What the Reformers Forgot Part 2 of 2

April 3, 2025

Erasmus of Rotterdam

These failures of the Reformers were recognised by their own harbinger, Erasmus of Rotterdam, who advocated rebaptism in the preface to his translation of Matthew's Gospel.

Erasmus wrote to the pope that it was rather the Anabaptists, who were persecuted by both Rome and the Protestants, that were the closest to a biblical Christianity. Erasmus, realizing the failure of Luther on a number of grounds, called the Reformation a travesty to which he preferred to remain a spectator. This came from one who repeatedly scorned the corruption and hypocrisy of Medieval Catholicism for its heresy on such brilliantly vitriolic and satirical works as "The Praise of Folly" and "Julius Exclusis".

While the Reformers were dynamic personalities, they were not dynamic thinkers. Luther drew his ideas from John Huss, Staupidz, and the humanists like Le Fèvre. Calvin drew on Luther, Farel, Oeclampadius, and Bucer. The English Reformers like Cranmer drew on Calvin and Luther.

All of these however were the natural result directly or indirectly of Erasmus, the greatest Christian humanist. Unfortunately, church history has never done him justice and blamed him for being indecisive. In fact, as we see from what became of Protestantism, he was not indecisive, but rather foresighted and aware of how Protestantism would end up. We must also remember that the Reformers did not rediscover the gospel as their followers abjectly claim until this day.

Long before the Reformation, Wycliffe in England, Huss in Bohemia, and Savanarola in Italy, had large followings of imperfect, but true Christians who believed the Word of God, and were trying to get back to it.

These of course were genocidely exterminated by the papacy using the Dominicans and Holy Roman Empire before the Reformation, as Rome used the Jesuits and Hapsburgs in its holocausts against the true church after the Reformation. But there was never an era when the Lord did not have people for His Own Name, whom while making mistakes did love Jesus, live for Him, die and watched their children die for Him, and tried their best to hold fast to His Word and, as faithful witnesses, point others back to prior to the advent of the reformers.

It was simply the collapse of feudalism and the Holy Roman Empire, together with the rise of humanism that sprung from the Renaissance and the invention of the printing press to mass produce translated Bibles that allowed the reformers to survive where others were exterminated by Rome and her agents.

During the Reformation era and what followed it, it was the Baptist sects (some good like the Menonites following Menno Simons, and some lunatics like the Munster Anabaptists following the Zwickau prophets - roughly late medieval equivalents of Mike Bickle, Earl Paulk, and Paul Cain) who attempted, for better or worse, to return directly to scripture.

The Protestants following the Reformers instead went back not directly to scripture, but to Augustine. Thus both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism spring not directly from scripture, but from Augustine's Platonised reinterpretation of it to again equate Christian identity with the national and cultural identity; that is making the church the new Israel. The results were, predictably, death.

The death Constantine and Augustine brought to the early church by making the church a temporal political power, was brought to Calvin's Police State in Geneva, Zwingli's in Zurich, Knox in Scot-land, etc.

As a pagan Rome was replaced by a Papal Roman State, so a Papal Roman State was replaced by a Protestant Church State.

For all of their good points in the establishment of a parliamentary democracy founded on biblical principles, both the English Puritans and the American Pilgrim Fathers soon found themselves engaging in genocidal war crimes against poor peasants in Ireland and burning alleged witches in Massachusetts.

Jesus said His Kingdom was not of this world.

Constantine, the Medieval Popes, and the Reformers, said it was.

Central to the popular Jewish rejection of Jesus was His refusal to accept temporal political power before the millennium (which the Reformers rejected).

We must grasp the fact that the twin pillars upon which the contemporary errors of Kingdom-Now Theology with its triumphalist over-realized eschatology and Dominionism are built are both the neo-gnostic latter montanism of "charismania", and the theonomic reconstructionism of highly Reformed Protestantism, particularly hyper-Calvinism.

This is why we see radical replacementist charismatic extremists such as Rick Godwin (a restorationist who teaches Israel is nothing but wasted money and Jews have no right to exist in the land of Israel) drawing their anti-futurist historicist and preterist eschatology from extreme Calvinistic reconstructionists like David Chilton. With both, Israel becomes the church and a theonomic regime that replays the mistakes of the post Nicean Constantinian church, and becomes the political kingdom of God on earth - a New Israel, which therefore can accord no place to the old one.

It is curious that any time an extreme Calvinism, stressing the notions of manifest destiny (stemming from an extreme view of predestination), permeated the social fabric with a church-state influence, the tragic results were gross social injustice.

This can be seen historically in the pro-slavery and later segregationist policies of the American Southern Baptists, the Apartheid policies of the South African Dutch Reformed Church, or the anti-Roman Catholic (not against the Roman church, but against the people in it) discrimination of Orange Unionism with the Strict Presbyterians in Northern Ireland. Hyper-reformed theonomic reconstructionism represents Protestantism at its worst, just as papal theonomy was Rome at its worst.

The replacementist super-cessationism produces a Judaized church with a theocratic government as oppressive and of-ten as hypocritical as the Sanhedrin ever were. Hence, the Reformation was a theologically incomplete, and thus a spiritually incomplete event.

We might see it as an aborted effort to restore biblical Christianity, as opposed to an authentic reintroduction of it.

The same nominalism that threatened to destroy Old Testament Israel, and produced the false church of the Middle Ages, was a fundamental component of Protestantism from its inception due to the errors of the Reformers.

This was recognized by Protestantism itself, when, within a few generations, Zizendorf's Pietists in Germany and Wesley's Methodists in England were trying to reform Protestantism from within, as the Reformers began by trying to reform Romanism from within.

The demise of Protestantism spiritually dovetailed with the theological decline of grammatical-historical exegesis going from a humanistic tool in the hands of Christians, to a humanistic tool in the hands of atheists.

The Baptists who tried to return to the kind of genuine sola scriptura faith that Luther only thought he had, were terribly persecuted and not infrequently murdered by the Protestants.

Even today, such evangelicals as Baptists, Pentecostals, Brethren, and Free Church are not, by classical historical definition truly Protestant, (although they are by etymological definition in that they witness for truth).

They are not Protestant in that they do not hold to a state church or accept infant baptism. They are rather the doctrinal heirs of the Anabaptists whom Catholic and Protestant alike persecuted.

The source of all of this tragedy once more relates back to the replacement theology that makes the church the new Israel. The endless arguments of Systematic theology, Dispensationalism verses Covenant / Reformed dividing Evangelicals from each other, stem from this same failure to grasp Jeremiah 31:31 and what it is addressing.

Because Abraham is indeed "Father of All who Believe" (Gen. 12: 1-3, Gal. 3:8, Isa. 63:16), and we see tremendous expressions of God's grace in the Old Testament (as with King Manasseh) and tremendous expressions of His wrath in the New Covenant (as with Ananias and Sapphira), dispensational theology admittedly understates the continuity between the two covenants, and the hyper-dispensationalism of Darby is erroneous.

Still, more moderate expressions of dispensationalism do more justice to Jer. 31:31 and the eschatology and ecclesiology that derives from it than does Covenant theology.

Dispensationalism (for all the faults of its more extreme expressions) rightly sees a spiritual and theological relationship between Israel and the Church, but keeps the distinction between them.

The Reformed Covenant theology of Calvinism understates the discontinuity between the covenants and overstates the continuity - in its classical form making the church Israel's replacement.

From this we again have the Protestant theonomic reconstructionism, not only supposedly replacing Old Testament Israel's theocratic state, but certainly re-placing the papal theocracy, with its Constantinian/Augustinian roots, with a Protestant version of the same thing.

While we should use Christian influence to be salt and light bringing a biblical influence into this fallen world, whether the Pope, Constantine, Calvin, and their latter day doctrinal heirs David Chilton, Gary De Mar, Gary North, Rick Godwin, and William Rushdooney approve or not, Jesus' true Kingdom is not of this world.

From the Unholy Crusades to the Seven Years War, such Dominionism has never brought us anything but bloodshed, and never will.

By equating the Church with Israel to the negation of Israel, the Reformers simply failed to correct what Constantine, Augustine, and their Papal successors got wrong. The Reformers forgot that Jesus' Kingdom was not of this world and His followers were called to be witnesses and salt and light in terms of a moral influence and a testimony in it, but they are not called to be of it - nor were they to set their hopes on it in any sense other than hoping in a resurrection and the return of Jesus.

The most sorry manifestation of these old errors still with us is the current state of much of Pentecostalism.

While Baptists sought out to restore some of the things the Reformers failed to (such as believers baptism, congregational autonomy, and a separation of Church and State) Pentecostalism, by definition and heritage, set out to restore the things that the Reformers and Baptists failed to restore, such as Gifts of the Spirit, an emphasis on the approaching return of Christ and Premillennialism. Yet today, we see Pentecostal preachers like Andrew Shearman telling a Nottingham congregation in the U.K. that he repents of ever having sung the hymn "This World Is Not My Home", leading the young people to chant "This World Is Our Home".

Such false and dangerous teachings may have no connection with the classical Pentecostalism Shearman now denigrates, but certainly is compatible with the classical Protestantism that the early Pentecostals reacted against.

