For My LDS Readers: Persecution of the Saints

It seems that the MIGA (Make Israel Great Again) movement has decided that the Church and its members are not Christian. Apparently it is not enough to believe that Christ is our Savior and the Son of God, that He died on the cross and was resurrected three days later. It is not enough, as the First Article of Faith states, that "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."

    But this article is not intended to be a theological debate, but a warning. We should be cognizant of the fact that it has been foretold that the followers of Christ, including the Church and its members, will suffer severe persecution in the Last Days. Christ, Himself, taught that "ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake." (Matt. 24:9). The Apostle Paul similarly warned that "all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Timothy 3:12). Or in the modern vernacular, "the flak is always heaviest over the target." So is this just the normal ebb and flow we see of animosity toward the Church sometimes poking its head above the surface? Or something more? I don't know. But the Gospel Lessons YouTube channel has a video about the persecution that shall come upon the followers of Christ in the Last Days. 

VIDEO: "Persecution of the Saints in the Last Days (LDS Last Days)"
Gospel Lessons (14 min.)

For My LDS Readers: Pentagon Eliminates Christian Heading Rather Than Include Church

The Hill reports: "Pentagon reworks ‘offensive’ policy affecting LDS after Mormon lawmakers loudly protest." The article relates:

    The Pentagon has reworked a list of religious designations service members can register as after Mormon lawmakers in Congress blew up over a previous list that did not label The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) under “Christian.”

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this year declared the Pentagon would cut down the faith codes – the recognized faith groups meant to provide more accurate demographic data on religious beliefs held among service members – from 200 to just 31. He called the former system “impractical and unusable” with many codes never used at all. 

    On Friday, the Pentagon announced service members could only register one of those 31 religions on their personnel records. But LDS was not listed under one of the 21 Christian labeled denominations to choose from, upsetting several Utah lawmakers, including Sen. Mike Lee (R), who called the new designation “very unfortunate.”

[snip]

    In a post to X on Friday, Pentagon press secretary Sean Parnell displayed the May 20 memo directing the changes, saying they were “long overdue” He said the Pentagon is [sic] making “any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief,” rather, it is trying to streamline data collection and religious support for soldiers, sailors and airmen. 

[snip]

    But that was not an acceptable explanation for Mormon House and Senate members, prompting a quick change. The new list now has just 30 faith codes, including LDS, but does not specify which religions fall under the Christian designation.

    “Last week, a proposed list of simplified faith codes was released to the media. The Pentagon list included redundant and unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed,” a Pentagon X account posted on Monday.

    “The Pentagon’s job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely-held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks,” according to the post.    

The Pentagon spokesman tried to make it sound like an oversight, but someone, somewhere, made that decision. And rather than include the Church under the umbrella of Christianity, they just removed Christianity as a category. 

For My LDS Readers: Declining Marriage Rates In The Church

Greg Matsen who runs the Cwic Show YouTube channel recently did a video on declining marriage rates in the Church ("The Collapse of LDS Marriage Culture And The Loss of Taught Doctrine"). He relied heavily on an article by "Alexander" at the Send Me substack entitled "The LDS Marriage Recession Is Here." Alexander notes the following statistics within the Church (bold in original):

    According to researcher Jana Riess in the Next Mormons dataset, Latter-day Saint marriage rates have dropped from 71% in 2007 to the mid-60s today, and the share of never-married LDS adults has grown from 12% in 2007 to 19%. (Salt Lake Tribune) Elder M. Russell Ballard told us in April 2021 that more than half of adult Church members today are widowed, divorced, or have never married. Half. Of us.

    The fertility numbers tell the same story. NPR reported in October 2025 that the share of Latter-day Saint women aged 18–45 with at least one child at home dropped from 70% in 2008 to 59% in 2022 — an eleven-point fall in fourteen years. President Dallin H. Oaks acknowledged at General Conference that LDS birth rates, while still higher than the national average, have declined “significantly.” (NPR)

    And retention. The share of childhood Latter-day Saints who remain Latter-day Saints as adults has fallen from 70% in 2007 to 64% in 2014 to 54% in 2023–24 — a generational cliff. (RNS)

    Some readers might not think that declining marriage rates (and falling birth rates) give rise to the level of “calamity.” But the Proclamation names the mechanism by which the calamities come — the disintegration of the family. If we stop getting married and we stop rearing children, families don’t simply shrink. They cease to exist. That is disintegration, in slow motion.

