Podcasts about middle eastern

//The Wire//2300Z July 27, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: WEEKEND SHOOTING REPORTED AT SEATTLE FESTIVAL. VEHICLE RAMMING ATTACK REPORTED IN BERLIN. STABBING ATTACK REPORTED IN PARIS. IRANIAN TARGETING CONTINUES TO STRIKE LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT MIDDLE EAST, U.S. HAS NOT RESPONDED YET.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Middle East: After the intense Iranian targeting of American positions Friday evening, sporadic Iranian drone strikes have been reported throughout the region. Other than targeting American positions, Iranian drone attacks have also been observed striking Kurdish militia encampments in northeastern Iraq. On the American side, CENTCOM has not disclosed any strikes within Iran for several days.Red Sea/HOA: Nearly the entire Jazan Refinery in Saudi Arabia remains on fire following the Houthi targeting on Saturday. As of last night, fire detection satellites indicated that most of the facility has been totally destroyed and satellite imagery from yesterday indicates a very large fire at this facility is still burning and the smoke plume stretches over 50 miles to the south.Europe: This morning Iran issued a public condemnation of the Ukrainian targeting of a Russian vessel. Over the weekend a Ukrainian drone struck a Russian vessel, which resulted in the death of one crew member. This crew member happened to be an Iranian citizen, which prompted Foreign Minister Araghchi to issue a statement of outrage.Analyst Comment: It is very unlikely that the Ukrainians would have known that one random crewmember onboard a vessel was technically Iranian, but intentional or not, this incident is another step towards linking the war in Europe with the conflict in the Middle East.Germany: On Sunday, a vehicle ramming attack was reported at the Pride festival in Berlin. One assailant ramming his vehicle into a crowd in the vicinity of the Tiergarden west of the Brandenburg Gate, killing one person and wounding 29 others. After the ramming, the suspect exited the vehicle and reportedly stabbed several people with a machete, before fleeing the scene. This prompted a nationwide manhunt for the assailant that was carried out Sunday afternoon. By Sunday evening, the suspect had been located in a residential area of Spandau. Once located, the suspect allegedly tried to stab the arresting officers, which resulted in the suspect being shot and killed. The suspect was identified as Abdul Ballout, who had reportedly just been released from a juvenile detention facility.France: This morning a stabbing attack was reported in Paris, near Porte de Clichy. One assailant stabbed 3x women on the street, before being restrained by bystanders and an off-duty police officer. While being held down by responding citizens, the attacker claimed that the attack was Islamic in nature, prompting the government to classify this incident as a terror attack.-HomeFront-Washington: Yesterday a shooting was reported at the Bite of Seattle food festival at the Seattle Center. Multiple black/Middle Eastern males began shooting at each other inside a crowd at the event, which resulted in 3x people killed, and 4x others wounded.Analyst Comment: This incident was initially reported as a mass shooting, however the multiple shooters were not targeting the crowd, as this was almost certainly a gang/cultural shooting. As a result of the cultural implications, Seattle Police have not released the name of the suspect(s) they have in custody, nor have they released the photo of the suspect which remains at large.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: Despite the substantial Iranian targeting over the past few days, the American response has so far been very minimal and no meaningful strikes have been conducted since Friday night within Iran. This is probably a reflection of the calm before the storm, as the United States continues to stage assets for a large scale attack sometime soon. Over the weekend, many phone calls were likely made which may have delayed whatever American targeting was planned to take place, as several Iranian/Houthi targeting efforts appear to have been more substantial than expected. The Houthi strike on the Jazan Refinery was very clearly an extremely devastating strike from the Houthis, which probably caused the Saudis pause regarding how much hurt the Houthis can bring to the table. Similarly, the heavy targeting of Erbil (and Patriot battery at this base) has likely resulted in a degradation of air defenses in this sector. How bad the damage is, is anyone's guess, but based on the scorch marks observed from space last week, it is hard to imagine this air defense site remaining operational. The Iranians have also claimed to have struck half a dozen other air defense sites throughout the region, but these can't be verified until better satellite imagery is available. Which might take time due to the deliberate censorship of imagery as mandated by the U.S. government.Over the past few weeks, anecdotal evidence from locals on the ground throughout the region has increasingly indicated fewer and fewer successful interceptions of Iranian munitions. These reports are very hard to quantify as most of the time it's a shepherd looking up and visually seeing the interceptors miss the Iranian missile, or no interceptors being launched in the first place. Obviously, these reports are about as unconfirmed as it can get, but the smoking craters that are visible on satellite imagery add a lot of credence to the general theory that, for whatever reason, interceptions are not as effective as advertised. However, as it stands the U.S. will probably respond in some way, not just because of the scale of the Iranian missile strikes, but also the fact that this targeting (and the collapse of the ceasefire) has resulted in the Strait of Hormuz remaining fully closed. What that response will be or when it will be carried out, only time will tell.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269 Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//

In this episode of A Table in the Corner, I sit down with chef Clara Bubenzer, co-owner of The Lebanese Bakery, a certified halaal bakery and deli with branches in Claremont and Cape Town's East City. Clara trained in fine dining kitchens before finding her way into Middle Eastern food through a career that took her from Cairo to Jack Black Brewing Co., before an unexpected opportunity led her to the bakery.We talk about how the business evolved from a small bakery into a deli serving shawarmas, falafel, dips and Lebanese pantry staples, and how Covid unexpectedly accelerated that transformation. Clara explains the influence of Egyptian and Lebanese cooking on the menu, the importance of sourcing the right ingredients and why products like their pita breads and shawarmas have developed such a loyal following.We also discuss kitchen culture, leadership and hospitality. Clara reflects on rejecting the aggressive brigade system she experienced early in her career in favour of building a workplace based on respect, trust and positive reinforcement. It's a conversation about food, business and creating a neighbourhood bakery people return to week after week. www.rwm2012.comOn Instagram @a_table_inthecornerCover image sketched by Courtney Cara LawsonAll profile portraits by Russel Wasserfall unless otherwise creditedTitle music: 'In Time' by Olexy via Pixabay

Just weeks after signing a memorandum of understanding on an interim deal to halt their conflict, the United States and Iran are embroiled in intense confrontation, casting a dark shadow over the region's stability and the security of global energy supplies.就在签署关于停火临时协议的谅解备忘录仅数周后，美国和伊朗便陷入激烈对抗，给地区稳定和全球能源供应安全蒙上了阴影。The current escalation is marked by a series of devastating attacks. The US has launched multiple rounds of air strikes against Iranian military sites, claiming they are necessary to "degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping" in the Strait of Hormuz. US President Donald Trump has threatened to target Iran's power stations and bridges.当前的局势升级以一系列破坏性袭击为标志。美国对伊朗军事目标发动了多轮空袭，声称这是“削弱伊朗在霍尔木兹海峡威胁商业航运能力”的必要举措。美国总统唐纳德·特朗普还威胁要攻击伊朗的发电站和桥梁。This military confrontation has effectively nullified the recently signed MoU. On Saturday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi declared that Iran has ceased fulfilling its obligations under the agreement, as Washington has violated its commitments.这场军事对抗实际上已使近期签署的谅解备忘录失效。上周六，伊朗负责法律和国际事务的副外长卡泽姆·加里巴巴迪宣布，由于华盛顿方面违反承诺，伊朗已停止履行该协议下的义务。Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei also said the US' violation of the MoU proves the US leader's signature is worthless and invalid, highlighting the profound breakdown in trust.伊朗最高领袖莫杰塔巴·哈梅内伊也表示，美国违反备忘录的行为证明美国领导人的签名毫无价值和效力，凸显了信任的彻底破裂。The diplomatic path, which offered a glimmer of hope, now appears completely blocked. Central to this conflict is the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The escalation of tensions has already led to a sharp slump in shipping through the strait, sending shock waves through global energy markets again.曾带来一线希望的外交路径如今似乎已完全堵塞。这场冲突的核心是战略要地霍尔木兹海峡。紧张局势升级已导致海峡航运量急剧下滑，再次冲击全球能源市场。The safety of this international shipping lane, vital to the global economy, must not be held hostage as a bargaining chip in this dangerous geopolitical game. Using the Strait of Hormuz as a tool for leverage is a reckless gamble with global stability. The two parties concerned should exercise restraint and de-escalate the situation.这条对全球经济至关重要的国际航运通道的安全，绝不能在这场危险的地缘政治博弈中被当作讨价还价的筹码。将霍尔木兹海峡作为施压工具，是对全球稳定的一场鲁莽赌博。有关各方应保持克制，推动局势降温。Regrettably, the MoU at the moment is effectively defunct as the basic preconditions for its implementation no longer exist. Its first article required both sides to cease fire completely and restrain their allies, forming the basis for the next phase of negotiations.遗憾的是，由于实施备忘录的基本前提已不复存在，该备忘录目前实际上已形同虚设。其第一条要求双方全面停火并约束各自盟友，为下一阶段谈判奠定基础。Not only has Israel continued to take military actions in Lebanon, but also the US and Iran have engaged in conflict again. Under the MoU, the US had previously agreed to lift the oil export embargo on Iran and unfreeze Iranian assets, but these promises have now been revoked by the US.以色列不仅继续在黎巴嫩采取军事行动，美国和伊朗也再次陷入冲突。根据备忘录，美国此前曾同意解除对伊朗的石油出口禁运并解冻伊朗资产，但这些承诺如今已被美方撤销。Much of the current situation stems from the inherent fragility of the MoU itself. The first article regarding the ceasefire was negotiated between the US and Iran without involving Israel. The reconciliation between the US and Iran has therefore always been at risk of being sabotaged by Israel.当前局势在很大程度上源于备忘录本身的固有脆弱性。关于停火的第一条是由美国和伊朗谈判达成的，并未让以色列参与。因此，美伊和解始终面临被以色列破坏的风险。Having neither sought nor signed the MoU, Israel is under no obligation to honor it — and Washington knows it. So it comes as no surprise that US Vice-President JD Vance has criticized Israel for resorting to a range of tactics, including lobbying to shape public perceptions in the US, all aimed at prolonging the US' conflict with Iran.以色列既未谋求也未签署该备忘录，因此没有义务遵守其规定——华盛顿对此心知肚明。因此，美国副总统JD·万斯批评以色列采取包括游说以塑造美国公众舆论在内的各种手段，旨在延长美国与伊朗的冲突，也就不足为奇了。Nor does the MoU offer any clarity on the Strait of Hormuz — its provisions are so loosely drawn that each side can claim victory. Iran asserts the document affirms its control; the US insists it means no such thing. The gap between their readings is not a misunderstanding — it has been a crisis waiting to happen.备忘录对霍尔木兹海峡问题也未作出明确规定——其条款措辞如此含糊，以至于双方都可以宣称胜利。伊朗声称该文件确认了其控制权；美国则坚称绝非如此。双方解读的差距并非误解，而是一场注定要发生的危机。The prevailing trajectory of retaliation serves the interests of no party, except those whose strategic calculations depend on the perpetuation of hostilities. Washington may think that military force can coerce Iran into submission. But that belief was proved wrong soon after the conflict started on Feb 28. Each round of US attacks on Iran, aimed at appeasing hard-liners at home, only escalates the cycle of violence rather than resolving it, and deepens US entanglement in the Middle Eastern quagmire.当前的报复性螺旋对任何一方都没有好处，除了那些战略算计依赖于敌对状态持续的力量。华盛顿或许认为武力可以迫使伊朗屈服。但这一信念在2月28日冲突开始后不久就被证明是错误的。美国对伊朗的每一轮攻击，虽旨在安抚国内强硬派，却只会加剧暴力循环而非解决问题，并使美国更深地陷入中东泥潭。A return to the negotiating table is the only viable solution. The MoU was a hard-won achievement that should be cherished and protected. China, along with other nations such as Pakistan, has called on both parties to immediately cease hostilities, overcome difficulties and restart dialogue to reach a comprehensive peace agreement.重返谈判桌是唯一可行的解决方案。这份备忘录是来之不易的成果，应当珍惜和维护。中国与巴基斯坦等国一道，呼吁双方立即停止敌对行动，克服困难，重启对话，达成全面和平协议。The longer this conflict course is pursued, the more it chips away at the already-frail trust that emerged from those first talks. And as that trust crumbles, so too does any hope of a graceful way out. The US and Iran must prioritize regional peace and the security of critical shipping waterways, return to the spirit of the MoU, and prove that their signatures are still credible.冲突持续越久，最初谈判中已十分脆弱的信任就越被侵蚀。随着信任瓦解，任何体面退出的希望也随之消散。美国和伊朗必须将地区和平与重要航运通道安全置于首位，回归备忘录的精神，证明他们的签名仍然可信。unfreeze assets /ʌnˈfriːz ˈæsets/解冻资产revoked /rɪˈvəʊkt/撤销inherent fragility /ɪnˈherənt frəˈdʒɪləti/固有脆弱性reconciliation /ˌrekənsɪliˈeɪʃən/和解loosely drawn /ˈluːsli drɔːn/措辞含糊的trajectory of retaliation /trəˈdʒektəri əv rɪˌtæliˈeɪʃən/报复性螺旋coerce /kəʊˈɜːs/胁迫

In this episode of BizNews Daybreak, political commentator Solly Moeng examines South Africa's deepening criminal justice crisis. On the global stage, President Trump demands harsher Iran sanctions as Middle Eastern oil routes shift. Meanwhile, Chinese tech startups Moonshot AI and DeepSeek prepare for massive IPOs, investors confront AI energy bottlenecks, Netflix pivots to live content to win screen time, and Andy Burnham prepares for Downing Street.