A new generation of Pentecostal ministers who reject the beliefs of their fathers, yet still define them-selves as Pentecostals, are remembering to forget the things the Reformers also forgot.

They are not Protestant in that they do not hold to a state church or accept infant baptism. They are rather the doctrinal heirs of the Anabaptists whom Catholic and Protestant alike persecuted.

The source of all of this tragedy once more relates back to the replacement theology that makes the church the new Israel.

The endless arguments of Systematic theology, Dispensationalism verses Covenant / Reformed dividing Evangelicals from each other, stem from this same failure to grasp Jeremiah 31:31 and what it is addressing.

Still, more moderate expressions of dispensationalism do more justice to Jer. 31:31 and the eschatology and ecclesiology that derives from it than does Covenant theology.

Dispensationalism (for all the faults of its more extreme expressions) rightly sees a spiritual and theological relationship between Israel and the Church, but keeps the distinction between them.

The Reformed Covenant theology of Calvinism understates the discontinuity between the covenants and overstates the continuity - in its classical form making the church Israel's replacement. From this we again have the Protestant theonomic reconstructionism, not only supposedly replacing Old Testament Israel's theocratic state, but certainly replacing the papal theocracy, with its Constantinian/Augustinian roots, with a Protestant version of the same thing. While we should use Christian influence to be salt and light bringing a biblical influence into this fallen world, whether the Pope, Constantine, Calvin, and their latter day doctrinal heirs David Chilton, Gary De Mar, Gary North, Rick Godwin, and William Rushdooney approve or not, Jesus' true Kingdom is not of this world.

From the Unholy Crusades to the Seven Years War, such Dominionism has never brought us anything but bloodshed, and never will.

The most sorry manifestation of these old errors still with us is the current state of much of Pentecostalism.

Yet today, we see Pentecostal preachers like Andrew Shearman telling a Nottingham congregation in the U.K. that he repents of ever having sung the hymn "This World Is Not My Home", leading the young people to chant "T his World Is Our Home". Such false and dangerous teachings may have no connection with the classical Pentecostalism Shearman now denigrates, but certainly is compatible with the classical Protestantism that the early Pentecostals reacted against.

A new generation of Pentecostal ministers who reject the beliefs of their fathers, yet still define themselves as Pentecostals, are remembering to forget the things the Reformers also forgot.

With its replacementism drawn from the post Nicean Fathers, Medieval Romanism said the Lord's Kingdom is indeed of this world, and the kingdom was them.

So too, today's Reconstructionists and Restorationists, drawing on the Reformers failure to correct the ramifications of Constantine's Erastianism (control of the church by the state, usually with a mutual control of the state by the church to some degree) also say the Lord's Kingdom is of this world and that it is also them, courtesy of their replacementism. As the adage goes: "Failure to learn from History assures we are doomed to repeat its mistakes and reap the same manner of consequences for doing so."

What the Reformers Forgot about God's Election of Israel and His Gifts

A final dimension to the replacementist misconstruction of the New Covenant as prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31, is the relationship between replacementism and cessationism - the belief that the charismatic Gifts of the Holy Spirit ended with the Apostles. Romans 11 warns against these twin errors and directly connects the two errors as sharing a common source. Romans 11:29 tells us "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance". Paul's use here of the Greek term for repentance is a mere translation of the Hebrew concept of "teshuva", meaning to turn or return.

He argues that Jews remain beloved and God will not revoke either His sovereign call of Israel as a nation, for the sake of their fathers with whom He made the covenant, nor will He revoke His Gifts.

But which "Gifts" does he mean here? And why link God not revoking his gifts with His not taking back His election of Israel?

The answers are found simply by examining the context of Romans 11 and the structure of the epistle - itself intended to be read as a letter.

To begin with, there are no chapter breaks in the original manuscript. Chapter 11 is to be read in light of chapters 9 & 10, which precede it, and with a view towards chapter 12, which follows it.

Chapters 9 - 11 focus on God's election of Israel and His prophetic purposes for Israel relative to the church, with the law having been fulfilled in the Messiah. From here the text develops the theme of a remnant, both of Jews and, by implication, of Gentiles.

Grafted into the olive tree

The text of chapter 11 reiterates three times that God is not finished with Israel and the Jews.

While individual Jews may accept Jesus (remaining grafted into their own olive tree), most reject Him (to be cut off from it and to be individually replaced by Gentile Christians who accept Him), or some reject Him but then come to accept Him (being regrafted into the olive tree).

But the tree itself remains the same. Believing Gentiles replace Jews who are not believers and are incorporated into Israel in a spiritual sense, but the tree is still Israel, with its final branches (the last Christians) being Jews once more, just as the first ones were.

After this, in Chapter 12, Paul exhorts the readers to be transformed with the renewing of their minds and be not conformed to the world.

Paul next deals with the issue of spiritual Gifts in body life. These include not only ministry gifts of leadership, service, and teaching, but charismatic gifts like prophecy (verse 5).

Thus, Romans 11:29 serves as a natural transitional link from what precedes it to the things which follow it. The exegetical context of the verse reveals a clear thematic progression of inter-related aspects of church life, one leading into an-other. Hence, the theme that all men (both Jew and Greek), being fallen, require salvation - introduced in the opening chapters of the letter to the Romans - logically and neatly leads in the middle chapters of Romans to the issue of the purpose of the law to illustrate our fallen nature and need for a savior.

Then, with the Law fulfilled in Jesus, the question necessarily arises about the purpose of the Jews, now that the Messiah has arrived to fulfil the Torah.

So Romans 9-11 form the next natural step. Paul addresses it on the basis of what he has built up to that point.

Again, we see a natural progression in themes with a logical chain of theological and doctrinal issues lining up neatly, one following another, to answer the new questions raised by the previous section.

Following this, Romans then deals with the next point in the order of logic: how our subsequent Christian life as individuals and our body life as the church should work to carry out this New Law of Grace. So, after his admonishments to holiness and humility, he speaks of Body Life and the role of individual members with individual gifts.

To this Romans 11:29 again becomes pivotal. Both the gifts and calling are things God will not take back from Israel or the church.

If God is finished with Israel because of its unfaithfulness, I would like to find one reason that a God, who hates unjust balances, should not be finished with the church for its unfaithfulness.

True, there has seldom been anything more than a remnant of Israel who remained faithful - of which Jewish believers are the faithful remnant for now, as for instance those not worshipping Baal were in the days of Elijah (Romans 11:1- 5).

Similarly, there has rarely been anything more than a faithful remnant of Christians who were truly faithful. As we have often maintained, it is fortunate for both Israel and the Church that the validity of a covenant depends not upon the unfaithfulness of man, but rather the faithfulness of God.

Luther and the Third Reich

Going the way of Chrysostum's anti-Semitism rather than Paul's Philo-Semitism, Luther forgot Romans 9-11.

This was again very strange, considering Luther regarded Romans as central to the Bible's overall teaching and ultimate meaning.

Luther expected Jews to accept Christ when they were presented with an Evangelical Protestant Christianity as an alternative to the idolatry of Romanism. When they did not he preached that Jews should be hoarded into corals and forced to accept Christ at the point of a knife.

He taught Lutherans that they were to blame if they did not murder the Jews to prove they were Christians. This they did, culminating in the Holocaust. In Mein Kamf, Hitler loved quoting Luther.

The same Luther who inspired the Reformation also inspired the Holocaust, by forgetting Jeremiah 31:31 and Romans 11:1-29.

Instead of reforming the church from its anti-Semitic history to provoke the Jews to jealousy as God dictated (Romans 11:13-14), Luther ended his ministry as a vulgar old murdering tyrant - like the popes before him - merely replacing the Roman Catholic Jew Hatred of the Spanish Inquisition with a Protestant Jew Hatred which helped to inspire Germany's Third Reich.

His failure to separate church and state by not comprehending Jer. 31:31 but instead, as it were, Judaizing the church with Erastianism, led him to take a position on the German Peasant's Revolt where he called for the peasants to be stabbed in the back so as to preserve the church's marriage to the governing German nobility.

Luther's deranged viciousness propelled his own protégé, Melanchthon, to distance himself from him. Calvinists had a marginally more benevolent disposition to Jews, and later, in Holland and England, other Separatists were also somewhat sympathetic. But not Luther and the first Reformers.

Spiritual Gifts not revoked

The other half of Romans 11:29 notes what God will not revoke: it is Spiritual Gifts, which Paul discusses in chapter 12. Here we see what the Holy Spirit is wanting to warn us against.

Romans 11 urges us not to forget that it is the root that supports the church (the root once more being Israel).

Romans 12 encourages us to exercise our Gifts in concert with the other members of the body. Just as the Lord foreknew the dangers of wrongly believing that God had finished with Israel, so also in the same verse the Lord warns of the dangers in wrongly believing that the Lord is finished with the gifts.

The bogus view that God is finished with the Jews is just as faulty as the bogus view that He has finished with the gifts.

Both errors have the same source: an incipient hyperdispensationalism claiming that a different set of rules exists now than existed in the apostolic church. This sees apostolic Christianity as primitive and 'the perfect' as having come in the form of a book (the New Testament), in the same way as the Moslems believe about the Koran, and Mormons do about the Book of Mormon (except of course that the New Testament is truly God's Word).