    Five extra years on the YSA range. CES openly trying to teach dating. Half the adult members single. Birth rates falling fast. Retention collapsing.

    These are not five separate problems. They are one problem with five faces.

    So what is the problem?

According to Alexander, it is because women and men want something different out of marriage. He cites statistics indicating that 48% of LDS women ages 18–35 (and 54% of  LDS women ages 18–26) prefer an egalitarian marriage — "one in which husband and wife share decision-making, breadwinning, housework, and childcare roughly equally, rather than dividing them along traditional provider/homemaker lines"; whereas 60% of LDS men ages 18–26 still prefer the traditional arrangement where men are the primary breadwinners and preside over the household. 

    And the reason for that, Alexander contends, is that we--as a Church--have softened the doctrine (I would add, when was the last time you heard 1 Timothy 2:12 preached in Sunday School?). He writes:

We — the cultural Church, the wards, the parents, the institute teachers, the Sunday school adults, the LDS-coded social media voices — have spent twenty years quietly softening the doctrine of marriage to make it palatable in mixed company. We stopped saying “preside” with confidence. Some have even started apologizing for the clarity of the Proclamation. We taught equal partnership in a way that quietly erased the uniquely different roles of men and women that follow’s God’s family model. We trained our daughters to look for an “egalitarian” husband without telling them that the doctrine isn’t actually symmetrical, and we trained our sons to want to “preside” without ever showing them what that looked like at a kitchen table on a Tuesday night.

And, he adds:

    I don’t think it is an accident that during the same years our cultural Church got quieter about gender as an eternal characteristic, the Next Mormons survey found that 94% of LDS Boomers identify as heterosexual versus only 77% of LDS Gen Z — meaning roughly 23% of Gen Z Latter-day Saints now identify as LGB+. (Religion News Service) I am not saying that to shame anyone. I am saying that is a data point we cannot keep pretending isn’t connected to something. When the doctrine of eternal identity gets quieter, identity confusion gets louder.

    Pair the LGB+ figure with the 54% retention number, the dating recession, the birth rate collapse, and the egalitarian-traditional mismatch — and a single picture comes into focus.

    When we evade the doctrine culturally the youth cannot get the foundation. They cannot find each other, cannot picture a marriage worth running toward, and in some cases cannot even locate themselves within the plan.

    That is not their failure. That is ours.

The solution, he contends, is to "say the doctrine out loud again, with confidence and joy." 

    I will be the first to say that I agree that softening the doctrine has not helped us, and to more strongly proclaim the family will help right the ship, so to speak, simply because it would drive the liberals out of the Church. And perhaps if women were, like the men, told that they cannot obtain exaltation without getting married--instead of the usual slop of "if you can't get married its not your fault and God will make up for it"--it might boost marriage rates a bit. 

    But I do not think his "solution" will actually solve the basic, underlying problem.  

    NPR published a piece on "The missing men of the American marriage market." First, contrary to the wording in the title of the NPR article, the men are not missing--it is not like we suffered a war where large number of men were killed or went through decades where male babies were aborted at higher rates than females. The men are there, but they just aren't good enough for the women. From the article:

    The United States is not currently witnessing any demographic imbalances so extreme. The ratio of men to women is pretty even. However, the economic and educational trajectories of men and women have increasingly diverged, with a large swath of men falling behind.

    For example, women are now more likely to graduate from college than men. In recent years, female students have made up almost 60 percent of undergraduate students, and outnumbered men on college campuses by more than two million, according to one government estimate. Meanwhile, many men who didn't get a college education have been struggling economically, and have been much more likely to end up on drugs, in prison, and unemployed.

    A new working paper by economists Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman, and Joseph Winkelmann, "Bachelors Without Bachelor's: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates," looks at how this growing educational and economic gender imbalance is affecting marriage patterns in the United States.

    The study suggests that the struggles of many American men have created something like a game of musical chairs for women looking to get married. College-educated women have largely maintained high marriage rates, but they've done so by increasingly getting hitched to men without a college education. But they're not ending up with just any men in this demographic pool. They're, on average, partnering up with the higher-earning ones.

    Meanwhile, this study suggests that women without a college education are left with a shrinking pool of economically stable husbands. They're still having kids, but their marriage rate has plummeted, and many are raising their kids by themselves.

