A new decade, To open the eyes to get a right view

When we look at the times we are living in, we might find we are going to darker times where there is less understanding and empathy for others.
Forbearance seems to be a long way off. Tolerance has become something very rare. Last year seems to have been a year full of lies. It looked more like a competition, who can make people believe the most incredible lies. There was the incredible Brexit saga and the debacle around the formation of a new Belgian government.

Maarten Boudry, author of the book “Waarom de wereld niet naar de knoppen gaat” (Why the world does not go wrong) believes that 2019 was not at all so bad. In 2014-2015 the graphs did indeed see an increase in the number of terrorist attacks but

“that peak is now behind us: 2019 was the fourth year in a row that there were fewer attacks.”

Though so much went on behind the curtains (by matter of speech).  when you know that in Belgium from the 28 000 registered Jews in 2015 there were only 25 000 left in 2018, it should have to question why so many preferred leaving this country. People also should know that the majority of Jews and Jeshuaists prefer to have a low profile and love to stay out of the spotlights. Though at the end of 2019 the Jewish organisation Chabad and the Belgian Jeshuaists asked their members to stop being afraid to show their faith. They asked their folks to put a menorah at the window so that others also could see and say

“Oh, there lives one of us.”

They, too, live with the same hope as us, that there may be coming times foretold in Scriptures.

It looks a long time since April 2010 when Apple released the first generation of the iPad. When it was originally launched, it was quite a novelty tech item. For us it became a handy tool to carry with us on our preaching trips, not having to have big heavy Bibles in our bags.
But the many electronic tools, like iPhone and other Smartphones brought social media also everywhere in the picture. The first of many social media “challenges” to become viral on the internet was the crazy act or simple fad that involved lying face-down in bizarre locations and then posting the photos on social media. In May 2011 everyone was planking — everywhere.

In July 2012 when South Korean singer, rapper, songwriter, and record producer Psy released a new song called “Gangnam Style” could bring the world sit on a horse, igniting a worldwide dance craze by the first two billion views hit on YouTube. As of December 2019, it is the seventh most viewed video on YouTube, with over 3.4 billion views.

When the viral self-replicating, bad-dancing meme sensation took over the internet back in early 2013, thousands of bizarre 30-second versions going up to three-minute song called “Harlem Shake, — a dance set to the electronic song by DJ Baauer — were being uploaded on the daily. The video usually began with a lone person dancing in a room full of seemingly oblivious onlookers, then — once the beat drops — cutting into the entire group joining the dance and going nuts in the most ridiculous way possible.

Thousands of ridiculous video’s would follow to take people their time away, bringing them from one bad joke or laughing matter to another mocking with the misery of others. From 2013 doing silly looked a rage. Bringing copy-cats video’s also was in, so that 2012 to 2013 could be called the time of viral videos.

Though at that time people still could see what was just for laughing or some joke and not distorting the reality. By going deeper in the second part of the decade more and more fake news videos conquered the internet world and politicians and political parties became aware how the new medium could be used in their propaganda world. By the end of 2019 the internet  social media platforms had become the best weapon in the hands of people who wanted to fool the world and wanted to get as much people on their site in their greed for power.

Not everything was fake yet but some mysterious events could only be resolved several years later. In early 2014 a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet disappeared with her 239 passengers and crew onboard, without a trace, becoming one of the biggest aviation mysteries in history. The missing plane captured the attention of millions around the world, triggering a multinational search and plenty of conspiracy theories. For years, it remained an unsolved mystery — until in July 2019 when The Atlantic gave us the clearest story to date of what happened: the plane was likely intentionally crashed by the pilot.

The presidential election in the United States of America could bring another conspiracy theory to the forefront. The political war via internet had started by the Americans and Russians, soon followed by the British, showing the world how Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are of a kind.

With the many political intrigues and several hashtag movements spreading virally on social media, like the sexual abuse allegation matter and #MeToo campaign and others, giving lots of opportunity for discussion of normally not so openly spoken of topics and having brought forward several historic feminist and LGBT movements.

In January 2017, on the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency, millions of people took to the streets of Washington and other cities to protest — and the result was the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. Supporting gender equality, civil rights, and other issues that faced challenges under the new presidency, the Women’s March drew over 5 million people in over 600 marches across the world — with the Washington March alone having had 500,000 people in attendance.

When the 116th Congress was sworn on January 3 2019, it was the most diverse class of lawmakers to ever take office. The incoming class had a record-breaking number of women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+ representatives — and among the 117 women newly elected to office, the North Americans also got the first Native-American women and the first Muslim-American women in Congress.

The Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal in 2016 did not wake up enough people. So many lets themselves being carried away by the manipulation of others, not taking enough measures to protect their web browsing and to avoid false information coming in via internet.

We do know that man is able enough to spread lots of lies and to fool a lot of people. Several religious groups tried to get people more away from the Only One Real God, the God of Abraham. They managed to do that by making people afraid of those who worship That Only One True God, be them Jews, Jeshuaists, real or non-Trinitarian Christians or Muslims.

Throughout the centuries the majority of people preferred to worship a tangible god and preferably one or more they could see and perceive effectively. Difficulty for many is that the Divine Creator is One Who no man can see. Several Christians therefore made a man, who could be seen, their god, and as such Jesus became a god son. That big lie is one which brought a lot of division in Christianity and Christendom. Several of those Christians were not satisfied with that one extra god and one other extra god (the third one of the Trinity) that they made some other sub gods like a mother god and several saints of whom they made statues and other images, where they could kneel down in front and pray to.

What we can notice is that they mostly created a god like they can imagine him or her to be. And those who say they do not believe in God or in a god really made material things their god, worshipping their cellphone or all sorts of things money can buy for.