Because this faulty view resembles Islam or Mormonism in a qualified sense, (we are not suggesting that cessationism denies the gospel or is fundamentally heretical but simply behaves in the same character) it becomes in essence a belief in a kind of third covenant, in some way distinct from the previous ones, yet claiming an essential continuity with them by borrowing on the motifs of the previous ones, but none the less with certain elements of the Old having passed away.

This position is arrived at by an eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 13, wrongly claiming that the perfect to come is the New Testament Canon.

Exegetically however, if the perfect has already come according to what is in the text, then hope and faith must have also passed away and are no longer necessary either, only love.

Cessationists of course would not reject the need for faith or hope, so we fall to see how their argument can do anything other than collapse.

Even today we see cessationists like Peter Masters and Jerry Falwell reading things into scripture which are not there with the same eisegetical license as proponents of the Toronto Experience do with their getting of things out of scripture that God did not put into it.

The perfect in 1 Corinthians 13 refers, of course, not to the New Testament canon, but to the Return of Christ. In the Pre-Nicean patristic literature the Early Fathers, such as Irenaeus, in the era immediately after the Apostles, strove to defend the "Didache" or true apostolic teaching from the gnostic heresies that threatened to subvert the church.

They made clear that the miraculous manifestations of the Apostolic church did not cease with the apostles.

According to Hegesippus, as quoted by Eusebius, Irenaeus was in a line of doctrinal succession from the Apostle John at Ephesus through Irenaeus' mentor, the martyr Polycarp.

Likewise both the patriarchs of Arminian Protestantism (not holding to a particularist interpretation of election or unconditional eternal security) such as John Wesley, and Calvinistic/Reformed patriarchs such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield alike testified in writing to Charismatic gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit as not being uncommon in their ministries - when, unlike Toronto, God was truly moving. Both D.L. Moody and R.A. Torrey, founders of Moody Bible Institute, in their biographies testified to an experience of Holy Spirit Baptism.

(I myself hold to "One Faith, One Baptism" - with many recurrent fillings, of which Spirit Baptism is but a chronological first which may happen at the point of, or following regeneration as a subjective experience - even though the Holy Spirit indwells believers at the instant of New Birth as an objective reality).

We can therefore conclude that radical expressions of cessationist pneumatology, like those of their hypercharismatic opposites with their unbalanced pneumatology, both have to engage in the same dangerous and unbiblical practice of eisegesis to argue for their extreme conclusions. Both moreover must ignore the re-corded history of those whom they claim as their doctrinal forefathers in church history.

For instance we see someone like Guy Chevreau, author of "Catch the Fire" promoting the Toronto Laughing experience claiming that such outbreaks happened in the Great Revival by quoting from Daniel Rowland.

When we read Rowland however, we see that these extremes of unruly laughter were stopped by the leaders because they were Satanic disruptions or counterfeits of what God was actually doing. Guy Chevreau literally wrote and published a direct lie to promote Toronto.

Hyper-reformed and hyper-dispensational cessationists will likewise point back to moves of God during the time of great and gifted preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, but simply ignore, and expect others to ignore, that so many of their founding fathers were out and out charismatics. This too is dishonest.

The root of this error again dates back to the Reformers. Because of the fraudulent hearings and bogus miracles claimed by Medieval Romanism, (and the money grabbing indulgence mongering that accompanied it) the Reformers - throwing out the baby with the bath water - had an aversion to all miracles, much the same as non-charismatics, seeing the heretical likes of Benny Hinn or Marilyn Hickey, will similarly shun all charismaticmanifestations today.

As we always point out, Paul warned that correct use of the gifts would induce the unsaved to want to be saved and the non-charismatic to want to become charismatic, but the misused or counterfeit 'gifts' would cause them to say we are mad and reject what we have (1 Corin-thians 14: 1-23).

Priesthood of all believers

Further consequences of such errors are the implications for "the priesthood of all believers" as is taught in 1 Peter 2:5. We must again reiterate that before Satan attempted to paganise the church he first attempted to Judaize it with a class of ordained clergy claiming powers apart from the laity.

Biblically, while not every Christian is called to full time ministry or to a ministry in the pastorate or leadership, every Christian is a minister and a priest. The body is to be a ministering organism it-self with varying members having varying functions.

The error of replacing the Old Testament practice of a Levitical priesthood with a clergy class apart from the Priest-hood of all believers and combining it with the heavy shepherding, condemned in Ezekiel 34 and Matthew 23, is known as "Nicolaitianism" (eg. Revelation 2:6).

To his credit Luther rightly reacted to the abominations of a transubstantiated Eucharist (that the bread and wine are worshipped as Christ incarnate and liter-ally eaten), whose basis was the Aristotelian "accidents" introduced into the church in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas and promulgated by scholasticism.

Along this line Luther and the Reformers stressed the universal priesthood of all believers against the idolatry and cannibalism of transubstantiation and the heresy that the Mass be taken as the same sacrifice as Calvary.

Luther believed in a kind of Consubstantiation which did not deny a literal presence, but did reject transubstantiation and the blasphemy of the Mass. The sacrifice of Jesus was efficacious once and for all, as Hebrews clearly states, and as His atonement was sufficient, Jesus does not die again and again.

Thus, the Reformers correctly opposed the notion of a sacerdotal priesthood. However, while remembering what a Priesthood of All Believers was not sup-posed to be, by embracing cessationism, the Reformers forgot what it was sup-posed to be.

To complete what a priesthood of all believers was meant to be, meant a return to the body concept of ministry instead of holding to the Medieval Roman Catholic clerical model of ministry.

The Reformers forgot to do this.

Biblically, pastors or leaders are simply differing ministries in the body. By forgetting that spiritual gifts include the sign gifts as taught in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12-14, the plague of a separate Protestant clergy class merely re-placed a Roman one.

In fairness however, we must observe that mainly cessationist non-conformist Baptist and, later, Brethren groups had far less of a clergy class distinction. They more closely approximated to the biblical idea of a what a universal priesthood of believers was meant to be than the mainstream Protestant churches.

Many contemporary Pentecostal denominations have become so hierarchical and 'priest ridden' - sometimes along virtually cultic lines - that they can be more Nicolaitian than moderate Protestant denominations.

Yet the source of all this started with the Reformers. By forgetting what Romans 11:29 said about God not being finished with the Jews, the Reformers simultaneously forgot about what God in Romans 11:29 said about not being finished with the Gifts.

What the Reformers forgot about Mission

Because of their replacementism, the Reformers (apart from the little known Caspar Schwenkenfeld, the Reformer of Silesia, who was by far the most doctrinally sound of the Reformers) misunderstood many things and left a mainstream Protestantism that could only degenerate because of the flaws in its very foundations.

While Justification and biblical authority were initially reestablished, because of its humanist roots and failure to radically remove what was unscriptural - as Baptists attempted to do, and restore what had been removed that was scriptural - as Pentecostals later attempted to do, even in the early stages many Protestants were unregenerate and neither justified nor biblical.

Today, western Protestantism is effectively dead

We see this today for instance in the rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism. Celts and Anglo-Saxons were always chalk and cheese and only united over a common fear of Rome. Now that is gone.

While Rome itself is declining, what it is losing numerically it is gaining by ecumenism - except in Latin America and the Philippines where another Reformation is underway - which has spread into Catholic areas of North America and certain Catholic countries in Europe.

Mission

This brings us to Mission. The Reformers saw no need for mission as such, and in the main, did not see evangelism as the best way to win Roman Catholics.

They substituted mission with what was at best a combination of polemics and politics, and at worst war (although they mostly fought defensively).

At the time of the Colloquies of Marlborough, there were actually at-tempts by Protestants to be reconciled with Rome through dialogue, and later Protestants with political ambitions sought the patronage of Catholics, so withdrew efforts to convert them. We now see a replay of this same kind of thing happening before our eyes.

Supposed Evangelicals with political ambitions like Pat Robertson (who has abandoned orthodoxy and embraced Dominionism and Toronto) have joined Chuck Colson, J.I. Packer, and Bill Bright in signing an agreement not to evangelize Roman Catholics and to accept Catholicism as Christian.

This is despite the fact its de fide doctrines still uphold the Council of Trent, the Anti-Christ doctrine of Papal Infallibility, sacramental regeneration (what Paul calls 'another gospel' in Galatians 1:8), calling upon spirits of the dead in prayer (which Scripture calls necromancy), and Transubstantiation (which denies the once and for all sufficiency of the cross, literally worships the Eucharist as Christ incarnate, then cannibalistically eats Him).

I write these things as one with a Catholic mother who has a great burden for Catholic souls.

James Dobson and Michael Green also support these views, while George Carey calls for reunification under the Pope, and disenfranchises mission to Jews.

Carey, addressing the Conference of Christians and Jews went along with a draft proposition which condemned the conversion of people from other faiths - in direct defiance of Jesus Christ's command. Organizations such as the International Christian Embassy and Operation Exodus replace biblical mission to the Jews with a social political-Zionist concept of mission which withholds Gospel Mission.

We also today have theological forums where reconciliation with Rome is at-tempted through dialogue which denies mission to Catholics.