Former CIA Targeting Officer Sarah Adams reveals what she believes are some of the biggest national security threats facing the United States today, and why many Americans may have a false sense of security about the future.In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Sarah explains why the U.S. could be more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than many realize, whether the U.S. is currently facing an active terrorist threat, and how the same types of intelligence disconnects that contributed to 9/11 could still exist today. She breaks down why we need to rethink what a future homeland attack might actually look like, how terrorist organizations are evolving, and why groups like Al Qaeda may be more widespread than ever.Sarah shares shocking insights into sleeper cells operating within the U.S., foreign actors intentionally fueling political division to increase influence, the strategic relationship between Al Qaeda, Iran, and Syria, and why many terrorist groups are now organized around waves of coordinated attacks.She also discusses emerging security concerns, including airport vulnerabilities, the return of threats similar to the Shoe Bomb and the rise of "invisible" bombs, and what she believes went wrong from a security standpoint during the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting incident.Drawing from years spent targeting some of the world's most dangerous terrorists, Sarah recounts how she helped capture the Taliban's number two leader, the intelligence work that made it possible, and what qualities allowed her to gather critical information in some of the most hostile environments on Earth.We also explore intelligence deception campaigns, how disinformation operations work, and the warning signs people should recognize when evaluating information online.Sarah reveals what it was like to interrogate Middle Eastern male detainees as a Western woman, how individuals become radicalized, and the indoctrination systems inside terrorist camps that determine whether recruits become fighters, suicide bombers, propagandists, or support personnel.She explains how corruption within humanitarian systems can allow resources to be diverted toward terrorist organizations and how ordinary people may unknowingly contribute to funding foreign terrorist camps.We also break downHavana Syndrome, alleged energy weapon incidents, reports involving an investigator connected to the Epstein case, and what is currently known (and still unknown) about these controversial claims.Sarah also discusses the role of social media algorithms in radicalization, whether platforms like TikTok are shaping the opinions of younger generations, and the broader information war being fought online.She opens up about living under a bounty, receiving threats from terrorist organizations, dealing with alleged surveillance around her home, and how she manages the psychological stress that comes with being a target. She shares practical advice on disaster preparedness, what average citizens can do to become more resilient during crises, and why the culture of terrorism has far more to do with ideology, power, and human behavior than religion itself.This conversation will challenge the way you think about terrorism, national security, online influence, and the risks that could define the next decade!Sarah Adam's Podcast, The Watch Floor: https://www.youtube.com/@thewatchfloorSarah Adams' Book, Benghazi, Know Thy Enemy: A Cold Case Investigation: https://a.co/d/09aeb3tGFollow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Former CIA Targeting Officer Sarah Adams reveals what she believes are some of the biggest national security threats facing the United States today, and why many Americans may have a false sense of security about the future.In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Sarah explains why the U.S. could be more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than many realize, whether the U.S. is currently facing an active terrorist threat, and how the same types of intelligence disconnects that contributed to 9/11 could still exist today. She breaks down why we need to rethink what a future homeland attack might actually look like, how terrorist organizations are evolving, and why groups like Al Qaeda may be more widespread than ever.Sarah shares shocking insights into sleeper cells operating within the U.S., foreign actors intentionally fueling political division to increase influence, the strategic relationship between Al Qaeda, Iran, and Syria, and why many terrorist groups are now organized around waves of coordinated attacks.She also discusses emerging security concerns, including airport vulnerabilities, the return of threats similar to the Shoe Bomb and the rise of "invisible" bombs, and what she believes went wrong from a security standpoint during the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting incident.Drawing from years spent targeting some of the world's most dangerous terrorists, Sarah recounts how she helped capture the Taliban's number two leader, the intelligence work that made it possible, and what qualities allowed her to gather critical information in some of the most hostile environments on Earth.We also explore intelligence deception campaigns, how disinformation operations work, and the warning signs people should recognize when evaluating information online.Sarah reveals what it was like to interrogate Middle Eastern male detainees as a Western woman, how individuals become radicalized, and the indoctrination systems inside terrorist camps that determine whether recruits become fighters, suicide bombers, propagandists, or support personnel.She explains how corruption within humanitarian systems can allow resources to be diverted toward terrorist organizations and how ordinary people may unknowingly contribute to funding foreign terrorist camps.We also break downHavana Syndrome, alleged energy weapon incidents, reports involving an investigator connected to the Epstein case, and what is currently known (and still unknown) about these controversial claims.Sarah also discusses the role of social media algorithms in radicalization, whether platforms like TikTok are shaping the opinions of younger generations, and the broader information war being fought online.She opens up about living under a bounty, receiving threats from terrorist organizations, dealing with alleged surveillance around her home, and how she manages the psychological stress that comes with being a target. She shares practical advice on disaster preparedness, what average citizens can do to become more resilient during crises, and why the culture of terrorism has far more to do with ideology, power, and human behavior than religion itself.This conversation will challenge the way you think about terrorism, national security, online influence, and the risks that could define the next decade!Every self-made person started somewhere. Yours starts free at https://www.shopify.com/breakdown.Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BREAK at https://www.oneskin.co/BREAK #oneskinpodGo to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive 20% off sitewide, 25% of Luxe Mattresses and 30% off Elite Mattresses.Get the Discounted Early Bird registration to the IANDS Annual conference before the sale ends July 15. Visit https://conference.iands.orgMake your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to https://www.quince.com/breakdown for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.Sarah Adam's Podcast, The Watch Floor: https://www.youtube.com/@thewatchfloorSarah Adams' Book, Benghazi, Know Thy Enemy: A Cold Case Investigation: https://a.co/d/09aeb3tGFollow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb bring their extended series on the parables of Matthew to a powerful climax with the passage most listeners have been waiting for: the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31–46). Far from a checklist of works required for salvation, this text is unpacked as the master parable of Christ's entire parabolic ministry — a sovereign declaration of divine election, not a merit-based audit of individual performance. Tony and Jesse explore why this passage has been chronically misread as a call to works righteousness, why the language of inheritance and predestination is front and center, and how a Reformed reading liberates rather than burdens the conscience. Along the way, they weigh in on Herman Bavinck's prescient warning about media distraction, and Jesse recommends a Puritan gem on anxiety worth picking up immediately. Key Takeaways The Sheep and Goats is best understood as a parable, or at minimum parable-adjacent. The Greek construction in verse 31 mirrors the same comparative language Christ uses throughout his parabolic ministry, placing this text firmly within that tradition rather than outside it. The kingdom was prepared before any works were done — this is election language. The phrase "inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (v. 34) is not a reward for performance; it is the language of sovereign predestination preceding all human action. The works of the sheep are diagnostic, not causative. What the righteous did reveals who they already were — sheep — rather than being the mechanism by which they became sheep. The beak doesn't make the bird. Both groups are surprised, and that surprise is the parabolic punchline. Neither the sheep nor the goats anticipated the verdict they received, which undermines any reading that frames this text as an encouragement to accumulate saving merit. This passage is a recapitulation of the wheat and tares parable. Sheep and goats co-mingled until the moment of final separation, just as wheat and tares grow together until the harvest — the judgment reveals what was always true. Any theology that requires a human contribution to activate or complete salvation misreads this text.Whether Roman Catholic, Arminian, or Mormon in flavor, every view that makes God's preparation of the kingdom contingent on foreseen human merit fundamentally inverts the logic of the passage. The scope of judgment — "all nations" (ta ethnos) — would have been scandalous to first-century Jewish ears. This language deliberately expands the kingdom beyond ethnic Israel, fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant promise and confounding the assumptions of the religious elite. Key Concepts The Kingdom Prepared Before Your Works: Sovereign Election, Not Merit When the King says to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matthew 25:34), the theological weight of that single sentence is staggering. The kingdom was not prepared in response to anything the sheep did. It was prepared before time, before works, before choice — which means the works that follow in the passage cannot be the grounds of that inheritance. Only a Calvinistic understanding of election can sustain this logic without remainder. Arminian views require God to foresee a qualifying human response; Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views require some degree of meritorious participation; even certain Lutheran frameworks lean on non-resistance to grace. Reformed theology alone places the entire cause within God's sovereign, unconditional decree — and this passage, read plainly, says exactly that. Works as Evidence, Not Ground: The Diagnostic Function of This Parable The great pastoral error in preaching this passage is treating it as a performance rubric — a list of charitable acts that, if completed, qualify a person for eternal life. But Christ does not separate the sheep from the goats because of what they did or failed to do. He separates them, and then describes the activity that characterized each group. The works are revelatory. They surface what was already true of each person's nature, just as a bird's beak reveals its species rather than constituting it. This reframing is liberating precisely because it means assurance does not rest on tallying acts of charity. It rests on the sovereign act of a Father who prepared a kingdom and the regenerating work of the Spirit who produces, in those He has claimed, a life that looks like the one described here. "All Nations": The Scandal of an Ethnically Inclusive Kingdom The Greek phrase ta ethnē — translated "all nations" in most English Bibles — would have landed very differently on first-century Jewish ears, particularly those of the Pharisees and Sadducees who comprised a significant portion of Christ's audience throughout Matthew 24–25. To them, ta ethnē meant the Gentiles, the peoples out there, those outside the covenant. The implicit effect of Christ's language is to place every people group — including Israel — within a single undifferentiated mass standing before his throne, with no ethnic group receiving preferential standing at the bar of judgment. This is entirely consistent with the Abrahamic promise of blessing to all families of the earth (Genesis 12:3), the vision of Psalm 2, and the missionary thrust of the Great Commission. The scandal is not incidental — it is the point. The kingdom Christ is ushering in is not the ethnic-nationalist kingdom the religious establishment expected. Memorable Quotes The kingdom of heaven was prepared for those whom Christ has elected before the foundation of the world, and it was the preparation of that kingdom that brought you through this such that you did the good works that you did... That is caused by the fact that God prepared a kingdom for you in advance, not that you somehow caused this kingdom to be prepared for you. - Tony It's not the beak that makes it the sparrow, it's the sparrow that makes it the kind of beak it is. That's the kind of classification we're talking about in this parable. - Tony The best freedom is the one that turns over all things to God and takes him at his word when he says, 'In love you were predestined to inherit this as sons and daughters of the kingdom,' so that he does all the work, because we do not want to have any of that work our own. - Jesse Full Transcript [00:01:11] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 498 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse  [00:01:19] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony, and this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey, brother.  [00:01:24] Jesse Schwamb: Hey, brother. They said it couldn't be done. They said we couldn't come back. We wouldn't come back and continue in Matthew 25. But here we are, and we're ending this chapter in this whole section about sheep and goats. Everybody was clamoring for it. Everybody wanted to know, what about the sheep and the goats? And I think the last time we all chatted together, we prefaced it by saying it's parable adjacent. Or let's just say- Yes ... we just stacked up these three other parables, lots of things going on, and then Jesus resolves this or brings all these parables to a culmination by speaking about the end times, the end of all things, and the sheep and the goats. Yeah. And so we gotta go there  [00:02:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, I'm stoked.  [00:02:07] What Counts Parable [00:02:07] Tony Arsenal: And y- you know, I, I was talking with a brother at, um, at church yesterday on the Lord's day, and he was asking how the podcast's going and what we're doing. And, you know, I was kind of thinking, like, I was talking about the parables and how we're kind of moving forward, and we were gonna do some of the I am sayings in John. And, and I was thinking, like, what is a parable anyways? And who decides what a parable is and what a parable isn't? Right. Um, some of the parables Christ calls a parable, others he doesn't. Uh, we'll probably talk a little bit about that when we get to, uh, some of the back half of Luke. But this, this episode I think is gonna be really, really the payoff and really the culmination of not just these, like, this trio of or trilogy of parables that we've talked about, but I think really, like, the payout of all of the parables in Matthew. It's really, like, the summary of all of Christ's parabolic teachings. So it's, it's a good place for us to round out Matthew, and then we'll, we'll dip into the parables in the other gospels, probably have a couple more months of, of, uh, parable talk before we move on to the next thing. But, uh, it's been great, and I'm super, super stoked for this. This is one of my favorite passages, actually, and there's so much to dig into. I, I, I'm just gonna say now, we probably won't make it through the whole thing- Right ... uh, because there's a lot there. But we'll see. We'll see how we do. Maybe Jesse and I will be super efficient tonight, uh, but we usually aren't, so. [00:03:27] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's never happened. We, we take it low and slow. Not only that- ... it was reminding me as you spoke about that kind of proverb generally of if you wanna go build a wall, you assess what you need, how many stones, and then you go gather those stones. Yeah. You should double it, or if you're gonna go out and fight an army, take stock of that army. That's basically what we do, but in reverse. Anytime, like, you just... I just heard you say- ... like, "It'll probably take us a couple more months," you should double that. That's probably how long- Yeah ... it's actually gonna take us.  [00:03:50] Faith Works Assurance [00:03:50] Jesse Schwamb: Even in this- Yeah ... conversation, I think we're gonna get stuck in the best way possible speaking about things like faith, works, and assurance because there's a lot of language here- Yeah that could seem on the surface to sit in this tension with justification by faith alone. And I think the key to resolving all that tension, as I hopefully think we'll see, lies in the readings of works as the evidence of living faith rather than its ground, and I think that's what- Yes ... Christ is leading us through all of these parables, actually, whether it goes back. And you should listen to all those episodes. In fact, I gotta ask. Th- I mean, this brother you were talking to, it just strikes me as that question had already be answered for him if you were listening to the podcast. So-  [00:04:29] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, I don't think he does. No, I don't think he does- ... listen to the podcast. Uh, he knows that I do the podcast, and he's very gracious to ask me about it. Tom. And I think he's probably listened to the podcast before. Got it. Um, and he's, he's just a very kind, gracious brother who, who is concerned and wants to know what I'm doing. And, um, he has, he has his own sort of, like, production stuff that he does that he enjoys that I'm, I'm not super keyed into. But, uh, it was just nice. But, but it did get me thinking, like, I was trying to explain to him where we were in the progress of the parables, and I was like, "I can't really... I don't really know," because, like, it's hard to even understand and fully... There's no, like, full comprehensive universal list of what is a parable- Right ... and what's not. And I think what we've found as we've been going through this is sometimes, sometimes you come up against a portion of a text that is often taught sort of separate from the, the rest of it. Parables get taught discreet from other parables. But then you have these sort of, like, intervening texts, or this one's kind of a summary text, that's so integrated to what the parable means you really can't do a series on these parables without also treating this text. Which is gonna be interesting, 'cause I've never, I've never encountered somebody who really roots this teaching here of Christ in the context of the parables, despite its proximity. So it'll be fun. We're gonna figure it out in real time, and, and it'll be good.  [00:05:47] Jesse Schwamb: No, it's gonna be fun.  [00:05:48] Deny Doomscrolling Bavinck [00:05:48] Jesse Schwamb: And speaking of fun, we're so glad that you're listening, and we know that you're waiting with bated breath to hear about affirmations or denials. It's of course that part of the conversation where we either affirm with something that we think is fantastic, maybe by way of recommendation, or conversely, we deny against something that isn't that great. So Tony, as is our custom in the liturgy of the Reformed Brotherhood podcast, I ask you once again, are you affirming with or deny against? [00:06:15] Tony Arsenal: I am denying against something, and I'm gonna do that by affirming a Herman Bavinck quote. Uh, so I'm gonna read it for you. This, uh... Some of the guys in the Facebook group have put... or the Facebook group, the Telegram chat, have put together a, uh, like, a reading group to work through Bavinck's, uh, Wonderful Works of God, which is great, and I'm loving it. I haven't been able to participate in the conversation as much as I would like to, but just being part of a reading group, uh, sort of keeps you on schedule, which is great. So I've been reading through Wonderful Works of God, and on the Kindle edition, on page 34, uh, which I think is still the, I think is still the, uh, introduction, he says, quote, "The reading of daily and weekly newspapers, of magazines and brochures, devours our every blink. There's a lack of desire and opportunity for the investigation of scripture and the study of old theological works," end quote. And when I read that, it just really struck me as like- If that was true like 70 years ago, 80 years ago when Bavinck was writing this, right? And all there was was hard, hard copy media. There was no, uh, there was no digital media. There was radio, but there wasn't a lot of programming. Uh, I don't think that there was much in the way of television broadcasting. If there was, it was, it was very, very limited and very rudimentary. Um, even then he was saying the daily news cycle and all of this extra stuff that is out there is consuming our, quote, "Every blink," which I thought was a really interesting phrase. Um, it's basically like it's so ingrained in us, we're so invested and obsessed with the news cycle. Uh, or you might translate that to like to our Twitter feed or our Facebook feed or our Instagram reels or whatever it might be, and dare I say it, the podcasts we listen to.  [00:08:05] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:08:05] Tony Arsenal: Um, that we don't save time for scripture and other theological works. And I think it's funny too is that the, the eternal, uh, the eternal contemporary statement of the Reformed world is like we don't read enough old theological works. Even Bavinck, who I'm reading as one of the old... I mean, not like super old, but like one of the old theological works, is saying, "Hey, we don't read enough old theological works." So I'm denying this sort of like obsession we have with the daily news cycle and with constantly being up to date and like constantly consuming all of that. Um, we've talked about how like our modern global news cycle sort of, uh, is built around the deception that we can be sort of pseudo omnipotent and know all things about everything. And, um- There's a lot of work that's been done to show that, like, the world's not really that much, not that much more of a violent place than it was 100 years ago. We just know a lot more about what's going on- Right ... in other parts of the world. And there's pros and cons to that. But I think the main con is, like, we, we feel suddenly that we have to be, you know, deeply involved in the goings on of a church on the other side of the country that we never would've even known existed otherwise. It- there's just a, there's a sense of omnipotence and omnipresence that's just not becoming for the creature that I think we try to take on. So Bavinck knew it. Uh, we've talked about it. Lots and lots of people have talked about it. This isn't new. I'm not, I'm not e- engineering anything new on this. But that quote really struck me when I was reading. I was like, "Dang, man, he, he got it right 100 years ago or, or 80 years ago, and we're still struggling with it." And I think probably, like, if you go back and you look at the, I don't know, more occasional writings of people like Martin Luther and John Calvin, um, as they're interacting with, like, people in the Reformed community or the Protestant community, I bet you would find statements like this too about how, like, we really spend a lot of time reading, like, silly things and not spending- Right our time studying the scripture or studying, um, theological works. So that's my denial. I'm sticking to it, and if that means you feel like you need to turn this podcast off and go read some John Calvin or some Herman Bavinck, then by all means. Uh, I think you're probably going to be edified by what we have to talk about. But, uh, th- the Bible's better, so if you gotta go do it, if you only got- That's true ... an hour today to study scripture or listen to this podcast, please go study scripture. Yeah. Uh, hopefully we can do a little bit of both with this podcast. But Herman Bavinck said it best. Our every blink is consumed with pamphlets and newspapers and it just is- It's true it's pretty silly.  [00:10:41] Jesse Schwamb: It's true.  [00:10:42] Meme Detour Reading Groups [00:10:42] Jesse Schwamb: I gotta take us all the way back to where you started there, and I'm going to betray, to nobody's surprise, my really strong naivete when it comes- ... to social media, and memes in particular. But this is what occurred to me, and I'm gonna try it. This is, like, what classically makes really good podcasting. Let me try to describe a meme to you that I'm not even sure I actually understand or know. So this will be great. I think, you tell me, Tony, 'cause you may have seen this. It's an old meme too, so I'm not even, like, on the cutting edge here. I think it's a meme of two panels showing, like, two pictures of Drake. In know one he's kinda, like, pushing away as if to say, like, "Get that outta here," and the other one's like, "Oh yeah, that's the stuff." Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Is that accurate?  [00:11:21] Tony Arsenal: I do. I think you're gonna use it wrong, but yeah.  [00:11:23] Jesse Schwamb: Is that Drake? Okay, all  [00:11:24] Tony Arsenal: right. Yeah, that's, that's the meme.  [00:11:25] Jesse Schwamb: Okay, okay. And usually, if I understand it correctly, it's kind of like a faux juxtaposition of two things, right? Like, okay. So like here, let me try it. Uh, uh, let me just try it on everybody. Here we go. I'm gonna describe to you how I just interpret this based on what you said, 'cause something cracked me up that you said, Tony. If I were gonna make this meme just based on how you opened that up, the first panel would be like Drake pushing away the idea or being like, "That's no good," book club. The second one would be reading group, as in like, like the reading group is like the new cool way of like just kind of... Did I use it properly? Am I close?  [00:11:59] Tony Arsenal: I think the problem with this is that there's like a, there's like an ironic way to use it, and then there's like a more direct way to use it. Mm. Yeah. The direct way would be like some- like Drake's pushing away something that's bad, and he's- Yeah ... like accepting something that's good. That'd be like the direct way. Yes. The more ironic one is where like Drake is pushing away something that's actually pretty, actually pretty good, and he's- Yeah ... accepting the one that's pretty silly. Oh, okay. Um, there's a lot of memes that have that basic format. Never mind. There's one with like Jordi LaForge. I think there's a Michael Scott one. I tried. I tried. But yeah, no, I, I think yours is valid, it's just, I think it's an older usage of the meme. That's like the, that's like the middle English version of that meme. The Shakespearean use of that meme.  [00:12:36] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. I'll take that. It's the old English style. I love a good book club or a reading group. A, a reading group just, it does have that sound like maybe somebody in the group has a monocle, or you guys have tea. Either way- Yeah ... I absolutely love it. And yes, what are our beautiful quotes. You kind of hear that general conception recapitulated among like theologians almost in every era. But it does make you think, what would Bavinck say about, like doom scrolling on the smartphone? Like- Yeah ... he's beside himself, right? It would just be beside himself. So I'm with you. I, it, there's gonna be a condemnation in every generation. Maybe I say this with some degree of like chronological snobbery, especially in ours, when it comes to not, like you said, I think kind of like not carving out or not prioritizing time in the scriptures. Yeah. There's not gonna be any excuse of like, "Well, I just didn't have time." Right. Or, "There were too many things to read." It's just, it's not gonna cut it. So I'm with you. I think you and I have talked about this at length, even just like the news media like you and I consume, like just s- set aside social media for a second. Just like how i- how much value is there in a lot of like what we cons- used to consider to be like well-informed reporting? How valuable is that to us? Yeah. And I'm certainly not saying like that everybody should be like unconcerned and uninterested in the world, but I think it's to what degree and what fascination we have with that, and how it fits into our priority as we consume information each day. That's the thing that's tricky, and there's no really-  [00:14:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah ...  [00:14:02] Jesse Schwamb: good answer except to weigh out with the spiritual discernment- Yeah ... how we ought to consume that stuff. But certainly I think, without question, we need to be prioritizing time in prayer, time in the scriptures. I imagine if we were all doing that with a great deal of attention, that all of the other things would kind of find their way into the right place. Or let's say they would just find their way out of our lives in a significant way- Yeah ... that would remove us from distraction and anxiety, instead bring us back into the providence of God.  [00:14:31] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not gonna be the guy that tells you you can never s- you can never scroll Instagram or TikTok or whatever. Um, I, I think that's a decision that's between you and the Holy Spirit as far as how you spend your time. But I, I do think, um, I think you're right- We are accountable for the decisions we make and how- Right ... we choose to divide up our time. And I- God, I mean, God is the inventor of fun. He's the inventor of leisure, and he is, uh, I think he's pleased and honored when we, we make good use of our time f- for things that are restful and rejuvenating. Um, he doesn't expect us to just slavishly read scripture all day, every day, like every minute. That's not, that's not the biblical expectation. Um, and so I think it's fine if you wanna sit down and watch a fun show, or if you wanna watch some YouTube videos, or listen to a silly podcast, or listen to a serious podcast. Um, but I do, I agree. Like, we, we really need to be thoughtful. And I think where, where Bavinck's quote, uh, is strong is it's not so much about, "Don't read these things." Right. He, he's talking about these things consume our every blink. Like, m- he's treating blink... He's using the word blink as sort of a fill-in for like our, our finite resource of time and attention, and these things have consumed all of them. There's a very strong use of that word consume. Uh, and I, I think that's really the, the point that I'm trying to make is we often allow, either intentionally or unintentionally, we, we just let our time get all sucked up, uh, on things that maybe are good but are not pr- properly proportioned. Um- Like I said, it's, it's fine to spend some time on Twitter and to get into a debate once in a while, or to check in on your friends on Facebook, your old high school, college buddies or whatever, but we can definitely take it too far. So I think it's a good corrective for all of us to at least make a stop and think about how we're spending our time, and whether we are affording the appropriate amount of time to things like scripture, theological study, catechesis of our children, um, family worship, all of those good things. So we don't have to go much more into that. I think the point has been made. Uh, so Jesse, what are you affirming and/or denying tonight?  [00:16:43] Affirm Puritan Anxiety Cure [00:16:43] Jesse Schwamb: Perfect segue, because speaking of reading old things, you know me, I've always got some kind of Puritan work in the rotation, and the one I just finished is the one I'm affirming, which is called Special Providence for Anxious Souls by Obadiah Sedgwick, who I think is kinda... Like, people are sleeping on Sedgwick, you know? Mm-hmm. He's, he's kinda like, he's there in the wings, but we need to take him off the bench. And I came across this book and I thought, "Who doesn't want a title like that in their lives?" Like, we got some anxiety in all of our souls. And I'm affirming this because, uh, hi- his definitions, his writing is, are on point. But here's what I thought. I was embarrassed that I picked this up expecting one thing, and then in typical puritanical fashion, was delivered something else that was far better. And I was thinking about this title as you might see it, like, in your modern bookstore today, whether it's, like, in Barnes & Nobles or at any of the periodicals we were just kind of mentioning or implying that are out there. And I was expecting to get some kind of, I don't know, six or seven things, I mean, that's Puritan style, but six or seven things that would really help you diagnose the psychology, and then going back to the scripture in ways, all, all the ways we'd expect about how God loves us and cares for us, and all those things are true. And yet the only way I could describe how this book ministered to me is, like, how you might go to a physical therapist for some kind of ailment, which I have many as I get older, and have recently been to one. And the ailment I had was, um, basically like tarsal tunnel, which is like carpal tunnel for your foot. And so there was some nerves that were inflamed and causing some pain and some weirdness in my feet. And here's what I do know about physical therapy now that I think the Puritans also do for our souls, and that is the physical therapist gave me this full workup. They prodded me and poked me and rubbed things and made things hurt- And in the course of doing that, they clearly could figure out what was wrong with my foot. And so when he gave me the diagnosis, after, again, rubbing that part and, like, doing one of those things where he's like, you know, they tap on your hard and they're like, "Does that hurt?" I'm like, "Yes, it does hurt." And I presume that's because you know anatomy. And, you know, he's, he's ta- tapping on my ankle and it's causing my foot underneath to hurt. And after all that, you know, I run on a treadmill. He d- takes all this video, and this is what he says to me. He goes, "Yeah, so this is actually pretty straightforward." And I was like, "Great, so what are we talking about? Like exercises, uh, splints, like massage?" He's like, "You have a weak butt." And I was like- "I'm sorry, let's talk about that for a second." And this is what I've learned about physical therapy, is it's rarely about the thing that's actually bothering you or the thing that's hurt, right? It's something- Yeah ... far different. It's something almost seemingly, like, disjointed or removed or divorced from the very thing, maybe even non-contiguous, if only in our minds, maybe even logically. And so what I love about this is the first half of the book is just speaking about the province of God before it even gets into this idea of anxiety. And then the treatment on anxiety and worry is, he goes through, like, six or seven things in particular, are just absolutely glorious. So good that I want you to read it. I don't even want to talk about it. Uh, that, that's my admonishment to you, is that you should just go pick it up. So I'm affirming again that the Puritans in particular do this thing where there's, there's no cheap advice here. It's not even hide advice. It's really good advice, but it's the kind that says, "You have a weak butt" when you're concerned that your ankle- is messed up. Yeah. And that's sometimes what you need to hear. And in my case, after... Let's make this super weirdly spiritual. After doing a bunch of squats, I don't know what the spiritual equivalent is of that. After doing a bunch of squats, my ankle and my foot was so much better. And it, because I had somebody who cared enough for me to go through and actually diagnose the root of it, that was the reason that inevitably there was healing. So I've, this has given me so much to think about, this tiny little treatise. So much to put into practice. It's so rich, so good, so practical, and yet I think you'll find in many ways joyfully unexpected. So I highly affirm to everybody listening, and even those who aren't, Special Providence for Anxious Souls, Obadiah Sedgwick. You'll, you'll love it  [00:20:49] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:20:49] Physical Therapy Spiritual Practice [00:20:49] Tony Arsenal: So two thoughts. Uh, one, uh, I can confirm Jesse has a weak butt, um, flat as a board. So it's probably, probably better after, after doing some squats. Wow. Uh, two- Wow. ... uh, I can say I also am in some physical therapy right now, and I've been a little bit of a slacker. And what I will contribute to the conversation is just like in physical therapy, they can give you all of the exercises- Yeah uh, that you want. If you don't do the work, you're not going to get better. Yeah. And so whether it's Jesse doing squats or me not finding time to stretch and to do some, like, arm exercises with a, with a s- uh, like a TheraBand, uh, the same holds true. And, and maybe to unify our, uh, affir- our denials/affirmations into one mega, mega recommendation, um, the same holds true in that, one, we can take a book like this from, uh, Sedgwick, and we can turn it into the same thing we do with media where we're just... it's just devouring our blinks. Right. And we're just using it as a way to sort of, like, feed our eye hole Get better. You won't improve. Um, and that's actually the same with scripture. Like y-you can- Right ... turn scripture into, uh, into a snack food that you, you don't actually use to be nutritious. Um, I think there's probably more benefit to reading scripture sort of rote and, and almost mechanically than there is to reading anything else. But, um, but at the end of the day, you can also consume your blinks with scripture and not get a lot out of it if all you're doing is passing your eyes over text. So get in there. I think that's great. I haven't read that one. I mean, I think there's... I think there are probably many, I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are many, many Puritan treaties that- treatises that are similar in theme and tone and have the same kind of like spiritual antidote or spiritual medicine, um, prescribed by these guys that is good and wholesome. And again, like, like you're saying, like it's not that complicated. It's not that hard. Right. It just takes- Right ... you just actually have to do the work. Um, it's funny, my physical therapy thing is my, my shoulder has been really ba- really messed up, and I went in, I expected him to give me all these, all these shoulder exercises, and he's like, "Uh Really what you need to do is you fix your neck, uh, 'cause your shoulder is, is being in- injured because you're sleeping- Okay on that side because you're trying to stay off the other side. So, like, you really gotta fix your neck so you can sleep on the other side of your body. And I was like, "So I'm just, like, sleeping wrong?" Like, it's funny, there's a joke, it's like in your 20s you can do anything you want, in your 30s, like, you gotta be a little bit careful, and in your 40s, like, you hurt yourself just sleeping. Right. Just getting out of bed is dangerous.  [00:23:46] Jesse Schwamb: It's  [00:23:46] Tony Arsenal: true.  [00:23:47] Jesse Schwamb: It's true. So. It's a tough world. But  [00:23:48] Tony Arsenal: it's true. I feel like a really old man saying that.  [00:23:51] Read Matthew 25 Aloud [00:23:51] Jesse Schwamb: You know, it strikes me that you're right, of course, that there's so much here we always have to put into practice. There's so much here that we have to trust with God. There's a faith that works. And so I think actually that is the most lovely inroad into this final passage of Matthew, because there's a lot here for us to talk about with all of those things, and to understand it in this proper context. So as you've already set us up, Tony, the best part of our podcast is the scripture, for sure, 100%. So let's go there. So we're in Matthew 25 in case you're just joining us. And for some reason I went into, like, a full radio mode, as if this, like, this is being broadcast live, and you just came into the program. We're in Matthew 25, uh, starting in verse 31, and I'm gonna read until the end of the chapter. There's so much here that of course we're not gonna get to all of it, but in the spirit of literally having the full context of the scripture in front of us, and to hear it all, I think it's important. It w- b- better yet, you should go back and read the entire chapter and then tune in right now. But let me start at verse 31. "But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in, naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me.  [00:25:32] Judgment Scene Read [00:25:32] Jesse Schwamb: I was in prison, and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? And when did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?" And the King will answer and say to them, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me." Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angers-- angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me." Then they will themselves also answer saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?" Then he will answer them saying, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life  [00:26:47] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:26:49] Parable Not Fear [00:26:49] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, it's, it's, um, it's a sobering passage. And just as I think we've seen in a lot of the other parables, um These eschatological parables and these eschatological sayings of Christ, uh, as you kind of alluded to earlier, I, I think they are really, really, um... They are not prone to being misinterpreted. Right. The church has been prone to misinterpreting and misapplying these, um, in a, in a way that's used to make, make the Christian fearful and to, uh, undermine their assurance rather than to call them to action or to accountability.  [00:27:33] Why It's A Parable [00:27:33] Tony Arsenal: Um, and I think a- as I've been reading through this and I've been sort of glancing at the Greek as we're reading, I actually think I'm on... I, I stumbled on much more better ground to treat this as a parable than I even originally thought I did. You know, I, I had this whole lead-up that this isn't technically a parable, but when you read here, when it says, in verse 31, it says, "When the Son of Man comes in glory and the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates- Right ... the sheep from the goats." If you go back to verse 14, when it says, "For it will be like a man," uh, that, that first word of verse 14 in the Greek is the same word as is used when it says, um, uh, "He separates people one from another as a shepherd." That same word is used as there, it's just translated differently because of where it comes in the, um, in the text. So Christ is still making this comparison, so it would be as though he said, um, you know, like the common, most common, at least so far, most common kind of parabolic introduction is like, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like." Um, this is the same basic language he's using here to introduce what the eschaton will be like. Right? The ga- the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them. It says people in the ESV, but will separate them one from another. You could also say the, the nations or the peoples will be gathered before him. Right. He will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep. So the parable here is the s- the shepherd separating the sheep from the goats, this whole process of the separation and this, this, um, frankly, like it's, it feels and smells like a parable, right? It does. This, this, um, figure, this shepherd in the parable or the shepherd in the saying is saying these sort of like parabolic statements. He's using this language that's kind of like shocking punchline statement. Like we've talked about how in parables there's often this sort of unexpected turn of events, or there's this unexpected kind of shocking language, and this whole like twist at the end in both, sort of both s- chunks here, where like the sheep don't really understand, like they didn't really recognize that they were doing sheepy things, and the goats didn't really understand that they were being goats. That's like the parabolic twist or the parabolic punchline here. So the, the kingdom of heaven is like, basically it's like the Son of Man will come in his glory and it will be like this. It will be like a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats. That's the parabolic connection here. Mm-hmm. So I actually think that, that linguistically we're on, we're on pretty solid ground not just to treat this as a summary of all the parables, um- I think of for sure these three parables, but it, it really is like the master parable, and I think probably the master parable that kinda governs and constrains and explains all of the parabolic ministry of Christ. So I'm, I'm stoked for us to really dig into the details a little bit, but I think linguistically we're on super good ground to, to treat this as a parable. I agree. At the very least, it's stronger than just parable adjacent.  [00:30:44] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:30:44] Tony Arsenal: It- but even if we aren't saying it's a parable proper, it's stronger than that. It still is using this kinda comparative ministry, comparative language that Christ has used throughout the parabolic, um, sayings of Christ.  [00:30:57] Jesse Schwamb: The construction seems a little bit less veiled because here we have Jesus implanting himself directly into the account.  [00:31:03] Tony Arsenal: Mm-hmm.  [00:31:04] Shepherd Imagery Stakes [00:31:04] Jesse Schwamb: At the same time, though, he's drawing on all the things you just said he does, especially with this allusion to shepherding, which would've been, of course, common throughout. So it seems to me a lovely bridge to all of the overt parables he's just told, but now he's bringing them all together and placing himself clearly as, like, the interpreter, as the identifier of all the things, as the one to seal up all of the edges, as it were. So it's clear that this is about the end times. All of these were all about the end times and about Jesus' role in them. And so of course here he identifies himself as the eschatological judge just to make it clear. He's the one who sits on his glorious throne, and that's significant, and that's why I think we sometimes feel like, well, this is not a parable because he's, he's being very, like, Christologically certain and direct here. You know, throughout scripture the final judgment is God's prerogative alone, but the Father has committed all that judgment to the Son, and here's Jesus affirming that. And so again, like Reformed theology, in all our conversations we've consistently emphasized that this text is in many ways, like, proof of Christ's full deity and his role as mediatorial king, and he's exercising his office as the judge at his return in glory. And though, like you said, at the same time, here's the cool parable kind of scent or flavor is you get all these nations, every person who has ever lived, not merely Israel or merely the church. And how does Jesus describe this? He goes back into parabolic language. And we got the shepherd imagery that- Yeah is, like, similar to Ezekiel 34 where God himself is judging between the sheep of his flock. And that separation, the shockingness of it, it's immediate, it's binary. There's no third category. There's only two eternal destinies. There's no purgatory, no middle ground, no post-mortem opportunity for repentance. So all that's at stake. And then again, the beauty of the language itself or the setup of the construction of the story as it unfolds is that both groups- Get the same speech with a change in do or do not, but they both ask the same question from, like, wildly different perspectives and standings. And that's the beautiful- Yeah thing to make reconciliation over is what does all this mean then? How is all this established and how is this final judgment come to be such that there are sheep and goats if, in fact, they're both doing the same things theoretically, or they're at least both asking the same questions of, well, when did this ever actually occur? That, that's what's for us to unpack either way.  [00:33:29] All Nations Gathered [00:33:29] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and b- before we jump into, um, into the parable itself and start to unpack that, the other element that I think is worth, uh, and this just came to me so hopefully I'm not on too far of a, of a limb here. But the other element that I think is worth at least commenting on, um, we've, we've remarked, especially in these last three eschatological, um, parables, how much these are directed at the religious leaders, right? Right. The, the, the people are, um, the, the- the parables are told, um, in the context and sort of following up on these, this real directed, um, assault against the religious leaders who thought they were the ones, right? They're the ones that have a claim to the Kingdom of Heaven, they're the ones that, um, are the, you know, they're the ones that think they're doing the right thing, they're the ones that are ushering in God's kingdom. This little phrase here, "gathered all the nations," would also have really stuck in the craw of the religious leaders, right? Because the word for nations that's translated here is the same word that would el- elsewhere get translated as Gentiles, right? And the word people, when it says, "He will separate the people," that, that word people doesn't actually exist in the Greek. So if you translate this very literally, it'd say, "Before him will, will be gathered all nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." Now, I don't wanna go the route of saying, like, this is a parable about, like, which pe- people group will be brought into the kingdom and which won't, and I've read some that go that direction. I don't wanna go there. But this idea that, like, even in the final judgment, the people who are in view here are the Gentiles, right? Right. I think most Jewish, particularly the, the Pharisees and the Sadducees hearing this, would've, would've read this and would've read ta ethnos, and would not have thought nations the way we do. Certainly would not have thought of, like, modern nation states. They might have been thinking maybe, like, people groups in general, but they would be thinking more along the lines of, like, Psalm, Psalm 2, like, "Why do the nations rage?" kind of nations. Why do the Gentiles rage? Why do the peoples plot in vain? They would've been thinking th- this, this, uh, judgment almost, at least on the face of it, almost excludes the Jews entirely when you think about it this way. It's really now sort of, like, zooming out where at the very least, at the minimal least, the Jews are just another people group within this broader judgment of the people group. Right. So again, like, we've seen this theme that Christ is continually expanding the scope of what is considered to be the Kingdom of Heaven to include not just the Jewish people, um, but all nations, all people groups, all Gentiles and Jews alike. And in a very real sense, um, and I wanna be careful how I've said this, I know I've commented this in the past, there's a very real sense of anti-Semitism that is prominent in- reform, quote-unquote reformed circles right now that is just vile and disgusting and sinful, and has no place in any sort of Biblical Christianity. But there is a reality that the Jewish people, broadly speaking, um, rejected the Messiah, at least while he was here on Earth. Um, relatively speaking, very few Jewish people, especially in the Jewish elite, like the leadership class, accepted Christ for who he was while he was here. Many Jews came to faith through the ministry of Peter, uh, and, and even through the ministry of Paul, even though he was an apostle to the Gentiles. So it's not as though it remained the case, but at this point in Christ's ministry, the Jewish people were by and large were rejecting him as Messiah. And so this idea and, and sort of this like final culmination now saying like he gathered all the, all the Gentiles, all of the peoples, all of the nations. In Jewish, in Jewish language and, and when you look in the Old Testament, and even in some of the New Testament literature, the nations were those people out there. So even if we don't translate this as Gentiles, we don't, we don't take that more like restrictive sense, even then it still implies that Christ is talking about people out there, the non-Jewish nations- Right are being gathered before his throne. And so that's not to say, absolutely not to say that the Jewish people, that, that the Jewish people of his day or the, the... This is where it gets tricky too, 'cause like we think about modern Israel and we, we import our understandings of like nation states. That's not what was in view here. The, the idea of a modern nation state was not a concept that existed in the first century. Um, you might have something like city states, but even that is kind of like a little bit ethereal. The idea here is that all people groups, and maybe, maybe we conceptualize Israel now as one of these people groups, the Israeli Jewish people as one of these people groups. All of those people groups, Jews, Gentiles, Scythians, Athenians, Spartans, like, uh, Ethiopians, you know, all of these different people- Right ... groups that are mentioned in the, the New Testament, all of those peoples, all of those nations are gathered before the throne, and then he will separate them one from another in the same way that a shepherd sep- separates the goats. [00:38:35] Group Judgment Assurance [00:38:35] Tony Arsenal: And yes, I think there is an individualistic, um, judgment element, and this is where I think, um... And, and then I'll, I'll pause for a second. This is where I think we can go wrong reading this as a parable about the individual judgment of individuals in the future That's not really what the language here is supporting. This is supporting sort of a broader group-based judgment, and the grouping is there are those who are sheep and there are those who are goats. But it doesn't appear as though Christ is saying like, "I'm evaluating each individual person, and this person is a sheep, this person is a goat." It's, it's a broader picture that, yes, has some implications for individual personal judgment, but when we read too much of that individual personal judgment into this parable that doesn't seem to be there, that's where we start to, like, rob individual Christians of their assurance. We start to say, like, "Did you do enough? Did you feed enough poor people or did you not?" That's not really, not really what's at stake here, I don't think.  [00:39:40] Jesse Schwamb: No, it's definitely not. It's, it's important to remember just the beauty of, like, the consistent theological thread that runs all the way through the Old Testament, and then that we might expect, of course, to be manifest in Christ's teachings, which happen exactly here. So he is going all the way back to that covenantal promise seed through Abraham, single seed, many people groups, many ethnicities. In this way, the gospel is ethnic inclusive. And so it is, why wouldn't he say that in this way to express that this is exactly from all time what God wanted to do is gather all people groups to himself? Which means then by the time we get to the end of this chapter in verse 46, and there is this righteousness that... or the righteous that lead or go into eternal life, then of course we're led to believe here either directly or implicitly that that means that there would be some for whom the Pharisees would find it's, like, anathema to receive that kind of righteousness and eternal life are the ones in fact who are getting it. And so even that is scandalous. So the, the whole thing is very much a setup, and I think it's the confusion again of this is Jesus saying again to the Sadducees, like, "You are confused. You do not know the power of God. You, you search for it everywhere else but do not find it in front of you. It, it's he who speak to you. I am he. You think you search the scriptures, but you do not know." Everywhere it feels like he's saying that, and here also he's saying that again, but it's in the setup. And I'm with you. I think that there would've been a lot here that would've, like, just come right off his lips that would've been like, "Say what?" Uh, that would've been, like, offensive right off- Yeah ... the top.  [00:41:16] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:41:17] Sovereign Separation [00:41:17] Tony Arsenal: And the other, the other theme that plays out really loud and clear here, um, as we start to dig into this is, um, there's a sovereignty to this separation that is baked into, um, the king's right to decide who to keep and who to cast away. Right. So I think we, we, um, understandably read into this an assessment of the productivity or the profitability or somehow the, like, merit or worth of the sheep as contrasted to the worth of the goats. Um, and we read into it like the sheep have utility and the goats don't, so the goats get cast into the- Right outer darkness. That's not really, that's not really what's going on here, right? In a, in an agrarian society, like sheep and goats both have utility. It's not as though, like, sheep are worthless and goats aren't. There's a reason people have goats. Um, th- the, the issue here is that the king has decided that there are those on his right and there are those on his left, and the ones on his right he's gonna keep, and the ones on his left he's gonna cast away. And, and so, um, there's this sovereign election and determination that precedes the rest of this, right? It's not as though he's ... And this is where the personal, sort of personal assessment part comes in. He doesn't look at a person and go, "All right, you did a g- enough good works to qualify as a sheep, so you go ahead and go over-" Right and be a sheep. And you didn't do quite enough, so you're actually a goat, so you go over and you be a goat." He looks at, he says, "Y- sheep, goat. Goat, sheep." You know, he, he's separating them out, and then he describes what sheep do versus what goats do. And I, I, like I'm even drawing some of this language out. The sheep goats part of this is actually only, like, a verse and a half. He then flips out of this parabolic language to now go back to the sort of strictly predictive eschatological ex- like explanatory language. So this is what it's like when the Son of Man is on, on his kingdom. He separates sheep and goats. We read into, and maybe with some good reason, but we read into Uh, we read into the fact that the sheeps go to one side, the goats go to another. Then we sort of like attribute the characteristics of those who go to his right to sheep, and we attribute the characteristics... And I think we do this the wrong way. How many sermons have you heard where the whole sermon is about how sheep are obedient, and they're, they're affable, and they listen, and they, they, they are sweet and kind, and goats are stubborn, and they, they just wreck everything, and they don't listen, right? And how many s- how many sermons have you heard where they talk about, like, well, sheep and goats really look the same in the Middle Eastern context, and the only way you can tell them apart is what, by what they do? I think there's probably some, uh, benefit to thinking through those elements, but Christ does not make that point in this parable- Mm ... at least not directly, right? He said, "This is the activity. Imagine a man who has sheep and he has goats. He takes the sheep, he puts them on one side. He takes the goats on another side." That's what the separation at the end of the time, at the end of time will be like. Then he goes straight back out of the parable language into saying, "This is how the king will actually make the distinction.  [00:44:29] Predestination Before Works [00:44:29] Tony Arsenal: The ones on his left, or on his right, he will say, 'Come, you're blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'" Right? This is predestination language, not eschatological judgment language. The sheep were guaranteed a kingdom from before the foundation of the world. Before they did anything bad or didn't do anything good, they were guaranteed a kingdom from before the foundation of the world. Then he says, he explains to them, like the context that, as you said before, that reveals that they were sheep all along. [00:45:02] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:45:02] Tony Arsenal: It shows them that they were already... Man, I just, just made this connection in my head. This is the parable of the wheat and of the tares- Yep ... coming to fruition- Exactly ... at the end of time. Right. Right? The sheep and the goats were allowed to mingle until the time came when they would be separated, just as the wheat and the tares were allowed to grow up until the time when they would be reaped and separated. This is what's going on. The sheep did things that sheep do. Those on the right did the things that the people on the right would do because they were part of God's blessed kingdom all along.  [00:45:34] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:45:35] Tony Arsenal: And then he goes on to explain what the people on the left did not do, not because now they've been put on the left because they didn't do it, but they were shown to have always been a part of that, part of that population. They were always goats because of these things. This shows that they were goats all along, and they did these things or failed to do these things because they were goats all along.  [00:45:58] Jesse Schwamb: That's right.  [00:45:59] Works Righteousness Trap [00:45:59] Jesse Schwamb: Let me read another verse. "For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children and also our brethren to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God. For we know that it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do." My guess is everybody was with me- ... sounded kind of okay until that last part. And if you had that, like, as we say, like, that theological muscle memory that just made you flex or bristle there, or you had the Spidey Sense, as you say, Tony, good, because that's from 2 Nephi 25:23 from the Book of Mormon. And here's what I wanna say that's shocking, is if we read this passage of scripture that we're talking about as if there's something there that we need to do that proves that we've done enough and that somehow God will be pleased with that, even at the end of time in some small way, some modicum, then we're actually acting way more like Mormons than we are like Christians. That's just the bottom line. Yeah. Because Mormons, if you ask about this verse, rather than try to qualify that last statement by saying, "Well, that's misunderstood," or, "It's really not after all you can do," because of course it begs the question how do you know that you've done enough? How you don't- you've done all the things and that you're, you're exhausted. Their explanation of this is to double down on it and say, "Well, the context of that verse is following verse 23 actually does emphasize salvation only coming through Christ, but it also encourages continued observance of the law of Moses in order to be reconciled to God." Because that's all they could do until Christ fulfilled the law through his atonement. Even that is nonsense. So all of this to say, we have to be careful with this because I, I think you're right. We're aligning, we're running right up on this, and that is I would submit to you that we just get distracted because we always, of course, want to bring something to the party here. The, the salvation cake. We wanna, I don't know, we wanna make it, we wanna do. But God is doing all the things on our behalf. And so as a result of that, I think this parable is actually, it's about the divine prerogative and the agency of Christ in judgment at the end which belongs to him and him alone, and not about these actions. But we get caught up in the actions and we're missing this thri- divine prerogative. I also think that Christ gives this to us to reverse it on us and to show us that he sets about all things. It is in fact his foreordination and his providence. By grace we have been saved through faith, and that in providence being predestined is an act of his great love. And so this shows the extent of that love because those whom he has chosen himself are asking in disbelief as if to say, "When did I do the good works that you required?" And he said, "Well, you didn't because you could never do them apart from me."  [00:48:38] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:48:38] Jesse Schwamb: And so really that's the whole point. It's just so easy for us to get it twisted and say, "Well, doesn't it make sense that there are two groups?" Well, certainly there are in this passage. And doesn't it make good sense that because he said they did things or they didn't do things, then I just need to be about doing those things. And I think that is unfortunately the adventure in missing the point in this passage.  [00:48:58] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, I, I agree 100%. And it's funny 'cause you were reading that and I was like What translation of J- of First John is it? It sound, I mean, it sounds like, it sounds like something you'd read in First John It sounds okay  [00:49:09] Jesse Schwamb: until  [00:49:10] Tony Arsenal: the end. Yeah. No, I mean, like, it literally sounds like First John until- Yeah ... you get to that last part.  [00:49:14] Jesse Schwamb: Yes.  [00:49:15] Tony Arsenal: And, and I think you're right that, um, we'll, we'll explore this more next week, but what has always struck me about this passage is that the, the p- the, the people on His right, I've gotta stop saying sheep, because that's... I just made the point that that's not really what's going on. The people on His right who are called into the kingdom because it was prepared for them before the foundation, because they were elected unto that kingdom. The people on His right, they're surprised at the fact that they did these things. And it, I, I think the works righteousness way of reading this is like, "You better earn your salvation. You better get at it because if you haven't fed Jesus in disguise, then you just aren't gonna make it. At the end of the day- Mm ... He's gonna say, 'I never knew you.'" And it, whether intentionally or unintentionally, sometimes I think intentionally, it implies that we, uh, that Jesus comes to know us because we've done good works, right? When we say, "If you don't do these things, then Jesus will say, 'I never knew you,'" then what you're saying is Jesus doesn't know you apart from your good works. Right. And what the Bible says, what this passage says, just right on the face of it, is that the Kingdom of Heaven was prepared for those whom Christ has elected before the foundation of the world, or who the Father has elected, who are blessed by the Father before the foundation of the world. Now, obviously the Father had to know those people in some sense-  [00:50:43] Jesse Schwamb: That's  [00:50:43] Tony Arsenal: right ... before the foundation of the world in order for them to be blessed by Him and for Him to prepare a kingdom. So then to come back to the end of it and say, "Well, there are some of those, uh, who the Father never knew because they didn't do enough work," well, the problem is that those who did the good work, the Father knew before they did the good works. They didn't merit the good works. I mean- Right ... it's funny you, you bring up the, the Mormons, and that's certainly true, but, like, you could substitute in, at least on this regard, right? There are meaningful, important differences between the groups I'm about to say and Mormons, that would be the dividing line between those who are possibly saved and those who are y- definitely not saved, right? You could substitute Arminians, who wanna say God looks down the corridor of time, and the reason He prepared a kingdom in advance for them from the foundation of the world is 'cause He saw that they would do these things that would merit salvation, or He saw that they would make the proper decision to receive His grace, right? Or Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodoxes in a different sense, but similarly who would say like, "Well, yeah, God knows in advance that you're gonna merit salvation, so He prepared- Right ... this kingdom anticipating your merit that you would contribute or your participation or, or whatever." I think in a certain sense, um, you could even apply this to some Lutheran theology, right? Which would say, like, "Well, God prepared this kingdom for you from the foundation of the world because he looked down the corridor of time and he understood that you were not going to resist the grace he gave," right? You were not gonna reject his grace. Um, it really truly only is Reformed theology that can say, "No, God prepared this kingdom in advance for you, and it was the preparation of that kingdom that brought you through this such that you did the good works that you did, such that you made the wise decision to follow Christ that you did. That is caused by the fact that God prepared a kingdom for you in advance, not that you somehow caused this kingdom to be prepared for you." A- and aga- again, again, like, this is dicey. It gets into, like, logical ordering, but fundamentally, a- as far as I can understand it, every competing view besides sort of a Calvinistic understanding of predestination election has to say that in some sense God prepares the kingdom for you as a response to something you have done, or chose- Right to do or chose not to do. The reality is that this passage is saying, "No To those who are on the right. He didn't separate them based on the fact that they did these things. He just said, "You are on the right, and now to those who are on the right, I say to you, come into the kingdom that is blessed. You're blessed by my Father. Come into this kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world." So I think, you know, we're c

