This was written by a brother in Christ, Walter Diepeveen
I found it to be an honest and thought provoking piece:
Sweating Drops of Blood By Walter Diepeveen
There are many miracles in the Bible. Some really big ones that are over the top like the Worldwide Flood, the 10 plagues of Egypt, and the parting of the Red Sea. As Bible believing Christians, we read these accounts and simply believe them, as we should. God is after all, God.
Jesus performed many miracles. Everything from turning water into wine to walking on water.
“And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.”
John 21:25 (KJV)
The Apostle John says Jesus performed many more miracles that are not recorded in Scripture. Yet, of all the many amazing things that we read about, there is one ‘unusual’ passage that I always wondered about. Not a miracle per se but something that stood out as not being normal.
“And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the Mount of Olives; and his disciples also followed him. And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Luke 22:39-44 (KJV)
While having trusted what was written about the intense prayer that Jesus went through, it still seemed to me to be metaphorical, or (Lord forgive me) almost an exaggeration. Some translations even imply that it was not really blood, just ‘like’ it. But God does not need to exaggerate.
I’ve worked so hard on hot days outside on landscaping, and in the attic in coveralls, that I often thought the huge drops I sweat were as bad as what Jesus experienced. Often that verse has come to my mind when I thought I could croak on the spot. Wondering if Jesus sweat this badly while working as a carpenter.
But drops of blood? How is that even possible? I don’t believe that Jesus had any sort of medical condition. I’ve read that perhaps He suffered a heart attack while praying intensely. But how does that explain blood dripping from his forehead?
Well I stumbled across an article that reveals that people can sweat blood. There is a medical label attached to regular sufferers: hematohidrosis.
Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article and the link to the source:
“Doctors say the patient had a three-year history of bleeding. There was no obvious trigger, and the spontaneous bleeding could happen while she slept and during physical activity. More intense bleeding happened when the patient was under stress, with episodes lasting anywhere between one and five minutes.”
“She found one case in the early 1600s of a 12-year-old Swiss boy with a high fever who sweated blood through his shirt. And then a case of a young Belgian condemned to death who was so distressed, he sweated blood.”
Again, I don’t believe that this happened to Jesus on a regular basis, and he was not ill. But His prayer encounter with God the Father was so intense that he did sweat real drops of blood. He was carrying the weight of the World. And He was about to prove that there is No Greater Love in the greatest miracle of all: His Resurrection.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 (KJV)
How intense that prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane must have been. Jesus is so many things: bold, passionate, caring, intense, and I bet He was really funny too. Which brings me to my parting thought and the reason why this hit me just the right way when I read about it. I don’t think Jesus is nonchalant about His return. I believe that He is even more excited, anxious, and eager to come for His Church than even the most Rapture-focused among us are. Come soon Lord Jesus.
Looking back, I think that Facebook decided that they had to do something about me after I wrote the article on Mark Zuckerberg’s tight relationship with SNOPES. That really hit a nerve, and since then my experience on FB has been quite stormy.
They began by banning me from sharing in any FB groups for a week or more. After my sentence was served, I would share only one time and immediately would get a warning that I somehow “Used sharing in an inappropriate way – even if I didn’t mean to.” It would then say “You may not share for 11 hours.”
Permanently Banned
A few days ago, FB friends were telling me that my comments on their pages were being flagged as “Spam.” I had never seen such a thing on FB – nor had my friends. That is when I realized that when I would attempt to just visit one of the many Christian groups to which I belonged, all I would see was a white page with no comments, with circles going round and round.
I rebooted my laptop, thinking that certainly something was amiss at FB and it would be fixed. But that was not the case. I was being watched and punished for my posts and my articles. I am thinking that if Mark Zuckerberg was questioned about the actions taken toward me, he would respond by simply saying that my articles were FAKE NEWS.