As with the inter-faith dialogue with Rabbis, Roman Priests and Rabbis alike see forums as devices to prevent evangelicals from sharing the gospel with people in these faiths.

Rome moreover openly states that a road to ecumenical dialogue is the road back to Rome.

Like the Reformers, so many of today's Evangelical Protestant leaders conveniently forget the Bible's teaching on mission. By forgetting that the New Covenant would not be like the Old (Jeremiah 31:31), the reformers took an Old Testament view of Mission.

Since Europe was Christianized, Luther said the Great Commission had already been fulfilled and had no further meaning. Since the Church was now Israel and Israel was to witness by example instead of by example and evangelism (forgetting also that the Judaism of the Second Temple Period was a proselytizing religion - Matthew 23:15), there was no need to send out missionaries. Like the Crusaders and Moslems before them, the only way most Protestant followers of the Reformers sought to convert souls was by the sword.

Mission rediscovered

Later Justinian Welz rejected this error and disappeared as a missionary into the Central American jungle.

While the early Baptists were somewhat more missionary minded, in time auniversalism infiltrated the General Baptists. Particular Baptists had become corrupted by extreme forms of Calvinism.

They took predestined election and irresistible grace so far that at their convention they denounced William Carey for his desire to send missionaries abroad; telling Carey to "Sit down and be quiet, if God wants to convert the heathen he will do without your help or mine".

Eventually, it was nonconformists, mainly Baptists, Independents, Menonites, and later Moravians and, then Methodist and finally Brethren sects that restored mission.

The English Protestant martyrs did for a short season proclaim the gospel until their deaths under Mary, and a kind of gospel preaching took place at Calvin's Geneva and in Knox's Scotland.

But it was Puritans such as Joseph Alleine with his "Alarm To the Unconverted" (which had a great influence on Whitefield and Spurgeon) who really restored a proper sense of evangelism to England, as the Covenantors did to Scotland.

Concerning mission, unlike the pre-Reformation Evangelicals, such as the Waldensians, who were so cruelly persecuted but remained missionary minded, the Reformers were not.

The pioneers of Mission like William Carey, Dr. Livingston, and Hudson Taylor came later. Later also came the rebirth of Mission to the Jews - Brother Rabbinowich in Eastern Europe, Brother Leopold Cohen, an Orthodox Rabbi who was saved in America, and David Barren, a Jew who was saved in Britain, who resurrected Jewish Missions from the ash heap of church history and who realized that the Book of Acts is as much history future as it is history past.

Life from the dead

While I cannot overlook the many failures of the Reformation, neither can I lam-bast the Reformers themselves for their failures. They were mainly well intentioned but, like ourselves, fallible men in complicated and difficult times who at least began trying, as best they could for the most part, to what they believed to be best 'as unto the Lord'.

If I had been in their place, I doubt I would have been immune from some of the same kinds of errors that I can so easily, in retrospect, criticize them for.

Yet when it comes to Israel and the salvation of the Jews, I can only on the one hand lament what the Reformers for-got, but praise God for what so many today are finally remembering-after all of these many long centuries:

If their rejection were the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15).

May we never forget it.

Anabaptists
Sometimes called the radicals or left wing of the Reformation, they denounced the baptism of infants. They held that only those who were old enough to understand the meaning of faith and repentance should be baptized. They were widely persecuted and many tens of thousands of them murdered during the sixteenth century.

Augustine (354-430)
Augustine of Hippo, a prolific writer who has been called the father of orthodox theology.

Cyprian (200-258)
Bishop of Carthage. Taught that the unity of the church was Episcopal, not theological: To be disassociated from the bishops meant separation from the true church. Made the classic statements that "He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his Mother" and "There is no salvation outside the Church"

Darby
J.N. Darby, leader (but not the founder) of the Plymouth Brethren. Played a major role in the division of the Brethren into Open and Exclusive groups.

Erasmus (1466-1536)
Desiderius Erasmus, sometimes called Erasmus of Rotterdam, was the leading Christian humanist of the Reformation era. Especially noted for publishing the Greek New Testament and his own translation of it in Latin.

Eschatology
The study of last things; the completion of God's working in the world; the consummation of history.

Evangelicalism
An informal movement committed to defending the historical Protestant understanding of the Evangel-(Gk.) the Good News. Emphasises the necessity of a personal commitment to Jesus and the authority of the Bible.

Futurist
View of eschatology which holds that most of the 'end time' events are still in the future.

Gnosticism
A religious movement which taught salvation, not by faith or works, but by the possession of secret knowledge, gnosis (Gk.).

Heilsgeschichte
German term, meaning "salvation history".

Hellenistic
Holding to a traditional Greek cultural, linguistic and historical perspective.

Historicist (1554-1600)
View of eschatology which holds that the 'end time' events were taking place when the Bible was being written, and are now in the past.

Hooker
Richard Hooker. Anglican theologian. Defended Anglicanism in his eight volume Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Circumvented the Puritan appeal to Scripture and the Catholic appeal to church tradition by proclaiming 'natural law' as the primary source of authority. Hooker's position tended to uphold Erastianism (state control over the church) and royal absolutism.

Humanism
Christian humanism teaches that individuals and their culture have value; the pursuit of secular life is not only proper but meritorious. The Christian humanist values culture but confesses that man is fully developed only as he comes into a right relationship with Christ.

Midrash
From a Hebrew word meaning "to seek, to examine, to investigate". Used to describe arabbinic method of biblical exegesis used in the time of Jesus and Paul.

Montanism
A prophetic movement occurring around 172, named after Montanus, and his associates. They called for people to prepare for the return of Christ by heeding the voice of the Paraclete speaking through his prophetic mouthpieces. Their confident predictions of the imminent end were shown in time to be false.

Neo-gnosticism
Modern versions of gnosticism, which teach salvation on the basis of secret knowledge.

Parousia
Greek, used with reference to the Second Coming of Jesus.

Origen (185-254)
One of the Greek Fathers of the church. One of the first textual critics of the Bible; one of the first to set forth a systematic statement of the faith; one of the first Bible commentators.

Philo
Jewish writer who lived at the time of Christ. Prolific writer. Embraced a combination of Stoicism and Platonist philosophy, while remaining committed to Judaism.

Preterist
View of eschatology which holds that most of the 'end time' events were in the future when the Bible was being written but, having been fulfilled throughout the Church Age, are now in the past.

Replacement
Form of theology which teaches that Israel failed God and, for their sins, have now been replaced by the Church.

Sabellian heresy
Teaching that the Trinity does not consist of three separate Persons of the Godhead, but one Person who manifests Himself in three separate modes-Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Scholasticism
A form of Christian philosophy and theology developed during the medieval period of European history by scholars who came to be known as "school men".

Sitz im Leben
German theological term = the setting in life.

Tenach
Jewish acronym, used to refer to the Old Testament.

Zwickau Prophets
Three men from Zwickau who visited Wittenberg in 1521. They claimed that God spoke directly to people and revealed His will through visions and dreams, rather than the Scriptures. They made numerous prophecies which failed to come to pass.

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A Divided Nation

By David Passmore • July 8, 2026

A Divided Nation Rubin Rothler LLB, LLM The Haredi community has had a complicated, paradoxical relationship with the State since its founding. Rooted in a Talmudic precept that the Jews are forbidden to resettle the land of Israel en masse by force before the coming of the Messiah, the secular democratic State of Israel presents itself as blasphemous by its mere existence. Yet due to practical considerations such as the need to obtain funding for its religious academies the Haredi leadership reached a settlement with the State's founders that exempted Haredi men from being conscripted for military service. This was at a time when the Haredi population in Israel was relatively small. Over the past decades this demographic ballooned until the point that soon the majority of Jewish children in Israel will be born into Haredi families. Such a situation is clearly unsustainable. Recently the Knesset's (Parliament's) Haredi parties have pressured their coalition partners in government to codify Torah Study as part of the Country's Basic Laws. This was purposefully done to elevate the status of their institutions to be on parity with service in the IDF. Israel is yet to promulgate a written Constitution, so legislation classed as a Basic Law holds Constitutional status for all intents and purposes. These moves by the religious parties represent a back door power grab to enshrine in law very significant hurdles to prevent the enlistment of Haredi men. The burden of Israel's defence is comparatively massive for a country its size and it is vastly disproportionately shouldered by the secular population. Until now there have been political initiatives to conscript the Haredim. But given the huge manpower shortages emerging in the wake of near continual conflict on multiple fronts since the events of October 7th this matter has become urgent and not merely a theoretical discussion of what is fair and equitable. It is important to draw a distinction between the Haredim and national religious Jews (Dati Leumi). The Haredim adhere to a lifestyle entirely committed to observance of Jewish Law and Talmudic study. This is embraced to the exclusion of gainful employment and participation in wider society. They are either outrightly opposed to Zionism or consider themselves non-Zionist. Conversely, followers of the national religious movement in Israel although being observant of Jewish law and learning would alongside this pursue secular professions. Furthermore, they are ardently Zionist and disproportionately serve in IDF combat units. This is often done within the framework of a program called Hesder Yeshiva that combines religious learning with military service. Efforts to cater a similar model for accommodating Haredi participation in the IDF have so far failed to make substantial gains. Such measures designed to override Haredi objections to service based upon modesty concerns by strict segregation of the sexes in these specially formed units have failed to appease the Haredi leadership. For them, any form of military service is considered a dereliction of their duty to fully devote themselves to a Torah lifestyle. They argue that their Talmudic learning and prayers are in itself a form of national service and act to protect the Jewish people spiritually from enemy attack. It is as if two parallel societies exist within Israel. And the trajectory of separation between the two is only growing. The Haredim are cloistered away in their Yeshivas, immersed in lives devoted to adhering to the stipulations of Jewish law. While the particulars of actually running the State is left to the Secular. The Haredim desire all the benefits of subsidizing their lifestyle without contributing to society. What we really have going on here at source is two profoundly different and opposing ideological visions of what is important in life and what is the purpose of a Jewish State. At the State's founding these divergent perspectives were more manageable. Ben Gurion only had to contend with one religious party –the National Religious Party. Later in 1970 Begin aligned with the NRP to form a coalition government that also brought Sephardic Jews under the Likud umbrella which had the effect of bringing unity to the country by bridging the Ashkenazi-Sephardi divide. However, over time Israeli politics has seen a proliferation of religious parties, gaining further leverage as king brokers in forming governments due to the proportionate representation voting system which secular Israelis not uncommonly view as political blackmail. (Author is an Israeli American lawyer academically qualified in British and in U.S.A. law, and a graduate of the School of Oriental & African Studies, London. He is a Jewish believer in Jesus and is currently based in Israel).