//The Wire//2300Z July 15, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: STRIKES CONTINUE TO ESCALATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AS WAR REMAINS HOT. PARASITIC INFECTION CONTINUES TO SPREAD IN USA. POLICE OFFICERS AROUND THE NATION INVESTIGATED FOR ILLEGALLY SPYING ON AMERICANS.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Middle East: Mutual targeting continued overnight throughout the region, with Iranian forces striking many American-aligned military bases in several Gulf states. Isa Air Base in Qatar was hit hard overnight, and several storage warehouses were hit in Kuwait. Iran claims to have also struck the parking apron at Muwaffaq Al-Salti Air Base in Jordan, targeting the fighter aircraft which have been staged at the base for weeks. On the American side, the US has conducted several waves of attacks, with constant bombings continuing in many major port facilities. The ports of Bandar Abbas, Jask, and Chabarhar have been targeted regularly for several days, in addition to the Gulf Islands which have served as communications nodes for ships transiting the Strait.Throughout the morning, the Strait remained somewhat navigable via the Iranian route. Several ships were observed making the crossing using only the northern Iranian traffic scheme. After the targeting of several merchant vessels over the past few days in the southern route, no ship has taken the Omani route, all ships are diverting north. Analyst Comment: In terms of how much oil is getting out, it's not much. No American tankers were observed transiting overnight via either route, and the severity of the oil crisis remains a major concern for impacts to the homeland. This afternoon CENTCOM struck a merchant vessel themselves, highlighting that the American blockade of the Strait is still in effect.-HomeFront-USA: Around the nation, an outbreak of Cyclosporiasis has continued to sweep through the country, with roughly 7,000 cases of parasitic infection being reported. Most of the cases are clustered in Michigan, but the food-borne illness has been reported in many other states. Health authorities are working to narrow down the point of origin for the parasite, which appears to be linked to contaminated lettuce or unclean food preparation practices at fast food chains.Georgia: This morning, five police officers with the Albany Police Department were fired after an internal investigation revealed that they were using their access to the Flock camera/sensor database to stalk and illegally surveil citizens.South Carolina: This morning, two police officers in the city of Greer were fired after an internal investigation revealed that they were using their access to the Flock camera/sensor database to stalk and illegally surveil citizens.Texas: Yesterday, one police officer with the Pasadena Police Department resigned after an investigation was launched into his misuse of the Flock camera/sensor network. Sgt. Michael Palitz is currently under investigation for allegedly using the intelligence network to stalk a female police officer. No further details on this incident have been provided as the investigation is still ongoing.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: Though it is purely anecdotal at the moment, locals on the ground in many Middle Eastern countries are reporting that this time, the fighting is different as fewer successful interceptions are being reported. As always, if interceptions of drones and missiles are successful, these munitions are usually destroyed out over the waters of the Gulf, out of view of the civilian populace. However, a lot of people have been rather dismayed that the fighting has resumed, and from their perspective it looks like their country is not intercepting anything because they are out of interceptor missiles. The stockpiles of interceptors running low for Gulf states has been a common theory for a while, after the war drew to a lull two months ago. After the ceasefire went into effect, it was generally assumed that the United States would sell more interceptor missiles to the Gulf countries (in addition to resupplying our own missile defense sites), but now that the fighting has resumed and locals are observing slow-flying drones very clearly not being intercepted in many cases, the concerns of missile stockpiles have come to the front page once again.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269 Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 15, 2026. We open with the biggest election integrity news in years — the House passed the SAVE Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, 217 to 209, with Speaker Mike Johnson delivering exactly what he promised us two weeks ago when he sat down with American Ground Radio. We explain what the SAVE Act actually does — and what it doesn't. It doesn't change who is eligible to vote. It doesn't alter the Constitution. It simply requires documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. We point out that we verify identity to board a plane, open a bank account, and buy a beer — and that the only people who benefit from not verifying citizenship at voter registration are people who aren't citizens. We also note that Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin's claim that no Democrat will ever win again if the SAVE Act passes raises an obvious question about how many non-citizens have been voting for her party. The bill now goes to the Senate, where John Thune needs to do his job — or be voted out at the first opportunity. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch testified before the Senate in his confirmation hearing — telling senators that his client is not the president but the American people, while more than 1,200 former DOJ employees signed a letter opposing his confirmation, which may be the best endorsement he could have received. Then the House passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent year-round — meaning darker mornings in winter and lighter evenings, with states currently on permanent standard time allowed to stay there. And Senate Democrats boycotted a hearing on government fraud, with only one Democrat showing up before leaving after his opening statement — even as investigative journalists Nick Shirley, James O'Keefe, and Dylan Heder-Gaudette presented documented findings on billions in fraudulent benefits claims. As Nick Shirley said, no dollar says Republican or Democrat on it. We also tackle the question of whether a New Hampshire state representative can drive 102 miles per hour on her way to the legislature and claim constitutional immunity from arrest under a provision dating back to the era of kings arresting parliamentarians on their way to inconvenient votes. We acknowledge the historical purpose of the law. We reject the application of it to someone who simply didn't plan her schedule well enough. Rules for thee but not for me is not a constitutional principle — and if you don't care about the safety of the people on the road, why would you care about the safety of the people you represent? Our American Mama Teri Netterville weighs in on the Emmy nominations — and the conversation becomes a broader indictment of an awards system that has completely lost touch with what Americans are actually watching. Greg Gutfeld hosts the number one late night show in the country. Not nominated. Taylor Sheridan has produced Yellowstone, Landman, 1923, and The Madison — all massive hits with critics and audiences alike. Not nominated. Meghan Markle's show As Ever received a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, was called the sweet spot between irrelevant and intolerable by the Times of London, and was canceled. Emmy nominated. The awards don't reflect excellence anymore. They reflect ideology. In our Digging Deep segment, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll announced that the Army has already met its 2026 recruiting goals — with 61,500 new recruits — eight and a half months before the year ends. Compare that to 2022, when the military missed its goals by 25%, and 2023, when it missed by 10%. Nothing changed except the administration and with it the clarity of purpose. We play Simon Sinek's story about a Marine recruiter who told a high school auditorium full of teenagers that not a single one of them was good enough to be a Marine — and walked out with the longest line of any recruiter in the room. People don't want to be told service is easy. They want to be challenged to be worthy of it. Trump and Hegseth figured that out. The numbers prove it. We also cover France's assisted suicide legislation — which has passed the lower house and would allow physicians and nurses to end the lives of patients who cannot do so themselves. The Catholic Church in France has threatened excommunication for any legislator who votes for it, and Pope Francis personally asked Macron not to sign it. We make the pro-life case plainly — compassion means walking with those who suffer, not eliminating the one who is suffering. A society's worth is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable, not by how conveniently it removes them. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has now threatened to shut down all Middle Eastern oil exports if Iran cannot export its own — using energy as a weapon exactly as both Iran and Iraq did during the 1980s war. We note that this is exactly why the Iraq oil pipeline deal through Turkey matters, why the Strait of Hormuz matters, and why at some point the president may have to say what needs to be said about ground troops. For our Bright Spot, a Spanish conservation group called El Burrito Feliz — the Happy Little Donkey — has deployed 18 donkeys around Doñana National Park on Spain's Atlantic coast, an area with the same fire-prone Mediterranean climate as Southern California. Since the donkeys were introduced, there has not been a single wildfire in the park in nine years. The donkeys eat the dry scrub and tall grasses that fuel fires, reach terrain that vehicles cannot, and cost a fraction of what California spends on fire suppression after the fact. We suggest California try it. What have they got to lose? And we close with Jenny Stepien, who walked down the aisle on her wedding day wishing her father could be there. Her father Michael had passed away ten years earlier — but he was an organ donor, and his heart had saved the life of a man named Tom Thomas, who became Jenny's pen pal out of gratitude. On her wedding day, Tom was there in person for the first time — to walk her down the aisle in her father's place. At the end of the aisle, Jenny placed her hand on Tom's chest and felt her father's heart beating one more time, just before she said I do. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is the region drifting toward another major war, or are all sides carefully managing the conflict? Elliott Chodoff returns to Shoulder to Shoulder to explain the strategic calculations behind the latest confrontation with Iran. He discusses why Western diplomacy often misunderstands Middle Eastern political culture, why Iran continues to test American resolve, how Israel might respond if attacked, and why Lebanon remains one of the region's biggest wild cards. Rather than focusing on the daily headlines, this conversation examines the deeper strategic forces shaping events and what they could mean for the months ahead. Join an all-star panel of Middle East experts for a special Israel365 webinar on Iran, regional security, and what comes next. Register at israel365.com/regime.