    Scholars have referred to the demographic imbalance in China as "missing women." One way to interpret these findings is that America increasingly has what you might call "missing economically stable men." It may help explain the dramatic rise of single-mother households, and it could be one driver of worsening inequality in America. 

 For all their screaming about equity, the Left seems ambivalent when the benefactors of a system are women and the ones being left behind are men. 

     But, getting back to the points raised by Matson and Alexander, the primary issue here isn't a misunderstanding of the marriage roles. It is primarily a lack of good jobs for men such that they can (i) attract a wife, and (ii) support a family. You can preach all day long that men should provide for families and women should stay home to raise the kids--something I commonly heard at church when I was younger--but it means nothing if the men cannot get jobs that allow for it. It was the growing economic need for women to get jobs outside the home that killed off the doctrine. And urging men to become better educated only gets you so far because a young man can't just go out and magically raise his IQ a couple standard deviations or have the capitalization to start a business fall from heaven like the manna of old. 

    I know that the there are more facets and nuances, but in the end--even if you convince a woman that the man should be the sole or primary breadwinner--the whole thing falls apart if the man, in fact, cannot win the bread. 

Reports of Christianity's Death May Be Premature

Rod Martin reports that "Christianity’s Decline in America Has Halted, and May Now Have Reversed." Martin offers two explanations:

    First, he believes that the decline was being led by people who didn't truly believe or were shaky in their faith who were leaving. But now that those types are mostly gone, the decline halted. He explains (bold in original):

    But why? Why would it stop? If the problem is that Christianity is outdated or offensive to our culture, why wouldn’t we continue to collapse?

    The answer is simple, as I’ve been telling you for decades. The people who were leaving Christianity were not leaving because conservatives were “mean,” or because Christians “lacked winsomeness,” or because the church failed to wrap historic orthodoxy in the therapeutic language of NPR. 

    They left because they were leftists. The belief system of the modern Democrat Party is anathema to the Christian faith.

    Or let me put that another way: the fakers have left.

    There’s no longer any benefit to your business, or to your personal prestige, that derives from pretending to be a Christian. There is no financial gain that comes from sitting on the second pew. To be a Christian today means you have to really mean it, or you just wouldn’t bother.

    And they don’t.

    So the half-believers left. The brunch Christians left. The “Jesus was a socialist community organizer” crowd left. The people who wanted the church to baptize abortion, transgenderism, Critical Race Theory, and every other fashionable madness of the age left.

    Second, Martin links the reversal to a growing number of young conservative men turning to Christianity. He notes: "Young conservative men helped drive the stabilization, and they may now be helping drive the reversal. They are embracing Christianity as part of a broader rejection of leftist ideology, secular despair, and the cultural war against masculinity itself." And it seems the numbers support this:

    Gallup’s newest data show a remarkable shift among young men ages 18–29. In 2024–25, 42 percent of young men said religion is “very important” in their lives, up from 28 percent just two years earlier. Young women, by contrast, remained roughly flat at about 30 percent. Gallup says young men now surpass young women on this measure by a statistically significant margin, a stunning reversal of the long-standing pattern in which young women were more religious than young men.

    Let’s put that in perspective. For the first time in 300 years, among young adults aged 18-24, the gender gap in religiosity has flipped. Historically, women have long been 15-20 percentage points more religious than men (which accounts for much of the church and the clergy’s feminization). But among Generation Z, those days are over.

    This is a very, very big deal.

    My LDS readers may be wondering about all this as it seems the LDS Church is still drifting left and embracing "social justice," DEI, and illegal immigration. For instance, the recent pronouncement allowing women to serve in Sunday School presidencies notwithstanding Paul's admonition in 1 Timothy 2:12. But looking at the statistics, you will see that the Church seems to be following the same trend lines as Christianity in general, albeit lagging by several years. This is illustrated by this article from April 21, 2026: "Why Latter-day Saints appear to be politically shifting to the left." The article explains that contrary to the general trend among Christian denominations, "[o]ver the last 18 years, [LDS] members moved 19 points to the left, according to a new report from the global analytics firm YouGov based on data from the Cooperative Election Survey." However, those members moving to the Left are less devout:

    ... When [Alex Bass, a data scientist] plotted the share of devout Latter-day Saints — those with the highest levels of religious practice, such as praying and attending church — and the share of Latter-day Saints who identify as Republican, they seem to be declining in tandem.

