Author: Papa Giorgio

I’ll Die Before I Quit… a Navy Seal Testimony | Chad Williams

Published by Papa Giorgio

About Wingmen: Wingmen is a gathering of men with the purpose of forming transparent, Christ-centered, masculine relationships. As Wingmen, we offer men acceptance, affirmation and accountability.

Wingmen is unique in the fact that it is not an accountability group, bible study, or networking group. It is an entity that emphasizes relationships above all else, relationships with Christ first and foremost and then relationships with other men. Our name, Wingmen, was purposeful in that fact that using military visual pictures/analogies are a powerful tool to bring home the idea of the need for masculine relationships in our lives as we conduct warfare and “spiritual maneuvers” in our daily spiritual battles. We do not dance around sensitive topics – pornography, addictions, over working, and abuse. We are a safe house — a place to get off the front lines and seek a reprieve/respite before jumping back into the battle.

About Chad Williams:

Having been a featured guest on Fox News Channel, CNN News Room, Anderson Cooper 360, TBN, Daystar, Hour of Power, CBN 700 Club and more; former U.S. Navy SEAL Chad Williams draws on his experience as a combat veteran SEAL to yield an exclusive perspective rooted in teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

Prior to entering SEAL training Chad was mentored by U.S. Navy SEAL Scott Helvenston. Just days before Chad headed off to Navy bootcamp, Helvenston took a brisk opportunity to serve his country once again in Iraq.

Shortly thereafter, Chad turned on a television one morning to learn first hand how precious and costly freedom is as his eyes met a screen that portrayed a smiling still image of his mentor followed by Scott’s birthdate separated by a dash March 31, 2004. What immediately followed was graphic video footage of Helvenston being mutilated and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq. Finally he was hung upside-down from the Euphrates River Bridge while an enraged Iraqi mob repeatedly chanted in Arabic, “Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans” and set him on fire.

Steeled in his resolve to walk in his Helvenston’s footsteps and become a SEAL in honor and memory of his good friend, Chad entered the military’s most grueling and difficult training known as BUD/S. BUD/S Class 254 started out with 173 sailors vowing they would die before they ever quit the rigorous training (which requires ringing a brass bell three times and surrendering their class helmet on the asphalt grinder). By graduation day there would only be 13 of those original sailors still standing there and Chad was among them.

Serving his country proudly as a Navy SEAL, on Teams One and Seven, Chad came into contact with the horrors of war first hand, even fighting his way alongside his Team through a premeditated ambush in Iraq, near the location that took Helvenston’s life in a similar scenario.

Today Chad is the author of SEAL of God and an in demand guest speaker, taking the principles and ethos learned as a U.S. Navy SEAL to better communicate the Gospel. As a gifted evangelist, Chad’s message is captivating and eye-opening as he relates to the audience the price of freedom that was not only paid for in the blood of our soldiers on battlefield but most importantly the blood of our Savior at the cross of Calvary.

What “Counts” as a Hate Crime? (RPT FLASHBACK)

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • (Reason for the FLASHBACK) I was invited to a Facebook group regarding recalling George Gascon (Facebook Group). While I support that, enthusiastically, I have seen a passion for hate-crimes… which I do not support enthusiastically. And it was then that I realized I had no real discussion or presentation of hate-crime legislation that was pushed through by Harry Reid back in the day. So this post is a combination of stuff from my BLOGSPOT days.
  • JUMP to newest UPDATE (01/2023)

I want to lead with some articles and excerpts, interrupted by some media. I realized I hadn’t done much on “hate-crime” legislation on this .com — but I was posting on the issue on my old BLOGSPOT (hate-crimes posts) site because that is the time it was being put into law. This post is a FLASHBACK of sorts, and has to do with how hate-crimes are “interpreted,” which makes them a weapon for the social-justice warriors whims. For some background, I was writing on this more in 2009 because this legislation was passed then. Here is Star Parker noting the change in law:

President Barack Obama has signed into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Actually, he signed into law the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act tacked onto which was the hate crimes legislation.

Sen. Harry Reid, our brave Democratic majority leader, slipped the hate crimes bill into the defense authorization bill to avoid having to have our senators consider the controversial hate crimes bill on its own.

It’s for good reason that our Democratic legislators wanted to hide under a rock while passing this terrible piece of legislation. It may help them with the far left wing of their party. But weakening and damaging our country is not something to be proud of. And that is exactly what this new hate crime law does.

