There are many stories of faith in the Bible, but few match the trust in God displayed by a young lady who decided to leave her family and home with a complete stranger for a new life and new husband she knew absolutely nothing about.
One of the most well-known tales from the Bible is the test of Abraham’s faith with the command to sacrifice his son Isaac. It is a difficult test to consider, it seems cruel and unreasonable.
Abraham- like Job and Noah- is on another level. He is a friend to God. He talks with God, has been trusted with extraordinary knowledge, and has been called to an extraordinary role. The father of many nations, the patriarch of the Lord’s people. In proving his friend, the Lord required extraordinary faith from someone who trusted God completely.
Abraham- like Job- could be trusted by God to demonstrate to all men (and the devils) how to trust completely in the Lord. An example of what is meant by true faith in God.
A faith that was quietly and simply displayed by a young lady named Rebekah.
Sarah had already passed away, and Abraham knew he wouldn’t be around forever. He didn’t want Isaac to marry one of the local heathen women, so he sent his most trusted, competent head servant back to the old country to find Isaac a wife from his people.
The man traveled to the old country and sat down near a well:
Genesis 24: 12-14 12 And he said O Lord God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master Abraham. 13 Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water: 14 And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master.
Before he had even finished his prayer, a young lady named Rebekah had arrived at the well. After she filled her pitcher, Abraham’s servant asked for a drink. She told him no problem, and she would get water for his camels as well.
Rebekah reveals she is of Abraham’s kin folk, and they would be able to lodge the travelers for the night. When the man arrives at the home and sits down for supper, he tells them his story, being sent by Abraham, culminating in the incident at the well. After the story, Rebekah’s people agree- this thing is from the Lord.
From the servants point of view, he was led straight to is master’s people, was given a sign at the well, and met the young lady he was sent for. It was a miracle.
From Rebekah’s and her families point of view- a strange man has shown up claiming God has sent him to take Rebekah back to his master’s son. Any adult reading this can certainly imagine what some concerns with this story might be.
They couldn’t call Abraham or send him a text to confirm this story. Rebekah couldn’t look up Isaac’s profile on Facebook to see what sort of person this was. It was time to lean on faith, to trust in God.
58 And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go.
I will go. A simple statement with a powerful meaning. I trust the Lord.
Would you go? Would you have allowed your daughter to go? Sometimes letting go and trusting God isn’t easy. But if it is something you practice daily, learning to lean on the Lord, learning to trust in the Spirit- you will be ready to answer when he calls.
64 And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel. 65 For she had said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master: therefore she took a vail, and covered herself. 66 And the servant told Isaac all things that he had done. 67 And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
The author of the article, Peter de Boer, is no fan of this art calling it “terrifying” and “soulless”
I have to agree with him. It’s in the eyes. The yes are the windows to the soul, and this AI just couldn’t come close with the eyes.
“And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. ” – Nietzsche
If it is on auction at Christie’s- there is an upscale market for this “art”.
I once saw in a textbook paintings done by schizophrenia patients. Even though some of it was very disturbing, somehow it had more soul than this “art”. It made a connection.
Cognitive dissonance is the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information.
Or disinformation.
What about when the information is conflicting? Then, inevitably, our beliefs and assumptions will be conflicted and contradicted. Seeds of mental chaos.
We are being scatter-bombed with cognitive dissonance. The effect, looking outward, is social dissonance. Long-held societal beliefs and assumptions are being contradicted by new information. And disinformation. It is causing conflict. And social chaos.
Religion of peaceophobe
Islam and it’s practitioners view women as second class people. They are prohibited from driving, going into public unchaperoned, and in many Muslim cultures are subject to the practice of female genital mutilation. Homosexuals are executed in Muslim countries, usually by throwing from a roof. Nearly all of the terrorist attacks in the US are carried out by militant Muslims. The religion of Islam considers all non-Muslims to be infidels- which allows for legal and sanctioned enslaving, raping, and killing of same. Lying to infidels- taqqiya- is encouraged to gain an advantage, a majority believe jihad and terrorism is justified, and killing an infidel is a ticket to paradise.
But…If you say anything other than “Islam is religion of peace”, you are an Islamophobe. If you criticize the religion, you are a bigot. If you believe we should restrict immigration from problematic Islamic countries, you are a bigoted Islamophobe racist.
It takes a village
“We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.”- Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC. This is a re-statement of Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village. Both are an argument for social collectivism. It is a basic tenant of socialism/communism, that argues social inequalities handicap many children, and unfairly privileges others. The destruction of the core nuclear family is the real objective.