Why Is It Always Israel? | Zechariah 12 Is Happening Before Our Eyes

By David Passmore • June 29, 2026

Pray for South Africa!

By Mea Fredrickson • June 23, 2026

New Paragraph

Disclosure - A Christian response

By David Passmore • June 22, 2026

THE CAPTION AT THE HEAD OF THE POSTER IMAGE FOR THE MOVIE ‘DISCLOSURE DAY’ BOLDLY DECLARES ‘WE DESERVE TO KNOW’ Indeed, we do need to know the truth. But will we find it in Stephen Spielberg’s new movie ‘Disclosure Day’? Could it just as well be entitled ‘DECEPTION DAY’? In an interview with USA Today Spielberg says that evidence of non-human contact has become “overwhelming” to him. He has suggested that his film could raise significant theological questions for Christians. But will it? For us Christians - No, not on our watch! The movie raises no questions for those who accept the proven accuracy of God’s Word, the Bible. The film, which is capturing the imagination of the public, only confirms exactly what scripture tells us about what are in fact extra-dimensional beings. ALIENS OR FALLEN ANGELS? God inhabits the heavenly realm along with a vast array of angels. Because Lucifer, a created angel, wanted to usurp God as ruler of the universe, he was expelled to another realm outside of our time and space, along with one third of the angels who rebelled with him. These fallen angels manifest themselves as demons who can appear on earth and disappear at will. Spiritual hosts of wickedness exist in heavenly places, wherever this realm is, it is not the place where God dwells. ARE ALIENS BENEVOLENT? In the movie, the ‘aliens’ are portrayed as friendly beings who want to help mankind in a time of crisis. If the aliens are really demons, not visitors from outer space, this is a dangerous delusion. Whitley Striber in his book ‘Communion’ writes on encountering ‘aliens’; ‘I felt an indescribable sense of menace. Whatever was there seemed so monstrously ugly, so filthy, so dark and sinister. Of course they were demons. They have to be.’ Many others have reported similar malevolent experiences. During the movie, Daniel claims to have had an encounter with extra-terrestrials during which he received a special gift of empathy, which is regarded by him as the ultimate superpower. However, there is only One who completely understands our human frailty. We read this concerning Jesus: ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet he did not sin.’ (Hebrews 4 v 15). Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11 v 28) END TIMES DECEPTION Before he was crucified, Jesus warned his disciples about these last days in which we are living. The first words he used in this context were: “Watch no one deceives you. For many will come in my name saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.” Deception was top of the list! Later, the Apostle Paul wrote about these days: ‘The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.’ (2 Thessalonians 2 v 9) Have you received the love of the truth? Have you received Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life? If not, you are in great danger. Perilous times are here and they are only going to get worse as man turns more and more away from his maker. Things will only change when Jesus returns soon to establish his own Kingdom on earth, where justice and peace will rule. JESUS, OUR ONLY HOPE! The Bible says all human beings are sinners. The message of Jesus is simple; repent and believe the good news, that God wants humanity, his highest creation, to be reestablished in relationship with him. His plan was simple: to give his life in unconditional love for every human being that has and ever will live, by shedding his blood on a Roman cross. In doing this, we can receive forgiveness of sins. Our old life will then be buried with him, giving us new life with the hope of an eternal future of true peace, love and joy, with freedom from pain and tears. Why ignore such a great gift of salvation? If you do, your fate will be sealed for eternity in hell, which is a real place without God, and thus without love, to face only eternal consequences of punishment. We condemn ourselves to such a fate. REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! Jesus loves you and asks that you repent and believe in him. It would be the best and safest decision of your life! If you commit your life to him, he will give you a new heart, you will be a new person inside. You will also gain a new desire for all that is right and true. And his Holy Spirit will give you an ability to discern the lies of the age we are living in. ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave us his only son, that whosoever believes in him, will not perish, but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16) FINALLY, A RECOMMENDATION All that is described in this leaflet has been open, in the light for millennia. On the other hand, the theory of extra-terrestrial life has been hidden in darkness, awaiting ‘Disclosure Day’. Which would you prefer to believe, the Word of God, or the word of Stephen Spielberg? I made my choice years ago, and have never regretted it! If this message has spoken to you, just call upon Jesus in a short prayer. Confess to him that you are a sinner in need of salvation. Ask him in sincerity to forgive you and to fill you with his Holy Spirit. You will then become what the Bible describes as being ‘born again’. (John 3 v 7) Then you need to seek a Bible believing church where you can be baptised and become part of a group of believers who can help you get to know Jesus more and more fully. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8 v 32)

Prayer request for Teerth Sond

By David Passmore • June 20, 2026

Prayer request for Teerth Sond Petitioned Prayer-Supplication/Personal Prayer/ Collective Prayer/Thanks Giving Prayer Our Dear brethren in Yeshua, my family & myself Teerth request your prayers in The Spirit that the latest drugs Ramicirumab & Pacilitaxel will destroy the cancer cell in the Authority Of The Lord Yeshua in The Power of The Holy Spirit. Targeted Petition: Please stand with us in prayer & fasting; The Lord will target the 2cm legion & that it will be cast out of my Liver in the love (agape), compassion, kindness, grace, mercy of God. I do not deserve it because of me- but By His Stripes we are healed for His Glory. This will allow the main operation to go ahead (which should have been done 18 months ago). Step by Step in the leading of The Holy Spirit and the in the Lord Step by Step, as our beautiful sister Beryl said, has worked on my Spiritual man- thank you Lord for waking me up. Lord raise me up for your glory forever because of your love to me, the family & fellowship- an unworthy sinner saved by your grace & love. Email sent to my Oncologist & my Local MP: Greetings Natasha & Dr Mano Joseph Hope All Is Well Thank you for our meeting today. At our meeting we discussed my MRI & CT scans which were done in May 2026. We discussed the operation on my oesophagus which I believe is the best option. (This should have been done 18 months ago). My Kidney operation will be done- non evasive- Lord willing within the next month. Will you be talking to Mr Chacravaty about this? The liver must be targeted first- this is wisdom and the latest radiotherapy treatments available- proton therapy-radiotherapy atezolizumab and bevacizumab sorafenib lenvatinib regorafenib cabozantinib durvalumab and tremelimumab At the meeting we discussed the next CT & MRI scans to be held end off July. Wouldn't it be to better to have them in August so by then I've had 4 full treatments on the latest medication. Also we have Zolbetuximab on compassionate usage- all glory to The Lord. After all the past wrongs I have no doubt now Dr Joseph you will pursue the best for me and family. Dear brethren- King Manasseh, David, Hannah, The Church For Peter, James, The Lord Jesus Christ for example made petitions onto the Lord. We pray as one body to cast off the illness in the Power of The Holy & The Authority Of Yeshua. The Great Physician who came for the ill. To lay out raised hands 🙌🏽 upon the head of our Lord. ABBA/Daddy/Lord in your mercy have mercy on us. Love you all in Yeshua our Lord & God. Teerth, Family & Fellowship

The End of an Extended Honeymoon – Are Trump and Netanyahu Parting Ways?