(STAR PARKER & my old Blogspot)

Here JOHN MCCAIN opines on the issue of Harry Reid shoving that bill into a defense act (VIDEO). You will in the words and media below see how this PC take on what is “equal” actually destroys the premise of “equal under the law.” A good start is this short noting of “hyphenated justice” by Dennis Prager:

So… where do we start. Let us begin with a series of letters I made and put in the break-room at Whole Foods during a “summer session.” It was a newsletter of sorts of ideas I knew my co-workers had never heard of. Here is an excerpt from July of 2003:

MATTHEW SHEPARD

Murder – Homosexual vs. Heterosexual[1]

…Witness the wall-to-wall coverage generated by the murder of Matthew Shepard, the young Wyoming man who was lured from a Laramie bar by two thugs in the fall of 1998, beaten unconscious and left to die, tied to a fence post in sub-freezing temperatures.  The implicit assumption of the coverage was that Shepard had fallen victim to the often invisible but always sinister homophobia embedded deeply in American society, a pathology that could be cured only by hate-crimes legislation.  On the eve of the killers’ trial, Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times: “What remains as certain now as on October 22, the day Matthew Shepard died, is that this murder happened against the backdrop of a campaign in which the far right[2], abetted by political leaders like Trent Lott, was demonizing gay people as sick and sinful.”

Given the avalanche of press it received, there are probably grounds to wonder whether the Shepard case might have been over-covered, although the gruesomeness of the murder and the hate that drove it certainly raised it to the level of an important national story.  But when homosexuals are the perpetrators of violence instead of the victims, the sense of moral urgency seems to vanish.  This is particularly true when the violence touches on the explosive issue of gay pedophilia.[3] A case in point is the 1999 murder of a thirteen-year-old Arkansas boy named Jesse Dirkhising and the 2001 trial of the two gay neighbors who killed him.

According to prosecutors at the trial, the two men had become friendly with the boy and his mother, their next-door neighbors, and one day invited Jesse over to their house.  During the afternoon, they drugged Jesse, tied him to a bed, shoved his underwear into his mouth to gag him, and added duct tape to ensure his silence.  As one man stood watching in a doorway and masturbated, the other raped the boy for hours using a variety of foreign objects, including food.  The two men then left the boy in such a position on the bed that he slowly suffocated to death.

A Nexis search revealed that in the first month after the Shepard murder, the media did 3007 stories about the killing.  And when the case finally went to trial in the fall of 1999, it was all over the broadcast news, received front-page coverage in all major newspapers, and was featured on the cover of Time magazine.  (In all, the New York Times ran 195 stories about the case.)

In the month after the Dirkhising murder, however, Nexis recorded only 46 stories.  The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored the story altogether and continued to do so through the March 2001 trial of one of the murderers, which resulted in a conviction.  (The other assailant later pled guilty.)  The Washington Post ran but one tiny AP [Associated Press] item about the case, along with an unusual ombudsman’s[4] defensive explanation of the paper’s decision not to cover the case.

… Writing for the New Republic, gay journalist Andrew Sullivan had some insight into why there was such disparity between the Shepard case and that of Jesse Dirkhising, and why the press found the latter so difficult to handle.  The answer was politics, Sullivan wrote:

“The Shepard case was hyped for political reasons: to build support for inclusion of homosexuals in a federal hate-crimes law.  The Dirkhising case was ignored for political reasons: squeamishness about reporting a story that could feed anti-gay prejudice, and the lack of any pending interest-group legislation to hang a story on….  Some deaths – if they affect a politically protected class – are worth more than others.  Other deaths, those that do not fit a politically correct profile, are left to oblivion.”

Can Minorities Commit “Hate-Crimes?”[5]

Refusal to acknowledge the reality of anti-white racism is particularly evident in coverage of black-on-white crime.  According to some survey’s, in the 1990s blacks were at least three times more likely to commit hate crimes against whites than the other way around.  Yet in case after case, media coverage either refuses to acknowledge the racial subtext of such crimes, or fails to subject them to the same scrutiny used when the racial roles are reversed.  This is so even in cases where the racial motivation is clear-cut, as in the 1994 case when a gang of black teenage muggers confessed to police that it had intentionally limited its violent attacks in a Brooklyn housing project to elderly whites.  Police reports had one culprit admitting, “We made an agreement not to rob black woman.  We would only take white woman.  It was a pact we all made.  Only white people.”  Yet such details did not find their way into the stories run by the New York Times.  The same omission occurred in coverage of other black-on-white attacks, even when the assailants were heard calling their victims “white bitch,” “white ho” (whore) and “white KKK bitch,” as they were in an April 1997 attack on a white matron by a gang of New York City high school girls on a bus.

