Witnessing Is Never Wasted

By Maria Fontaine: Link - Audio length: 7:54
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A point that is easy to forget when you witness to people is that you’re doing just as much for the Lord and being just as successful when you’re witnessing to people who maynot receive the witness in the end, and are not going to accept the Lord, as you are when you’re witnessing to those who decide to pray with you. The ones who don’t receive the witness in the end need the witness just as much as the ones who are going to decide for Him.

Often the majority of people you talk to are not going to pray with you to receive the Lord. So you shouldn’t feel that you’re wasting your time and not accomplishing much because your witness didn’t result in immediate decisions. Granted, after praying and struggling to witness to people, when you finally find a person who receives the Lord, it’s wonderful when a soul is saved! All the angels in heaven rejoice when a soul is saved, and Jesus said, “Likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.”1 But the truth is, even if your whole day is spent witnessing to people who don’t take that step to receive Him, your time was well spent. We accomplish just as much when we witness to those who don’t receive the Lord as when we witness to those who do.

Those who don’t receive the Lord have to have the witness just as much as those who do, because they have to be able to make the choice. I know we have often said, “Avoid the devoid” and “Don’t cast your pearls before swine,”2 and that’s true. If people don’t want to hear the message, don’t want to listen to you, then there’s not much you can do.

However, there are many people who will listen politely and ask you questions and get your answers. Maybe they’ll do a little friendly debating with you or arguing, and then in the end say they’re not prepared to receive the Lord at that time. But you will have planted seeds that may yet take root in the future. So it’s important that we give them the message.

Of course, when you first start sharing your faith with someone, you don’t know if they’re going to accept your witness or not, so you just have to be faithful to witness. But to reflect back on it afterward and say, “I didn’t accomplish anything because the people I talked to didn’t end up praying to receive the Lord” would not be the right conclusion. You did what the Lord wanted you to do: you shared the message with people.

Our job is to witness and share the good news! Disciples of Jesus are called to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”3 We know that not “every creature” is going to receive the Lord. So if we measure how we are fulfilling the Great Commission by how many people pray with us to receive the Lord, then we’re missing the point of the Great Commission.

It’s also important to remember that many people who don’t receive Jesus with you on the spot will receive Him later—you’ve just planted some seeds. You can’t always expect to plant the seed and have the plant grow up to full bloom right then and there while you’re talking to them. If the seed hasn’t been planted before, it may need some time to be watered, to grow, and then to be harvested. Maybe in some cases the seed has already been planted, and when you come along, you water it, but it’s still not quite ready yet. So who knows? It may be a while, but they may yet receive the Lord.

Gauging the worth of a witness

Do you sometimes in your heart question, “Is the witness I am able to give really making a difference in people’s lives? I’m hardly doing anything for Jesus. I’m occupied with my job and my family. I barely get a chance to tune in to anybody or anything else.”

What would be enough to make you feel you are doing enough for Jesus? What is your criterion? Is it to save a soul every day, or give a Bible study once a week? What if you could only do a few small things each week or month? Maybe you got a chance to tell someone how you depend on Jesus and prayer to strengthen you. Or maybe you were able to give someone Jesus’ comfort or help them to feel happier and more confident.

What if you feel like you did all you were able to do, but you don’t feel that it was nearly enough? How much would you have to do in order to know that it was enough? Would feeding Jesus be enough? Would finding Him shivering with cold and giving Him a blanket be enough? How about going to visit Him if He were in prison? Would encouraging His aching heart or taking care of Him when He was sick satisfy your heart and mind that what you are doing is pleasing Him?

Mother Teresa expressed it like this: “Christ said, ‘I was hungry and you gave me food.’ He was hungry not only for bread but for the understanding love of being loved, of being known, of being someone to someone. He was naked not only of clothing but of human dignity and of respect, through the injustice that is done to the poor, who are looked down upon simply because they are poor. He was dispossessed not only of a house made of bricks but because of the dispossession of those who are locked up, of those who are unwanted and unloved, of those who walk through the world with no one to care for them. Jesus, in the least of His brethren, is not only hungry for a piece of bread, but hungry for love, to be known, to be taken into account.”

Jesus Himself said: “Come, you who are blessed by My Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited Me in. I needed clothes and you clothed Me. I was sick and you looked after Me. I was in prison and you came to visit Me. … Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”4

How can we judge what is important and what will yield eternal results? We want to give our time to a worthy cause, something that is going to succeed and have exceptional and visible results. Trouble is, we won’t know until we’ve put in the time—and sometimes we won’t even know then. It’s not always so easy, this life of faith.

We often may make small investments and yet reap huge dividends. But we never know the extent of those dividends in advance, do we? We so often look at the likely outcomes and figure it won’t be worth much. It’s hard to believe that little old you, laboring alone, or with your little family, could possibly be accomplishing things that are truly great and important to God.

What you do matters to God. What matters to God impacts everything, because He designed it all. God has created this huge universe, but He designed it so that its very existence is dependent on the minute particles, each doing what they were ordained to do. How much more is the immensity of His love activated through even your seemingly insignificant actions and words! If one atom can start a nuclear reaction to bring a world of devastation, imagine what small words and deeds done in His love can trigger for good in the lives of others, now and on through eternity.

Compiled from the writings of Maria Fontaine. Adapted and republished February 2016. Read by Carol Andrews.