But… If you are the child of an illegal alien at the US border, then by all that’s holy, the village has no right whatsoever to infringe upon your parental rights, and cannot under any circumstances separate these children from the parents they belong to. It doesn’t even matter if they are really your kid or not.
The hand that robs the cradle
Abortion is a legal medical procedure whereby a pregnancy is terminated by destroying and removing the fetus. The developing embryo is a fetus- not legally, ethically, or medically to be connected to a stage of human development- thus absolving those involved in the practice of any legal or moral jeopardy. It is a woman’s right to choose.
But… If you commit a crime against the pregnant mother or commit a crime and cause the involuntary termination of the pregnancy, you can be charged with murder for the death of the unborn child. ?
Anti Logic
Antifaschistiche Aktion- “Antifa”.
Despite whatever ideology these anarchists claim to defend, Antifa’s actions ironically reveal nothing more than a group of violent, fascist, Nazi imitators.
Get a better paying gender
There are no biological genders. Gender is a construct, and is a product of cognition and social behaviors rather than biology. The current male/female paradigm is repressive, as there are now in excess of 30 recognized/suggested categories of gender. Some propose the elimination of the term altogether.
But… We are told that one of the great sins of our time, one of the main deficiencies in our society, crippling us on every level- is the gender pay gap.
Retro-causality is the notion that current events are influenced by future events.
Conventional wisdom would argue that we are the products of our past, that our history is the best predictor of our future. We learn from the past, the future is uncertain. Or is it?
Our concept of time is linear. That is, everything we are aware of, even the cosmos themselves, have a beginning- and an end. It is beyond the abilities of our consciousness to comprehend eternity- no beginning, no end.
Always has been, always will be. A world without end. Try to picture it, grasp it.
Forever is a long time.
The best argument against time travel is, if it were possible, a traveler from the future would have dropped in on us by now. And then you can get all flummoxed considering that time travel may be possible in the future, but not yet. But, if it is possible in the future, wouldn’t future time travelers have appeared in their past- our future- by now?
It’s a trip.
Time is a measure of duration. Our time is based upon the rotation and revolution of the Earth. The communication satellites that orbit the Earth have to be adjusted because time is different in space where they are. It is further different the further away you get. Time is way different on a light beam or in a black hole. Time is not a steady constant force- it is a function of the dimension.
Remember when time stood still for Joshua? ( Joshua 10: 13- And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.)
Can future events affect the present? Think of it this way: Do you plan for the past or the future? Are your goals and dreams geared towards a better future or past? The future is coming, the past is gone.
How can the future- things that haven’t happened yet- affect the past and present? We have all heard tales of how someone got a feeling, a premonition, to alter their course in some kind of way. Cancel the flight. Take the next bus. Don’t move to Albuquerque. How are these messages to us from the future explained? ESP, coincidence, the zeitgeist, spiritual consciousness, cosmic awareness, and many other explanations have emerged.
We have symbols for eternity, infinity that are representative of an existence without beginning or end.
Regardless the shape of the endless loop, that is the best way to conceptualize time. Everything that has ever happened, and will ever happen, is at a point along the round. We are on that circle at a specific point. Time doesn’t loop around and turn back where things happen over and over again- we don’t move along the loop (yet)- we occupy a point along the loop. That is what we see.
Inevitably, when considering such concepts, thoughts turn to the one thing that we know is eternal- God. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He can see everything on the loop, all at once. We will be able to see everything too someday- if that is what we want.
Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and John- among others- were shown the future. The end of the old earth- something that has not yet come to pass. But, it’s on the loop- it will happen.
Just as Daniel and the others saw the future- we can too. If you seek God, it is possible to see these things through the Spirit. Dreams, visions, premonitions from the future can warn, guide, and comfort you.
Proverbs 22:3- A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
If you find any of the above information to be unacceptable, please remember: Republicans have done nothing to change this arrangement despite having had the ability to do so.
When I was 17, I met a Linguistics Professor at BYU. At the time, I was taking German in high school and he asked why. I told him it was because of my heritage. I explained that my family migrated to Zurich from Germany to flee the Nazis. My aunt at one time lived in Munich and I wanted to impress her by speaking German. He said “A word of advice? Drop your German classes and learn Spanish – once you have mastered that language, learn to speak Mandarin Chinese.”
I asked him why and he told me that in the future he believed that Spanish would be the language of labor and that Chinese would be the language of future business.
Well, since then I have learned Spanish, lived in a Spanish speaking country, and now I am realizing that perhaps I should have learned Chinese when I had the chance.
I am not understanding what he was telling me; however, I do not believe that he realized that not only would Chinese be the language of business, but it would also be the language of government and e-commerce.