[….]

Another recent illustration of the media’s tendency to sidestep uncomfortable realities of black racism involved the case of Ronald Taylor, a thirty-nine-year-old black Pennsylvania man who killed three people and wounded tow others, all white, in March of 2000.  According to authorities, Taylor had grown enraged when managers at his Wilksburg, Pennsylvania, housing project sent white maintenance workers to fix something in his apartment.  He shot the two maintenance workers, killing one.  Then he set his apartment on fire and walked to a Burger King a mile away, where he shot another white person before going across the street and shooting three others at a McDonalds.  After that, Taylor stormed a building used as a senior citizen and children’s day care center, taking hostages before finally surrendering.

It would not take much digging to find a racist antipathy to whites in the background of Taylor’s rampage.  According to the Associated Press, which quoted the surviving maintenance worker, Taylor shouted, “You’re all white trash racist pigs.  You’re dead.”  Other published reports the day after the shootings had him barging into the home of a friend, saying, “I’m not gonna kill any black people.  I’m gonna kill white people.”

[….]

After finding racist and anti-Semitic literature in his home, the FBI finally labeled Taylor’s actions a hate crime, which forced the media to report it as such.  To some, the lag was odd.  As a writer for the webzine salon.com put it: “What took so long?  Why did the media, which normally promote not only the of hate crimes but of hate crime legislation, have to wait for the FBI to make this designation?”

To “Digress”[6]

The double standard slaps you in the face.

Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. Ronald Taylor, a black man, allegedly guns down five whites, killing three. What followed became a textbook case on how contemporary American journalism deals with race.  The suspect’s motive could not have been more clear. A black neighbor quoted Taylor as saying, “I’m gonna kill all white people.”

A white maintenance man described Taylor as disruptive ever since moving into the apartment building, “Whenever he saw me, he’d call me a racist pig, or white trash, or he’d make a point of walking past me and brushing up against me. He just didn’t like me.”  Yet the media leaned over backwards to avoid any appearance of racism. News anchors cautioned that we don’t know whether Taylor’s alleged hatred against whites was the “primary” or “sole” reason for the shootings. Pardon me. When did they add that requirement?

The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act defines hate crime as: “crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.” No mention of hatred as a “sole” or “primary” motive.  Even the police issued mild, tentative statements about whether they considered Taylor’s actions a hate crime. “There’s a lot of hostility in this individual,” said Wilkinsburg Police Chief Gerald Brewer, “so I think it’s a little premature to simply define this as a racist event.” A little premature?

In August, 1999, white supremacist Buford Furrow gunned down several people at a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, and shot and killed a Filipino letter carrier. In the three days following the shooting, over 150 newspapers wrote nearly 200 articles about the slaughter.

On November 11, 1999, in Kansas City, an Ethiopian man shot and killed two co-workers and wounded a third person. All the victims were white. The Ethiopian shooter, who also shot and killed himself, left a letter referring to “blood sucker” whites. To date, how many newspapers carried a story about this apparent race-based shooting? Eleven.

The killing of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepherd brought screaming headlines and around-the-clock coverage. So did the dragging and killing of black Texan James Byrd.

Jesse Jackson parachutes into Decatur, Illinois, turning the expulsion of seven high school kids into a referendum on race. Meanwhile, in Missouri, a carjacker steals a car. He tries to push out a seat belt-strapped child, and drives at high speeds, with the boy bouncing to his death along the highway. In Michigan, a six-year-old girl is shot and killed by a six-year-old boy. In these cases, the media informs us much, much later that the bad guys are black. Were it the other way around, how long before Al Sharpton holds a press conference, a somber Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP by his side?

Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker shoots his mouth off to Sports Illustrated, and everyone from Jesse Jackson to Jesse James piles on. But the same gang seemed strangely AWOL in the case of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. Where’s the somber gathering of the “black leadership” demanding that Congress pass enhanced hate crime legislation? Where’s the speech by President Clinton asking some blacks to cope with their pronounced and mostly unwarranted anti-white bias?

The double standard simply astonishes. George W. Bush must apologize for speaking at Bob Jones University, given the institution’s anti-Catholic statements and policy against inter-racial dating. And on the question of the Confederate flag, the media filed story after story on the Republicans’ response.

Yet the media allows Al Gore’s black female campaign manager, Donna Brazile, to derisively refer to the Republicans as the “party of the white boys,” while suggesting black Republicans J.C. Watts and Colin Powell are Uncle Toms. 