1 Luke 15:7.
2 Matthew 7:6.
3 Mark 16:15.
4 Matthew 25:34–36 NIV, 25:40 KJV.

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Syrian Forces Press Aleppo, Sending Thousands Fleeing

By Anne Barnard, NY Times, Feb. 5, 2016:

BEIRUT, Lebanon–Syrian government and allied forces pressed their most significant advance in months on Friday, sending insurgents scrambling and tens of thousands of civilians fleeing toward the border with Turkey.

The advance has accelerated in recent days, with new momentum from heavy Russian airstrikes in the northern province of Aleppo, according to Syrian state news media, residents and antigovernment activists. The government’s gains have given a morale boost to loyalists and prompted opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to calculate their next moves.

The government’s gains in Aleppo Province, building on earlier ones in Dara’a in the south and Latakia in the north, also scuttled United Nations-mediated peace talks this week in Geneva. Neither side saw much to discuss there: The government believed it was achieving its goals on the battlefield, while the opposition accused the Assad administration and Russia of using negotiations as a cover for indiscriminate attacks.

Russia’s four months of escalating military intervention have strengthened the government, allowing Mr. Assad’s forces to go on the offensive in several provinces at once for the first time in years. It remains to be seen whether the most recent advances will hold. But they have dealt major blows to the armed opposition and made crucial military gains around the divided city of Aleppo, the provincial capital that was once Syria’s largest city and industrial hub.

Government forces and pro-government militias, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah, have cut the main supply route for weapons and humanitarian aid north of the city. If the government and its allies advance farther south, they could surround rebels in Aleppo and employ the type of “starve or surrender” siege the government has used elsewhere.

Mr. Assad’s forces also broke the insurgents’ siege of two towns near Aleppo, Nubol and Zahra, which had survived on government airdrops of food. People there were celebrating on Friday and thanking the troops in videos posted on social media.

The government gains have increased the sense of alarm among antigovernment insurgents and their civilian supporters, sending thousands of people, including women and children with whatever they can carry, fleeing through orchards.

The United Nations said 20,000 people were stuck at the border fence between Syria and Turkey, and aid groups said as many as 50,000 were expected. Turkish officials have said they will allow refugees to cross, but it was not clear when they would open the crossing or how many would be allowed through. A few people requiring urgent medical care are being taken to Turkish hospitals.

The United Nations’ director of humanitarian operations, John Ging, told the Security Council on Friday that the situation around Aleppo, and the closing of an important border crossing with Turkey, could prevent food and medicine from reaching 325,000 people caught in the fighting, according to two diplomats who attended the closed meeting.

The new advances are squeezing rebel groups north of Aleppo that have been holding off Islamic State militants, who want to expand into a coveted section of rebel-held territory near the Turkish border. Long controlled by United States-backed insurgents and hard-line Islamists, that strip of land is wanted by nearly every party to the conflict.

Kurdish militias want the area to connect two enclaves they control near the border to the east and west. That is where the United States and Turkey sought last year to create a “safe zone” for refugees, free of Islamic State fighters. That plan broke down when the two countries, NATO allies, disagreed on the details.

Turkey would be particularly troubled if the Kurds, whom it considers its main enemy in the area, further encroached on the border area.

It would be unusual, though, for Turkey to send in troops without consulting with the United States, even though their relationship has been strained by Turkey’s frustration that the United States is more focused on battling the Islamic State than Mr. Assad.

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Who Are the Real Heirs of Zionism?

By Steven Erlanger, NY Times, Feb. 4, 2016:

JERUSALEM–Zionism was never the gentlest of ideologies. The return of the Jewish people to their biblical homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty there have always carried within them the displacement of those already living on the land.

The Israeli general and politician Yigal Allon defined Zionism in 1975 as “the national liberation movement of a people exiled from its historic homeland and dispersed among the nations of the world.” Some years later, and more crudely, perhaps, another general and politician, Rehavam Ze’evi, a tough right-winger, said, “Zionism is in essence the Zionism of transfer,” adding, “If transfer is immoral, then all of Zionism is immoral.”

In that gap between idealism and pragmatism is the fierce battle now going on in Israel, some 65 years after the founding of the state, about the true inheritors of Zionism.

Are they those who hold to the secular and internationalist vision of the nation’s founders, or are they the nationalist religious settlers who create communities beyond the 1967 boundaries and seek to annex more of the biblical land of Israel?

The earliest version of Zionism based the creation of a Jewish nation on the revived language of Hebrew, to unify the huge variety of dispersed Jews. Beginning in the 1920s and especially with the Holocaust, suggests Bernard Avishai, the author of “The Tragedy of Zionism” and “The Hebrew Republic,” came the idea of “political Zionism,” which required a state and a military both to protect Jews against anti-Semitism and to transform them into a modern state, to defend themselves and, if necessary, to defy the world.

The largely secular founders of Israel, the generation of David Ben-Gurion, had a dual vision of Israel as both “a light among nations” and a state like others, part of the international community of nations, outward looking and socially just.

“When Israel has prostitutes and thieves,” Ben-Gurion said, “we’ll be a state just like any other.”

