiary races anyhow).

In the business world I think we’re going to see not just a rapid abandonment of DEI policies (some executives may be crushed in the stampede for the exit), but an actual reversion to traditional values in the culture and advertising of some companies.

However, what’s really at stake for the truly top elites (think military-industrial complex and the Banksters) who allowed this presumed deal with Trump to be struck is not domestic policy, but their global hegemony – very much in parallel to the reason they allowed Ronald Reagan to reign in the 1980s. (They tolerated Reagan’s Christian and populist-pleasing domestic policy shift to the right only because he was the right man to finally take down the Soviets, knowing their inside man H.W. Bush – and his buddy Bill Clinton – could undo Reaganism domestically after The Gipper termed out.)

The rapidly growing threat of a new “multi-polar order” represented by an ascendant BRICS alliance (which also indirectly threatens Israel by dissolving the long-ago British-created polar-division of Muslims along Shiite/Sunni lines) definitively trumps domestic policy concerns and in fact requires a new resurgence of patriotism. Their best hope of retaining control is to preserve the U.S. as the world’s sole superpower. That means war, which means “American” boots on the ground (the illegals earning citizenship the hard way), which requires a truly believable commander in chief and a populace willing (however grudgingly – wait for it) to accept war under his leadership as the only way to make America great again.

Little-noticed on election night was that the U.S. military field-tested a brand new hypersonic nuclear missile – firing an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile westward from California in an unmistakable message to American’s competitors just as the reality of Trump’s sweeping victory was taking hold in the collective perception of the world. That “shot across the bow” was long pre-planned, of course, but likely so was the decision to “surrender” to Trump.

What made the American experience unique in all of world history was the phenomenon of bottom-up governance. From Nimrod to King George, all prior forms of human civilization were imposed upon humanity from the top down by those with the power to make their own will the law. This was universally true in the realms of both church and state wherever settlements grew beyond the ability of their member families to collectively govern themselves – and even in small communities, the tendency of strong-willed men of means to impose an order of their own choosing was likely. That is the reality of all human society because of the reality of unredeemed human nature.

But Jesus
When Jesus Christ – God Himself – briefly joined the human race, He taught us how we could maximize the blessings, freedoms and potentialities of His created order by receiving into the temples of our bodies His Holy Spirit and then operating as sovereign governors of ourselves, in cooperation with every other justified “Christian.” That model was best reflected by the Apostles in the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, which operated as a board of equals in the physical absence of the Master, using Holy Spirit intuition and the written biblical law as their guide.

That was the first example of self-governance under law since the Israelite Republic led by Joshua and the Judges. It was the first ever in which the Holy Spirit dwelt personally in each individual Christian, ending human dependency on priests and rituals, while affirming the terms of the Holy Scripture which Jesus (through the Apostles) then updated and upgraded during the Apostolic Age to suit the needs of the Last Days. Importantly, Jesus affirmed the covenant even as He clarified its meaning to a more matured humanity capable of higher behavioral standards than Moses had set for them (e.g. no more polygamy, concubinage and unjustified divorce).

But willful man
The Apostolic Age ended with the death of John and the close of the Canon of Scripture with his written recording of the Revelations of Jesus Christ (an updated and expanded version of the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24-25, Mark 13 and Luke 21). After that, the Jerusalem model of Christianity gave way to the Roman model, in which the doctrine of “the priesthood of all believers” was rejected in favor of top-down governance by an ecclesiastical order of priests under a dictatorial pope deemed to be God’s representative on earth. The transition happened slowly but inexorably, starting with an assertion of authority over church matters by Clement of Rome and eventually incorporating the “divine right” to murder dissenters to its increasingly un-biblical doctrines, which it enforced vigorously for centuries.

Yet even under this man-made institutional yoke, the Scripture itself was preserved and the lives of true Christians continued to be governed internally by the Holy Spirit. A great many Roman Catholic Christians lived (and still live) exemplary lives, and Christianity continued to reshape the world and raise the standards of human ethics and morality everywhere it spread. God’s will for individuals was not thwarted. Just as He had allowed the Israelites to reject His Tabernacle in favor of a Temple and His Republic in favor of a Monarchy, He allowed the Christian church to institutionalize itself in this Roman form and He worked around its deficiencies to achieve His goals for mankind.