The media sits as both Al Gore and Hillary Rodham-Clinton trek to Harlem and kiss the ring of Reverend Al Sharpton, a David Duke in blackface. Nevermind that Sharpton falsely accused a prosecutor of rape. Nevermind that Sharpton turned a dispute between a black tenant and a Jewish landlord into a racial riff. Stirred up by Sharpton’s rantings, a black man set fire to the building in dispute, and then shot and killed several minorities before turning the gun on himself. Nice work, Reverend.

Sooner or later, the mainstream media and the white-man-done-me-wrong black leadership must face the facts. Black/white interracial crime is almost entirely committed by blacks against whites. By ignoring this, and holding black criminals to a different standard, the media heightens tension and divisiveness. 

[1] Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism, William McGowan. Encounter Books; San Francisco: CA (2001), pp. 99-100

[2] Side-note: You rarely hear – if at all –the phrase “far-left,” but you do hear “far-right;” or, you never hear “religious-left,” but always “religious-right;” we hear “hard-line-conservative,” but never “hard-line-liberal.”  For instance, over a period of ten years, the Los Angeles Times used the term “hard-line-conservative” 71 times.  What about “hard-line-liberal?”  Surely such a person exists (Jane Fonda, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, etc.).  Over the same period of time the Los Angeles Times used the phrase “hard-line-liberal” twice.  A Lexis Nexis search of the New York Times archives shows there are 109 items using the phrase “far right wing,” but only 18 items using “far left wing.”

[3] Side-note: Pedophiles seek out positions of authority and seclusion over their victims.  The relaxation of tough moral consensus on these issues (mainly due to the sexual-liberation movement of the 60’s and 70’s), have made institutions impotent (for lack of a better word) in forcefully dealing with this issue.  This is why the Catholic Church and Hare Krishna’s, as well as other institutions, are having trouble currently for crimes committed during the 60’s and 70’s.  The boy-scouts for example have an unofficial saying, “sodomy will not happen if you refuse to allow sodomites in.”  In our politically correct (“diverse”) culture though, this has been a tough road to travel for the Boy-Scouts.  And the “diverse” journalism merely fuels the fire.

[4] A person who investigates and attempts to resolve complaints and problems, as between employees and an employer or between students and a university, or in this case, between readers and the paper.

[5] Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism, William McGowan. Encounter Books; San Francisco: CA (2001), pp. 59-60, 67-68

[6] By this I mean I am including an outside article with this Summer Reading Session.  “When the Bad Guy is Black” – by Larry Elder (black writer and radio commentator), found at FREE REPUBLIC: and JEWISH WORLD REVIEW: “When the Bad Guy is Black”

MATTHEW SHEPARD UPDATE

(This video is almost 16-minutes long.) When I get some time, I have been going through old posts and trying to save them or nixing them. As I was rooting around for some video to use for one of these “saves” –(“Some ‘Ghey Talk’ Regarding Same-Sex Marriage” | June 8, 2010), I came across an unrelated video that I decided to update an old post with this excerpt. This old post is a 2010 update of an older post (October 27, 2009). I used the video found researching the above to update the following post:

The above updated version includes some extended input from the author of the book, “The Book of Matt: The Real Story of the Murder of Matthew Shepard (Truth to Power),” Stephen Jimenez. Here are the original video sources used, in order:

A decent article from the NEW YORK POST is here: “‘Uncomfortable Truth’ in Matthew Shepard’s Death” (11/2013). As well as this excellent interview article of Stephen Jimenez by Mark Adnum: “Matthew Shepard: Some Facts” (04/2020)

ALSO THIS EXCELLENT VIDEO:

Stephen Jimenez: How My Research Into Matthew Shepard’s Murder Began from The Dish on Vimeo.

END OF UPDATE

Jesse Dirkhising

Many people have not heard of Jesse Dirkhising. The media was oddly silent at the death of this little boy. Before going further… it was thought that Sheparhd was killed due to an anti-gaye hatred by his killers… a narrative pushed by the media. However, through real journalism, Stephen Jimenez (a gay man himself) wrote an excellent book entitled: “The Book of Matt: The Real Story of the Murder of Matthew Shepard (Documentary Narratives)“ So as you read some of the below, the assumption was that this was a hate crime.

The Dirkhising story never caught on with the major media, which claimed it was not news because it was not a “hate crime.” As Jonathan Gregg wrote then for Time.com:

“The most salient difference between the Shepard case and this one, however, is that while Shepard’s murderers were driven to kill by hate, the boy’s rape and death was a sex crime. ” He continued: “It was the kind of depraved act that happens with even more regularity against young females, and, indeed, if the victim had been a 13-year-old girl, the story would probably never have gotten beyond Benton County, much less Arkansas.