The “new” Zionists–religious Zionists–see the world, and Israel, differently. They are sure that they represent the future. “We are the real Zionists now,” a settler, Igal Canaan, told me, “and slowly, slowly we will be the majority of the country.” They argue that they are the pioneers of this generation, taking risks to expand the state in the face of dangers from the Palestinians, whom they largely regard, in Mr. Avishai’s words, “as a distraction on the landscape who will eventually be displaced,” as others were before by the left-wing secular Zionists who built the young state. The new Zionists see themselves as honoring God’s commandments and living in shared communities like the early heroes of Israel.

Defiant in the face of criticism, both domestic and foreign, they believe that they are building a religious Israel, not a European or cosmopolitan one.

“Zionism justified a return to the holy land in terms of universalist values,” said Yaron Ezrahi, a political theorist and emeritus professor at Hebrew University. “The idea was to bring enlightenment and cultural development, to bring universalism to the Middle East. But the settlers are the epitome of particularism, of localism, and they give a bad name to Zionism. If Zionism is a European movement,” he said, “the settlers are colonialism in a post-colonial era. They’ve lost the universal values of Zionism.”

Uri Dromi, who was a spokesman for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said that liberal, secular Israelis feel “besieged and pessimistic” in the face of new security fears and the political power of the nationalist religious and ultra-Orthodox. Rather than trying to be a nation among nations, “today, without saying it, by what we are doing, we are a people that is alone.”

Religious Zionism is a relatively large tent, with more liberal and more nationalist wings. But it regards the settlements as “its most important creation in this generation,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research center. “There is a growing sense that they are the true future of Zionism, because secular Zionism has been in decline for decades.” They have taken more leadership positions in the Army, have the most vital youth movements and are having a major impact in politics, so “they have a growing sense of self-confidence,” he said.

The real danger to religious Zionism comes not from the Palestinians or from abroad, nor even from the dwindling Israeli left. What settlers are really afraid of, Mr. Halevi said, is the secular right, still largely represented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his party, Likud. He said religious nationalists “have an almost apocalyptic fear” that another pragmatic, secular, right-wing government like that of Ariel Sharon will betray them and undermine the settlement movement.

Mr. Sharon’s decision in 2005 to withdraw all Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza (and from four settlements in the West Bank) was an enormous shock to the religious Zionists. They learned their lesson and sought stronger allies in politics, including with Naftali Bennett of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, the religious parties and younger members of Likud. Mr. Bennett, for example, favors the annexation of what is known as Area C, which is 62 percent of the West Bank and includes most Israeli settlements.

Mr. Bennett is a prominent member of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition government, but they are rivals for right-wing and settler votes. Mr. Netanyahu won last year’s elections after speaking on television of “droves” of Arabs being bused to vote. The left was furious and accused him of appealing to fear, but it worked: Many of the votes that went to Likud at the end came, in fact, from Mr. Bennett’s supporters, who also feel tricked by Mr. Netanyahu.

The relationship of religious Zionism to democracy is another of the hidden dramas now in Israel. The struggle for the future of democracy here, Mr. Halevi said, will be “between those who are legitimate democrats and those who don’t really understand it, who pay lip service to it but come from a nationalist and even theocratic place and view certain democratic norms as a threat.”

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Shrill wind from Israel: Does it risk alienating its allies?

By Joshua Mitnick, CS Monitor, February 5, 2016:

TEL AVIV–The acrimony started with Sweden’s foreign minister, continued with the US ambassador, and reached a crescendo with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Israel has been getting an earful in public recently from its friends over its policies toward Palestinians, and the comeback from the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu has often been shrill.

Sweden’s Margot Wallstrom is now unwelcome in Israel for criticizing the police killings of Palestinian knife assailants. Remarks by Dan Shapiro, the US envoy, were called “unacceptable and incorrect” for suggesting that a double standard exists in West Bank law enforcement.

And Mr. Ban–despite his good ties with Israel–was assailed by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel’s ambassador to the UN as fanning terrorism for warning that Palestinian “resistance” would not subside absent statehood.

Israel’s responses demonstrate the Netanyahu government’s style of blunt pushback against all critics of its military occupation of Palestinian territories. They also reflect its retreat to a diplomatic bunker amid a vacuum in peace negotiations and the absence of any new diplomatic initiative of their own regarding the Palestinians.

The bunker could be costly. Though the stridency may play well at home, the spats risk eroding Israel’s ability to fend off potential initiatives in Europe and at the UN aimed at supporting Palestinian statehood. And this at a time that the United States is signaling it is less inclined to come to Israel’s diplomatic rescue.

“There’s an accumulation of [diplomatic] incidents in which the one common thing is growing international criticism of certain phenomena in Israeli behavior in the occupied territories,” says Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union. “What is new is the tone coming from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responding more forcefully to the accusations.”

Amir Tibon, diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Walla! News, says that while UN treatment of Israel overall is biased, Secretary Ban himself has sided with Israel against Hamas and Iran.

“It’s more than legitimate to criticize his organization’s attitude toward Israel,” he says, “but turning him personally into an enemy is a mistake that will backfire.”

Behind the fiery rhetoric, however, analysts say Netanyahu is quietly tempering his moves in order to preserve ties with allies like the US who can help an isolated Israel fend off new initiatives on behalf of Palestinian statehood.

“Because ultimately he wants to muddle through, what we are seeing from a policy perspective is an avoidance of certain steps because they cross the lines of international allies,” says Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “These confrontations make it more difficult for Netanyahu to deflect more imminent [diplomatic] risks.”