For a season
In due time, abuses of power by both the church and the Christian kingdoms of Europe – most especially Spain – triggered the rise of a populist “protestant” movement of both Christians and Jews. In particular, the Spanish Inquisition’s torture-backed forced mass conversion of Jews to Catholicism convinced them they faced extinction as a religion if the trajectory of Christendom did not change. Similarly persecuted were Christian Millennialists, who shared with Jews the “heresy” of belief in a future thousand-year earthly kingdom under the Messiah. Out of that common experience and doctrine grew an on-and-off partnership known modernly as the Hebraic movement in Christendom, which to an unmeasured degree inspired and facilitated the Protestant Revolution.

Its effects also included the eventual overthrow of Catholic Spanish dominance of Christendom (and the Western world) by an ascendant Protestant British Empire, whose sense of destiny was heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian theory/ideology/doctrine of British Israelism (BI). While BI “doctrine” was largely debunked and discarded after WWI, it had helped shape and steer British self-identity and policy for the preceding five centuries. BI’s most prominent legacy was the British restoration of the House of Judah to the Holy Land in 1917, supplanting the Ottoman Turks whom the Brits expelled by military force. (To be clear, in regards to geo-politics it doesn’t matter how much of BI theory was true, only that it was believed to be true by British leaders.)

God’s Providence
The most powerful impact Protestantism had on the world, however, was the restoration of the “priesthood of all believers” that took practical form in Scottish Presbyterianism under Pioneer Reformer John Knox. That spawned the Scottish Covenantors’ movement which swept the British Isles with its example of self-rule by sovereign Christians directly empowered by God to set law by mutual consent. Out of this grew “constitutionalism” as the term was understood by America’s Founding Fathers – making possible the United States of America: The world’s first government in which limited power was delegated to elected representatives by the people ourselves. Because of that theological/ideological foundation, America matured to become the all-time pinnacle of civilization in the middle of the 20th century – the envy and immigration magnet of the world.

And yet Satanic statist enslaving Marxism still grew as a parasitic infestation amongst us – until now, in the early 21st century, it has nearly killed the host. History repeats. The MAGA movement is America’s populist uprising against egregious power-grabbing and power-abusing by tyrannical elites who hate the Bible and the Messiah, whom both Christians and Jews prophetically await.

It may not be possible, even under a Trump presidency, to restore all that has been stolen from us. But if the prophecy of a soon-coming Millennial Kingdom under direct rule by Christ from Jerusalem is true, we of the God-fearing remnant can still recreate the harmony amongst ourselves that reflects all of the best we once were – and perhaps even attain bit of the better harmony we’re promised in the age to come. We can do that amongst ourselves even if hell is about to be unleashed in all its fury because the Devil knows his time is short.

If, however, we have a few years’ reprieve under Trump, the MAGA movement can speed and maximize the restoration of our greatness by getting us back to first principles in citizen self-rule and constitutionalism – so long as we remember John Adams’ warning that those blessings are the gift of God for those who submit only to Him: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Our history proves his case.

Written 10/27/2024

Last week WND published my article “Have Obiden and the Clintons cut a deal with Trump?” I explained why I think they did and in the process touched on the issue of abortion, and the choice of some Christians not to vote for Trump because he refuses to take a fully purist pro-life stance in this election. I call that decision – in context – “shameful, stupid, and unbiblical” for reasons I’ll let you read for yourself.

I’ll add here I have no problem with people deciding to stay completely out of politics in favor of just prayer to God to produce good results supernaturally, which He most certainly can do. There’s no hypocrisy in that stance. But if you decide to engage in social policy setting in the necessarily compromise-based political realm, you can’t simultaneously pretend to be a true purist, because every vote involves risk/benefit analysis about imperfect choices. It’s utterly unavoidable. And in this election, the risk is that Kamala Harris will win and reverse every pro-life victory Trump won for us in 2016-2020, resulting in the deaths of potentially millions of unborn babies that would otherwise be saved under a Trump second term.

Trump may not support a total ban on abortion right now (which is not achievable in today’s political climate), but he’s not going to stop chipping away at the baby-killing industry in doable steps – or undo the amazing, unprecedented work he’s already done for the babies. Are you going to let the Whore of Babylon win the White House because Trump is playing politics on hypotheticals?

Since I’ve stuck my neck out this far, I’ll stretch it a little more. A woman responded to my article with this:

“I read your WND columns and respect your political savvy. A question keeps confronting me: what is the underlying reason for the intense zeal and passion abortion proponents have for that ‘freedom’? What specifically do the demons do for them, their lives and fortunes in recompense for these sacrifices to Molech? I know their passion cannot be to simply protect their hedonistic lifestyles from life-trajectory-changing unwanted parenthood. I know practitioners of Santeria and Mexican American witchcraft often petition their spirit contacts to bless them financially, romantically or to execute vengeance on a target, and that radical pro-aborts are occult-affiliated as well. What’s Satan repaying them with? Thank you in advance, Dr. Lively.”