By David Passmore • June 19, 2026

The End of an Extended Honeymoon – Are Trump and Netanyahu Parting Ways? Rubin Rothler LLB, LLM The Israeli public had high hopes for Trump. Unlike his predecessors, he consistently endorsed Israeli measures of self-defence in the different theatres of conflict in which it had to contend. Further to these ends Trump shared in Netanyahu’s determined agenda of preventing the Iranians from pursuing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. During Trump's first term he tore up Obama's negotiated settlement with the Iranians concerning enriched Uranium, echoing Netanyahu’s position that it didn't go far enough. Now in his second term Trump partnered with Israel in a war with Iran that turned out to lack clearly defined goals. The campaign required resolve on the part of America that it wasn't willing to commit. After an initial lightning blitzkrieg that decapitated the Iranian leadership, the Persians dug in and the conflict became a protracted war of attrition hinging on Iran's stranglehold on the straits of Hormuz that could only be realistically lifted by placing boots on the ground or an intensified air war directed against Iranian coastal positions and the destruction of Kharg island, or at least the viable threat to obliterate Kharg island if Iran did not acquiesce. It transpired that Trump and Netanyahu underestimated the resilience of the Iranian regime, thinking that it had already received a near mortal blow during the prior popular demonstrations. So now we are left with a situation where Trump is exasperated with this protracted endeavour and appears to be aiming his frustration towards Netenyahu. A sticking point is Israel's continued occupation of Southern Lebanon. Iran is insistent that Israel withdraw its forces from there as a precursor to fully committing itself to a final status agreement with the U.S. to put an end to its nuclear aspirations. With the midterm elections looming Trump seems to be desperate for an exit strategy from this war. From Israel's perspective the fight against Hizbollah is an inextricable part of the Iranian equation. The IDF has invested massive resources and personnel in the hopes of quashing the Iranian proxy once and for all. Netanyahu is determined to build on the momentum achieved after the spectacular pager attack in 2024. After the catastrophic Hamas massacres of October 7th, the majority of the Israeli public is unwilling to tolerate a capable hostile force on its borders. Trump's proposed solution to this dilemma unrealistically suggests that Syria should take on the role of disarming and removing Hizbollah from Lebanon. In the ultimate reckoning of international relations, America doesn't have iron clad allies, but rather interests like any other nation. If, (as appears to be occurring now) U.S. and Israeli interests fail to align the two countries will cease to act in unison and there may be a rupture in relations on the not-too-distant horizon. Trump has indicated that Israel owes him big time. He has asserted that were it not for his decisive actions they would have been obliterated by Iran's missiles. This is nothing to say of the robust diplomatic support Trump has lent Israel in such forums as the United Nations Security Council and sanctioning officials of the International Criminal Court. Netanyahu is acutely aware of what may be next after Trump. The way public opinion is turning against Israel it is unlikely that the next administration is going to be any way near as friendly as Trump has been thus far to Israel. Trump too of course is mindful of this turning tide opposing Israel. The Iran war has been unpopular to his domestic audience, and the President has been caricatured as Netanyahu’s stooge doing Israel's bidding. Another major consideration for Trump is the colossal impact that the war has had on his other major regional allies: the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. They have received the brunt of the Iranian backlash that has effectively targeted their energy infrastructure and trading routes. They, along with the Europeans have been exerting pressure on Trump to end the conflict and reopen the Straits of Hormuz regardless of whether the most favourable terms of Iranian capitulation are achieved. Israel, however important a strategic asset and technological powerhouse will not override these broader concerns that are endangering global energy markets. An unspoken factor is Trump's propensity for a belligerent severing of his relationship with allies in the political sphere. His public displays of hostility with former political allies such Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Ron Santos and Elon Musk demonstrate a temperament that the same kind of falling out could invoke with strategic allies as well as those political. Both Trump and Netanyahu are approaching the sunset of their political careers and are naturally inclined to deeply consider the legacies they will leave behind. In the international sphere Trump projected himself as a peacemaker from a position of strength. But as many commentators have pointed out, the war with Iran demonstrated the limits of U.S. power. Trump appraised Iran as low hanging fruit that could be swiftly toppled like Venezuela. However, when push came to shove and the only prospect of landing a decisive blow demanded a massive ground offensive on the scale of the Iraq war, he bottled out and sued for a premature peace that will leave Netanyahu in the cold. Netanyahu is anxious to rehabilitate the injury inflicted on his reputation of the greatest disaster to have occurred in Israel's history having happened on his watch. Eliminating Iran as the great regional adversary pulling the strings of its proxies would have done much in this regard. Neither leader is able to craft their legacies as they would have wanted. Trump is choosing the perceived option of mitigating the damage done to his legacy in foreign affairs. He is trying hard to sell his Iran deal as being more than what Obama bargained in terms of guaranteeing a nuclear free Iran. But as further details of his proposal are leaked this is becoming a tall order. Netanyahu is faced with October elections and he may decide to stay the course in Lebanon as otherwise he will seem weak to most voters. Should this happen, we will be in uncharted waters as it will thwart Trump's designs for an immediate end to this affair.

The Battle for Israel's Reputation

By David Passmore • June 17, 2026

The Battlefield for Israel's Reputation Rubin Rothler LLB, LLM Israel has enjoyed strong U.S. support since its founding. Within eleven minutes of Israel's Declaration of Independence Truman recognized the Jewish State. Under the Kennedy administration the Pentagon sold advanced missile systems to Israel. However, it was the 1970 attempted PLO takeover of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that demonstrated to the U.S. Israel's regional prowess and indispensability for implementing Washington's agenda. During Arafat's attempted Coup Syria mobilized its forces on the Jordanian border in support of the PLO's bid to dislodge the ruling Hashemite dynasty. Upon Washington's direction the IDF also mobilized its army upon its border with Jordan, thereby deterring the Syrians from taking further action. From then, the Pentagon and U.S. military planners invested heavily in promoting Israel's defence. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War disaster Nixon's massive air lift came to Israel's aid. For decades U.S. diplomatic and military support for Israel was a non-partisan issue. Both Democrat and Republican members of Congress voted nearly unanimously in support of measures concerning Israel. However, in the mid 2010's this began to change. To the extent that now 80% of Democrats hold views in opposition to Israel and this is reflected in how their representatives are acting. It is difficult to praise an exact moment when this turning point occurred. For years Democrat grassroots activist groups across the nation were lobbying their local representatives about their attitudes to Palestine and the mass student protest movements following the Gaza war built upon this momentum. The dual standards by the academic establishment were riddled with hypocrisy as if by the same criteria Israel is condemned for its responsive self-defence counter attacks in Lebanon and Gaza, Britain and America would be similarly indicted for what they did to Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin in response to Hitler. This is facilitated by the funding of Western Universities by Qatar and other Islamic interests associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. There is alienation between Israelis and the traditional left-centre Jewish Diaspora in the U.S. with a third of New York Jews voting for Mandani a vehement anti-Zionist in the New York Mayoral election. This is counterbalanced by a growing Jewish Right in America led by Ben Shapiro, David Ruben, Dennis Prager, Mark Levin and Trump advisor Steven Miller who are in political harmony with the Evangelical Right. The Republicans are also approaching a crossroads. Just as the Democrats have been hijacked by the Woke Left there has emerged a virulently anti-Zionist Woke Right led by Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes and Candace Owen who are also attempting to hijack the Republicans. What is alarming here, is the fact that the majority of young Republicans under forty now hold an unfavourable view of Israel. So, it is very much a matter of fighting for the future of the Republican Party. The growing populist movements in Britain and Europe may counter the anti-Zionist and anti- Semitic political activities of the Muslim vote and their left-wing allies. In any eventuality, even if the least favourable trajectory of U.S. public opinion were to further materialize it is unlikely to dismantle the massive military and intelligence sharing cooperation between the U.S. and Israel. The Pentagon views Israel as far too big of a strategic asset in a volatile region to cut ties with. (Author is an Israeli American lawyer academically qualified in British and in U.S.A. law, and a graduate of the School of Oriental & African Studies, London. He is a Jewish believer in Jesus and is currently based in Israel).

Urgent prayer request - India

By David Passmore • June 10, 2026

MAJOR PRAYER REQUEST - STEVE MITCHELL MORIEL ORPHANAGE (Andar Pradesh, INDIA) Please read the enclosed missions report from Moriel Missions Branch India: Our children need us and we put a lot of money into buying and then expanding the Moriel orphanage to take in more children. These precious orphan children are coming to Christ and the devil is angry. Until now we had opposition from radical Sheikhs at the Moriel Horeb church we built in Punjab, but the Hindu Authorities in Andar Pradesh have largely until now left us alone. The BJP government is however as wicked as Hamas or Hezbollah - only Hindu (I was in India when radical Hindus burned the Australian missionary family alive in their car; these are the ones who wanted to murder Steve Mitchell when Moriel helped to quickly get him out of the country some years ago). Some pastors have been murdered again in West Bengal. (Samuel, who oversees the Moriel orphanage went to Bible College with one of them). Because our orphan children are Dalet (treated as subhuman 'out casts' by the Hindu caste system), or from Muslim backgrounds, we have largely been been left alone and some of the local officials liked us. This is obviously not a good situation. Prayer is urgently requested. Please pray for Mark Masih particularly that they will not cancel his visa. They are now forbidding us from bringing any more bibles into the country. What would happen if Britain, Australia, or America outlawed Hindus from bringing the Bhagavad Gita into England, Oz, or the USA? MARANATHA Come Quickly Lord Jesus "You Will Be Hated By Men For My Name's Sake" Matthew 10:22