Analysts are saying the Chinese are looking at a window of about five years to 10 years to achieve world domination before they collapse under the weight of their own aging population.
However, what they cannot do in the real world they will do in the cyber world. It is very telling as to what their moves are with regard to the Internet of Things and quite simply they are outsmarting us at every move, from our economy to our elections.
And the media still is obsessed with Russia.
The media seems to ignore the fact that Soviet Russian communism fell with the Berlin Wall.
They obviously are forgetting to report that the biggest and soon to be the most powerful country on earth, remains unabashedly communist apart from its commitment to capitalism.
The only part missing is the democracy.
When analyzing the move of our adversaries, the media has failed to report on how the Chinese have now been able to successfully show the technocrats the most foolproof ways of using the forces of censorship to curtail freedom of expression.
The country’s government appears to have launched a new offensive, closing the social media accounts of some influential opponents.
Now keep in mind we are still talking about China; however, if you were half listening to what I was saying you would think I was talking about the United States and the efforts of tech platforms to run their operations in the same way China is running theirs.
The fact is that technocrats are very interested in implementing operations based on Chinese models and AI dependency.
With a $14 trillion GDP, China is predicted to account for over 35 percent of global economic growth from 2017 to 2019 — nearly double the US GDP’s predicted 18 percent.
And AI is responsible for a big chunk of that.
It may or may not alarm you that within 5 years, the Internet of Things may be operated by Chinese companies and regulated by Chinese technocrats.
By 2030, they will dominate the industries of AI.
Already, Chinese investments in AI, chips, and electric vehicles have reached an estimated $300 billion. Meanwhile, AI giant, Alibaba, has unveiled plans to invest $15 billion in international research labs from the US to Israel, with others following suit.
Beijing has now mobilized local government officials around AI entrepreneurship and research, led by billions in guiding funds and Venture Capital investments. And behind the scenes, a growing force of driven AI entrepreneurs trains cutting-edge algorithms on some of the largest datasets available to date.
As the tectonic plates of global politics shift, it is worth asking if we want the world to be led by a nation whose guiding principle is:
“We should not just mechanically copy the political systems of other countries. The CPC stresses the unity of Party leadership, the people running the country, and law-based governance. Party leadership is the fundamental guarantee for ensuring that the people run the country and governance in China is law-based; that the people run the country is an essential feature of socialist democracy, and law-based governance is the basic way for the Party to lead the people in governing the country. The system of people’s congresses must be upheld and improved to ensure the people’s exercise of state power.”
Or, do we want to live and defend our philosophy:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Well, call me old fashioned but life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is pretty stable and when applied can be quite palatable; however, it needs to be said that as we are failing in our educational systems and as we see the growing endorsement of communist and anarchist groups like Antifa – I worry that we are preparing for the ideological takeover of a new communism – one that has been put through the Chinese Laundry.
Perhaps China’s biggest advantage is the sheer quantity of its data. Tencent’s WeChat platform (their version of Facebook) alone has over one billion monthly active users. That’s more than the entire population of Europe. Take mobile payments spending: China outstrips the US by a ratio of 50 to 1.
Chinese e-commerce purchases are almost double US totals.
But China’s data advantage involves more than just quantity. As China witnesses an explosion of online-to-offline startups, their data is creating a new intelligence layer unparalleled in the West.
This should raise some concern.
After Facebook and Twitter have led efforts to purge what they call uncomfortable speech according to community standards – they also claim that they wish to also shut down what they deem to be “Russian agent” accounts that are said to be pushing Russian propaganda hell bent on meddling with our election process.
However, a bombshell new report states that China is using LinkedIn to attempt mass recruiting of Americans with access to government and commercial secrets.
Evanina, who heads the U.S. National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center, has further called on LinkedIn to follow the lead of other online companies: “I recently saw that Twitter is canceling, I don’t know, millions of fake accounts, and our request would be maybe LinkedIn could go ahead and be part of that.”
LinkedIn has something approaching 600 million users on its site around the globe, including about 150 million members in the US.
Meanwhile, LinkedIn has responded to the allegations of US intelligence by noting it is increasingly aware of such threats and says it’s cooperating with authorities.
It has been confirmed that Chinese intelligence did use LinkedIn to successfully recruit a retired CIA officer who is reported to have been facing financial hardship at the moment he was contacted by what he thought was a Shanghai think tank looking for fluent Mandarin speaker.
Furthermore, reports state that “the targets include experts in fields such as supercomputing, nuclear energy, nanotechnology, semiconductors, stealth technology, healthcare, hybrid grains, seeds and green energy.