Prime Minister of Israel Bibi Netanyahu makes his debut on Sid & Friends in the Morning with Sid to honor the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who suddenly passed away over the weekend at the age of 71. Bibi then expands on his relationship with President Donald J. Trump, his opinion on anti-Semite and Israel-hating NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the resolve of the Isreali people to maintain their freedom and independence surrounded by enemies in a volatile Middle Eastern region. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barely weeks after the United States and Iran signed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, an interim deal intended to end hostilities and create a framework for a broader settlement, the agreement is in jeopardy.美伊签署《伊斯兰堡谅解备忘录》仅数周，这份旨在停止敌对行动、为达成全面解决方案搭建框架的临时协议如今已岌岌可危。The immediate trigger appears to have been disputes over the interpretation of the MoU's provisions governing navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Yet the renewed confrontation is not simply another chapter in the rivalry between Washington and Tehran. It has evolved into a three-party strategic contest in which Tel Aviv's calculations also influence the pace and direction of events.此次危机最直接的导火索，似乎是双方对备忘录中霍尔木兹海峡通航条款的解释存在分歧。然而，这场重新燃起的对峙已不再是美伊双边博弈的简单延续，而是演变成了一场三方战略较量，其中特拉维夫的考量同样在左右着局势发展的节奏与走向。Israel has never concealed its willingness to prevent any US-Iran accommodation. From its perspective, even a temporary understanding risks reducing pressure on Tehran while leaving "unresolved concerns" over Iran's regional influence and nuclear issue. Recent reports suggest that Tel Aviv has been "coordinating" with Washington while simultaneously warning Tehran against retaliation. Israel's strategic intentions differ from those of parties seeking to preserve regional stability.以色列从未掩饰其阻挠美伊达成任何和解的意图。从其视角来看，即便是临时性的谅解，也可能减轻对德黑兰的压力，而伊朗的地区影响力与核问题等"核心关切"却依旧悬而未决。近期报道显示，特拉维夫在表面上与华盛顿"协调"的同时，也在私下警告伊朗不得采取报复行动。以色列的战略诉求，显然与那些致力于维护地区稳定的各方存在显著不同。This matters because the MoU was always less a peace agreement than a ceasefire held together by political convenience. It rested upon ambiguous language, diverging strategic objectives and fragile domestic calculations on both sides. Such pacts survive only when all parties concerned possess strong incentives to preserve them. That condition is disappearing.这一态势值得警惕，因为这份备忘录本质上并非和平协定，而更像是一份依赖各方现实政治利益而维系的停火安排。它建立在模糊的措辞、相互背离的战略目标以及双方各自脆弱的国内政治算计之上。此类协定得以存续的唯一前提，是所有相关方都拥有强烈的维护动机。而如今，这一前提正在消失。Washington's own calculations illustrate why. The US administration continues to face conflicting pressures. Military restraint satisfies voters weary of endless Middle Eastern crises. Yet any perceived concession toward Iran invites fierce criticism from domestic hawks. Rising oil prices threaten inflation, consumer confidence and electoral prospects, while renewed military action risks producing precisely the energy shock that the earlier agreement sought to prevent. Unsurprisingly, Washington has simultaneously resumed military operations while signaling its willingness to return to negotiations — an apparent contradiction that reflects political necessity rather than strategic coherence.美国自身的处境恰恰说明了这一点。美国政府持续承受着方向矛盾的内部压力：军事上的克制，能迎合厌倦了中东无休止危机的选民；但只要有任何被视为对伊朗让步的举动，又会招致国内鹰派的猛烈抨击。油价上涨会加剧通胀、打击消费信心并影响选情，但重启军事行动又极可能引发此前协议力图避免的能源市场震荡。因此，我们看到美方在恢复军事行动的同时，又释放出愿重返谈判的信号——这种看似矛盾的做法，反映的是国内政治妥协的现实，而非连贯一致的战略逻辑。Military force has repeatedly demonstrated its limitations. Months of strikes have neither fundamentally altered Iran's strategic judgments nor produced a durable diplomatic breakthrough. Instead, every exchange of missiles further erodes trust while increasing the probability that a miscalculation or third-party action could trigger a broader regional war.军事手段的局限性已反复得到验证。持续数月的打击，既未能从根本上改变伊朗的战略判断，也未能促成持久的外交突破。相反，每一轮导弹交锋都在进一步侵蚀双方互信，同时增加了因误判或第三方介入而引爆更大范围地区战争的风险。Energy markets understand this reality better than politicians. The world's consumers ultimately finance every failure of diplomacy in the Middle East. That is why the greatest danger today lies not merely in renewed hostilities but in the gradual normalization of perpetual low-intensity conflict. If the MoU collapses without a credible diplomatic successor, the region risks settling into a familiar yet dangerous equilibrium: intermittent strikes, periodic retaliation, disrupted shipping lanes and repeated diplomatic resets that never address the underlying disputes. Such instability benefits few beyond those who profit politically or economically from permanent confrontation.能源市场比政客们更清楚这一现实：中东外交的每一次失败，其最终账单都将由全球消费者来支付。正因如此，当今最大的危险不仅在于冲突的重启，而在于长期低烈度冲突的逐渐常态化。若这份备忘录最终失效，而又无可靠的外交替代方案，该地区或将陷入一种熟悉却危险的循环：间歇性的打击、周期性的报复、受阻的航道，以及从未触及核心矛盾、徒劳重启的外交进程。这种动荡局面，最终只会让那些从永久对抗中获取政治或经济利益的少数群体受益。As China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations Sun Lei stressed at a UN Security Council briefing on the Iranian nuclear issue on Friday, a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities must hold in the Gulf.正如中国常驻联合国副代表孙磊周五在联合国安理会伊朗核问题通报会上所强调的，海湾地区必须维持停火，终止一切敌对行动。"China urges all relevant parties to overcome disruptive factors, refrain from the use or threat of force, preserve and implement the MoU, reach a solution that accommodates the concerns of all parties, lift the sanctions against Iran at an early date, and achieve substantive progress in the political settlement process," Sun said.孙磊表示："中方敦促相关各方排除干扰因素，避免使用或威胁使用武力，维护并落实这份谅解备忘录，寻求兼顾各方关切的解决方案，尽早解除对伊朗制裁，推动政治解决进程取得实质性进展。"The proper settlement of the Iran nuclear issue must respect the legitimate aspirations and lawful rights and interests of the parties concerned. Iran should continue to uphold its commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. As a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran enjoys the legitimate right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The US should take concrete actions to create conditions for the political settlement of the Iran nuclear issue, Sun added.孙磊补充指出，妥善解决伊朗核问题，必须尊重相关各方的合理诉求与合法权益。伊朗应继续恪守不发展核武器的承诺；作为《不扩散核武器条约》的无核武器缔约国，伊朗拥有和平利用核能的正当权利。美方应采取切实行动，为伊朗核问题的政治解决创造有利条件。The Middle East has accumulated more than enough examples of wars that were easier to begin than to end. Another prolonged US-Iran confrontation will not produce a decisive winner. It will only weaken regional security, unsettle global markets, burden already strained economies and deepen divisions throughout the international system.中东地区已有太多"易战难和"的前车之鉴。美伊若再度陷入长期对峙，不会有绝对的赢家，其结果只会削弱地区安全根基、扰乱全球市场、加重各国本已承压的经济，并加剧国际体系的分裂。The choice confronting related parties is therefore stark. They can allow strategic mistrust, domestic politics and regional rivalries to dismantle an imperfect but valuable diplomatic opening. Or they can recognize that however unsatisfactory the MoU may have been, its implementation remains infinitely preferable to another round of instability. Even a fragile peace is always better than permanent war.因此，摆在相关方面前的抉择是清晰的：是任由战略猜忌、国内政治与地区竞争，摧毁这个虽不完美却弥足珍贵的外交窗口；还是认识到，无论这份备忘录有多少不足，落实它都远比再次滑入动荡要可取。毕竟，再脆弱的和平，也胜过无休止的战争。The world should not have to relearn that lesson yet again.世界各国不应再一次亲身验证这一道理。peace /piːs/ 和平war /wɔːr/ 战争choice /tʃɔɪs/ 抉择stability /stəˈbɪləti/ 稳定