    Of course, correlation isn’t always causation. Bass said, however, the political beliefs of the different devoutness groups haven’t changed — devout members are firmly Republican, and cultural members are near the political center. Now, there are just more Latter-day Saints who are less devout and less Republican.
    
    The share of devout Latter-day Saints dropped from 52% in 2008-2012 to 39% in 2021-2025. Cultural members, those who attend church less than once a month, grew from 21% to 31%. 

And in going to Bass's blog, he reports that there is some data showing a resurgence in Church activity, but warns that "the limited data we have more likely suggests a retrenchment where those who remain are more likely to participate in all religious measures, but people are lost at the fringes." And in line with what Martin was saying, Bass notes: "Looking at party affiliation, in-line with the practice metrics and increasing 'devout' status, we see a rise in Republican Party affiliation. This again shows how strongly correlated these two things are!" 

    The correlation shouldn't be all that surprising. Church members were, prior to the 1970s, roughly split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, but as the Democrats moved ever leftward, the membership shifted to voting Republican. Given the current state of the Democratic party and its embrace of communist theories if not outright communism, it is notable that on July 3, 1936, the First Presidency of the Church issued a statement concerning communism that warned members that communism was anathema to both the teachings of the Church and to our Constitutional form of government, stating in part:

    Since Communism, established, would destroy our American Constitutional government, to support Communism is treasonable to our free institutions, and no patriotic American citizen may become either a Communist or supporter of Communism.

[snip]

    Furthermore, it is charged by universal report, which is not successfully contradicted or disproved, that Communism undertakes to control, if not indeed to proscribe the religious life of the people living within its jurisdiction, and that it even reaches its hand into the sanctity of the family circle itself, disrupting the normal relationship of parent and child, all in a manner unknown and unsanctioned under the Constitutional guarantees under which we in America live. Such interference would be contrary to the fundamental precepts of the Gospel and to the teachings and order of the Church. Communism being thus hostile to loyal American citizenship and incompatible with true Church membership, of necessity no loyal American citizen and no faithful Church member can be a Communist.    

Leftists cannot abide Christianity and Christianity cannot abide Leftism. So eventually the Leftists, where they are unsuccessful in destroying a religious institution, will eventually leave. 

IDF Investigating Israeli Soldier Who Took Sledgehammer To Statue of Jesus (Update: Soldiers punished)

 By now you've probably already seen this:

According to Not The Bee's report on it, Israel's military has confirmed that the photograph is real and the matter is being investigated. The IDF soldier was operating in southern Lebanon and is facing a criminal investigation according to a post on X by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But rather than leave it at that, the Not The Bee piece goes on to explain and excuse the Israeli soldier's conduct.

    The article explains that many Israeli Jews are devout in their religion and noting that "[i]n the Bible, the best kings were those who smashed the idols and altars on the 'high places' as an act of worship and dedication to the true and living God," adding:

    ... For devout Jews, rebuilding Israel is a sign that God is about to restore their temple and kingdom, with the messiah being a core part of that belief.

    The reason the IDF or Netanyahu won't say the name of Jesus is that he is intolerable to them, as He was to their ancestors. I am not being antisemitic here: I am simply saying that devout Jews see Jesus as a heretic, not a Savior. 

Then comes the excusing:

    Whether or not you believe these things or not is between you and God. But the secular Israeli government is not an individual - it holds all these things in tension as any government does. It cannot have soldiers desecrating religious statues that may hurt its war efforts ... but it also cannot alienate the devout Jews in its ranks who support smashing "idols" of "heretics." It walks a line of compromise, public relations, and negotiation that gives it critics on all sides. 

    A wise person will note that the Israeli politics of the 21st century are as complicated as those in the 1st century. A wise person will also notice that the IDF didn't have to admit the photo was real but DID. A wise person will realize there's no reason to throw everyone in Israel under the bus because of the actions of one man. 