Staying the course amidst isolation

By David Passmore • May 30, 2026

Staying The Course Amidst Isolation Rubin Rothler LLB, LLM Living in Israel one gets the feeling that the metaphorical walls are closing in. Israel's reputation is being tarnished all over social media and the mainstream media, and this is reflected in massive public disdain towards this country. We are constantly told that there is near consensus amongst academics and commentators that a genocide was committed in Gaza. The very legitimacy of the state is brought into question. The majority of Americans are now hostile towards Israel. There is real fear that the next U.S. administration will turn against Israel. Even if this were to happen passively, by the U.S. refraining from exercising its veto power towards Security Council Resolutions condemning Israeli actions this could be catastrophic. Internally it is a fractured society leaning increasingly right wing which further alienates Israel from world opinion. An example in point is how Ben Gvir mocked the most recent participants of a global aid flotilla to Gaza. Such conduct further agitates outrage at Israel. The left-wing media presents the ruins of Gaza as a mortal wound in Israel's side. When the world observes this level of carnage no degree of public relations can ameliorate the sense of indignation towards Israel. We can liken the situation of Israel to that of a depressed person. All he sees is hopelessness and gloom. But this isn't the first time that the Jewish nation has been faced with such darkness. Things change and we don't know how the geo-political map will reconfigure in the future. We need to ride out this storm and keep going. On a historical note, the situation is reminiscent of what our ancestors faced when we returned from the Babylonian exile to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah was faced with constant lies and conspiracies designed to entrap him by hostile actors: Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arab. They employed deception, slander and ridicule in order to maintain their political eminence. There was also a certain sense of abandonment amongst the Jews in Israel then as in our own day. We read in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah about the anguish of the leadership in Israel concerning the lack of assistance from the Babylonian diaspora towards the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem and the Temple. Only 20% of the exiles returned to the land. It was largely the poor who returned. Most of the affluent, established Jews remained in Exile. This is a continuing theme in Jewish history. It is also important to observe that from its very beginnings there were bible believing Christians who spearheaded the return of the Jews to their land. The idea of organizing a return of the Jews to Israel began as a Protestant Restorationist objective that can be traced to 17th century Puritan England. The protagonists of the Cromwellian Republic viewed themselves as the new Israel fighting the Papist forces of Satan. Alongside this, interest grew in the notion that biblical prophecies pertaining to the return of the Jews to Israel were a necessary precursor for the return of Christ. The growth of the British Empire in the 19th century lent political clout to Christian Restorationism with specific missions to the Jews established. Although there had been a longing to return to Israel as written in the thrice daily Amidah prayer, Jewish Zionism arose in the midst of mid nineteenth century nationalism and was further fermented by European antisemitism. It was an altogether secular enterprise. Although Israel's situation appears rather stark, we can draw strength from the Providence afforded to our ancestors in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah when they too were faced with defamation. This is also an opportunity to grow closer to our natural allies in the evangelical world who from the beginning of Zionism were steadfast supporters of the project to establish a Jewish homeland in Israel. (Author is an Israeli American lawyer academically qualified in British and in U.S.A. law, and a graduate of the School of Oriental & African Studies, London. He is a Jewish believer in Jesus and is currently based in Israel).