I replied:

“You might not like this answer, but support for abortion is mostly rooted in rebellion against the patriarchal order established by God as a foundation stone of human civilization. As Paul summarized in Ephesians 5:22-24, there is a specific sex-based order all humans (married or not) are subject to that is evident from the first pages of Genesis and was never rescinded or modified by God. ‘Women’s liberation’ from ‘patriarchal oppression’ was embraced by Lenin and incorporated as an early pillar of Soviet Marxism, ironically having its first major international victory in the U.S. – in the passage of the 19th Amendment by Congress in June of 1919, ratified by the states in 1920. The Marxists had been hard at work for a quarter century or so in the U.S. when they scored that win giving voting rights to women.

“Abortion is much more about Feminism than Satanism, which explains why the issue really IS ‘choice’ for so many women who would never actually murder their own child. It is the choice personally and collectively to reject male authority in favor of independence from the God-ordained order. The ‘right to abortion’ is the perceived guarantor of that right – without which the burdens of pregnancy and child-rearing would prevent women as a social class from competing with men as a social class vocationally and politically.

“Abortion is just a symptom of the deeper spiritual problem of rejecting God’s guidance in favor of Secular Humanist reasoning – the return of human sacrifice being the most poisonous fruit of it.”

In many ways America’s most fateful election was granting women the right to vote against the wishes of their husbands in matters specifically ordained as his area of responsibility. I believe every evil turn in public policy has occurred as a result of that election (technically a state-by-state series of them) because subjective emotionalism replaced objective rationalism as both the standard for policy and the means for swaying public opinion. This is not to say that all women are equally susceptible to subjective emotionalism or all men are equally driven by objective rationalism but these are obvious and valid stereotypes generally speaking, and that’s all that matters to social engineers. In a “representative democracy” it’s all about getting a simple majority – so “empowering” women to shape public policy while emasculating men to promote emotionalism in them is a win/win for them.

That’s why we’re largely ruled today by irrational raging Feminists and Beta-Male “Soy Boys.” And those are the very people who hate and fear Trump the most because he is an unashamed Alpha-Male who symbolically and practically represents the return to patriarchy.

I believe that the 19th Amendment would never have been ratified if the voters of that day could have looked into the future and seen its consequences. Conversely, I don’t think it’s possible or desirable to reverse it at this stage: Pandora’s Box has simply been open so long we’re no longer the same society. BUT, God’s natural order is organic and self-organizing. If we just drain the swamp and clear out the weeds, His garden will grow back, quickly producing many new and healthy examples of true masculinity and femininity, true marriages and a thriving network of natural families – God’s eco-system for human civilization.

That’s my expectation from Trump’s second term, which I hope every pro-life Christian will join me in voting for.

I’ve been holding my peace and watching from a distance ever since my prediction failed that Barack Obama would end up in a head-to-head contest with President Trump (directly or indirectly) in November. But all bets were off when the action on the political battlefield swung from crazy to surreal in the takedown of Joe Biden and replacement with Kamala Harris by the controlling Marxist elites. I knew the game had changed completely when they suddenly dropped all pretext of “democracy” and simply installed HER as the candidate (rather than Michelle) as if she were just another garbage company winning a no-bid contract in mob-run Boston, Philadelphia or NYC. And since then Barack (now as gaunt as an AIDS patient) has looked so impotent in his Kamala-surrogate role, I’m seriously considering scratching him off my list of Antichrist candidates 🙂 (Not really – because I think its all an act.)

It’s never safe in modern America to assume that the show being performed in front us accurately reflects the reality of the war behind the scenes. What I believe is actually happening is civil war in the Democratic Party, because powerful elements of their coalition, including OBiden and the Clintons, have decided to cut a deal with Trump to let their party take a fall in exchange for a promise not to prosecute them post-election for their many serious crimes.

Most of the Democratic Party propaganda, election fraud and GOTV machinery is grinding away to win the race by hook or by crook, as it has always done – but Obama, Biden and Bill Clinton are clearly undermining Harris through subtleties of rhetoric and tactics that are ostensibly pro-Harris but actually intend to weaken her. For example, Barack Obama’s tepid so-called appeal to black men to support her lacked only a conspiratorial wink to convey the true message to dump her. Some of Biden’s sabotage of Harris has not been subtle at all.