I’m sure that I am not alone in my life sentence on Facebook. They are watching Conservative Christians as if we are public enemy number one. Oh wait – they do believe that we are enemies of America! After all, we worship the Lord Jesus – we are vocal about the atrocity of abortion; we believe in the sanctity of marriage as defined by God as between one man and one woman; and many of us have the audacity to be patriotic! The only “Taking a knee” they would find among us is when we bow to our Lord in prayer.
Is this a foreshadow of what is to come?
When Obama gave the Internet away to ICANN (connected to the U.N.) he knew precisely what he was doing. He never hid his disdain for Christians or Conservatives. Obama knew the power of the Internet, but he also knew that putting the Internet into the hands of those who were like-minded with him – globalists, Israel haters, despisers of Christians and Jews; yes, he knew that controlling the Internet was certainly a means to an end, and in this case the end would be to silence the opposition.
It has been said that the word is mightier than the sword. I do believe that there is profound truth in that statement.
The MSM uses the “word” to mislead and confuse.
Communist Governments use the “word” to control the masses
Conservative publications use the “word” to speak truth and clear out confusion.
God uses His Word to bring Eternal Life to sinful men and women
Yes, the “word” spoken or written is indeed powerful. It can be used for evil or for good. Controlling the words spoken on the Internet is not only more powerful than the sword; it is a way of pushing one’s own narrative while silencing the opposition on a grand scale.
Adolph Hitler’s head of PR, Joseph Goebbels said this:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
I believe that Goebbels’ quote is true, and we can clearly see this all around us today. Think about what transpired in Nazi Germany during WWII. Think about Hitler’s speeches and the reaction of the German people to his words. Think about Leftist news sources and their blatant lies; and think about the so-called “Fact checker” websites who tell people the complete opposite of the Truth.
My words are offensive to Facebook and to liberals who read my articles. I speak truth. But I don’t speak words which will further the Leftwing’s agenda. Therefore, the only option left for these people is to silence me. They are silencing many of us who speak truth.
I think that the main reason that the Lord still has me writing is to speak truth. And until I have no breath left in me; or until He comes to gather us up to Himself – I will speak truth.
They will find ways to silence me and others who know what is happening with the globalists, but until such time comes when we can speak no more, we will speak and write TRUTH.
I had a favorite saying about Barack Obama during his reign over the U.S. I would say to my husband:
“Everything BHO does is Calculated.” I even said that one day I would write a book entitled “Calculated.” But I think that writing articles about geopolitical events and how they correlate to Scripture is far more important.
There were no random actions or even words spoken by this man. His goal was the utter destruction of the United States. Obama would have handed off his nefarious plan to Hillary Clinton for completion had she won the election. Thanks to our Lord – He crushed that plan. But make no mistake, God’s prophetic Word will be accomplished to the letter. I still do not find America in End Times Prophecy.
I believe that the Lord granted us a reprieve of sorts when Donald Trump became our president.
The first step for Obama was to give up the U.S. overseeing ICANN in 2014. This was a very big deal, but as always the MSM barely spoke of it. The journalistic arm of the Democratic Party are obedient to the powers that be. At times I wonder if these useful idiots write their articles out of conviction, or out of fear. Some are duped by the Left, but I’m sure there are others who fear George Soros and other Globalists.
The next and final step was accomplished by Obama in 2016. He literally gave control of the Internet to ICANN – relinquishing any part the U.S. would play in overseeing the World Wide Web. In essence, the diabolical Obama made sure that the United Nations would wind up having full control over the Internet.
This alarmed many Conservatives, but as most things done by BHO – the story was suppressed and finally was “yesterday’s news.”
We are now seeing in action what was always planned
Obama gives away the internet and, with it, our liberty
In 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president, if you asked the average American, “What is the Internet? What is the World Wide Web? And, what is Email?” most Americans would not have known.
It is hard to believe in less than a quarter century, the internet has transformed the world. It has created wealth for many. It has changed the way America does business. It has given birth to political movement and killed political careers. The Internet is without a doubt the greatest tool for advancing freedom since the invention of the printing press.