The last few decades we can see that in lots of countries many churches fell in the trap of the money god. In North and South America lots of preachers came into the forefront creating mega churches where people offered enough money so that their leaders or ministers could buy several private planes and big expensive cars.

They and their counterparts of the many Trinitarian churches do not love to see loosing people to other faithgroups and certainly not to the Islam or to Non-trinitarian Christians or Jeshuaists. Therefore they did and do everything they can to discredit such groups. Even in the ‘Jews for Christ’ groups in 2018-2019 lots of work was made to get Jews away from the God of Abraham (Him being a God Who is One and not two or three). But they also were confronted with other groups of Jews who recognise Jesus (Jeshua) as Messiah (or the Kristos – the Christ) but who refuse to adhere the false human dogmatic teaching of the Trinity.
For those non-Trinitarian groups their choice to refuse going with the idea of a three-headed god, made them a target for hate letters and all kinds of attacks by so-called Christians.

Several of the Jews believing in Jesus and what he says, gave preference to go to Israel and to worship overthere in the synagogue with their fellowbrethren of other Jewish denominations instead of staying here in Belgium, France or Holland. The Biblestudents and Christadelphians who were targetted also tried to tackle those so-called Christians, or riposted by not minding to defend themself with Words from the Bible, trying to get those ‘Christians’ to see that Jesus is the way to God and not to himself.

Not always easy, to meet with such counteractions we loose a lot of energy and have to see how the decrease of believing people continues and how lots of Catholic and other Trinitarian churches are left abandoned, to be sold for becoming warehouses, libraries or apartments, or just to become to dilipidate.

Like in politics, the truth is far gone, so it looks like in real life too. Even when people may say that they

think everyone has the question in them that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus in John 18:38, “what is truth.” {2020, Seeking Clearer Vision of Our Father}

and may say

Our theology or belief system is “our truth,” right or wrong. {2020, Seeking Clearer Vision of Our Father}

and

Truth is not only a thing we can manipulate to our choosing like the gods people chose to worship, Truth is a person, the LORD Jesus Christ, Yeshua HaMashiach. {2020, Seeking Clearer Vision of Our Father}

Even when they hear or read that Jesus said

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. {John 14:1-6}

they seem to have difficulties in believing Jesus and his heavenly Father, Who Himself declared Jesus to be His only begotten beloved son. ((Mt 3:16-17; Lu 3:21-23; Mr 1:10-11). It is that unwillingness that makes them also blind for the many sayings of Jesus and his God. It is also that attitude of not willing to worship the same God as Jesus worshipped, that lots of them, by not listening nor following the teachigns of Christ Jesus, have no brotherly love in them and are able to spread such hate.

Clearly people should come to see that they are not of the truth, and that their speading such hatred against immigrants and/or people of other faith, skincolour, or of not a main gender attitude, proves them not to be real Christians or followers of Christ, but wolves in sheepclothing.

We should know that Jesus had come into the world to make his heavenly Father better known, but also to liberate people from the bounderies or chains of this world. Real believers in Christ Jesus, the son of God, should show people around them how they too, can be liberated by the acts of Jesus and by their faith in this sent one from God, who is the only fully authorised one from God, who is now the mediator between God and man.

As we continue in this 21st century let us open the 2020ies with gratitude but also with general caution to protect people from the very emerging dangerous populism.

Let all believers in the son of man and son of God, Jesus Christ, join hands to show the world that Jesus is the way to God and the way to life. The only one who can give us a good government and bring peace for ever.

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That the God of Abraham, the God of Israel, Who is One, may bless you all.

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Preceding

Warring Tendencies and Spiritual Airs

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Additional reading

1. 2015-2016 Religion
2. The American clouds of Anti-Semitism
3. At the closing hours of 2016 #2 Low but also highlights
4. Religious Practices around the world
5. Donald Trump after declining numbers of people victimised for their religion managed to increase the numbers again
6. Trump’s rhetoric is infusing a culture of Anti-Semitism
7. Seeds from the world creating division and separation from God
8. Speaking up and Celebration of Purim
9. What to do in the Face of Global Anti-semitism
10. Apocalyptic Extremism: No Longer a Laughing Matter
11. The Rise of Anti-Seminism
12. What to do in the Face of Global Anti-semitism
13. Incidents of hate have become commonplace in the U.S.A. anno 2017
14. Dr. Miller looking at Jews in France
15. Growing anti-Semitism possible sign of certain times
16. Jews In France Ponder Whether To Stay Or To Leave
17. Quiz questions, views, left- and right-wing anti-Semitism
18. Many members of Jewish community wondering if they are still welcome in Poland
19. French rabbis of the suburbs confront anti-Semitism
20. a Call to stop the growing anti-Semitism
21. The danger of having less than 25 000 Jews in Belgium
22. Historian Deborah Lipstadt Assesses the New Anti-Semitism
23. Anti-Semitism in Austria 2018 study results
24. Anti-Semitic pressure driving Jews out of Europe
25. Numbers 10:10 Make Your Rejoicing Heard
26. The fight against anti-Semitism is also a fight for a democratic, value-based Europe
27. Month of freedom and liberty with Independence Day or Deceived day
28. Luca Jahier, EESC President on the present intolerance
29. Signs of the times – “An object of scorn and ridicule”
30. 2019 was #1 a Year of Raising fire and voices
31. 2019 was #2 a Year of much deceit in the U.S.A.
32. 2019 was #3 a Year of much deceit in the News World
33. 2019 was #4 a Year of much deceit in Belgium and the rest of Europe
34. Negative attitudes toward Jews in Europe
35. Signs of the times – “Anti-Semitism on the increase”
36. To see more menorahs in the windows