This apology is, frankly, appalling. Some thoughts:

1. Are we, in fact, supposed to be pleasantly surprised when the Israeli military tells the truth? Is that really the standard under which we are to treat IDF pronouncements?
2. Who cares if Israeli kings were considered good for tearing down pagan idols in ancient Israel or Judah? This soldier wasn't in Israel but in Lebanon--a country that was majority Christian until recent times--and this is the 21st Century AD, not the 7th Century BC. His action served no military purpose, but was an expression of Jewish supremacy. Moreover, he did this knowing that it was an insult to Israel's greatest ally--perhaps only ally--the United States. He should be dishonorably discharged (or whatever is its equivalent in the IDF) simply for being so stupid.  
3. This is not just one soldier. There was, at the least, the soldier filming it and their NCOs and other unit leaders that allowed it or condoned it after the fact. Because let's be realistic here: there would have been no IDF investigation until it became a PR disaster in the United States. 
4.  Would the writer apply the same reasoning to other religions? Could we not say the same thing about devout Muslims vandalizing synagogues or churches? Should vandalizing synagogues or churches be excused in order to not alienate devout Muslims? 
5. No matter how the writer twists it, the soldier was tearing down and attempting to destroy the image of Christ and thereby deserves to be condemned by all Christians. 

Update:

Breitbart reports that the Israeli soldier that smashed the crucifix and the soldier that photographed it have both been dismissed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in a military prison. The article also reports that: "The IDF said six other soldiers who were present for the incident, but took no action to stop it, could also face discipline." And, "[o]n Tuesday, the IDF announced that the damaged statue has been replaced." The IDF claims it replaced the statute, but it was apparently Italian forces working with the UN that replaced it. 

Interesting: Evidence That Tomb Of Christ Really Is Under The Church Of The Holy Sepulcher

 From PJ Media: "Under the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Archeologists Found What Could Be the Tomb of Jesus." Renovations to the floor of the church in recent years gave an opportunity for archeological excavations, which uncovered gardens and tombs as described in John 19:41:

    During the time of Jesus, this quarry was a burial site “with several tombs hewn in the rock.” It wasn’t the only such site in Jerusalem, but when Constantine—the first emperor of Rome to convert to Christianity—was in power, this quarry was the one exalted by early Christians as the site of the burial, so the emperor ordered the construction of the first iteration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre there (the church would suffer numerous attacks over the centuries, before its current form was constructed by Crusaders in the 12th century).

    What Stasolla’s team found was that, in the time between when the quarry was originally mined during the Iron Age and the construction of the church atop it, the area to which the burial site is attributed had (at one time) been used for agriculture, based on the discovery of 2,000 year-old olive trees and grapevines.

    “Low stone walls were erected, and the space between them was filled with dirt,” noted Stasolla.  

Young Men Now More Religious Than Young Women

Gallop reports that its "latest data, from 2024-2025, show 42% of young men saying religion is very important to them, up sharply from 28% in 2022-2023. By contrast, during this period, young women’s attachment to religion has held steady at about 30%." More:

    Young women were significantly more attached to religion than young men were at the start of the millennium, leading by nine percentage points (52% vs. 43%) in calling religion “very important” in their lives. That gap widened to as much as 16 points in the early to mid-2000s before steadily narrowing over the next decade.

    By the mid-2010s, the difference had shrunk to about five points, and the two groups remained about this closely aligned through 2022-2023. The most recent data mark a clear break, with young men now surpassing young women on this measure of religious importance.

    This reversal is unique to those aged 18 to 29. Among adults aged 30 and older, women remain more religious than men.

    The percentage of young men saying religion is very important to them is now similar to the percentage for men aged 30-49 and only slightly lower than for senior men. Young women, by contrast, are now by far the least religious women. At 29% calling religion very important, women aged 18-29 trail the next-least religious group, 30- to 49-year-old women, by 18 points and are less than half as likely as senior women to say religion is very important.   

Well, if a woman believes she needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, that woman is definitely not going to believe she needs a man that was nailed to a cross. 

VIDEO: Church Posts Controversial Messages To Women

The video below discusses a couple social media posts from the LDS Church. The first has received considerable attention as it is from the Church's communications department and is of a husband praising the fact that his wife had finished medical school and was pursuing a career as a doctor while he is still trying to figure out his life (and presumably raising the kids). Hopefully he will figure something out before his wife divorces him, because a high earning woman is not going to stick with someone like him forever. 

The second post, from BYU-Idaho, was of a woman who had worked to put her husband through school, but decided to continue working even though they no longer needed her to do so and they had a couple of children.  

The host is not only puzzled because it represents a shift from past teaching, but comes at a time when birth rates are reported to have again declined in the United States. 

(Note: the host of this video speaks overly slow--I put it on 1.5X speed in the settings and that seemed to be fine).  

 VIDEO: "Church Posts Controversial Family Message To Women"
Cwic Show (24 min.)