Last week, France called for an international conference to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks–a format Israel has always resisted for fear such a conference would impose a deal. The proposal has also stirred concern that France will try to push a series of peace parameters as a resolution at the UN Security Council.

Separately, after the European Union decided to label products from Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, there is concern in Israel that the Europeans will add new sanctions against Israeli settlers and businesses with operations across the Green Line.

“Israelis feel that they are becoming a target for European policies and are unfairly treated. This brings about a more radical reaction from the Israeli side,” says Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the US and a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party. “The way that Israel is going about to minimize the damage is to try to balance European initiatives by maintaining a close relationship with the US.”

Indeed, US officials have been making the case in public and private that they are less able to shield Israel from such initiatives when there is no peace process and when it appears that prospects for a two-state solution are growing dim. The fact that the US made no immediate public attempt to shut down the new French proposal is evidence of the wavering US diplomatic cover even as defense ties remain strong, says one Western diplomat.

Netanyahu has been trying to repair ties with the Obama administration, agreeing late last year to a truce on the much-disputed Iran nuclear deal.

Some say the prime minister has even observed a quiet slowdown in initiating new building in the West Bank despite pressure from pro-settler constituents. A recent announcement of 150 new houses was the first such announcement in more than a year, according to Dror Etkes, a long time monitor of settlement policy. Israeli housing starts dropped in the West Bank by 5 percent in 2015.

And when Ambassador Shapiro’s criticism made headlines in Israel and the US because it was interpreted as drawing a comparison between Israel’s military occupation and apartheid South Africa, Netanyahu followed up a blunt retort with a one-on-one meeting with Shapiro to clear the air. No escalation ensued.

The need to rally allies at a time of diplomatic uncertainty might also explain the timing of Netanyahu’s decision to approve the recent compromise to make room at Jerusalem’s Western Wall for non-Orthodox Jewish prayer.

The mix of diplomatic flare-ups and tactical maneuvers to minimize international fallout has led critics both inside and outside of the government to call it passive and strategically adrift.

But when it comes to solving the conflict with the Palestinians, Mr. Zalzberg says, the Israeli leader prefers the status quo to any radical change of Israeli policy at this point.

“Netanyahu is committed to a policy that generates tension internationally,” he says. “He is looking for ways to minimize the tension, but he’s not changing the policy.

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9 Strategies To Become A Good Listener

By John Stoker, Leadchangegroup.com, Feb. 1, 2016:

Not long ago I was reflecting on a conversation that I had with my spouse. I thought that I had not been a very good listener in a conversation that we had about an hour earlier. Knowing that she was in the next room, I called out to her, “Stephanie, I was thinking about that conversation we just had, and I was thinking I need to apologize for not listening or giving you my full attention when you were talking. Will you forgive me?” She responded, “For which time?” I thought I had blown it, but I had no idea of how bad of a listener I had been. That is the problem. Most of us think that we are average to good listeners. Unfortunately, that is the status we all occupy in our own minds.

Most of the time, our thoughts are what get in the way of being an effective listener. We have this little voice in our head that is constantly judging, evaluating, criticizing, analyzing, and editorializing everything that we hear. When I did research among a number of managers and asked them why they didn’t listen, they gave the following explanations:

“Sometimes I listen to see if I agree or not.”

“I usually am thinking about what I should say in response.”

“I listen to understand if what the person is saying will have a negative impact on me.”

“I don’t listen to some people because I already know what they are going to say.”

“I know I don’t listen because I am thinking more about what I am thinking than to what the person is saying.”

Notice in all of these responses, the individual is preoccupied with their thoughts. When this happens, they are obviously not listening nor capturing the sum total of the messages that are being sent.

Here Are Some Strategies That Will Help You Become A Fantastic Listener.

1. Recognize and suspend your thinking. If your thinking is a distraction, then you must learn to manage the voice in your head. Recognize that the little voice is competing for airtime and set it aside. If you can’t do it, it would be better to excuse yourself from the conversation and reschedule when you can give your full attention. Listening and attending to others is not something that you can fake until you make it. People know when you are not present.

2. Don’t assume anything. If you find yourself making negative judgments about what the other person is saying, shift to asking questions that will confirm or disconfirm your thinking. For example you might ask, “Help me understand how you came to your opinion.” Asking good questions will add depth to your understanding and a richness of learning about the individual. This won’t happen if you make assumptions and never ask a question. Ask yourself, “What will I miss if I don’t ask?”

3. Eliminate distractions. We are so preoccupied with the use of electronic gadgets today. It is a wonder that anyone can give their full attention to another individual. Close your laptop and silence your phone and put them outside your reach. Giving your attention to a person and then allowing your electronic devices to interrupt the conversation is highly disrespectful. You wouldn’t want to be interrupted by someone answering their email or an incoming text in the middle of a conversation that you wanted to hold. Do people the service of giving them your full attention.

4. Demonstrate good body language. Use clusters of nonverbal behaviors to show interest in what people are saying. For example, mirror the eye contact that is being given to you by the person who is speaking. Lean slightly toward the person to show interest. Use your hands in a gesture of making an offer when sharing an idea, or gesture with your fingers that you want to hear more. Sit on the same level as the person to whom you are speaking. Turn your body to face the person and allow for ample spacing so that they will feel comfortable. Using your body to demonstrate interest in what the other person is saying will put the other person at ease and communicate that what they have to share is important to you.