(NEWSBUSTERS: “On ‘Hate Crimes Day,’ Remembering Media Blackout of Jesse Dirkhising’s Death)

  • In the month after Shepard’s murder, LexisNexis Recorded 3,007 stories about his death. In the month after Dirkhising’s murder, Nexis recorded 46 stories about his. … A LexisNexis search revealed only a few dozen articles that appeared only after The Washington Times story on the lack of coverage on October 22, 1999, a month after Dirkhising’s death.(WIKI)

Other articles wroth your while:

  • The Tragic Story Of Jesse Dirkhising (WND)
  • Not a Hate Crime (WND)

Here is some media to show where we are headed, and why we have not zoomed towards it is only because of the First Amendment.

Where Does Freedom of Speech End, and a Hate-Crime Begin?

A Norwich grandmother has had a visit from police after firing off a letter complaining about a gay pride march, broadcast on 26 October 2009

A Christian pensioner was verbally abused at a gay pride parade but, when she complained to her local council, the police investigated her for homophobic hatred.

Placing a Qur’an in a toilet or burning it is not a hate crime, even though it is treated as such.

And crimes like the following… are not treated as hate-crimes when they should be: “Vent with Michelle Malkin covers the Christian-Newsom Murders. The mainstream media finds some crimes more useful than others. Michelle explains.”

On Saturday January 6, 2007 Hugh Christopher Newsom, age 23 and Channon Gail Christian, age 21, both students at the University of Tennessee went out on a date.

They were driving in Channon’s Toyota 4-Runner when they were carjacked at gunpoint. Suddenly the crime turned far more savage than an armed car theft. Chris and Channon were kidnapped and driven to 2316 Chipman Street where they were forced into the home at gunpoint.

While Channon was forced to watch, her boyfriend was raped prison style and then his penis was cut off. He was later driven to nearby railroad tracks where he was shot and set afire. But Channon’s hell was just beginning. She was beaten; gang raped repeatedly in many ways, had one of her breasts cut off and bleach poured down her throat to destroy DNA evidence—all while she was still alive. To add to Channon’s degradation the suspects took turns urinating on her. They too set her body afire, apparently inside the residence, but for some reason left her body there—in five separate trash bags.

(FLOPPING ACES & LA SHAWN BARBER via SERAPHIC SECRETS and NEWSBUSTERS)

The entire “hate-crime” obfuscates justice rather than achieves it. There are reasons for this, and I will let ROMAN CATHOLIC BLOG from over a decade ago share their reasons why they think it is [or was] all the rage:

….It seems to me that “hate” crime legislation is an attempt to make sure that criminals should always be indifferent about their victims, taking an, “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business,” approach. I think the nature of a crime speaks for itself and its own nature should determine the merited consequence in the justice system. Criminal acts can carry serious penalties for the nature of the acts committed for without worrying about whether the criminal actively “hated” their victim during the commission of the crime.

Here are other reasons not to support “hate crime” legislation:

It is costly and difficult to prove hatred as a motivation.

Hate crime legislation sacrifices equality before the law by treating perpetrators of the same crime differently because they hold different beliefs.

Over time, hate crime laws and associated case law could evolve to the point that speaking out strongly against a particular group or its actions could be construed as a libelous hate crime, violating rights to freedom of expression, thought, religion (among others).

The danger of “hate” crime laws and “hate” speech laws is that they are being used to unfairly suppress religious objections to homosexuality (among other things) in this country and in other countries.

I believe “hate” crime legislation is essentially indoctrination that has been elevated to the status of law, and I do not want to live in a society where the government prosecutes thought crime.

Chip Roy Explains What the Speaker Fight Is About

Published by Papa Giorgio

The Republican Party found itself in chaos on Tuesday when Rep. Kevin McCarthy failed to receive enough votes to secure the House Speaker position. McCarthy told reporters the party is still ‘unified,’ but after tense meetings on Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy tells Glenn some conservative members of Congress are hardening their anti-McCarthy stance. So what’s going on, and why is it VITAL the correct Republican gets the job? Rep. Chip Roy describes why the battle for the House Speaker position is about ending the D.C. swamp and ultimately about protecting the American people.

How Many “First” Visions?

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Video added 1/2023 – Imported here 4/2014 [originally posted HERE 12/2007])

(above) Joseph Smith’s Handwritten Account of His Vision in His Diary

Ronald Said (an old debate many yearn ago):

“And about what Joseph Smith believed, he SAW the Father and Jesus Christ, at the same time. He saw that they had bodies like ours, except glorified….To say that Joseph Smith believed that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost were the same is laughable, at best.”