It is no great shock that President Obama does not like American control of the internet. The internet was an American invention and America shared it with the world. American values of freedom and liberty created the Internet and allowed it to flourish. Now, in one of his last acts, Obama wants to destroy the Internet.
No, this is not one of those crazy internet conspiracy theories.
Despite the explicit wishes of Congress, Mr. Obama wants to allow an international body to take control of the Internet.
The United States still controls something called the International Assigned Numbers Authority. IANA is responsible for the allocation of unique names and numbers that are used around the world in Internet protocols.
In short, it controls the allocation of domain names from Facebook.com to your church’s website. And Mr. Obama wants to give control of this to an International Organization.
What could possibly go wrong?
Since the internet became a worldwide phenomenon, repressive regimes have looked for ways to censor the internet. China has what is known as the “Great Firewall of China” to keep out materials the government does not like. When there is unrest in countries, one of the first things dictators do is to shut down the Internet.
Without America and American values controlling the internet, who will control it and what will they do?
Imagine the internet controlled by regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, China and North Korea. Imagine these nations telling Americans what they can and cannot put on the Internet. This is the ultimate end game. This will be the destruction of the Internet as a tool of liberty and commerce, instead making it nothing more than a massive propaganda tool.
The mechanism Mr. Obama will use to allow International control of the Internet is to simply allow the existing contract between IANA and the United States Department of Commerce to expire.Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin have introduced legislation that will prohibit the Commerce Department from allowing those contracts to expire.
In 1976, Ronald Reagan ran for president and he opposed the planned give away of the Panama Canal. He said then, “We bought it, we paid for it, we built it, and we intend to keep it.” President Jimmy Carter, a man who hates America almost as much as Mr. Obama does, gave the Panama Canal away.
What result did we see?
Today, China controls the most strategic water passage in the Western Hemisphere. President Reagan and other Republicans warned us then what would happen if the Democrats gave away a national asset like the Panama Canal. Today, the national asset the Democrats want to give away is the internet.
The Internet is and will be the engine of both commerce and liberty in the 21st Century. That is, if the Party of Treason does not give it away to international control.
Every American should be calling and emailing their senators and members of Congress to tell them no. If Congress does not act by Sept. 30, it will be too late.
And if we allow the internet to be given away to foreign powers that view it as a threat, then to paraphrase President Reagan, we will one day tell our children and grandchildren what it was like when there was a free internet. – source
What images should appear when you Google “white couple”? Probably two people of European descent. If you search those words today, though, you’ll find almost exclusively black couples. The results are similarly skewed for “white man & white woman” and “white couple with children”. Try it. Strange, a bit annoying, and vaguely political – just imagine the reaction if a query for “black couple” turned up only whites. I suspect that wouldn’t fly at Google.
What results would you expect when Googling “American inventors”? Likely a mix of great innovators from our past and present, from a variety of backgrounds. Instead, Google tells us they’re almost all black. No Benjamin Franklin, no Samuel Morse, no Bill Gates. Without disrespecting Dr. Patricia Bath and her cataracts-surgery machine, the telegraph and personal computer merit a higher placement.
Somebody at Google is skewing the queries, in this case a form of digital affirmative action: conceivably another point scored in an endless matchup against “white supremacy,” whose presence at all turns is the greatest of progressive obsessions. The implication is that anything related to whiteness – even the telegraph – shouldn’t be searched for at all, and takes up “space” from the accomplishments of marginalized people. In both of the above examples, we receive a political indoctrination in lieu of sought after information. In the second one, we actually learn an altered version of history.