5. Clarify your understanding. At any time during the conversation, don’t hesitate to summarize what you believe you have heard. Doing so demonstrates that you are trying to understand the individual. Don’t worry if the person tells you that you have not entirely understood what they were saying. They will correct any misinterpretations that you may have made. What is important is that you demonstrate your understanding while checking the clarity of your understanding.

6. Listen more than you speak. We were given two ears and one mouth. We ought to listen twice as much as we speak. As you listen, don’t steal the other person’s talking turn. Stealing a turn occurs when you grab the focus of the conversation away from the speaker and then share your experiences or stories to complement the message of the speaker. People with different conversation styles may do this as a way of establishing common ground. But such behavior is unusually looked upon as very disrespectful. If you are not asking questions to deepen the conversation or to clarify your understanding by summarizing, then you are probably talking too much. Additionally, those who are more assertive frequently cut people off or finish their sentences. Such behavior is also not acceptable.

7. Be patient. Learning to listen and give your full attention to another person is not easy even for a practiced listener. Learning to give your full attention to someone over a longer period of time if you are preoccupied with all the things that fill up your agenda requires patience and focus. Before you listen to another, you would do well to assess the amount of time you can give to listen to an individual. If you realize that you may not have the time because of other concerns, then schedule a time when you will have the time. For example, you might say, “This is a really important conversation and I would like to talk about it more. Unfortunately I have another meeting scheduled in a few minutes. Would it be alright if we picked up the conversation when I return?”

8. Ask for meaning. One of strategies that will help you become a more effective listener is to realize that there is meaning behind the feelings, words, and actions that people express or display. If you are in doubt about the meaning of a person’s message, then ask for the meaning. For example, if you observed that someone seems to become defensive, you might say, “I am noticing that you are beginning to become upset. Tell me why.” Or if someone said something that you didn’t understand, you might offer, “After the meeting I heard you say, ‘Oh great! Now what are we supposed to do?!’ Can you tell me what you mean by that?” What is important is for you to observe what people are feeling, saying, and doing and then try to gain further understanding about what all of that means. Notice that this skill really requires that you give your full attention to the person and notice what messages they are displaying. The challenge is uncovering the meaning hidden behind the message.

9. Apologize when in doubt. It is not difficult to become unconsciously conscious in a moment and quit listening and attending. If someone calls you on your behavior, admit your distraction, apologize, and reengage. Offering a heart-felt apology will go a long way to building your relationships and establishing your sincerity.

Becoming an exceptional listener requires a conscious and deliberate effort to understand and connect with others. After all, everyone wants to know that they are heard and understood.

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Satanism has been practiced in the Vatican.

Link

These Last Days News - August 10, 2015

Concurrent satanic rites reportedly took place in the U.S. and St. Paul’s Chapel in the Vatican on June 29, 1963, barely a week after the election of Paul VI

Fr. Malachi Martin affirmed: Satanism has been practiced in the Vatican...

"How I warned and warned that satan would enter into the highest realms of the hierarchy in Rome. The Third Secret, My child, is that satan would enter into My Son's Church." - Our Lady of the Roses, May 13, 1978

Fr. Malachi Martin's accusations

In The Fatima Crusader article, Malachi Martin, a scholar, Vatican insider, and best-selling author, said, “Anybody who is acquainted with the state of affairs in the Vatican in the last 35 years is well aware that the prince of darkness has had and still has his surrogates in the court of St. Peter in Rome.”

From 1958 until 1964, Jesuit priest Malachi Martin served in Rome where he was a close associate of, and carried out many sensitive missions for the renowned Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea and the pope. Released afterwards from his vows of poverty and obedience at his own request (but still a priest), he ultimately moved to New York and became a best-selling writer of fiction and non-fiction.

Martin had first made reference to a diabolic rite held in Rome in his 1990 non-fiction best-seller about geopolitics and the Vatican, The Keys of This Blood, in which he wrote:

"Most frighteningly for [Pope] John Paul [II], he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops’ chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the ‘superforce.’ Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to ‘the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary’. . . an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic pedophilia—rites and practices— was already documented among certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South Carolina, in the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel’s rites." (p. 632)

These allegations have largely gone unnoticed, possibly because he was so crafty in his descriptions that he might even have been referring to the coronation of Pope Paul VI. But he revealed much more about this alleged ritual in one of his last works, Windswept House: A Vatican Novel (1996). In this story, he vividly described a ceremony called “The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer” supposedly held in St. Paul’s Chapel in the Vatican, but linked with concurrent satanic rites here in the U.S., on June 29, 1963, barely a week after the election of Paul VI. In the novel, before he dies, a pope leaves a secret account of the situation on his desk for the next occupant of the throne of Peter, a thinly-disguised John Paul II.

According to The New American, Martin confirmed that the ceremony did indeed occur as he had described. “Oh yes, it is true; very much so,” the magazine reported he said. “But the only way I could put that down into print is in novelistic form.”