The Strait of Hormuz, alongside Lebanon, where Israel continues to strike at alleged Hezbollah targets despite a ceasefire, is not the only Middle Eastern theatre at risk of escalated violence with potential regional and global consequences.

Step into Episode 220 of On The Delo as Delo sits down with Akram Abdallah and Mohamed — the entrepreneurial force behind Laymoon Café, Tempe's buzzing Palestinian-Syrian café bringing Middle Eastern hospitality, culture, and flavor to the heart of the ASU community. From a chance road-trip conversation about an available space to opening one of the most talked-about new concepts in the Valley, this story is about bold moves, deep roots, and a team who built something beautiful before they even had a name for it.Delo digs into the origin stories, the chaos of launch week, supply chain realities, a 40-person staff puzzle, the significance of operating next to one of Arizona's most iconic mosques, and what it means to create a true "third space" rooted in Middle Eastern hospitality. If you're into food, entrepreneurship, culture, and the real behind-the-scenes of building a business from the ground up, this one will hit different.Chapter Guide (Timestamps):(0:00 - 2:42) Delo's Intro, Episode 220, and the New Book "Risky Business"(2:43 - 5:00) Meeting at Filthy Animal and Guest Origin Stories Begin(5:01 - 7:01) Mohamed's Tech Background: Waymo, Amazon, and Pilot's License(7:02 - 9:41) Operations, Staffing Puzzles, and 1,000+ Guests a Day(9:42 - 14:21) Akram's Real Estate Background and Finding the Location(14:22 - 19:33) The Mosque Connection, Nomad Jewelry, and Bringing on House of Form(19:34 - 27:40) Palestinian-Syrian Heritage, Islamic Hospitality, and the "Third Space"(27:41 - 30:12) The Menu: Fusion Drinks, Kedak Chai, Yemeni Honeycomb & More(30:13 - 37:45) Operations, Supply Chain, Social Media Strategy, and What's Next(37:46 - 43:20) Non-Negotiables, Prayer Routines, and Fitness Habits(43:21 - 50:00) Where to Find Them Online and Rapid Fire Questions

Episode 351 features former MLB manager Terry Collins reflecting on his remarkable baseball career, followed by an engaging conversation with Honey & Co. Daily authors and restaurateurs Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer. Leonard is joined by his wife, Patty Jarrett, making her first appearance as a special guest co-host, as they explore Itamar and Sarit's culinary journey, their partnership, and the experiences that have shaped their lives together. Terry Collins has managed the Houston Astros, the Anaheim Angels, and the New York Mets in Major League Baseball and the Orix Buffaloes of Nippon Professional Baseball.  Terry started his baseball career as a minor league shortstop.  He then went on to manage the Albuquerque Dukes of the Pacific Coast League and the Buffalo Bisons of the International League at the minor league level.  He made his MLB managerial debut in 1994 with the Houston Astros.  His longest tenure came as manager of the New York Mets, where he led them to their first playoff appearance in nine years in 2015, which resulted in a trip to the 2015 World Series.  That same year, Terry won the National League Sporting News Manager of the Year Award. His steady leadership, resilience, and unwavering commitment to player development earned him the distinction of becoming the longest-tenured manager in Mets history.  Beyond the dugout, Terry has continued to serve the game as a special assistant, advisor, and ambassador for baseball. His enduring influence on the sport reflects a lifetime dedicated to leadership, perseverance, and excellence, leaving a lasting legacy that extends far beyond the wins and championships he helped achieve. Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer are the award-winning husband-and-wife chefs behind London's beloved Honey & Co. family of restaurants, celebrated for bringing the vibrant flavors and generous spirit of Middle Eastern cooking to the heart of the city. Since opening the original Honey & Co. in 2012, the pair have built a culinary destination renowned for its warm hospitality, exceptional baking, and deeply personal approach to food, later expanding with additional London restaurants, including their most recent addition, Honey & Co. Daily. Both trained in some of London's finest kitchens after beginning their culinary careers in Israel.  Itamar served as head chef for Yotam Ottolenghi before launching Honey & Co., while Sarit trained at Butler's Wharf and the Orrery before leading the pastry teams at Ottolenghi and serving as executive chef at NOPI. Their shared vision combines the rich culinary traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean with contemporary techniques and an unwavering commitment to hospitality. Beyond their restaurants, they are acclaimed cookbook authors whose award-winning books have introduced home cooks around the world to the joy of Middle Eastern cuisine. They are also hosts of the popular podcast Honey & Co:  The Food Sessions.  This interview was conducted during their international book tour for their latest cookbook, Honey & Co. Daily: Easy Food For Your Everyday Pleasure and features  Leonard's wife, Patty Jarrett as special guest co-host.  For more information on Itamar and Sarit and their restaurants and cookbooks go to https://honeyandco.co.uk We recommend you go to Rogue Cookers website, https://roguecookers.com/ for award-winning rubs, Chef Ray Sheehan's website, https://www.raysheehan.com/ for award-winning saucess, rubs, and cookbooks, Baseball BBQ, https://baseballbbq.com for special grilling tools and accessories, Magnechef https://magnechef.com/ for excellent and unique barbecue gloves,  Mantis BBQ, https://mantisbbq.com/ to purchase their outstanding sauces with a portion of the proceeds being donated to the Kidney Project, and for exceptional sauces, Elda's Kitchen https://eldaskitchen.com/ To team up against prostate cancer go to https://fansforthecure.org/ for Fans for the Cure, and to subscribe to Bill Chuck's newsletter, Billy-Ball go to  https://billchuck.substack.com/    We conclude the show with the song, Baseball Always Brings You Home from the musician, Dave Dresser and the poet, Shel Krakofsky. If you would like to contact the show, we would love to hear from you. Call the show:  (516) 855-8214 Email:  baseballandbbq@gmail.com Twitter:  @baseballandbbq Instagram:  baseballandbarbecue YouTube:  baseball and bbq Website:  https//baseballandbbq.weebly.com Facebook:  baseball and bbq       Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