Back on July 3rd when the Biden takedown was in full swing I wrote:

“As long as other options exist, however, the Dem elites do NOT want Joe to be reelected! Why? Because, as everyone who’s ever witnessed the phenomenon up close knows, dementia is both irreversible and progressive at an ever-increasing speed, and thus in the event of a Biden victory in November there would be no way to prevent the almost universally despised Kamala Harris from becoming president – with no way to remove her. There is no way Biden can finish a second term at the rate he’s declining.

“But, of course, because she’s a black female, no one involved in the Biden removal process can ever publicly admit this … Even Harris would be better than Trump in their warped minds – but a Joe Biden reelection is clearly the worst-case ‘victory’ scenario.

“The supposed best-case scenario being floated now is for Joe to be persuaded to resign – soon – but the people with the most control of that decision are the ones most desperate to keep him in power: the dominant members of the Biden crime family whose exposure to serious jail time is a very real possibility if they lose the protections of the presidency and its ‘justice’ department. They will fight like cornered wolverines to stay in power – at least until they’re presented with an offer they can’t refuse or are guaranteed sanctuary in a foreign jurisdiction with no extradition treaty with the U.S.”

That last line was tongue-in cheek – the implicit real point being Joe would resign only when he got a deal to escape accountability for himself and his co-conspirators.

While the narrative says Pelosi forced him out Don Corleone-style, I think Biden in fact had made his deal with Trump and the supposed “offer he couldn’t refuse” was just a smokescreen. Harris’ subsequent coronation-by-acclaim indicates that ALL the key power-brokers with real juice and real criminal exposure (including Pelosi) were a part of it.

Does this contradict the election-season mass delusion on the right that sees Trump as a veritable demigod of virtue? I’m fully on board the Trump train for many reasons, but I’m not a dreamy-eyed newbie. Remember, Trump’s self-declared first principle of success is “The Art of the Deal,” which he mastered while “making his bones” in New York real estate – the “Madison Square Garden” of bare-knuckle political prize-fighting. Look how quickly he pivoted on abortion after the Dems proved in the ’22 midterms it was their silver bullet to kill his chances in ’24. I made MY bones as a Christian culture warrior during the pro-life Rescue Movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s, but I understand and accept his pivot because he actually earned our continuing pro-life support during his first term by handing us the Holy Grail of pro-life victories: the overturning of Roe v. Wade! However, post-Dobbs, large numbers of Christian voters turned their backs on him by not voting in ’22 and are now using Trump’s pivot (which their apathy reasonably made necessary in his mind) to justify their intention not to vote for him this year. It’s shameful, stupid and unbiblical.

As I state on my website at ScottLively.net, “Christians who can’t balance the aspirations of Christianity with the realities of politics sabotage their own interests by imposing an unrealistic standard of moral perfection on people who run for office: a standard God Himself never imposed on the people He raised up as Judges during the 400 year Israelite Republic America is modeled upon.”

But back to the presumed Biden/Trump deal. For years I’d been spotlighting Biden as the man being set up to take the blame for the whole corrupt cabal – I even nicknamed him “Joey the Scapegoat” and to the very end thought the controlling elites were going to publicly sacrifice him like Azazel’s prize. But, impressively, Biden’s leveraging of the presidency outmaneuvered even Obama, masterfully transferring his fated scapegoat role onto Harris. Biden may still be named and shamed for the crimes as a panacea for the masses, but his dementia will make him unprosecutable (and if I’m right nothing substantive will ever come of it per the secret deal with Trump). Meanwhile, Harris will take the blame for the 2024 political failure – which will, of course, be attributed entirely to racism and mysogyny, confirming core Marxist narratives and fueling continuing passion for “social justice.” In other words, she’ll skate too.

Heads will certainly role in 2025 and beyond after Trump wins (perhaps in a Reaganesque landslide – which would have been my price if I were Trump), but they’ll almost certainly be underlings and not bosses – as always seems to be the case in peaceful transfers of power.

I’m not carving this in stone or claiming “thus sayeth the Lord,” just offering what I think is the most realistic analysis based on today’s known and likely factors. I can also still see the dark clouds of World War III looming on the horizon with their potential as a pretext for martial law, suspension of our election and the one-two punch of a global “Great Collapse” and “Great Reset.” I much prefer the deal-based Trump victory scenario.

Update Oct. 28, 2024: Is this evidence of a deal?