Martin's accusation of a satanic ritual at the Vatican was also confirmed by John Loeffler, host of the Steel on Steel radio show. Mr. Loeffler personally asked Fr. Malachi Martin (who had been a regular guest on his show) about the reported dedication to satan within the Vatican:

"You know Malachi confirmed—the first part of his book, Windswept House—he confirmed the dedication of the Vatican to satan in a secret ceremony that occurred unknown even to the Pope at that time, that he managed to pick up. And I did ask him, 'Was this true? Did it happen?' And he [Fr. Martin] said, 'yes, it did.'" - John Loeffler (July 29, 2000 radio show)

Fr. Malachi Martin said more members of the clergy are becoming aware of the situation. An archbishop several years ago also accused high members of the hierarchy in Rome of practicing satanism. The Italian newspaper Il Tempo and other major daily papers reported this stunning news (Italian newspaper articles).

Windswept House

Windswept House is a sweeping novel, set on the grand global stage and the unfolding of the next stage of civilization, the ominously-named New World Order. It tackles head-on a number of heavy issues from abortion to the Third Secret of Fatima, but the essential message seems to be this: Satanists lurk in the shadows, from the heart of the Vatican down to the local parishes, manipulating those duped by the false spirit of Vatican II. They are doing their damnedest to subvert the Roman Catholic Church.

In Windswept House, Martin was quite explicit about the conditions in the Vatican, opening the novel with the above-mentioned satanic ritual. In it, Satan was formally enthroned in the Vatican in the Chapel of St. Paul (by all reports a dark and appropriately spooky place). The ceremony was coordinated via telephone with another simultaneous rite in South Carolina.

But these are minor quibbles. Like The Keys of This Blood, Windswept House is written for a wide and not necessarily Catholic audience, but both books give an odd feeling of being intended for John Paul II himself. It’s as if Keys was written to show the Pope that Martin understood what the Pontiff was doing in the geopolitical arena and address his concerns for the Church’s internal situation. (One may be reminded of Machiavelli’s The Prince, written also by a courtier exiled from court.) Windswept House, however, is a much more dramatic and desperate plea to the Pope.

A Dark Vision

Just how bad did Martin judge things to be? Extremely so:

"Suddenly it became unarguable that now during this papacy, the Roman Catholic organization carried a permanent presence of clerics who worshipped Satan and liked it; of bishops and priests who sodomized boys and each other; of nuns who performed the “Black Rites” of Wicca, and who lived in lesbian relationships . . . every day, including Sundays and Holy Days, acts of heresy and blasphemy and outrage and indifference were committed and permitted at holy Altars by men who had been called to be priests. Sacrilegious actions and rites were not only performed on Christ’s Altars, but had the connivance or at least the tacit permission of certain Cardinals, archbishops, and bishops. . . In total number they were a minority—anything from one to ten percent of Church personnel. But of that minority, many occupied astoundingly high positions or rank.... The facts that brought the Pope to a new level of suffering were mainly two: The systematic organizational links—the network, in other words that had been established between certain clerical homosexual groups and Satanist covens. And the inordinate power and influence of that network." (pp. 492-3)

At the time of his passing on July 27, 1999, Martin was at work on what he said would be his most controversial and important book.Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of The New World Order was to deal with power and the papacy. This work was to analyze the revolutionary shift that lies at the heart of what many see as the breakdown of papal power. It was to be a book of predictions about the Vatican and the world in the first decades of the new millennium.

Fr. Malachi Martin never recanted any of his claims that the scene in Windswept House was based on an actual satanic ritual in the Vatican in the first days of the reign of Pope Paul VI, nor that there exists a general satanic conspiracy within the Roman Catholic Church.

The murder of Pope John Paul I

The Blessed Virgin Mary's apparitions in Bayside, New York stating that satan has entered into "the highest realms of the hierarchy in Rome” would also explain some very dark secrets surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I, who mysteriously died of a “heart attack” slightly over a month after election. Regarding the alleged “heart attack,” his niece affirmed:

“In my family almost no one believes it was a heart attack that killed my uncle. He never had heart trouble or any illness of that kind.” (San Juan Star, October 3, 1978) http://www.thesanjuanstar.com/

And Pope John Paul I’s brother:

“John Paul’s brother Edoardo, in Australia on a trade mission, reported that the Pope had been given a clean bill of health after a medical examination three weeks ago. He was frail in health as an infant and as a young priest, but there were no reports of heart trouble.” (San Juan Star, October 9, 1978)

From Time magazine (October 9, 1978):

In an earlier age so untimely a death might have stirred deep suspicions: “If this were the time of the Borgias,” said a young teacher in Rome, “there’d be talk that John Paul was poisoned.”

But the Vatican replied that such allegations were “irresponsible.” (San Juan Star, October 18, 1978)

The fact is, Our Lady’s message at Bayside New York affirmed, “man has fallen very low, even (resorting) to murder.” (October 6, 1978) And on May 21, 1983: “We will go back, My child, in history, a short history, and remember well what had happened in Rome to John, Pope John, whose reign lasted 33 days. O My child, it is history now, but it is placed in the book that lists the disasters in mankind. He received the horror and martyrdom by drinking from a glass. It was a champagne glass given to him by a now deceased member of the clergy and the Secretariat of the State [Cardinal Villot (right)].”

Sound incredible? Please note that a 1975 ruling from the Vatican ordered that no autopsy could be performed on a Pope. How convenient. What does the Vatican have to fear from an autopsy? Not just Our Lady's message points to foul play. There is a best-selling book by David Yallop that also alleges that Pope John Paul I was murdered: In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I.