BUY GOLD & SILVER HERE: https://firstnationalbullion.com/schedule-consult/ Avoid CBDCs! HELP SUPPORT US AS WE DOCUMENT HISTORY HERE: https://gogetfunding.com/help-keep-wam-alive/# Josh Sigurdson talks with Mark Gonzales about the struggle the vast majority of people have with money today as we see insane stats released showing about 50% of all adults under the age of 30 live with their parents in the United States. People cannot afford rent or food and this is also shown in the grocery store as companies like Pepsi have lowered prices on much of their junk foods by as much as 15%, yet sales still continue to crash. When the cheapest garbage one can eat is no selling, this is a massive indicator. One can imagine how this will affect the already disastrous pension short falls when younger people are still dependent on their parents and can't afford basic foods, regardless of how many hours they work. As the Iran War continues, we are also witnessing the continued shock to the supply chain we have been warning of for so long. In the face of the Middle Eastern conflict, gold firms are seeing gains of more than 1% due to the amount of people fleeing to safety. People like Peter Schiff believe we are witnessing the trapped Federal Reserve setting up $200 silver and $10,000 gold. He is not alone in this belief as if we see the Federal Reserve lower interest rates, we could expect out of this world inflation. If we see them raise interest rates, we can expect an economic depression. If they stay stagnant, we are seeing people flee to gold and silver. All of the above is a bad sign for the United States monetary system and the dollar on the world stage. In this video, we break down what this all means and what it is leading to. Stay tuned for more from WAM! GET 10% OFF ON SHILAJIT FROM DR. KAUFMAN WHEN YOU USE CODE WAM10 HERE: https://medauthentica.com/discount/WAM10?redirect=/products/authentica-shilajit%3Fsca_ref=10867124.wrNV3jkYSaMg9 GET HEIRLOOM SEEDS & NON GMO SURVIVAL FOOD HERE: https://heavensharvest.com/wam USE Code WAM to save 25% plus free shipping! USE Code WAM50 for 50% off on select items like the #10 cans & MRE packs! GET YOUR WAV WATCH HERE: https://buy.wavwatch.com/WAM Use Code WAM to save $100 and purchase amazing healing frequency technology! GET YOUR APRICOT SEEDS at the life-saving Richardson Nutritional Center HERE: https://rncstore.com/r?id=bg8qc1 Use code JOSH to save money! Get Your SUPER-SUPPLIMENTS HERE: https://vni.life/wam Use Code WAM15 & Save 15%! Life changing formulas you can't find anywhere else! Get local, healthy, pasture raised meat delivered to your door here: https://wildpastures.com/promos/save-20-for-life/bonus15?oid=6&affid=321 USE THE LINK & get 20% off for life and $15 off your first box! DITCH YOUR DOCTOR! https://www.livelongerformula.com/wam Get a natural health practitioner and work with Christian Yordanov! Mention WAM and get a FREE masterclass! You will ALSO get a FREE metabolic function assessment! PayPal: ancientwonderstelevision@gmail.com FIND OUR CoinTree page here: https://cointr.ee/joshsigurdson PURCHASE MERECHANDISE HERE: https://world-alternative-media.creator-spring.com/ JOIN US on SubscribeStar here: https://www.subscribestar.com/world-alternative-media For subscriber only content! Pledge here! Just a dollar a month can help us alive! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2652072&ty=h&u=2652072 BITCOIN ADDRESS: 18d1WEnYYhBRgZVbeyLr6UfiJhrQygcgNU World Alternative Media 2026

Preview for Later Today: Jim McTague observes fluctuating gasoline prices in Lancaster County, noting that costs are creeping upward daily due to Middle Eastern violence, impacting even the typically cheapest outlets like Costco and BJ'swarehouse stores.

We're continuing our summer series with a recap of the week's top headlines and relevant conversation from The Bulletin archive. This week, Maine's Democratic Nominee for US Senate Graham Platner suspended his bid for Senate after Politico reported a woman's accusations of rape. We re-air a conversation with Charlie Sykes, Russell Moore, and Clarissa Moll about other politicians who have removed themselves from office due to sexual allegations, and why politicians have become more shameless. Then, conflict reignited in the Middle East after Iran struck three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the US began retaliatory strikes. Jill Nelson joins to discuss the importance of the Strait and how it affects international Christian aid organizations. Finally, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married last weekend, and some are speculating how their wedding will affect trends to come. Jen Wilkin, Russell Moore, Mike Cosper, and Clarissa Moll discuss secular and sacred wedding traditions, and what couples getting married today can focus on. GO DEEPER WITH THE BULLETIN: Join the conversation at our Substack. Find us on YouTube. Rate and review the show in your podcast app of choice. ABOUT THE GUESTS: Charles J. Sykes is a political commentator who hosted a conservative talk show in Wisconsin for 23 years. He was the former editor-in-chief of The Bulwark, and is currently an MSNBC contributor. Sykes has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Salon, and other national publications. He has appeared on the Today Show, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, PBS, and the BBC. Jill Nelson is Christianity Today's Ukraine and Israel correspondent. She holds a master's in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Texas and began her journalism career as a reporter and anchor in South Dakota. For nearly 20 years, she covered Ukraine and the Middle East for World News Group. Jen Wilkin is an author and Bible teacher from Dallas, Texas. She has organized and led studies for women in home, church, and parachurch contexts. An advocate for Bible literacy, her passion is to see others become articulate and committed followers of Christ, with a clear understanding of why they believe what they believe, grounded in the Word of God. ABOUT THE BULLETIN: The Bulletin is a twice-weekly news analysis podcast from Christianity Today, with editor-at-large Russell Moore. Each episode offers commentary on current events and headlining news with a roundtable of premier guests, and shares a Christian perspective on issues that are shaping our world The Bulletin listeners get 25% off CT. Go to https://orderct.com/THEBULLETIN to learn more. “The Bulletin” is a production of Christianity Today Host: Alexa Copeland Associate Producer: Alexa Copeland Editing and Mix: Kevin Morris Graphic Design: Rick Szuecs Music: Dan Phelps Executive Producer: Erik Petrik Senior Producer: Matt Stevens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Richard Pater speaks with Professor Eyal Zisser about the US-Iran MOU, political developments in Syria and Lebanon, Turkey's regional ambitions, and Israel's relations with its Arab neighbours. Professor Zisser also discusses Israel's challenge of translating military achievements against Hezbollah and Hamas into lasting political gains. Prof. Eyal Zisser is Chair of Contemporary History of the Middle East and Vice Rector at Tel Aviv University. He is also the author of several books and a prominent columnist for Israel Hayom, and previously served as Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.

Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon and Richard Porter discuss the unfolding political drama surrounding Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Maine. As tensions rise and the clock ticks down to his potential withdrawal, they discuss the implications for the Democratic Party and the broader political landscape. Then, they touch on the current state of the presidential race, where Kamala Harris appears to be leading in the polls, yet betting markets tell a different story. This discrepancy raises questions about the effectiveness of polling and the unpredictable nature of political campaigns. Then lastly, they discuss international politics, including Donald Trump's recent comments on Iran and the complexities of Middle Eastern relations. The chaotic nature of Trump's administration continues to create uncertainty, and they analyze the potential consequences of his decisions on global stability. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rejoice! The Iran war is over!...or is it? Today James talks to Trita Parsi, the co-founder and Executive Vice President of The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about his recent reporting on why Iran believes Israel will attack again before October. We also discuss the emerging new Middle Eastern order and whether Israel can be brought into the fold or if an anti-Abraham Accord pact will define the new status quo. As a bonus, James asks Trita about reports that the State Department is trying to have him deported.

Rejoice! The Iran war is over!...or is it? Today James talks to Trita Parsi, the co-founder and Executive Vice President of The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about his recent reporting on why Iran believes Israel will attack again before October. We also discuss the emerging new Middle Eastern order and whether Israel can be brought into the fold or if an anti-Abraham Accord pact will define the new status quo. As a bonus, James asks Trita about reports that the State Department is trying to have him deported.

Help us expand our Muslim media project here: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/membership Donate to our charity partner Baitulmaal here: http://btml.us/thinkingmuslimOne thousand days since the start of the genocide in Gaza, the humanitarian catastrophe continues to unfold. In this episode of The Thinking Muslim, Dr. Azzam Tamimi joins the podcast to examine where Gaza stands today, how the conflict has reshaped the Palestinian cause, and what the future may hold.The conversation explores the political realities surrounding Hamas, the impact of the Iran - Israel war, the role of Western media, the effectiveness of protest movements, and the broader questions of Muslim unity, nationalism, and solidarity. Dr. Azzam Tamimi also shares his recommendations for those looking to deepen their understanding of Palestine through reading.About Dr. Azzam Tamini: Dr. Azzam Tamimi is a Palestinian-British academic, political analyst, and author specialising in Middle Eastern politics and Islamic movements. He is widely recognised for his commentary on Palestine, political Islam, and regional affairs, and has written extensively on Hamas and the Israeli - Palestinian conflict.You can find Dr.Azzam Tamimi here:X: https://x.com/AzzamTamimiIG: https://www.instagram.com/azzam_s_tamimiBecome a member here: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/membership Or give your one-off donation here: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/donate Listen to the audio version of the podcast:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7vXiAjVFnhNI3T9Gkw636a Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-thinking-muslim/id1471798762 Purchase our Thinking Muslim mug: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/merch Find us on: X: https://x.com/thinking_muslim LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-thinking-muslim/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Thinking-Muslim-Podcast-105790781361490 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkingmuslimpodcast/ Telegram: https://t.me/thinkingmuslim BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/thinkingmuslim.bsky.social Threads: https://www.threads.com/@thinkingmuslimpodcast Find Muhammad Jalal here:X: https://twitter.com/jalalaynInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jalalayns/ Sign up to Muhammad Jalal's newsletter: https://jalalayn.substack.com Website Archive: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com Disclaimer: The views expressed in this video are those of the individual speaker(s) and do not represent the views of the host, producers, platform, or any affiliated organisation. This content is provided for lawful, informational, and analytical purposes only, and should not be taken as professional advice. Viewer discretion is advised. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special cultural episode of the Israel Daily News Podcast, host Shanna Fuld sits down with longtime friend of the show, singer-songwriter and performer Nicole Raviv.Before the interview, Shanna introduces listeners to Nicole's remarkable journey: from growing up in a multicultural Jewish family in Montreal to performing on some of North America's biggest stages, including as the official national anthem singer for the NHL's New York Islanders and performances for the NFL's New York Jets at MetLife Stadium. After making aliyah to Israel, Nicole dedicated herself to creating a new artistic persona complete with original music that reflects her rich cultural heritage and traditional regional musical influences.Nicole's music blends contemporary pop and R&B with Middle Eastern sounds, and she performs in English, Arabic, Hebrew, and French. Her latest single, "Hayati," has sparked conversation for its use of Arabic at a time of heightened tensions and cultural sensitivities in the region. In this candid conversation, Nicole and Shanna discuss their long-standing friendship, artistic expression during difficult times, multicultural identity, and the power of music to build bridges across communities.Israel Daily News website: https://israeldailynews.orgYOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@israeldailynews?si=UFQjC_iuL13V7tyQIsrael Daily News Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shannafuldSupport our Wartime News Coverage: https://www.gofundme.com/f/independent-journalist-covering-israels-warLinks to all things IDN:⁠ https://linktr.ee/israeldailynews⁠

  One of humanity's ultimate goals is peace. We talk about peace, we pray for peace, and we hope to promote peace. But when push comes to shove, we often forget peace. As we move on from America250, we wanted to spend some time talking about the importance of peace and how we can actually work towards peace – all so our country can live on for another 250 years. In this special, Greg and Holly are joined by several experts who share their understanding of peace according to their cultures:  Professor Chad Ford, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Utah State University, joins us to share a religious perspective  Professor Michael Ligaliga, assistant professor and Program Lead of Intercultural Peacebuilding at BYU-Hawaii, shares his insights into how Pacific Islander cultures tackle the issue of peace  Darren Parry, former Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, explains the role of peace within the Shoshone culture  Dr. Austin Knuppe, Director of the Heravi Peace Institute at Utah State University, goes in-depth on how Middle Eastern cultures view peace and what we can learn from the rest of the world when it comes to finding true transformational peace 

"LONDONOV!" HOW THE SLOANE RANGERS WHORED THEMSELVES OUT TO DODGY OLIGARCHS & SHEIKHS In his latest Lowdown podcast, Nick Cohen talks to Peter York, the legendary social commentator who co-wrote the influential "Sloane Ranger's Handbook" in the 1980s about the English upper class in London.Peter discusses how London has transformed from an English-dominated city to a global centre for wealthy international elites, with properties like the One Hyde Park development being owned primarily by Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern investors, and other foreign billionaires rather than British residents. They examined how American and Russian influence has disrupted traditional national identities, with Peter citing examples like Elon Musk's deliberately inflammatory statements and the US government's official security strategy calling for regime change in favor of European far-right parties.Peter and Nick explore how the English ruling class has been replaced by international plutocrats, with British citizens now often serving as "butlers to the world" in various service industries, while political figures like Nigel Farage receive funding from wealthy developers like the Candy Brothers who build luxury properties for international clients. Peter reflects on his own political awakening and expressed concern about Britain's future choices between aligning with America, Europe, or other global powers, emphasising the need for truth-telling about the current state of international relations.Read all about it! Peter York @PeterPeteryork The legendary journalist, author, style guru & social commentator. Author: Sloane Ranger Handbook, Dictators Homes, Style Wars, The War Against the BBC, Dead Cat on Your Table Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Luke and Janine celebrate the Simpsons reached 25 seasons by... addressing Middle Eastern focused xenophobia... Oh Boy! But at least on One Piece they just ... continue to disrespect Tashigi and Smoker is given a boring fight? Oh no! At least the new format is fun! Covering One Piece Episodes 609-614 Cover art by Mike Patten Edited by Andie. Links! Itunes – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dohmance-dawn/id1620557454… Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/0iOBMkRGKTz04wJB2kitx7… RSS – https://pinecast.com/feed/dohmance-dawn… Bluesky – https://bsky.app/profile/dohmancedawn.bsky.social Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/lukeherr

Heatwave, Q buys a bar, tall ships, pranking influencers, Supergirl, Norm's viral video, Walt impugns the swimming pool industry and stumps for a Middle-Eastern despot. Factormeals.com/tesd50off, BuyRaycon.com/tesd, theperfectjean.nyc - Code:TESD15, https://public.liveread.io/media-kit/tesd

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Jessica Steinberg speaking with acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook. Solomonov and Cook, the trailblazing chefs behind Philadelphia hospitality group CookNSolo Restaurants, are known champions of the Israeli culinary landscape, a history that began with their first restaurant, Zahav, which is considered their flagship and was established 17 years ago. The James Beard Foundation award-winning restaurateurs speak about how they met as line cooks in Philadelphia, when they ran to a tiny Middle Eastern market to stock up on freekeh, silan and spices for their developing menu. Solomonov, the son of a Bulgarian-Israeli father and American-Israeli mother, and Cook, the son of an American rabbi, speak about the Jewish and Israeli influences in their lives. They discuss how Zahav came to be, in an unlikely corner of Philadelphia, an upscale version of an Israeli grill restaurant, eventually branching into additional restaurants and cafes in the city, in New York, and in Florida. Their take on Israeli cuisine has been at the forefront of the American discovery of creamy hummus and tahini, roasted meats and fresh salads, a concept they discuss during the podcast. Cook and Solomonov review the last two and a half years since the bloody October 7 Hamas onslaught and the concurrent wave of anti-Zionist sentiment, when it became much more challenging to run a chain of Israel-influenced restaurants. With nearly 500 employees at their 18 restaurants, the pair say they feel proud to be an Israeli restaurant group, knowing that it is inspiring to some and a reason for others to express hate and vitriol. Solomonov and Cook agree that they won't apologize for their identity, for their culture or community, and will continue to prepare and develop their dishes and restaurants to represent their roots. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht. IMAGE: Celebrated restaurateurs and chefs Steve Cook (left) and Michael Solomonov (right) speak to What Matters Now host Jessica Steinberg for this week's podcast (Courtesy)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following escalating tensions in the Middle East sent European fuel oil imports from the Gulf plummeting 95% in the first half of 2026. Supply chains faced unprecedented disruption while risk premiums skyrocketed across the bunker market. In this episode, S&P Global Energy's Emma Kettley, associate director, price reporting, is joined by reporters Joseph Jaffe, Iman Rezig and Awa Bobb in examining how different fuel oil grades responded to the crisis, from high sulfur fuel oil cracks surging into positive territory to bunker-barge spreads widening over 200% from pre-war levels. They dissect how the June peace agreement between the US and Iran has reshaped fuel oil fundamentals, why VLSFO markets proved more resilient than HSFO during the crisis, and what the current contango structure signals for European fuel oil supply as summer demand patterns emerge.