He Is Risen

 

Description: "The resurrected Jesus Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. Mary is kneeling before Christ and looking up at Him. Christ is dressed in white robes. Spring flowers and trees border the tomb. (Mark 16:9, John 20:11-18)"

In 1 Peter 3:18-19, we learn that after His death on the cross, Christ "went and preached unto the spirits in prison," thus fulfilling yet another part of Isaiah 61:1-2 which noted that one of the acts of the Messiah would be to "to proclaim liberty to the captives". 

The Bill Was Paid In Full

 In "Tetelestai: The Meaning of ‘It Is Finished’," Chris Queen points out that after Christ drank the sour wine on the cross (in fulfillment of Psalm 69:21) He said what is, in the Greek, tetelestai (τετέλεσται), which is often translated as "it is finished." But, Queen goes on, this phrase doesn't merely mean that something is done. Rather, it was written on business documents and receipts in New Testament times to indicate that a bill or debt had been paid in full.  

IDF Attacks Iran's Largest Natural Gas Infrastructure

Yesterday, it was reported that Israel had struck the South Pars gas field--the largest natural gas field in the world--notwithstanding that Trump has previously told Israel to not attack the oil and gas infrastructure in Iran. From the Institute for the Study of War (footnotes omitted):

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck Iran’s most important energy infrastructure, including facilities linked to the South Pars natural gas field and the Asaluyeh processing hub in Bushehr Province on March 18. These facilities are central to Iran’s domestic natural gas supply and broader energy system, which supports a significant portion of Iran’s economic activity and regime revenue. Iran consumes roughly 94 percent of its natural gas production internally, according to data by the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, meaning disruptions will primarily strain domestic supply. Damage to these facilities will likely disrupt Iran’s electricity generation capacity, given their role in supplying fuel to the power sector. Over 90 percent of Iran’s electricity is generated by gas-powered thermal plants. Israeli media reported on March 18 that the strikes reportedly damaged up to one-fifth of Iran’s gas processing capacity. Israel previously struck Iranian energy infrastructure, including gas processing facilities linked to the South Pars field and the Fajr-e Jam Gas Refinery in Bushehr Province, during the June 2025 Israel-Iran War.     

Iran, in turn, "retaliated with attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure, including a missile strike on Qatar's Ras Laffan, one of the world's largest liquefied natural gas export terminals." 

    Trump apparently posted on his Truth Social account that Israel had attacked the gas field "out of anger," that the United States and Qatar had no knowledge of the attack, and Israel had promised to make no more attacks on the gas field; but, he also warned, if there were any more attacks on Qatar, the U.S. will "massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field...." The AP reports, however, that the Administration did have foreknowledge of the attack:

The United States was informed about Israel’s plans to strike Iran’s massive South Pars natural gas field, but did not take part in it, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, would not say if the Trump administration agreed with the Israeli decision to attack the gas field — part of the world’s largest such resource and a pillar of Iran’s energy supplies. 

All this must be taken with a grain of salt, though, as the AP is not the most reliable of sources when it comes to reporting on Trump and unnamed sources could just be some buddy of the reporter who has a friend, who knows a guy, who ... well, you get the idea. 

    In other news, it is being reported that Israel has closed holy sites within Old Jerusalem, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which, tradition states, marks the tomb where Christ was interned after His crucifixion and where His resurrection occurred. Although there are reports stating that this is unprecedented and has never happened before, this is incorrect: a similar closure occurred in June 2025 when Israel and Iran were fighting. The church/shrine has been destroyed several times over its history as well. The Church is very important for several Christian denominations, including the Greek Orthodox, for Easter celebrations and worship, so there is an effort to convince Israel to at least allow some limited access to the church for Easter. 

    The problem is that once a government shuts down a church or shuts down worship for an emergency, it becomes easier to justify doing the same subsequently--the whole camel's nose in the tent. 

Ted Cruz Says "Christ Is King" Shouldn't Be Used Because It Is Antisemitic

From the Daily Mail: "Ted Cruz sparks outrage as he claims the phrase 'Christ is King' is antisemitic." He instead would like people to use praises to "teddy bear Jesus":

    Cruz said he never heard the phrase at church while growing up, proposing other alternatives.

    'We would say things like "Jesus loves you, Jesus saves",' Cruz said.

    The GOP lawmaker added that 'Christ is King' appeared to have originated from the internet.