This is just one more symptom of what the real Third Secret is all about.

"But, My children, as I said in the past, I repeat again, that satan and his agents, the band of 666, has entered into the highest places of the hierarchy; and therefore he has captured some of Our formerly noble hierarchy to do his bidding." - Our Lady of the Roses, June 1, 1978

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Obama Is Pressed to Open Military Front Against ISIS in Libya

By Eric Schmitt, NY Times, Feb. 4, 2016

WASHINGTON–President Obama is being pressed by some of his top national security aides to approve the use of American military power in Libya to open up another front against the Islamic State.

But Mr. Obama, wary of embarking on an intervention in another strife-torn country, has told his aides to redouble their efforts to help form a unity government in Libya at the same time the Pentagon refines its options, which include airstrikes, commando raids or advising vetted Libyan militias on the ground, as Special Operations forces are doing now in eastern Syria. The use of large numbers of American ground troops is not being considered.

The debate, which played out in a meeting Mr. Obama had with his advisers last week, has not yet been resolved, nor have the size or contours of any possible American military involvement been determined.

The number of Islamic State fighters in Libya, Pentagon officials said this week, has grown to between 5,000 and 6,500–more than double the estimate government analysts disclosed last fall. Rather than travel to Iraq or Syria, many new Islamic State recruits from across North Africa have remained in Libya, in militant strongholds along more than 150 miles of Mediterranean coastline near Surt, these officials said.

The top leadership of the Islamic State in Syria has sent half a dozen top lieutenants to Libya to help organize what Western officials consider the most dangerous of the group’s eight global affiliates. In recent months, United States and British Special Operations teams have increased clandestine reconnaissance missions in Libya to identify the militant leaders and map out their networks for possible strikes.

Military planners are still awaiting orders on whether American involvement would include striking senior leaders, attacking a broader set of targets, or deploying teams of commandos to work with Libyan fighters who promise to support a new Libyan government. Any military action would be coordinated with European allies, officials said.

Teams of American Special Operations forces have over the past year been trying to court Libyan allies who might join a new government in a fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But commanders say they are dealing with a patchwork of Libyan militias that remain unreliable, unaccountable, poorly organized and divided by region and tribe.

For Mr. Obama the challenge is to avoid embarking on yet another major counterterrorism campaign in his last year in office while also moving decisively to prevent the rise of a new arm of the Islamic State that if left unchecked analysts say could attack the West, including Americans or American interests.

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter summed up the balancing act between nurturing the fragile and fitful political process and gearing up for what would most likely be a Special Operations war this way last week: “We’re looking to help them get control over their own country.”

But, he added, “We don’t want to be on a glide slope to a situation like Syria and Iraq.”

More than a dozen countries have had attacks since the Islamic State, or ISIS, began to pursue a global strategy in the summer of 2014.

Forming a unity government would most likely lay the groundwork for the West to provide badly needed security assistance to the new Libyan leadership. Options under discussion include sending Italian and other European troops to Libya to establish a local stabilization force and reviving a Pentagon plan to train Libyan counterterrorism troops.

There is no functioning government now in Libya, where a NATO bombing campaign helped overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi nearly five years ago. Warring factions are far more focused on fighting one another than on battling the Islamic State, and Libya’s neighbors are all too weak or unstable to lead or even host a military intervention.

Lawmakers in Libya’s internationally recognized Parliament last week overwhelmingly rejected a proposed United Nations-backed unity cabinet, dealing a blow to diplomatic efforts to swiftly reconcile the country’s splintered factions.

Senior administration officials say the parallel tracks of supporting the political process in Libya while fighting the Islamic State are “mutually reinforcing.” But at some point, current and former administration officials said, the United States may have to act unilaterally or with allies if faced with a credible threat from the Libyan franchise.

“Weighing our actions based on how it impacts the Libyan political environment is an almost impossible juggling act,” said Juan Carlos Zarate, a former top counterterrorism official under President George W. Bush. “We may not have a choice if ISIS continues to control greater swaths of territory and assemble more terrorists.”

While no decision has been reached about when the United States and its allies will formally expand action in Libya against the Islamic State, administration officials said this week it could come very soon. A decision will probably be made in “weeks,” Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said late last month.

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Why are Americans so angry?

By Vanessa Barford, BBC News, 4 February 2016

Washington DC–Americans are generally known for having a positive outlook on life, but with the countdown for November’s presidential election now well under way, polls show voters are angry. This may explain the success of non-mainstream candidates such as Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders. But what is fuelling the frustration?

A CNN/ORC poll carried out in December 2015 suggests 69% of Americans are either “very angry” or “somewhat angry” about “the way things are going” in the US.

And the same proportion–69%–are angry because the political system “seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power, like those on Wall Street or in Washington,” according to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from November.

Many people are not only angry, they are angrier than they were a year ago, according to an NBC/Esquire survey last month–particularly Republicans (61%) and white people (54%) but also 42% of Democrats, 43% of Latinos and 33% of African Americans.

Candidates have sensed the mood and are adopting the rhetoric. Donald Trump, who has arguably tapped into voters’ frustration better than any other candidate, says he is “very, very angry” and will “gladly accept the mantle of anger” while rival Republican Ben Carson says he has encountered “many Americans who are discouraged and angry as they watch the American dream slipping away”.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders says: “I am angry and millions of Americans are angry,” while Hillary Clinton says she “understands why people get angry”.