Julia Ioffe joins Peter with fresh reporting on J.D. Vance's increasingly pointed criticism of Israel as the U.S. works through its ceasefire deal with Iran, explaining how Vance is playing to a nationalist populist base that's grown deeply skeptical of American involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Jessica Steinberg speaking with acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook. Solomonov and Cook, the trailblazing chefs behind Philadelphia hospitality group CookNSolo Restaurants, are known champions of the Israeli culinary landscape, a history that began with their first restaurant, Zahav, which is considered their flagship and was established 17 years ago. The James Beard Foundation award-winning restaurateurs speak about how they met as line cooks in Philadelphia, when they ran to a tiny Middle Eastern market to stock up on freekeh, silan and spices for their developing menu. Solomonov, the son of a Bulgarian-Israeli father and American-Israeli mother, and Cook, the son of an American rabbi, speak about the Jewish and Israeli influences in their lives. They discuss how Zahav came to be, in an unlikely corner of Philadelphia, an upscale version of an Israeli grill restaurant, eventually branching into additional restaurants and cafes in the city, in New York, and in Florida. Their take on Israeli cuisine has been at the forefront of the American discovery of creamy hummus and tahini, roasted meats and fresh salads, a concept they discuss during the podcast. Cook and Solomonov review the last two and a half years since the bloody October 7 Hamas onslaught and the concurrent wave of anti-Zionist sentiment, when it became much more challenging to run a chain of Israel-influenced restaurants. With nearly 500 employees at their 18 restaurants, the pair say they feel proud to be an Israeli restaurant group, knowing that it is inspiring to some and a reason for others to express hate and vitriol. Solomonov and Cook agree that they won't apologize for their identity, for their culture or community, and will continue to prepare and develop their dishes and restaurants to represent their roots. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht. IMAGE: Celebrated restaurateurs and chefs Steve Cook (left) and Michael Solomonov (right) speak to What Matters Now host Jessica Steinberg for this week's podcast (Courtesy)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Preview for Later Today: Jonathan Schanzer. Executive Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), specializing in maritime security, international sanctions, and Middle Eastern geopolitical leverage. He assesses Iranian intimidation tactics and economic leverage in the Strait of Hormuz, noting their ability to selectively approve or target international shipping, and calls for increased international and UN intervention to protect global waterways from unilateral Iranian control.1701

Goodbye INDOPACOM and hello Middle Eastern distractions.Today on The Diplomat's Asia Geopolitics podcast hosts Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) and Katie Putz (@LadyPutz) take stock of U.S. Asia policy at the midpoint of 2026, discussing the recent renaming of INDOPACOM and last month's Shangri-La Dialogue. What are the perception of U.S. Asia policy among regional players amid recurrent distractions caused by conflicts in the Middle East and the uncertain future of US-China relations.You can subscribe to The Diplomat's Asia Geopolitics podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify; and watch the episode on YouTube.

It’s summer in St. Louis, which means one of the region’s most beloved traditions is underway: Muny season. The Tony Award-winning outdoor theater is an essential part of St. Louis culture and one of our city’s crown jewels. It’s also the perfect jumping off point for enjoying some delicious food. That’s how local food writer Madi Lee sees it. The SLM contributor recently put together a fun guide to help you enhance your Muny experience by pairing each show with some of the city’s most popular restaurants. Whether you’re looking for a dine-in affair or some casual takeout to enjoy under the stars, Madi creatively pairs each of this season’s productions with local eateries that match the show’s theme. From turkey legs for Shrek to Middle Eastern delicacies for Ain’t Too Proud, Madi has you covered to make this your most delicious Muny season yet. Watch Arch Eats on YouTube and listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are available. See related stories and resources from this episode at https://www.stlmag.com/podcasts/arch-eats/episode-70 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwYnyrcREHGkvOXGJHENgtHtcRMnGPVFW Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0BfUm30GQXcfuYAWqwrsYs?si=432aaa0abc5646a4&nd=1&dlsi=c46d922dd1824b7b Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/arch-eats/id1714524378 New to podcasts? Follow these instructions to start listening to our shows, and hear what you’ve been missing: https://www.stlmag.com/podcasts/how-to-listen/ Have an idea for a future episode? Email podcasts@stlmag.com Interested in being a podcast sponsor? Email advertisting@stlmag.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's episode of Truth Wanted, ObjectivelyDan is joined by Born Again Atheist to explore deconstruction stories and the pitfalls of extreme indoctrination! They dive into the "worship leader side-hustle," the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate, and why learning psychology is the ultimate faith-killer. Can a community built on facts survive the pressure of religious excommunication?Mohammed in India challenges the hosts to prove their own existence before they can criticize belief in God. ObjectivelyDan and Born Again Atheist point out that responding on camera provides more evidence for their existence than any deity has ever offered. If a standard of proof is set too high to be useful, what is the point of the conversation?Sven-WA accuses the hosts of obfuscating the problem of solipsism to make a previous caller look silly. ObjectivelyDan argues that solipsism is a philosophical dead end that doesn't actually provide evidence for any specific deity. Does questioning the existence of other minds actually make ancient miracles more plausible?Jesse-TX claims the complexity of life and mathematical order in the universe prove a creator exists. Born Again Atheist points out that the biblical creation story contradicts the observable order of the natural world, such as trees appearing before sharks. Will future predictions about Middle Eastern wars provide the evidence the Bible lacks?Josh-WA presents the "minimal facts" case for the resurrection, citing the radical transformation of the disciples as proof. The hosts challenge the reliability of hearsay testimony and compare the disciples' sincerity to modern cult followers. Is a 2,000-year-old story enough to bridge the gap between faith and fact?Thank you for joining us today! We will see you next time!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/truth-wanted--3195473/support.

Sermon Outline: "You Can Get There from Here" I. Introduction: The Divine Waymaker Overcoming the World's Directions: In the natural world, when asking for directions, people might discouragingly tell you, "You can't get there from here." However, God specializes in impossible routes. No matter your starting point or how dead-end your situation seems, God can get you to your divine destination. The Invisible Path: Reading from Psalm 77:19, Pastor Rhonda highlights that God's road often leads straight through the sea and mighty waters—paths that no one even knew existed, leaving no human footsteps behind. The God of Action: Citing Psalm 77:13-14, we serve a great God who actively makes things happen and pulls His people out of the worst kind of trouble. II. Point 1: Start Right Here (The Beauty of the Sanctuary) Choosing a New Path: In Psalm 84, the sons of Korah write about longing for the courts of the Lord. This is significant because their ancestor, Korah, rebelled and was destroyed. Yet, his descendants chose a different path. You may come from generations of brokenness, but you can choose today to serve the Lord. Proximity Over Position: The house of God is beautiful not because of its physical architecture or staging, but because it is where God's people gather to corporately meet with Him. A Day in His Courts: According to the Psalmist, a single day in God's courts is better than a thousand days spent anywhere else. Proximity to God trumps any secular privilege—even a debt-free million-dollar resort or a palace. Strength to Strength: In the sanctuary, believers draw dynamic strength from one another's testimonies—seeing brothers and sisters who have conquered cancer, beaten addictions, and defied medical odds. Together, they pass through the Valley of Baca (weeping) and turn it into a place of fresh, living springs. III. Point 2: Remember God's Track Record The Roundabout Way: When God delivered Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 14), He intentionally did not lead them along the shortest route through Philistine territory. God stated His strategy: He knew that if they faced an immediate battle, they would get discouraged and turn back. Strategic Position vs. Apparent Mistake: God purposefully led them on a roundabout way through the wilderness to camp at a perceived dead end at Baal Zephon. To Pharaoh and the enemy, it looked like they were wandering aimlessly and trapped by the wilderness. The Enemy's Trap: What the world or the enemy labels as a disastrous mistake is actually God's hidden strategy. God didn't build a dead end to trap His people; He built a trap to eliminate their enemy. IV. Point 3: Trust the God Who Takes You Through the Obstacle Through, Not Around: When the crisis hit at the Red Sea, God did not build a bridge over it, send boats to carry them, or take them around it. He took them straight through it. The obstacle itself became the road. Night Season Operations: God blew back the waters all through the night season. When you are in your own dark night season and cannot see a way forward, that is precisely when God is operating behind the scenes to clear your pathway. The Mystery of the Dolphin Skins: In Exodus 26:11, God instructs Moses to cover the ceiling of the Tabernacle's tent of meeting with dolphin skins. While finding sea creatures in the middle of a dry wilderness seems impossible, Jewish history and various scholars suggest a powerful reason: As the Israelites crossed the Red Sea with walls of water stacked high on either side, they could see the marine life. They carried those skins into the wilderness as a permanent structural reminder in their ceiling to look up and remember: “We did not get here by ourselves; it was the Lord who redeemed us.” The Right to Cross Over: Because the blood of Jesus has purchased you, you are legally classified as the redeemed of the Lord, giving you an absolute right to cross over your barriers. V. Point 4: Trust the Process from the Manger to the Throne God's Unconventional Pathways: Throughout history, God has continuously built unexpected avenues of deliverance using unlikely people: He anointed a heathen king named Cyrus to march through the Euphrates River at night to overthrow Babylon and deliver His weeping people. He anointed a simple cupbearer named Nehemiah to stand before King Artaxerxes to secure the rebuilding of Jerusalem's ruined walls. Shouting to the Mountain: When holy projects stop halfway and leave you in disappointment, we must speak the prophetic words of Zechariah 4:7: Cry "Grace, grace" to the mountain, and it shall be leveled into a plain. The Humble Arrival: When the King of Kings arrived, He bypassed the expected pathways of Middle Eastern royalty—the velvet tapestries, marble floors, and royal heralds. Instead, He started in a dusty, earthy manger filled with straw and the smell of livestock. Palace Transmutations: God took a route no human saw coming. If God can navigate a path from a low, dirty manger straight to the right hand of the Throne, He can take the "manger" situations of your life and turn them into a palace. VI. Conclusion: No Throne Without the Cross The Strategic Weapon: The cross was naturally a site of execution, sin, deep shame, and public humiliation. The religious elite and demonic principalities assumed Jesus could never reach the throne from such a low place of defeat. Returning to the Feet of the Cross: The cross is not just the entry point of your salvation; it is your ongoing structural weapon against the enemy. When you are bullied by fear, intrusive thoughts, or defeat, return to the feet of the cross where the veil was torn, sin was destroyed, and shame was paid back. The Third Day Resurrection: The apparent defeat of the cross was turned around on the third day when Jesus was triumphantly resurrected from the tomb. Because of that structural victory, God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name that reigns supreme over cancer, sickness, debt, and every dead-end trap of the enemy. Scripture Index Here are the primary scriptures read, cited, or expounded upon during the service: Psalm 77:19 > "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known." Psalm 77:13-14 > "Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God? Thou art the God that doest wonders: thou hast declared thy strength among the people." Psalm 84:1-2 > "How amiable [lovely] are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." Psalm 84:6-7 (Referenced) – Passing through the Valley of Baca [weeping] and making it a well, as they go from strength to strength. Psalm 84:10 > "For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." Exodus 14 (Referenced) – The account of God leading Israel the roundabout way through the wilderness to camp at Baal Zephon, and Pharaoh assuming they were trapped. Isaiah 51:9-10 (Paraphrased) – Awaking the arm of the Lord to put on strength as in ancient generations, drying up the great deep to make a road for the redeemed to cross over. Exodus 26:11 / Exodus 36:19 (Referenced) – The structural command to cover the tent of the Tabernacle with a covering of dolphin skins [badger/sea-cow skins in some translations]. Zechariah 4:7 > "Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it." Isaiah 51:11 (Referenced) – The redeemed of the Lord returning and coming with singing unto Zion, with everlasting joy upon their heads. Numbers 6:24-26 (The Benediction) > "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace." "Thanks for listening! For more information, visit churchoftheharvest.com. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube @cothcleveland.