Well, I will quote again the latter part of your comment for clarity, “To say that Joseph Smith believed that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost were the same is laughable, at best.”, unfortunately you are laughing at the Book of Mormon. I added nothing to this book, or took anything out. So when you laugh, you’re laughing at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Secondly, the “vision” that defines for you who God (and his subsequent nature) is commonly referred to as the First Vision, is very important to LDS theology. And separates it from historical Christianity. The First Vision sets up the following, and thus Smith’s

  1. Prophetic authority,
  2. Teaching concerning the nature of God, and
  3. Condemnation of historical Christian beliefs is all dependent upon the credibility of this first vision account.

I would invite anyone who can examine evidence and delineate between what is truth and what is false [who were reading this real-time exchange… slightly edited for readability]. However, this invitation excludes Ronald because he already knows it to be true… how? Due to a feeling he received in his chest when he prayed over the book of Mormon. His only criterion is a sensation, which, if allowed or caused by a fallen angel, Ronald would have no recourse in testing this phenomenon.

Keep in mind that the Mormon Church believes in a form of tri-theism. In other words, the Father has a body of flesh and is a completely separate being than from Christ. Christ has his own body and was in fact born (by sexual union) by heavenly mother in heaven (the Planet Kolob) ~ [could you imagine Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard teaming up!?]. If Christ was not born, Heavenly Father would still be God, they are separate – corporeal – beings. And the Holy Ghost is a God as well, but has a spirit body, still quite discernible. I presume much like Casper the Friendly Ghost’s body. [For more info, see my 4 Trinity Posts on page 3]

The First Vision

Smith’s official account of this pivotal event was published in Times and Seasons in 1842, twenty-two years after the episode allegedly took place. This account is now published in the Pearle of Great Price, and is accepted as Scripture by Mormons. However, Mormon authorities suppressed at least three additional earlier accounts of the first vision, all by Smith, because they contradicted the “official” story. And the official first vision was not published until 1840.

For example, the earliest account we now posses, from 1832, varies in key details from the official 1842 version. There are discrepancies in Smith’s age, in the message given and the number of divine personages in the vision. There are also details added, such as the presence of an evil power, Smith’s reason for seeking the Lord, and the existence of a revival. All this lends serious doubt to the credibility of the official account.

Consider for instance, the divine persons in the revelation. In this version (1832) only “Jesus” appears. What happened to God the Father? The first handwritten account of Joseph Smith does not even mention the existence of the Father – who plays so crucial a role in the official version.

It is absolutely impossible for us to believe that Joseph Smith would not have mentioned the Father if he had actually appeared…. We feel that the only reasonable explanation for the Father not being mentioned in the account that was suppressed is that Joseph Smith did not see God the Father, and that he made up this part of the story after the writing of the first manuscript. This, of course, throws a shadow of doubt upon the whole story.

Consider yet another of Smith’s accounts written between 1835 and 1836. In this case there is no mention of God or Christ at all – only many spirits who “testified” of Jesus. But here again, the authority of the account – and of Mormonism’s “divine origin” – is called into question. No longer is it God and Jesus telling Joseph Smith to begin a new church because all the others are abominations; it is now only a group of nebulous “spirits.” why should anyone accept the word of a fifteen-year-old boy claimed he talked with some unidentified spirits? Even if he did, why should anyone trust such spirits in the first place? If my fifteen-year-old boy claimed he saw a vision of God or Jesus giving him divine authority, why should Mormons believe him?

So what do we have?

We now have three different handwritten manuscripts of the first vision. They are all written by Joseph Smith or his scribes and yet every one of them is different. The first vision account says there was only one personage. The second account says there were many, and the third says there were two.

The LDS Church accepts the one with two personages. If I were to accept one, it would be the first account. It was written six or seven years closer to the event. Also, this account, which mentions only one personage (Jesus), is the only account in Joseph Smith’s own handwriting (his diary).

In fact, as Fawn Brodie explains:

The description of the vision was first published by Orson Pratt in his Remarkable Visions in 1840, twenty years after it was supposed to have occurred. Between 1820 and 1840 Joseph’s friends were writing long panegyrics; his enemies were defaming him in an unceasing stream of affidavits and pamphlets, and Joseph himself was dictating several volumes of Bible-flavored prose. But no one in this long period even intimidated that he had heard the story of the two gods. At least, no such intimidation has survived in print or manuscript…. The first published Mormon history, begun with Joseph’s collaboration in 1834 by Oliver Cowdery, ignored it altogether… Joseph’s own description of the first vision was not published until 1842, twenty-two years after the memorable event….