Here are five reasons why some voters feel the American dream is in tatters.

1. Economy. “The failure of the economy to deliver real progress to middle-class and working-class Americans over the past 15 years is the most fundamental source of public anger and disaffection in the US,” says William Galston, an expert in governance studies at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Although the country may have recovered from the recession–economic output has rebounded and unemployment rates have fallen from 10% in 2009 to 5% in 2015–Americans are still feeling the pinch in their wallets. Household incomes have, generally speaking, been stagnant for 15 years. In 2014, the median household income was $53,657, according to the US Census Bureau–compared with $57,357 in 2007 and $57,843 in 1999 (adjusted for inflation).

There is also a sense that many jobs are of lower quality and opportunity is dwindling, says Galston. “The search for explanations can very quickly degenerate into the identification of villains in American politics. On the left it is the billionaires, the banks, and Wall Street. On the right it is immigrants, other countries taking advantage of us and the international economy–they are two sides of the same political coin.”

2. Immigration. America’s demographics are changing–nearly 59 million immigrants have arrived in the US since 1965, not all of whom entered the country legally. Forty years ago, 84% of the American population was made up of non-Hispanic white people–by last year the figure was 62%, according to Pew Research. It projects this trend will continue, and by 2055 non-Hispanic white people will make up less than half the population. Pew expects them to account for only 46% of the population by 2065. By 2055, more Asians than any other ethnic group are expected to move to US.

“It’s been an era of huge demographic, racial, cultural, religious and generational change,” says Paul Taylor, author of The Next America. “While some celebrate these changes, others deplore them. Some older, whiter voters do not recognise the country they grew up in. There is a sense of alien tribes,” he says.

The US currently has 11.3 million illegal immigrants. Migrants often become a target of anger, says Roberto Suro, an immigration expert at the University of Southern California. “There is a displacement of anxiety and they become the face of larger sources of tensions, such as terrorism, jobs and dissatisfaction. We saw that very clearly when Donald Trump switched from [complaining about] Mexicans to Muslims without skipping a beat after San Bernardino,” he says, referring to the shooting in California in December that left 14 people dead.

3. Washington. When asked if they trust the government, 89% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats say “only sometimes” or “never”, according to Pew Research. Six out of 10 Americans think the government has too much power, a survey by Gallup suggests, while the government has been named as the top problem in the US for two years in a row–above issues such as the economy, jobs and immigration, according to the organisation.

The gridlock on Capitol Hill and the perceived impotence of elected officials has led to resentment among 20 to 30% of voters, says polling expert Karlyn Bowman, from the American Enterprise Institute. “People see politicians fighting and things not getting done–plus the responsibilities of Congress have grown significantly since the 1970s and there is simply more to criticise. People feel more distant from their government and sour on it,” she says.

William Galston thinks part of the appeal of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is down to frustration with what some see as a failing system. “So on the right you have someone who is running as a ‘strong man’, a Berlusconi and Putin, who will get things done, and on the left you have someone who is rejecting incrementalism and calling for a political revolution,” he says.

Ted Cruz, who won the Republican caucuses in Iowa, is also running as an anti-establishment candidate. “Tonight is a victory for every American who’s watched in dismay as career politicians in Washington in both parties refuse to listen and too often fail to keep their commitments to the people,” he said on Monday night.

4. America’s place in the world. America is used to being seen as a superpower but the number of Americans that think the US “stands above all other countries in the world” went from 38% in 2012 to 28% in 2014, Pew Research suggests. Seventy percent of Americans also think the US is losing respect internationally, according to a 2013 poll by the centre.

“For a country that is used to being on top of the world, the last 15 years haven’t been great in terms of foreign policy. There’s a feeling of having been at war since 9/11 that’s never really gone away, a sense America doesn’t know what it wants and that things aren’t going our way,” says Roberto Suro. The rise of China, the failure to defeat the Taliban and the slow progress in the fight against the so-called Islamic State group has contributed to the anxiety.

Americans are also more afraid of the prospect of terrorist attacks than at any time since 9/11, according to a New York Times/CBS poll. The American reaction to the San Bernardino shooting was different to the French reaction to the Paris attacks, says Galston. “Whereas the French rallied around the government, Americans rallied against it. There is an impression that the US government is failing in its most basic obligation to keep country and people safe.”

5. Divided nation. Democrats and Republicans have become more ideologically polarised than ever. The typical (median), Republican is now more conservative in his or her core social, economic and political views than 94% of Democrats, compared with 70% in 1994, according to Pew Research. The median Democrat, meanwhile, is more liberal than 92% of Republicans, up from 64%.

The study also found that the share of Americans with a highly negative view of the opposing party has doubled, and that the animosity is so deep, many would be unhappy if a close relative married someone of a different political persuasion.

This polarisation makes reaching common ground on big issues such as immigration, healthcare and gun control more complicated. The deadlock is, in turn, angering another part of the electorate. “Despite this rise in polarisation in America, a large mass in the middle are pragmatic. They aren’t totally disengaged, they don’t want to see Washington gridlocked, but they roll their eyes at the nature of this discourse,” says Paul Taylor. This group includes a lot of young people and tends to eschew party labels. “If they voted,” he says, “they could play an important part of the election.”

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