Any confusion about the leftward tilt of Silicon-Valley tech companies would have been put to rest after the sacking of dissenting Google engineer James Damore, or the defenestration of Mozilla’s CEO years before him, or the de-monetization of conservativeYouTubers, or Mark Zuckerberg’s robotic flirtation with progressive politics. The employees at Google, Facebook, and Twitter are adherents of the same scornful progressivism as those at CNN, ESPN and VICE – so we shouldn’t underestimate their willingness to “bake in” their biases to our search queries, and justify their efforts in doing so. A stupid racial joke on Google Images is obvious (and meant to be), but it could become much more difficult to detect or prove.
Let’s say Google subverted the organic results for “Obama’s Foreign Policy”: you could receive results that bury Obama’s red lines in Syria, a history in which we never ceded power to Russia and Iran. “How is Trump doing on the economy” could give you economic indicators designed to dissatisfy. A “Reasons Hillary lost” query could route you to the infinite think pieces declaring all 63 million Trump voters bigots, or better yet, to visceral stories of hate crimes occurring during and after his election. Educated people would work around this bias, as we already do across media channels. But novice information seekers – and those of the next generations – are far more vulnerable.Kashmir Hill, a journalist for Gizmodo, recounts exactly such a process of censorship when she dared to publish a piece criticizing Google itself. First, her then-employer Forbes faced pressure from the search engine to take down the offending article, with vague threats to starve them of web traffic if they didn’t comply. The cached version “was soon scrubbed from Google search results,” a fact Hill found “disturbing,” “unusual,” an “almost dystopian abuse of the company’s power”: “websites captured by Google’s crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly.” The offending material was disappeared. Cases of influencing searches both subtle and flagrant. Purging dissenters from inside its ranks. Who’s to say Google wouldn’t go further to disfavor views it doesn’t like?
George Orwell warned us in 1984 of a society in a constant state of re-creating history to dominate its citizens: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” With every search query, we hand over power, often unconsciously, to shape our thoughts. Each becomes an opportunity for indoctrination. In a world where every platform for progressive thought-making is exploited – from the kindergarten classroom to the pages of Teen Vogue – it’s a natural development that left-leaning tech companies too will shape us in their own image.
The bias would infiltrate other tech platforms, where some opinions are clearly more equal than others. On Facebook, a crackdown on “fake news” is unlikely to treat right-wing bogus with the same equanimity as liberal myth-making around Russian electoral interference.
On Twitter, conservative users already complain of a blue-checkmark bias: the platform awards reputability to any liberal hack with a smartphone but not James O’Keefe of Project Veritas (330K followers). Voices are stifled altogether with total bans, most famously alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulus. His supporters unloaded a racist tirade on black actress Leslie Jones, but is that really worse than the Women’s March glorifying a cop-killer to its five hundred thousand followers? Twitter can choose to be a cesspool or not, but to clean up one side only is an odious double standard.
Wikipedia, a key source of information for novices and experts alike, could selectively edit pages without anyone knowing. Web platforms could refuse to host opinions they dislike, as happened to the Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormerafter the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. With the distinction between “Nazi” and “Republican” being blurred by so many in public life, it’s easy to imagine mainstream conservative groups being similarly no-platformed. First they came for the actual Neo-Nazis, and then they learned there really weren’t that many of those…
Fine, say many conservatives, arms crossed. We’ll start our own search engines. We’ll have our own social networks. But the impulse for us to huddle together feeds a growing alienation from “the mainstream” – everything we see and hear. It’s an alienation that makes people doubt the existence of objective information, and by extension objective truths: every fact we’re offered, every voice we’re allowed to hear, comes from one side, so what could be true of what we’re told? The disaffection finds its human incarnation in the factless Right Wing reactionary: your aunt the birther, your neighbor the Pizza Gate crackpot. It has hollowed out the modern conservative intellectual movement.
The topography of our politics is as influenced by the course of time as our physical world is, and movements that sustain themselves bring in new adherents as others fall away. If we seek to continue living as we do – to conserve what is good – we must be able to reach both thinkers coming of age and converts to our worldview. Access to neutral facts and dissenting voices, to a private manner of constructing thought, is a lifeline in a world saturated with messages from the other side. Fundamentally, information forms ideas, and if certain ideas are not allowed – what Orwell called thoughtcrime – the information that leads to them will be stamped out.