If something happened that spring morning in 1820, it passed totally unnoticed in Joseph’s hometown, and apparently did not even fix itself in the minds of members of his own family. The awesome vision he described in later years may have been the elaboration of some half-remembered dream [keep in mind his first account in his diary] stimulated by the early revival excitement and reinforced by the rich folklore of visions circulating in his neighborhood. Or it may have been sheer invention, created some time after 1834 when the need arose for a magnificent tradition to cancel out the stories of his fortune-telling and money-digging.

So no one besides Joseph Smith in his diary even mentioned this vision for twenty years!? Unlike the resurrection report of Jesus, we have papyri dating to A.D. 55, Dead Sea scroll illusion dating to A.D. 49, and early creeds and catacomb writings dating to A.D. 44. These all describe the resurrection (as well as the belief that Jesus was God almighty). These are all based on earlier beliefs, so we can get the date even closer. But the point is this; such an event is well remembered and talked about. For the most important foundation for the origin of the Mormon Church to not even be mentioned in the throes of massive copying and writing seems to be the most serious objection to the vision being valid.

And, like I have shown, the Mormon Church has made sweeping changes to the Book of Mormon and Doctrines and Covenants, as well as other important Church writings. So it wouldn’t surprise me if they massively tampered with the official account of the first vision as well. This all shows that the foundation for the existence of the Mormon Church is called into question. But that’s okay Ronald, you can grasp onto that “burning in the bosom,” cause it’s all you got buddy.

Bill McKeever: The Historical Approach

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Babies Hears for the First Time (*tears*)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This was posted originally in May 2010, But I have updated the single video with two compilations many years later. Originally this was with a hat-tip to NewsBusters. One of my favorites is this one, BTW

Baby hearing for the first time with hearing aids in this cute babies hearing for the first time compilation. Baby hears mom and dad in the most cute and touching baby clips.

Deaf People Hearing Sound for the FIRST Time [Compilation]

Andrew Klavan Gives His Testimony (One For Israel)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Read more at BISHOP’S ENCYCLOPEDIA)  …. Klavan got baptized at the age of fifty. This frightened him given his nominal Jewish background,

“One of my biggest fears confronting baptism—took me five months to work through it—was I didn’t want anyone to think I was turning my back on Jews, trying to escape my Jewish identity. The default mode with some Jews is to assume you’re trying to “pass as gentile” or blend in or that you hate your Jewishness and are joining the enemy. All understandable, because the Jews are the most mistreated group of people on the face of the planet and some of that trouble has come out of Christian sources, which stinks. Oddly, though, accepting Jesus made me feel more Jewish than I ever had, religiously at least. I had no connection to the Old Testament particularly, until I accepted the New.”

Today Klavan is an outspoken Christian and has since authored a book called The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ (2016).

Ben Shapiro Interview of Klavan

Author, screenwriter, and Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan joins me to discuss the craft of writing novels, how he went from being “intellectually agnostic” to deeply religious, and why he decided to out himself as a conservative Christian in Hollywood.

A New Years Miracle Many Years Ago (One For Israel)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Born in 1944 Rivka Lazarowitch endured great trials to follow her Messiah Yeshua, and today she stands with Him in Glory. Rivka has passed from this life to life eternal, and heaven is lit up a little brighter by her smile. Join us as we celebrate her life, the testimony of Her Messiah and the Joy of her salvation. Help celebrate her life by sharing her story of faith.

Billionaire’s Club De-Population “Secret” Meeting 13 Years Ago

Published by Papa Giorgio

A 13-year old article is making it’s rounds and I thought it worthwhile to post it here – in full with links to comments/posts on it. This is from ARCHIVE TODAY via REDDIT: Here are some comments taken from REDDIT before the SUNDAY TIMES article.

  • The word ‘philanthropist’ now has negative connotations, whenever I see it next to someone’s name I shudder.
  • The word has always been a whitewash of ‘Robber Baron.’
  • But Bill Gates is a new breed – the Philanthro-capitalist. He doesn’t give money to charities, he gives money to corporations, so he can use them as part of his plans. Lots of money to media for favorable attention, for example.
  • i prefer philanthropaths – it has that sinister ring to it
  • We need to familiarize ourselves with search engine alternatives
  • Real life James Bond villain[s].