    'Christ is King is a phrase that seems to have originated online,' Cruz said. 'It summoned kind of the groyper folks. It almost sort of invokes images of the crusade that in the name of Jesus, we will conquer everyone else in a way that I don't think is right or biblical. '     

The phrase is not a creation of the Internet. Christ's kingship shows up in the New Testament, including in Luke 1:31-33 where Mary is told she will bear a son who will take the throne of David. Revelation 17:14 specifically declares Christ to be King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. As Wikipedia notes, "The concept of Christ as king was the subject of an address given by Eusebius about AD 314. Depictions of the imperial Christ arise in the later part of the 4th century. Christ Pantokrator ('Ruler of All') is one of the most common religious icons of Orthodox Christianity." Moving to more modern times, Wikipedia also notes that "[t]he liturgical feast 'Christ the King' was formally instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 through the encyclical Quas primas" in "response to rising secularism, atheism, and nationalism in the aftermath of World War I, with the first celebration occurring on October 31, 1926." 

    So it is not like "Christ is King" or similar is not supported by scripture or previously extolled by Christians. Rather, Cruz's objection to people proclaiming that Christ is King is that it might offend Jews. It is in that sense that he finds it "antisemitic". Yet Christ has warned us: "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." Matt. 10:33. 

For My LDS Readers: Elder Clark G. Gilbert Is Called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Per the news release from the Church, Elder Gilbert has degrees from BYU, Stanford, and Harvard; and taught on the faculty at Harvard Business School before going on to fill roles in various media and educational positions in the Church or Church related entities, including a stint as President of BYU-Idaho and serving as the Commissioner of the Church Educational System. And somehow amidst all this, he and his wife had 8 kids. 

Mississippi Man Who Twice Set Fire To LDS Church Sentenced To 30 Years

 From WLOX: "Wiggins man sentenced to 30 years in prison for setting church on fire." 

    On Tuesday, 37-year-old Stefan Day Rowold was sentenced to 30 years in prison after vandalizing and setting fire to a church in Wiggins.

    Rowold’s sentence comes after a jury found him guilty of six counts of federal arson and civil rights charges following a trial in September 2025.

[snip]

    On July 5 and July 7 of 2024, Rowold vandalized and set fire to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Hall Street in Wiggins. Evidence shown during the trial proved that Rowold did it because he disagreed with what he believed were the church’s religious views.

    Rowold confessed to police that he broke into the church building and graffitied hateful messages on the walls before starting a fire in the middle of a multipurpose room. To kindle the flames, he used paintings, hymnals, and more. Rowold also confessed that after he learned his first fire failed to burn the building down, he broke in two days later to finish the job, setting a second fire against a wall inside the church. 

Being A Useful Idiot Is Not Christ-Like

 In "Stop Falling for Weaponized Empathy" Michael Clary, the author warns: "For all the gullible Christians angrily venting about ICE, your Christian love is not pure. You're functioning as agents of chaos. Stop it." He explains:

    False teaching almost always bypasses the mind and works directly on the emotions. That’s why scripture warns us to watch out for it. Paul says false teachers “cause divisions and create obstacles” by using “smooth talk and flattery” to “deceive the hearts of the naive” (Rom 16:17-18). That’s exactly what Benjamin Cremer was doing in his post.

    He was using emotional manipulation to make error feel like love. It works like a charm on naive people.

    That’s a big problem in the modern church. Too many people are gullible, and gullible Christians are causing a lot of harm in the church. These people aren’t blue-haired radical leftists we see at ICE protests in Minneapolis. No, they are ordinary Christians who sit next to you in church on Sunday but are led by their emotions. They are the nicest people you’d ever meet. They just don’t have the stomach to face hard realities. They think being “Christlike” is whatever seems “nice” or makes them feel good. 

    But here’s the truth: it isn’t Christlike to be gullible. It isn’t Christlike to believe and share debunked propaganda. It isn’t Christlike to be led by your emotions. It isn’t Christlike to outsource your critical thinking skills to the left-wing activists in the media.

These gullible Christians don't actually believe in Christ, anyway. They believe in what I've heard referred to as "Teddy Bear Jesus" who is always warm, loving, and, most significantly, accepting no matter what. Or, as the host of the Cwic Show describes it: "A 'teddy bear Jesus' is a concept of Jesus as only comfort and no consequences, where 'all is well in Zion'."

    But this goes beyond merely believing that Christ's mission was to make us feel warm and fuzzy. These people are foot soldiers in one of the greatest evils of all time: the genocide of white Europeans and their descendants. Because even if that is not what they intend, that is what they are advocating for when they support mass immigration, welcome refugees from across the word in the tens and hundreds of thousands, or speak out against deportation.  