Conservative thought is not facing a fatal environment on the free Internet yet. But the intensity and urgency of attacks are no doubt rising on those who express dissent from the progressive sacred truths: that to uplift marginalized people we must obliterate all vestiges of historical power; that every aspect of our society has been irredeemably tainted by oppression.
In the coming years, we will see the erosion of objectivity where we do our thinking, which is mostly over the Internet. It will come from the inside of our tech companies – as social engineering is codified, dissenters are purged, and everybody else joins up or shuts up – and it will come from the outside, with Twitter mobs, viral petitions, and a blizzard of media hits.
Republicans technically hold political power, but the ascendant movement in America is an increasingly puritanical progressivism. It threatens the safety of conservatives expressing mainstream opinions. That the fervor is spreading through the halls of our greatest tech companies – to the minds that control our minds – is a dire signal for all free thinkers.
Google plays strange games of race politics. Conservative voices are shut out or shut down. Our access to objective information becomes imperiled. Are conservatives prepared to be censored? –source
Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has taken censorship to another level. Even though in the world of journalists, I am virtually unknown (except for Christians who follow my blog) somehow I have been targeted by Mr. Zuckerberg’s “big-brother-like” employees.
I am constantly placed in FB “Jail” which just means that I’ve been put in a time-out chair, sometimes for weeks. Then, once my sentence is served, if I dare share one of my articles; a new judgement of my behavior will immediately pop up, claiming that I am not using the share option in a good way – even if I didn’t mean to – and I will be placed in the “chair” for another 11 hours.
Here is a screen shot of my ongoing censorship:
When I have clicked on “This is a mistake” I am simply told “Thank you.” I take this as a cordial way of saying “Shut up.”
This is what the Left wing Globalist, Christian hating, Conservative hating rulers of our once free and fair Internet are able to do. And believe me when I say – We are just seeing the very tip of this political/progressive iceberg. Oh yes – they have big plans for us.
I would venture to say the the Censorship we are witnessing now, will eventually lead to us being incarcerated. I am talking about tribulation to which some Americans thought we were immune.
I am NOT speaking of THE TRIBULATION. But Jesus told us that our lives would be filled with tribulation. He told us that we are hated because they hated Him first.
This is merely Bible Prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes. The convergence of events – Natural disasters, wars and rumors of wars etc. coupled with the silencing of Christians; and all of this happening at break- neck speed, leads many of us to conclude that we are without a doubt in the End Times.
Look up Brethren, for our redemption does draw nigh!
After the turn of the 20th Century, my grandparents from both sides of the family came to America through Ellis Island, NY. They had lived in Ukraine, but I also had relatives who lived in Russia, and they tried for many years to obtain visas to come to America to live.
I was told that on my mother’s side there was an uncle who was high up in the Communist Party of Russia; and this was the problem for many in my family – they were denied visas because of this uncle whom I never met.
Uncle Micha
When I was about 12 years old, our family was told that Uncle Micha would be coming to visit us. He was coming from Russia. It was a good thing that Uncle Micha spoke Yiddish – my parents would not have been able to converse with him otherwise.
It was amazing watching this man as he observed our life and ways in America. He was astonished at so many things. I remember the first night that we had dinner. I had set the table and put napkins out like we always did. Uncle Micha was horrified. He said Nyet Nyet! And then proceeded to take each napkin and tear it in half.
He told my mom and dad that in Russia, paper was like gold – very expensive and hard to find. He told them that the people used newspaper for toilet paper. We were quite wealthy and I loved watching my uncle as he gazed in astonishment at almost everything in our home. He was also amazed that we had so much food in the house. He spoke of waiting in long lines to get bread and milk.