Some authorities fear that this is China’s first step in conducting espionage under the cover of cyber recruitment.
According to the FBI up to 70 percent of China’s espionage efforts are aimed at the American private sector.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center in its annual report ‘Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyber says that China is the most aggressive actor in collecting The United States most sensitive economic information, trade secrets, and technologies, particularly in cyberspace.
China, according to the report, has expansive efforts in place to acquire US technology to include sensitive trade secrets and proprietary information.
It continues to use cyber espionage to support its strategic development goals—science and technology advancement, military modernization, and economic policy objectives, the report said.
The report running into more than 15 pages said that while next-generation technologies will introduce a range of qualitative advances in data storage, analytics, and computational capacity, they also present potential vulnerabilities for which the cybersecurity community remains largely unprepared.
The solidification of cloud computing over the past decade as a global information industry standard, coupled with the deployment of technologies such as artificial intelligence and internet if things, will introduce unforeseen vulnerabilities to US networks.
Today’s companies are often faced with the complex decision of whether to use public cloud resources or build and deploy their own IT infrastructures. This decision is especially difficult in an age of mounting data requirements when so many people expect limitless access and ultra-flexibility. For these reasons, cloud computing has become an increasingly popular choice for many organizations.
With 5G on the horizon, most companies now are preparing multicloud IT infrastructures.
Cloud computing does present many drawbacks that often come back to haunt users, such as skyrocketing fees, poor performance and security concerns. The decision between using a public cloud versus owning your own infrastructure is not so different than deciding between renting and a buying a home. It is a choice between controlling your own environment versus living within someone else’s domain.
Users’ security can be automatically affected by anything that happens to their cloud provider. Additionally, anyone using a public or shared cloud can experience a data breach and information loss through no real fault of their own.
Cloud networks and Internet of Things infrastructure are rapidly expanding the global online operational space, and threat actors from China have already demonstrated how the cloud can be used as a platform for cyber exploitation.
I admit that this is not reported in the mainstream narrative frame, but this is the way China can invade the United States without even firing a shot.
China will continue to be a threat to US proprietary technology and intellectual property through cyber-enabled means or other methods, the report warned that if this threat is not addressed, it could erode America’s long-term competitive economic advantage.
The Daily Caller reported that a Chinese-owned company operating in the Washington, D.C., area hacked Hillary Clinton’s private server throughout her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails.
The Chinese firm obtained Clinton’s emails in real time as she sent and received communications and documents through her personal server, according to sources at the Daily Caller, who said the hacking was conducted as part of an intelligence operation.
The Chinese wrote code that was embedded in the server, which was kept in Clinton’s residence in upstate New York. The code generated an instant “courtesy copy” for nearly all of her emails and forwarded them to the Chinese company.
The FBI released a statement saying they had “not found any evidence” of an intrusion of Clinton’s server by the Chinese.
However, the English speaking Chinese newspaper, Epoch Times, reported a week ago that the Chinese have had plenty of practice hacking into and meddling with elections of foreign countries, including the United States.
Taiwan has accused China of meddling in their elections.
China regards Taiwan, a full-fledged democracy with its own constitution and military, as a renegade province that must be united with the mainland, by military force if necessary.
In July, the website of Taiwan’s ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party, was hacked. Taiwanese investigators believe the cyber-attack came from China, according to a report by the Financial Times.
President Donald Trump indicated in an August 18 Twitter post that there could be cybersecurity threats from China.
“All of the fools that are so focused on looking only at Russia should start also looking in another direction, China,” he wrote.
Echoing Trump’s remark, National Security Adviser John Bolton expressed concerns about foreign influences, including China, on the 2018 U.S. midterm elections in November, during an interview with ABC that aired on August 19.
It needs to be courageously declared that an unbiased revelation needs to prevail in the United States and the dialogue needs to shift to discussing where we stand in the development of cyber infrastructure.
The threat to our way of life goes beyond the political trappings of taking sides on the push button offenses that are manufactured by political pundits in the media.
We are all far to busy looking under rocks for Russians agents that we are unaware of the crisis happening with our intelligence and communication structures.
If China were to take our mainframe down or shut down our communication satellites, we would certainly have to surrender to their technological expertise. It is also important to say at this juncture that when satellites go down or are offline – things are moved into positions that they don’t want us to see—scrambling or shutting down a signal could indicate that a malicious actor could make a move.
It would be something that could be considered a cyber Pearl Harbor.
Put simply, the Intelligence Community within CIA and NSA would deaf, dumb, and partially blind.
This would be a perfect scenario to carry out a final blow event.