IGOR’S SUBSTACK has more

INDEPENDENT SENTINEL has more

John Harlow, Los Angeles, Sunday May 24 2009, 1.00am BST, The Sunday Times

TITLE: Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation:

SUBTITLE: America’s richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat

SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.

The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.

Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.

These members, along with Gates, have given away more than £45 billion since 1996 to causes ranging from health programmes in developing countries to ghetto schools nearer to home.

They gathered at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan on May 5. The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at “security briefings”.

Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit was unprecedented. “We only learnt about it afterwards, by accident. Normally these people are happy to talk good causes, but this is different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal,” he said.

Some details were emerging this weekend, however. The billionaires were each given 15 minutes to present their favourite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an “umbrella cause” that could harness their interests.

The issues debated included reforming the supervision of overseas aid spending to setting up rural schools and water systems in developing countries. Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation was a priority.

This could result in a challenge to some Third World politicians who believe contraception and female education weaken traditional values.

Gates, 53, who is giving away most of his fortune, argued that healthier families, freed from malaria and extreme poverty, would change their habits and have fewer children within half a generation.

At a conference in Long Beach, California, last February, he had made similar points. “Official projections say the world’s population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive healthcare, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion,” Gates said then.

Patricia Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives more than £2 billion a year to good causes, attended the Rockefeller summit. She said the billionaires met to “discuss how to increase giving” and they intended to “continue the dialogue” over the next few months.

Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.

“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.”

Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.

“The Woman King” Might Not Be What You Think | Larry Elder

Published by Papa Giorgio

Hollywood Lies vs History Truth: Movie “The Woman King” Might Not Be What You Think

Here’s the trailer for the movie “The Woman King” starring Viola Davis, supposedly “based on true powerful events.” Really?

The plot as described in IMDb:

  • “A historical epic inspired by true events that took place in The Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.”

How historical?

Critic Robert Daniels, who mostly praised the film said: “You might wonder how (Director Gina Prince-Bythewood can shape a tale centering the Agojie warriors—an all-woman group of soldiers sworn to honor and sisterhood—hailing from the West African kingdom of Dahomey, when one considers their hand in perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade.”

Other reviews were more blunt about the historical inaccuracies, such as there was, in fact, a band of warrior women in Africa called the Dahomey. And they were fierce, feared and frequently bloodthirsty fighters. But they used that ferocity to kill and conquer other Africans for sale to slave traders. Indeed, the trans Atlantic and the Arab African slave could not have occurred without the complicity of African chiefs who sold conquered Africans do European an Arab slavers.

A review called The Woman King Historical Embarrassment puts it this way: “The movie has been set-up as a having a historical basis, telling the story of the real-life Kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th and 19th centuries…. In reality, Dahomey was a notorious slave kingdom, and not the Pan-African freedom fighters as the movie presents them. They enslaved and murdered hundreds of thousands from other tribes and sold them into the slave trade. Dahomey was renowned as the “Black Sparta,” and was a fiercely militaristic society bent on domination and conquest. Their soldiers struck fear into other tribes all along what is still known as the Slave Coast, as they captured tribespeople from enemy tribes and sold them as slaves.”

In the film, white slavers are the enemy when, in reality, they were business partners with the “women kings.”

The “Historical Embarrassment” review continues:

“Even worse for those who struggle with reality, the Amazons were formed from among the king’s “third class” wives. These were those considered insufficiently beautiful to share his bed and who had not borne children. Awkward!”

“History Vs. Hollywood” writes: “… in real life, the Dahomey are much more the villains than the heroes….The Kingdom of Dahomey was a bloodthirsty society bent on conquest. They conquered neighboring African states and took their citizens as slaves, selling many in the Atlantic slave trade in exchange for items like rifles, tobacco, and alcohol. Many of the slaves they sold ended up in America… There are accounts of Dahomey warriors conducting slave raids on villages where they cut the heads off of the elderly and rip the bottom jaw bones off others. During the raids, they’d burn the villages to the ground. Those who they let live, including the children, were taken captive, and sold as slaves.”

The truth is, as in my written testimony before a congressional committee considering reparations is as follows: Slavery, sadly, has been part of human history since the beginning. Muslim slave traders took whites out of the Mediterranean area and enslaved them in Northern Africa. European slavers took blacks out of Africa and shipped them to the New World. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Africans enslaved Africans. Even native Americans enslaved other Native Americans…

“The Arab slave trade took more blacks out of Africa (for a time) and for a longer period of time then did the European slavers. In “Prisons & Slavery,” John Dewar Gleissner writes: “The Arabs’ treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. … African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves making the Middle Passage to the New World by ship.”