Micha knew virtually nothing about Judaism. He knew that he was called a “Jew” and that he was considered different (not in a good way) but my uncle knew very little about what it meant that he was a Jew. He had never celebrated any of our holidays. He did not know about Passover. Because I was so young, I really didn’t comprehend all of this. I just thought that perhaps the Jews in Russia were not interested in their heritage. But I was so wrong.
My father had grown up in an Orthodox Jewish home. My mother in a secular Jewish home. I watched my dad as he spoke Yiddish to my uncle and explained many things about the heritage of my people. I think that Uncle Micha did not even know about the Holocaust. I remember feeling very sorry for him.
Believing in God and Communism Do Not Mix
I soon realized that the reason that my uncle knew nothing about being a Jew was because the Communist government IS the god of the people. They would not tolerate competing with God for anyone’s allegiance.
I’m pretty sure that there must have been some Jews and Christians who were worshiping in secret in Russia. The punishment for doing such things was execution. But my people who were in Russia obviously were not part of any underground groups who bravely came together in secret to worship.
Aunt Manya
When Uncle Micha returned to Russia, his sister, Aunt Manya came for a visit. I remember that she had such a sweet face and beautiful white hair. She also spoke Yiddish with my parents.
Aunt Manya (which means “bitter” in Russian) told my parents that the government assigned jobs for every person. She was assigned to be a nanny for the children of a couple who were in the Communist Party. She told my parents that she was also assigned a place to live. She said that it was one room and quite small. Can you imagine what she thought of our large home and my father’s Cadillac? Aunt Manya was so amazed at our way of life. Like Uncle Micha, Aunt Manya had no idea what it really meant to be a Jew. She knew that she was a Jew, but that was it.
Finally, Micha, Manya and Many Cousins moved to NYC
When I was around 16 years old, my parents told us that Uncle Micha, Aunt Manya and about 12 cousins were moving to NYC. I’m not exactly sure why, but we never met our cousins. I do remember my parents speaking of the hard time all of the relatives were having adjusting to living here. The main problem was that they were not familiar with freedom. In Russia every decision had been made for them about their lives. Freedom was a concept so foreign to them. I know they struggled for years. As I said, we lost touch with them; but I thought about them often.
Antifa and Other Groups Paid by George Soros
I wonder if most people understand that these groups i.e. Antifa, Occupy, BLM, Open Borders and the rest of the Soros funded groups have one goal. George Soros wants to see the destruction of America. He hates Capitalism. He hates our Republic. And he knows that America stands in the way of the coming NWO.
Many are wondering what will happen on November 4th. The Antifa anarchists are promising a Revolution. Only God knows what will happen, and thankfully, He is in full control.
When I think of George Soros and how he has wreaked havoc across the globe, I think back to my relatives who had lived in Communist Russia. I think of our freedom here in America. We still have the right to assemble and worship our God freely.
God changed America’s direction when President Trump was elected. I believe that if Hillary Clinton had won, our rights would have slowly been taken from us; like the frogs in the pot of water, jumping about gleefully, not realizing that the water was being heated so very slowly, until the heat finally destroyed them.
We must trust only in the Lord
We don’t know what the future will bring to America. But praise God, we do know our eternal destiny because we belong to the Lord. We await His coming in the clouds to take us from this wicked place. We know that we will never be apart from Him again!
Do you Know the Lord?
I don’t mean “Do you believe in God?” The Bible says that even the demons believe in Him and they tremble.
“When He had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way. And suddenly they cried out, saying, “What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:28-29).
Clearly, believing in God and knowing Him as your Lord and Savior are two separate things. Do you want to know the Lord? Are you sorry for your sins? Have you wondered how to be right with Him?
Brethren, pray for our president and his family and administration. Pray for the lost among your family and friends. Share the Gospel of Jesus Christ boldly. We will be rejected by many, but ours is to obey the last words spoken by our Lord Jesus to “Go and makes disciples.”