Signs of the Times - Tony Pearce

By David Passmore • May 25, 2026

Signs of the Times Tony Pearce ‍ ‍ Left, right or center – is our democracy in danger “Things fall apart, the center does not hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” W.B Yeats ‘The Second Coming. ’ ‍ ‍ Labour’s losses in the council elections and the battle for succession to their unpopular leader Kier Starmer have raised the possibility that we may soon have our seventh Prime Minister in ten years. Local elections saw Reform and the Greens make sweeping gains, leading Green Party leader, Zack Polanski to say that we are seeing ‘the end of the old two party system’. Maybe we are. In which case what comes next? Will we head to the far left, the far right or will the center hold on to power? Or will it end with ungovernable chaos as unqualified people take control of local and national government? Behind all this there are fundamental questions, ‘What is government for? Who does it represent and where is it going?’ ‍ ‍‍ ‍ According to the Bible (Romans 13) the purpose of government is to promote good and restrain evil. The government has the right to raise taxes for the common good of society and people should pay them. In 1 Timothy 2 Paul encourages us to pray for the government that ‘we may live a godly and peaceable life’. In other words, pray that the government will create an orderly and peaceful society and not interfere with our right to set up communities that teach and preach the Word of God. The situation becomes more difficult when we see government promoting things which are harmful and restraining things which are good and clamping down on freedom of speech with a threat to our ability to live a ‘godly and peaceable life’ ‍ Since becoming a Christian in my early twenties, I have wrestled with the question of how our faith applies to contemporary political issues. I started this quest on the left politically after leaving university and working as an English teacher with sympathies for Marxism. I then became a born again Christian in 1970, and joined my late wife Nikki in evangelizing the radical left, by handing out leaflets at their marches and demonstrations in London and attending their meetings to discuss matters of faith and politics with them. ‍ ‍‍ ‍ We had some good discussions with people and hope we made some consider the Christian alternative. However as we looked at Marxism from a Christian point of view and its practice in Communist countries, we understood that behind this ideology there is a strong anti-christian spirit. It denies the existence of God and promotes the idea of human perfectibility by our own effort. This is exemplified in the words of the Internationale, the socialist battle hymn, ‘No saviour from on high delivers, no faith have we in prince or peer, our own right hand the chains will shiver, chains of hatred, greed and fear.’ This Antichrist spirit led to the persecution of Christians in the Communist countries of eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China. Far from creating the socialist paradise on earth that Lenin wrote about in ‘Socialism and Religion’, it created a society ruled by hatred, greed and fear, controlled by secret police, prison camps and responsible for the death of millions. ‍ ‍ In western society we have witnessed the growth of ‘cultural Marxism’ a movement aimed at infiltrating and changing society from within, rather than fomenting the workers’ revolution. Labour’s Fabian Society, with its (now discarded) logo of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, has been engaged in this process since the beginning of the 20th century. Social change really took off with the permissive society in the 1960s, which succeeded in changing traditional values, especially in the area of sex and the family. It replaced biblical values with a new ‘morality’ that is fundamentally anti Christian. These ideas have permeated large swathes of our society including the education system, the judiciary, the Civil Service, much of the media, mainstream political parties (including even the Conservative ‘wets’ and parts of the established church). ‍ ‍ Melanie Phillips describes the results of this in her book, ‘The Builder’s Stone.’ ‘Having decided that the West was rotten to the core, western elites set out to create a new culture that would usher in the brotherhood of man and eradicate hatred, prejudice, and war. Their Brave New World junked biblical religion with all its constraints on behaviour and revolved instead around self gratification. Everybody had the right to live as they wanted; nobody could say that their way of life was better or worse than anyone else’s; no one had the right to say that their culture was better than any other culture. That was ‘racism.’ At the heart of all this was the doctrine that there was no such thing as objective truth. Everything was relative; everything was a matter of opinion. Because there was no truth feelings became more important than facts. So the West abandoned the codes of morality, conscience, truth and lies, personal responsibility, and duty to others in favour of a culture of the self. In the process it junked its inherited traditions and biblical codes on which western culture was based.’ ‍ Britain changed from being a society that respected values based on the 10 Commandments and the teaching of Jesus Christ to one that discarded them for relative values. Ideas of ‘diversity, inclusion and equity’ became the norm, together with and a form of ‘tolerance’, that is really very intolerant if you oppose it. This ‘tolerance’ means accepting the virtues of multiculturalism and humanism and believing that all gods are equally valid or true (or none are). We must also accept that all lifestyles and family arrangements including homosexual and transsexual ones are just as valid as traditional two parent heterosexual families, with a father and mother committed to each other in lifelong matrimony looking after their own children. ‍ As society accepts this radical change in how we view culture, morality and religion, we are told not to criticize other cultures and world views or imply that they are anything less than equal to the culture, morality and faith derived from the Bible. ‍ All this has not improved society. Instead we have a collapse of values with no central idea to hold it together, just a group of competing ‘communities’ which are often only united in opposition to the traditional values and culture of Great Britain. A good example of this is the ‘red – green alliance’ of radical leftists and Islamists who come together to denounce Israel and campaign to ‘globalise the Intifada’. In practice this means a world wide war against Israel and Judaeo-Christian society and a desire to replace it with their version of either Islamism or Communism. However if one of them were to come to power, you can be sure that the Islamist’s would get rid of the leftists or vice versa. In fact that happened in Iran’s 1979 revolution, when Islamist supporters of Khomeini and Communists came together to get rid of the Shah. Then the Islamists seized power, turned on the Communists and wiped them out. ‍ Alisteir Heath wrote in the Daily Telegraph: ‘Ruined by decades of political vandalism, the Britain we knew and loved, a land of stability, pragmatism, and ancient freedoms, is no more. Today’s UK is uglier, impoverished, volatile and disorderly. We’ve lost our level-headedness. Anger and frustration have become our defining emotions. Our institutions have wasted away, and we have been taught to despise our history. The decline of family, community and faith have led to alienation, dependence on welfare and the rise of novel ideologies, mostly secular but also sectarian, turbocharged by social media. While the state becomes unnervingly authoritarian, the air reeks of insurrection and every variety of extremism. The British public’s sense of betrayal is as well-founded as it is dangerous. The machinery of state is incompetent and self-serving, a vehicle for social engineering in the global interest.’ ‍ ‍ ‍ Criticism of this process now risks being classed as ‘hate crime’ with a growing authoritarian society monitoring social media posts and public teaching of alternative ideas in ways which risk shutting down free speech in our society. A Christian teacher Enoch Burke is currently in prison in Dublin after he was suspended from his job and jailed after refusing to accept and teach transgenderism in the school. ‍ ‍ ‍ Nick Timothy, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, got into trouble when he questioned mass Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square. He wrote: ‘Mass ritual prayer in public places is an act of domination. The adhan – which declares there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger – is, when called in a public place, a declaration of domination. The domination of public places is straight from the Islamist playbook.” He is right in this. Allah hu Akhbar actually means Allah is greater, greater than your God, Muhammad is greater than Jesus and the Koran is greater than the Bible. ‍ ‍ ‍ Tim Dieppe of Christian Concern for our Nation wrote: “The fact that we have mass Islamic prayer in Trafalgar Square at all is indicative of the massive culture change that we have seen in the last few decades. A culture change that was not voted for or ever agreed to by the British people. And, a culture change that can hardly be described as having been entirely beneficial to our culture as a whole. I only need to mention grooming gangs involving mostly Pakistani Muslim men , sharia courts, honour crimes, terror attacks, the assassination of an MP, an attempt to blockade Parliament, mass antisemitic marches through London, a convicted terrorist standing for local elections, sectarianism, and many other examples to make the point. Earlier this month, the Government gave Muslims special protection with the adoption of an official definition of anti-Muslim hostility .” ‍ ‍ ‍ You are not really supposed to question this in public life today. A message circulating on social media is an apt commentary on all this. ‘First they overlook evil, then they permit evil, then they legalise evil, then they promote evil, then celebrate evil, then persecute those who call it evil.’ Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn wrote: ‘A Communist system can be recognised by how it spares criminals and criminalises its opponents.’ ‍ ‍ ‍ The root cause of all this is the rejection of God and biblical values. The 18th-century French philosopher Joseph de Maistre coined the phrase "people get the government they deserve." David Pawson followed up on this idea, arguing that in democratic societies like ours, the moral and spiritual condition of a nation's citizens is directly reflected in the leaders they elect. If the general public abandons moral truths, they will inevitably vote for governments that reflect those same compromises. David Pawson taught that God may use governmental leadership to judge or bless a nation, depending on the people's obedience. He noted that Hebrew prophets saw wicked rulers as a form of divine judgement on a society that has strayed from God's laws. Therefore a nation's ultimate hope rests on repentance rather than just political change. His conclusion is that Christians should actively stand for moral truth in society. He believed that the church is meant to influence culture upward, and that a decline in national morality inevitably leads to deteriorating governance. ‍ ‍ ‍ Sadly much of the church today has become the ‘salt that has lost its savour’ through compromise with antichristian forces in society and government. It may be too late to save our country and western democracy as social and economic pressures create a collapse of democracy and push us either towards anarchy or dictatorship. ‍ ‍ ‍ Yeats’ poem quoted at the beginning of this article ends with the enigmatic line ‘Some rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.’ Most likely he is referring to the coming anti-Messiah who is labelled the Beast in the book of Revelation. Many believe his is now waiting in the wings to replace the true Messiah (born in Bethlehem) and bring in the dictatorship prophesied in Revelation 13. The Bible indicates that the Beast or Antichrist will have power for a moment, but it will be short lived and doomed to destruction at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to the earth. Then the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and of His Messiah and He shall reign forever and ever (Revelation 11.15) and the ‘government shall be on His shoulder’ (Isaiah 9.6). ‍ ‍ ‍ Maranatha come Lord Jesus. ‍ ‍ ‍ Water, water nowhere and not a drop to drink. (Apologies to the Ancient Mariner) ‍ ‍‍ ‍ While nations worry about supply of oil and gas as a result of the war in the Gulf and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a much more vital commodity for human survival is water. And it is in short supply in a growing number of nations. ‍ ‍ As of 2026, over 25 countries face extremely high water stress, with the most severe crises located in the Middle East and North Africa. This region is home to the world's most water-stressed nations, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and Libya. India and Pakistan face critical water scarcity due to overexploitation of aquifers and population density. Much of Africa , Somalia and Ethiopia in particular are facing severe shortages due to drought and climate change. Mexico and parts of the United States (particularly Texas and the west coast) are experiencing significant water shortages and declining groundwater levels. ‍ ‍ ‍ Iran is facing a severe, multi-year water crisis as of May 2026, with major cities like Tehran, Mashhad, and Karaj approaching the point where taps could run dry due to depleted reservoirs. Groundwater is depleted across most of the country, and nineteen provinces are experiencing severe drought. The crisis is driven by a combination of climate change and decades of poor water management, including excessive dam construction and inefficient, water-intensive agriculture. China is facing a severe, multi-faceted water crisis defined by extreme scarcity in the north, widespread pollution, and mismanagement, threatening its food supply and economic growth. ‍ ‍ ‍ Several countries are significantly affected by upstream dam construction that reduces downstream water flow, causing, environmental, and diplomatic crises. These countries include Iraq, heavily impacted by dams built on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers by Turkey and Iran, leading to reduced water for agriculture, destruction of forests, and increased sandstorms. Egypt and Sudanface significant water security risks due to the Ethiopian Grand Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laosare affected of dams built by China on the upper Mekong River ‍ ‍ One country which bucks this trend is Israel. Israel manages its water resources by transforming a chronic shortage into a surplus through large-scale desalination, extensive wastewater recycling, and a centralised national water carrier system. The agriculture sector has shifted away from freshwater, using treated effluent instead. Advanced drip irrigation technologies are widely used to minimise waste. Israel has exported its water technologies to countries around the world, particularly Africa where it has given advice on how to use limited water resources to great effect. ‍ ‍ ‍ Without water no society on earth can survive. Bible prophecies indicate that water shortage and pollution will be a global problem in the last days. Most obviously no water equals no food, so famine is an inevitable result of water shortages. Jesus warned of this as a sign of the last days in Matthew 24.7. Revelation 8.10-11 speaks of something called ‘Wormwood’ falling on rivers and springs of water causing it to become bitter and many to die from drinking it. ‍ ‍ Prophecy speaks of the two great rivers of the ancient world, the Nile and the Euphrates, being affected by a crisis causing the Euphrates to dry up (Revelation 16.12) and the Nile to become contaminated and its waters turn foul (Isaiah 19.5-11). Isaiah 24 speaks of a curse devouring the earth in the last days causing the earth to be ‘defiled (or polluted) under its inhabitants.’ ‍ ‍ ‍ According to the New Scientist, there are massive amounts of water hidden deep beneath the Earth's surface. Scientists have found evidence of a reservoir of water three times the volume of all surface oceans combined, located roughly 250–400 miles underground within the mantle. ‍ ‍ ‍ It may be that the Lord will release this water to replenish and clean up the earth in the Millennial kingdom when ‘waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water.’ Isaiah 35. Zechariah 14.8-9 says, ‘In that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea; In both summer and winter it shall occur. And the Lord shall be King over all the earth.’ Zechariah 14.8-9. See also Ezekiel 47. ‍ Rethinking Russia ‍ Things are not going well for Vladimir Putin in his ‘special military operation’. Four years after invading Ukraine in February 2022, Russia is not making advances and actually losing ground. Russia is losing as many as 25,000- 35,000 casualties a month and over 1.2 million have been killed and wounded since the war began. Ukrainian skills in drone warfare have destroyed large quantities of Russian equipment, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and rocket systems, helicopters, and naval vessels. ‍ ‍ Russia is spending an estimated 40% of the entire federal budget on the war effort. As a result of this and western sanctions, Russia is increasingly unable to fix chronic infrastructure problems at home. During the bitter Russian winter thousands of people were left without heat, light, or even water. All forms of transport, trains, trucks and planes, are facing logistical problems, making it difficult to transport goods and people across the vast Russian regions. Russia is on the way to an infrastructure collapse that will likely take decades to recover. ‍ ‍ Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov warned the State Duma that Russia's faltering economy risks stoking a 1917-style revolution. He demanded urgent financial and economic measures by autumn to avert a potential economic collapse. This raises the danger of the Russian Federation fracturing. The Caucuses are restive, the far east is looking to China and Siberia is facing an acute problem as a result of melting permafrost, causing buildings, bridges and pipelines to collapse. ‍ ‍ In the present circumstances it is hard to see how Russia could lead the Gog and Magog invasion of Israel (Ezekiel 38-39). Some have said that it is more likely that Turkey is the lead power in the War of Gog and Magog. They say that Meshech and Tubal are not Moscow and Tobolsk, but regions of modern Turkey. Erdogan’s Turkey is backed by an Islamist world view hostile to Israel, seeking the recovery of its Ottoman Empire. He has his eyes on taking control of Jerusalem. Turkey is possession of a large land army already stationed in the region, some of it occupying part of Syria. ‍ ‍ The alternative is that the War of Gog and Magog is some way off, possibly part of Armageddon, giving time for Russia to recover from its present distress. We wait and see, but meanwhile spare a thought and a prayer for the people of Ukraine and Russia, suffering as a result of Putin’s futile war, oppressed by his corrupt dictatorship and facing an economic and social collapse caused by his failed policies. ‍ ‍