What would you think about someone that is known as a ‘wild man’? The description has negative connotations, like we are referring to someone who behaves poorly or appears to often be out of control.
When Sarai gave her handmaid Hagar to Abram as a surrogate wife because of her own infertility- when Hagar got pregnant- Sarai quickly realized she had made a mistake.
Hagar got an attitude with her mistress, and Sarai decided to put her in her place. After the confrontation, Hagar ran away, out into the desert.
After awhile, an angel appeared and asked her what is the plan? Hagar had obviously expected better treatment in her new role, and Sarai- who hadn’t thought things through- did not agree.
The angel told Hagar to return and to try and get along. And then she was told:
Genesis 16: 11 And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.
12 And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.
There was once a fellow that played for the Houston Oilers named Carl Mauck. He would growl about the (lack) of manliness the other team had. He would get angry when they lost, and would be cocky when they won. Carl once famously quipped that he wished he could buy a tank. He would take the tank out onto the Houston freeways and ‘rollover every car with a Dallas Cowboys bumper sticker’.
Carl Mauck was a wild man.
In January 1980, after the Oilers lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship for the second year in a row, they brought the team to a packed Astrodome for an appreciation rally. Dan Pastorini thanked everyone for their support. Bum Phillips famously proclaimed ‘that next year, we’re going to kick the (door) down!”
Carl stood up, and in front of 50,000 screaming football fans, declared “That Holly-tola has got 53 Americans hostages over there. We’re going to sing God Bless America”
And then the wild man, led 50,000 football fans into a drawling, off-key, roaring tribute to the Iranian hostages.
We loved our wild man, Carl Mauck.
A wild man is not a bad man. He is passionate, impulsive, enthusiastic, unruly, emotional, unrefined, and eager. At times, reckless.
Hagar was warned. Ishmael would be a wild child. The angel told her to return and submit to Sarai. Humble yourself. Rather than have an attitude of “I’m better than you because I was able to give your man a child”- be considerate of Sarai and have empathy that she is elderly and no longer able to have children.
A wild child must be nurtured and made passionate about doing the right things. They should be eager and enthusiastic about serving God. One that impulsively becomes emotional about good things- like Carl Mauck. The way they are raised and nurtured is crucially important in a wild man- so that passion and emotion is modeled properly and encouraged by example by the nurturer.
Abram loved Ishmael, and so did the Lord. When he came to tell Abram he and Sarai would have a son, Isaac, Abram spoke up for Ishmael.
Genesis 17: 17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? 18 And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee! 19 And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.
Hagar was warned about her son. She was doing enough to get along- knowing that the old lady was never going to have a child- and knowing that she would outlive them both and all of it would be hers. Ishmael’s and hers. And she obviously instilled this sentiment into her wild child Ishmael. “It will all be ours”. Abraham was very rich.
Can you imagine the shock and disbelief when ninety-year old post-menopausal Sarah turned up pregnant? And when she had a son? He, Isaac, was now the heir. The heir gets it all. Talk about a plot-twist. Well, the heir does get it all, but of course, generous gifts and pledges can be made to other children.
Genesis 21: 8 And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. 9 And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. 10 Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.
If only Hagar had listened to the angel. If she had submitted herself to Sarah and modeled respect and harmony for her wild child, it may not have come to this. Instead of being jealous and disrespectful, Ishmael could have been excited about a new half-brother and celebrated. But, instead, it wasn’t going to work out.
11 And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son. 12 And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. 13 And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed. 14 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.
It always bothered me that rich Abraham sent them away with next to nothing- not even enough to survive long. But- Abraham had God’s promise that Ishmael would become a great nation- which means it was time to turn it over to his friend.
And God was ready to work another miracle:
15 And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. 16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow shot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept. 17 And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. 18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. 19 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. 20 And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer. 21 And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran: and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt.
Hagar and Ishmael departed Abraham’s house with nothing. This was so that they would know that Ishmael survived in the wilderness not because of inheritance from Abraham, but by the power of God. He became a great nation- a father of twelve princes- not because of the wealth and riches of Abraham, but of God. God was with the lad.
Ishmael’s descendants became the Arabs. Isaac’s became Israel. For many up to this present day- this was the start of the conflict. Ishmael was the rightful heir, they argue.
I suggest people still making this argument follow the example of the fathers they claim:
Genesis 25: 8 Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. 9 And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre;
In a poignant moment, the wild man and the miracle heir buried their father together. If there had been any animus, it was gone. God had blessed both sons of Abraham and a long co-existence was beginning for two great nations.
Proverbs 16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
How much did you contribute to the Democrats this year?
Bondo- the real deal 