Shadaversity Starts LDS YouTube Channel

Shad Brooks runs the long running YouTube channel, Shadiversity which mostly covers medieval weapons and society, as well as being a fantasy author. Some of you may be aware that he is a member of the LDS Church. He has started a YouTube channel called the Latter-Day Knight (see the introductory video below). His channel introduction warns that it may have irregular posting because it will just be his thoughts as to certain Church and religion matters as they come to mind. 

VIDEO: "Welcome to The Latter-Day Knight"
The Latter-day Knight (4 min.)

VIDEO: From Where The Magi Probably Came

Merry Christmas to everyone. To keep in the mood of celebrating the birth of Christ, here is a video that discusses the probable origin of the magi that came to see the young Christ and provide him with gifts.

VIDEO: "Where the Magi Actually Came From"
Good News Studios (15 min.)

Are We Praying For The Right Things?

 The Lord's Prayer sets out a model of how to pray to God. It reads (in the KJV):

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. 

I suspect that most people that regularly pray will regularly pray for most of the items or categories that Christ outlined. But how many of us regularly pray that "Thy kingdom come"? I mean, it is essentially a prayer for the Second Coming. It is, perhaps, the ultimate version of "deliver us from evil" and "Thy will be done on earth." Perhaps we should be praying for the Second Coming to occur ASAP.  

Canada Mulls Including Religious Speech As "Hate" Speech

Reclaim the Net reports that "[m]embers of the House of Commons Justice and Human Rights Committee voted on December 9 to delete a longstanding clause in the Criminal Code that shields religious discussion made in good faith from prosecution." At issue is "whether the change to Section 319(3)(b) opens the door to criminal proceedings against clergy or believers discussing moral or scriptural teachings." 

As reported by The Catholic Register, Justice Minister and Attorney General Sean Fraser alleged that the measure poses no threat to religious freedom. “The amendment that the Bloc is proposing will … in no way, shape or form prevents a religious leader from reading their religious texts,” Fraser said. “It will not criminalize faith.”  

So it won't prevent a religious leader from reading from their religious texts. But what about someone else other than a religious leader? What about discussing that religious text or what it means in modern parlance? Will that religious leader be able to read it in public? Can anyone else? Can they read it out loud? When they say it won't criminalize faith, they are lying. 

    And say they are correct. So what? It isn't illegal for baker to refuse to bake items for gay weddings, but that hasn't stopped the lawsuits and prosecutions. Sometimes the process is the punishment. "Religious and civil rights organizations say the removal of Section 319(3)(b) would leave clergy and lay believers vulnerable to politically motivated complaints," the article points out. That is probably the point.  

VIDEO: "The ‘Judeo-Christian’ West Is a Myth"

The producer of this video, who goes under the name "Richard the Fourth," reminds viewers:

A key theme on this channel is as the west starts to crumble, the liberal dream will start to crumble with it because it really built on illusory foundations. People will lurch back to their root level identities when things start to fall apart. Now, we're seeing this across the board in the Western world at the moment.

Case in point is  journalist Melanie Phillips, of whom the producer shares some clips from a lecture she gave at a Jewish legal conference where she tells the audience that they are first and foremost Jews and part of a Jewish nation and everything else is secondary (which must make her antisemitic since the definition of antisemitism includes "Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations"). And she apparently insists that the West only became great because of Jews, such as when she states that "Christianity didn't come from nowhere; one could say Christianity it was a Jewish sect that got slightly out of hand." This is, of course, hogwash as Richard explains. As he points out, using that logic, Islam would also be a Jewish sect, but of course no one thinks of it that way because it isn't. No, Richard continues, Europe was not created by other peoples, but it was Europeans that built Europe. 

    The real issue here, however, is that Europeans and people of European descent are not allowed to have their own identity, let alone glory in it like other cultures. Richard the Fourth, suggests two reasons: (i) certain other groups are afraid that if Europeans were allowed to revel in their own identity they would become national socialists or something like it, so European national identities must be crushed (this is part of the "never again" strategy); and (ii) behind liberalism are the money powers that want to see nations and peoples divided as it makes it easier for them to obtain and maintain control.  

 VIDEO: "The ‘Judeo-Christian’ West Is a Myth"
Richard The Fourth (12 min.)