In this episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal walks through Jonah 1–2, focusing on the remarkable prayer Jonah offers from the belly of the great fish. Far from a simple morality tale, the Book of Jonah presents a complex, deeply theological portrait of a disobedient prophet who nonetheless clings to the Lord in his darkest moment. Tony explores the Hebrew literary features that shape how we read Jonah's prayer, the doctrine of divine sovereignty as it operates through human agency, and the rich typological connections between Jonah and the death and resurrection of Christ. Most importantly, the episode grounds Jonah's experience in the Westminster Confession's teaching on sanctification — offering genuine hope to believers who feel buried under besetting sin, assuring them that salvation, from beginning to end, belongs entirely to the Lord. Key Takeaways Jonah is not the hero of his own story — he functions more as an anti-hero whose failures actually make him a more useful and relatable example for ordinary believers. Divine sovereignty operates through, not apart from, human agency — the sailors freely threw Jonah overboard, and yet Jonah rightly says God cast him into the deep; both are simultaneously true. The sequence debate in Jonah 2 matters theologically — whether Jonah prayed before or after being swallowed affects how we read the book; reading it as a strict cause-and-effect sequence risks turning the gospel into a quid pro quo transaction with God. Jonah's "yet I will see your holy temple" is a confession of eschatological faith — in the midst of near-certain death, Jonah expresses confidence not merely in earthly rescue, but in his ultimate destiny as one of God's people. The deep is a Genesis image — Jonah's descent into the primordial waters deliberately echoes the formless void of Genesis 1 and the undoing of creation in the flood, placing his experience within the grand arc of biblical cosmology. Jonah is a prophetic type of Christ's death and resurrection — his three days in the belly of the fish, his descent into the pit, and his emergence onto dry land anticipate and foreshadow the resurrection, as Jesus himself confirms in Matthew 12. Sanctification is real but imperfect — drawing from Westminster Confession Chapter 13, Tony argues that the up-and-down nature of Jonah's spiritual life is not an aberration but a description of the normal Christian life, in which the flesh and spirit remain in perpetual war until glory. Key Concepts Eschatological Faith in the Pit One of the most striking moments in Jonah's prayer is his declaration in 2:4 — "Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple." Tony argues that this is not merely a hope of physical rescue and a return to Jerusalem. Jonah believed he was dying. The waters had closed in to take his life; he was being dragged into underwater trenches that the ancient Semitic mind associated with the very gates of Sheol. In this context, Jonah's declaration is better understood as eschatological faith — a confession that even if God takes his life in judgment, he will still see the Lord face to face in the heavenly temple. It mirrors Job's cry, "Yet in my flesh I shall see God," and anticipates the kind of faith that says, with the father in Mark 9, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." Sovereignty and Human Agency Working Together Tony uses Jonah's descent as a teaching moment on the Reformed doctrine of concurrence — the truth that God's sovereign decree and human free will are not in competition but operate simultaneously on different levels. The sailors made a free, agonized decision to throw Jonah overboard; and yet Jonah rightly attributes his casting into the sea to God himself. Tony draws the parallel to Joseph's words to his brothers in Genesis 50: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." This is not a philosophical sleight of hand. It is the consistent testimony of Scripture that God governs all things — including the underwater currents that dragged Jonah to the ocean floor — without reducing human beings to puppets or eliminating their moral responsibility. Sanctification Is Real, Imperfect, and Guaranteed Perhaps the most pastorally significant thread of the episode is Tony's application of Westminster Confession Chapter 13 to Jonah's experience. Jonah makes genuine progress in faith — his prayer is theologically rich and demonstrates real trust in God — and yet he almost immediately slips back behind the curve, making vows the sailors had already made before him, and later in chapter 4, sulking over a dead plant. Tony refuses to read this as a failure of the text. Instead, it is the text faithfully portraying the reality of sanctification: real throughout the whole person, yet imperfect in this life, with an irreconcilable war between flesh and spirit. The hope is not that we will finally overcome that war on our own, but that through the continual supply of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part will overcome. Salvation — including sanctification — belongs entirely to the Lord. Memorable Quotes Jonah is constantly behind the curve, but for this little moment, for this glimpse in the very center of the book, the pinnacle of the book is Jonah finally catching up to the sailors. All outside visible indicators said he was going to die and he was going to hell. Yet he trusted in the Lord that he would see his holy temple again. God redeems our life from the pit. From the very depths of hell itself, he snatched us like brands from the fire. Full Transcript [00:00:08] Tony Arsenal: Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it. For their evil has come up before me." But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.  [00:01:24] Storm and Sailors [00:01:24] Tony Arsenal: But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said, "What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god. Perhaps the god will give us a thought that we may not perish." And they said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us." So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, "Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation, and where do you come from? What is your country, and of what people are you?" And he said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, "What is this that you have done?" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?" For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. [00:02:36] Cast Into Sea [00:02:36] Tony Arsenal: He said to them, "Pick me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you." Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to the dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the Lord, "O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood. For you, O Lord, has done as it pleased you." So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea. And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. [00:03:15] Fish and Prayer [00:03:15] Tony Arsenal: And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, "I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the dep-- into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your waves and billows passed over me." Then he said, "I am driven away from your sight. Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head." At the root of the mountain I went to the land, whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God. When I-- when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord.  [00:04:23] Jonah Not the Hero [00:04:23] Tony Arsenal: And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land Jonah is an interesting book because, as I commented a year ago, Jonah is not necessarily the hero of the story. Uh, if anything, he is kind of the villain in, in some senses. But nevertheless, I think as we'll see today, Jonah still gives us a good example to follow in a sense, and that I think is really the centerpiece of this prayer, is that even as Jonah's going through all of this, his prayer is still remarkably filled with faithful sayings and trust in the Lord. We learned early on in Jonah that Jonah was a prophet during the time of the kings. Uh, he, uh, he seemed to have been a sort of a court temple. He was in the presence of the kings in Jerusalem itself, and he received a calling from the word of the Lord, and this phrase, "the word of the Lord," seems to imply a pre-incarnate, uh, visible manifestation of the second person of the Trinity. So we're not just talking about a, a disembodied voice. We're not just talking about some sort of sense or impression, but the word of the Lord itself, himself, came to give Jonah this mission, to give Jonah this task, to commission him as a prophet to Nineveh. And Jonah gets up and says, "No, thank you," and he goes the opposite direction. We see in that first section there the repeated phrase, "He goes to Tarshish. He boards a ship in Tarshish." The author here, who we, we think is Jonah, is hammering that he did not go where he was supposed to. He went the opposite direction. He went to Tarshish instead of Nineveh, which is 180 degrees the other direction from, uh, from Nineveh on the map. And he boards the, he boards the ship in order to flee the presence of the Lord. He pays, probably buys out the entire ship itself. He pays the fare for the whole ship, and the Lord hurls a great wave, uses the language of weapons. He hurls this storm like a spear. He weaponizes nature itself to correct and chastise and judge Jonah for his disobedience We get to verses seven through 17, and everyone on the boat is crying out to their chosen deity except Jonah. Jonah is asleep in the hold of the ship, oblivious to everything, totally dead to the world and dead to his Lord. The sailors begin to seek divine li- divine wisdom after they wake Jonah. He comes to the deck of the ship, and they cast lots to identify by divine, uh, revelation, sort of a strange practice in the Old Testament or the old, uh, world. Divine revelation that shows them Jonah is the source of this wickedness that is being wrought upon them, at least their impression of it. So they ask Jonah, "Who are you? Tell us who it is that has caused this great calamity." And he says emphatically, "A Hebrew am I." He identifies himself with God's people, and he says, "The Lord is my God, and he made the heaven and the earth and the sea." There's no small amount of irony, and it explains why the sailors are so afraid when he says that God created the heavens where the storm was. He created the sea where they were about to die, and he created the dry land where they were trying to get to. And so this one phrase that Jonah uses almost casually demonstrates that the Lord has total and utter sovereignty over what is going on, which is a theme that we'll see come back again and again through the book The sailors say, "Well, what do we do about this?" And Jonah says, "Throw me into the ocean, because I know that if you do so, then the storm will calm down and you will be saved." Whether he knew this because he's a prophet and it had been revealed to him, or whether he just was surmising that this was the case, we don't know. But the, uh, sailors are hesitant to do so, and we talked about how it was a little bit strange that these, uh, pagan sailors from cultures that d- had no qualms about human sacrifice were suddenly, uh, unwilling to throw Jonah over the sea a- as a, an appeasement offering to this Lord. And we came to the conclusion that they had been regenerated. They had come to faith in this God who created the heavens and the sea and the dry ground. And so they knew intrinsically that this was wrong, that there was a moral imperative not to do this. So they tried to row back to the land. They jettisoned all of their, uh, all of their goods, all of their cargo. They were making for land as best they could, and when it finally became clear that they couldn't do this, they sought the Lord's mercy in saying, essentially, "We don't understand how this is, but please don't put this man's blood on us, because you, Lord, have done as you please," right? The sovereignty of the Lord again comes to the forefront. They finally cast Jonah into the sea, and this is, this is important. They cast Jonah into the sea, and then they worship, they vow vows, and they vow to sacrifice. They offer sacrifices. They seek the Lord, they acknowledge his s- his sovereignty, and they worship him with what they have left. And then rounding out the chapter, the Lord appoints a great fish to come and swallow up Jonah. And we talked about how this, this swallowing of Jonah, although our popular children's books and VeggieTales and other stories we might read to our kids paints the fish often as the vehicle of judgment, it's actually a vehicle of deliverance for Jonah. There's this interesting grammatical feature that happens where in 1:17 the fish is masculine. The, the, the gender of the word is masculine, and then when we get to 2:1 it switches over to the feminine, almost as if to indicate that the whale was pregnant with Jonah, that Jonah was in the whale and was about to be reborn into the world in a new way And that brings us to our passage here today.  [00:10:21] Sequence Debate [00:10:21] Tony Arsenal: I'm gonna read, uh, 1:17 even though that's a little bit outside of our scope. I'm gonna read it along with 2:1 to, to make the point here. It says, "The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the whale, of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish." When you look at the Hebrew text, 1:17 is actually verse 2:1 and 2:1 is then 2:2 and so on and so forth. In the original Hebrew mindset of how this book goes together, these two things were linked together, him being swallowed by the whale and being in the belly of the fish and then him praying was linked together in this sequence. There's a feature in the Hebrew that's called a vav consecutive. You don't need to remember that. Nobody is gonna care about that. But it's, it's a little grammatical feature where it adds this little character to the front of the verb and it indicates a sequence. It's the narrative storytelling. When you look at Genesis 1 it's, "And then God said, 'Let there be light,' and then there was light." It tells you the sequence of events. Sometimes it indicates that it is a strict sequence of events. This happened and then that finished and then the next thing happened and then that finished. And many of the commentators use this passage to justify a perspective of Jonah where Jonah is this rebellious, stubborn prophet who holds out his stubbornness until the very last minute. He's swallowed by the whale, he's getting digested by stomach acid and he sort of finally relents to the Lord and cries out for deliverance and the Lord acquiesces in response to his prayer. That's certainly a possible interpretation. There's lots of good reasons in the, the text here to think Jonah was kind of a chucklehead and was not paying too much attention to what the Lord had for him The other option is to see this as a way for the author of the text to situate this prayer in contrast to other prayers that are not necessarily talked about directly in this text. And I'm gonna take that later view here, and I think it's important. This makes good sense of the text, and we'll explain exactly why that is when we get to the next little section here. But it also protects us theologically if we understand it this way. Jonah is already a book, uh, as I've alluded to, that tends towards a sort of crass moralism or fabulism. We tend to read it as sort of an allegory of if you do the wrong thing, God punishes you, and when you finally do the right thing, He blesses you. And there's a certain level of common grace wisdom to that approach, right? The whole book of Proverbs is-- are these proverbial sayings that if you do this, then the God-- then God will do this. If you raise up your children in the way they will go, they will not depart when they are older. But we also learn in the Book of Job and the Book of Ecclesiastes that those proverbial sayings, although generally true, it's not a magic formula. And so we have this tendency to read Old Testament literature as though it was this sort of like equation, that God punishes us when we're bad. He, uh, He relents from His punishment when we say we're sorry, and we have to be careful about that. If we understand what I'm about to teach from the next section here, that this is not a strict sequence of events, that Jonah began praying before he was swallowed by the whale, and this is simply recording the prayer that was actually within the whale. It helps protect us from seeing Jonah in this sort of quid pro quo, this for that kind of thing. I think we should simply understand this as saying Jonah was in the water, he got swallowed by the whale, and then when he was in the whale, he prayed. It doesn't say anything about whether he was overly stubborn or whether his stubbornness held out. It simply tells us that he was in the pray-- in the whale when this prayer occurred [00:14:23] Sheol and Descent [00:14:23] Tony Arsenal: He says in verse two, he calls out to the Lord out of his distress. He, and God answers him. Out of the belly of Sheol, Jonah cries, and God hears his voice This here tells us that he began praying, right? He was in the water, he was in the deep. All of this descriptive language we're gonna see later on about how deep he was, how quickly the current took him. He was wrapped up in seaweed, his life was fading from him. It was in the midst of all of that that he cries out in his distress. It's a pretty distressing situation. And Jonah, like all of us would, like even most atheists would, cries out to the Lord, even just out of instinct. I think it's kind of crazy for us to think that this man who's now been cast overboard and is being swept to the bottom of the ocean is sure he's gonna die. Somehow, he overrides all of his instinct and his entire life teaching and refuses to pray to the Lord. It just doesn't make sense, and it doesn't make sense of what the text presents here Jonah was in the belly of Sheol. He was in the very, the very womb of Sheol. And there is this interesting contrast that he goes from the belly of Sheol into the belly of the whale. This phrase, the belly of Sheol, is probably roughly equivalent to our phrase about being at death's door, right? It, it may or may not come from some sort of Mesopotamian, um, mythology. It may be a phrase of sort of co-opted into Hebrew, kinda like our phrase at death's door is actually co-opted in from Greek mythology, where there were actually literal doors to the underworld, and people would go there and when they were about to die. Jonah's point is that this was not a small thing. When we watch VeggieTales, he gets thrown in the water, and, like, 13 seconds later, the, the whale comes up and takes him. Jonah was swept down into the water almost supernaturally quick. He was drawn down to the very bottom of the ocean. We talk about the miracle of him surviving in the whale, and it was miraculous for sure, but the miracle of him being swept to the bottom of the ocean and not being crushed by the weight of the water, by the pressure, is equally miraculous. It's no more difficult for God to do that than it is for Him to preserve him in the whale or to raise Jesus from the dead or to create everything from nothing He finally starts to catch up with the pagan sailors. A theme in Jonah is that everyone around Jonah who shouldn't know any better somehow gets to the right conclusion before he does, right? The sailors begin to worship the Lord. They recognize this is divine wrath while Jonah is still asleep in the hold. Later, we'll see that, uh, the, the Ninevites recognize God's mercy and grace and thank Him for it, and Jonah is still mad because the plant he was sitting on d- uh, dies, right? Jonah is constantly behind the curve, but for this little moment, for this glimpse in the very center of the book, the pinnacle of the book is Jonah finally catching up to the sailors. [00:17:34] Sovereignty Explained [00:17:34] Tony Arsenal: He recognizes that it was God who cast him into the depths. This teaches us something about the doctrine of sovereignty and how it relates to human freedom, right? We, we often ask the question, what, what causes rain? Well, you can answer that by saying tiny particles of dust collect water in the air, and once they have enough weight, they fall out of the sky 'cause the air can't hold them up anymore. That's true, and it's good, and that's what nature teaches us. It's also equally true that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, and those two things are not contradictory. So when Jonah says, "You cast me into the sea," he's recognizing, like Joseph does in the Book of Genesis, that what the sailors in this case meant for good but what the brothers meant for evil, God purposed and caused for good. What the sailors did by their own volition, their own free will, they exercised their own, uh, autonomy in the, the horizontal sense to cast Jonah into the sea, God also cast him into the sea As I said, the text here uses language that we may not catch in our English translations to indicate that it's not just the sea here that's the problem. God's sovereignty continues to affect and act on Jonah. The word that we read here as the, the water or the flood, other places refers to the current of a river. The, um, the Euphrates itself is sometimes referred to this, the large- sort of the largest river apart from the Nile that the Egyptian or the, um, Israelite mind would have is the Euphrates, right? This underwater river, this underwater current, the undertow sucks him to the bottom of the ocean. It's like if you're swimming at the beach at the ocean and you get caught in the undercurrent. There's not a lot you can do about it. Y- sometimes even the strongest swimmers can't overcome this, and Jonah in all of his Middle Eastern robes, all of this stuff, probably with all of his baggage, his, his own equipment, things he had on him, is caught in this undercurrent that sucks him to the bottom of the ocean. And it's not just below the surface of the water. He's dropped down into the heart of the sea, the very core. We're seeing this language of him being pulled to the depths. In, in chapter one he goes down, down, down, and now he's being drawn into the belly of the ocean, into the pit of Sheol, into the heart of the waters The picture here is that Jonah doesn't just get thrown in the water and sink. He is actively pulled down to the bottom. This is not just a judgment where perhaps he can swim to the top. Just as the mariners hopelessly tried to reach land, Jonah would've been hopelessly trying to swim against this. We don't actually have any indication he tried, but had he tried, there would've been no chance He goes on to say that the God's breakers and his waves roll him. This is the picture we see if you ever watch surfing competitions on the ocean, where a surfer will get hit by the wave and he just gets rolled over and rolled over and rolled over, and it can be incredibly dangerous. That's why they have like the little lifeguards on the jet skis that zip out there to get them. Because when you get caught in that breaker, you just get rolled over and rolled over and rolled over, and soon you lose track of which direction is up, and even if you did, you couldn't get out This process is not just the forces of nature doing what they do. This is, again, the Lord weaponizing the forces of nature to execute judgment on Jonah This tumultuous and supernatural rapid descent showed Jonah that this is not only the moment in which God wanted to take his life, but was actively casting him away from the g- from the presence of the Lord [00:21:47] Yet I Will See [00:21:47] Tony Arsenal: It says here, um, in verse four, Jonah says, "I am driven away from your sight If you do a word study on this, you start to see that Jonah is pulling language from the creation account. He's pulling language from the fall. He's pulling a lot of language from Genesis itself. He's also pulling from the Psalms, which are pulling from the Genesis account. This word driven away could also be tran- translated as banished. He's cast out of the presence of the Lord. Just as in Genesis 3, we read, "God drove the man out at the east of the Garden of Eden. He placed cherubim and flaming swords." He drove the man out. Genesis 4:14, Cain says, "You have driven me away from the ground." And in Jonah 1:3, we see that Jonah was trying to get away from the presence of the Lord. And I wonder if there was this moment where he goes, "Ooh, I guess I got what I was looking for." Now, the second half of Jonah f- 2:4 here does something a little bit weird, and it's hard to translate. I think we should be honest at times. Hebrew is a language that in some senses is mysterious to us at times. There are still parts of the Hebrew Bible that we're not always 100% sure of. This verse here could be translated... In, in Hebrew it's just a statement. It's, "I, um, I shall again see the holy temple, or your holy temple." How that fits into the text itself is tricky. Some read it as, uh, as a question. "How shall I see your holy temple?" It's actually a statement kind of reaffirming the doubt and the fear and the idea that God was banishing him Most translations translate it as sort of a contrast. He says, "I was driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look on your holy temple." The force of this is even though you're driving me away, even though you're casting me out of your presence, I have faith, I have confidence that I will again see your holy temple The question here, and this is where I think Jonah becomes our example It's certainly possible that Jonah was asserting his belief that he would be rescued from this calamity and he would make his way back to Jerusalem and he would return to the holy temple. I think that what he says in the rest of this, he's recounting what he was praying. What he was praying in this context is not that he would return to the temple. He was confident God was taking his life. He says in verse five, "The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head." The other way that the phrase holy temple is used in the Old Testament is to refer to the place that God lives in heaven. Jonah was asserting faith that even though he was being cast out of the presence of the Lord in this life, even though he was being justly punished for his sin, even though he was about to enter the belly of Sheol and to enter the pit, the very abyss, that he would see God again in His holy temple. This is a statement of Jonah's belief in his own destiny as one of God's people, destined to be saved by faith in God. In this moment, Jonah trusts the Lord despite all of the appearances that God was out to get him It's not all that different than when we read in Mark chapter 9, where this father brings his, uh, demon-possessed child to Jesus, and Jesus says, "I can heal him." And he says, "If you can do anything, Lord," I'm paraphrasing here. He says, "If you can do it, please, Lord." And he says, "If? All things are possible for me." And the father desperately cries out, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." It's this raw, unfiltered statement of just the human condition on this side of glory, right? I believe in the Lord, but there's always that little part in the back of my head that isn't sure, because we're never going to be perfect. Now, I've said before, and, and this is becoming my new catchphrase, I think, I'm not here to rob you of your assurance of faith. Our, our confession, the Bible, this church, our Reform, broader Reform tradition, the assurance of faith of the Christian is the rightful possession inheritance of every person in this room who trusts the Lord. But it is a reality that at times that assurance is shaken. And if there's ever a time for your assurance to be shaken, it's when you're being dragged to the bottom of the ocean, right? One of the words in here, I don't have it-- I don't actually have it in my notes for some reason, but one of the note, words here, uh, s- about the roots of the mountain, I believe, in the next verse. It's not just that he was dragged to the bottom of the ocean. This word root of the mountain is like the word that's used to cut. He's not just being dragged to the bottom of the sea, he's being dragged to the bottom of a deep sea crevasse. He's literally being pulled into the pit, right? Many, uh, in the ancient Semitic world would have seen these underwater pits. They would have theorized or thought about these underwater crevasses as the actual entry into Sheol. And Jonah sees himself being drawn down into these things. Yet, he believes he will see the good presence of the Lord We read a similar statement, I won't, uh, I won't make us go there for time. We read a similar statement in Job. Job goes through this long speech about all the things that God has done to him, and at the very end of it, he says, "Yet I will see the Lord with my eyes, and he will stand up next to me on, on the earth." Right? Even though Job was going through this unimaginable grief, and we know that Job didn't deserve it in the strict sense, he still was saying, "I'm gonna be destroyed. God is shooting arrows at me," right? "His sword is in my side. He's targeting me. He's sending hornets after me." All of these terrible, vibrant images that he's using to show what God is doing to him, and yet he still trusts. I would say that he trusts that he would see the Lord in the flesh. This is not only Jonah's faith, it's a-- or Job's faith, it's a prophecy of Christ This is alien to our modern mindset. We've been talking about this in the Psalms. Weston's been leading us through the, the lament Psalms We often think that suffering and trials and difficulties are the opposite of blessing and favor. And we might recognize that in some sort of way that in God's economy, one thing leads to another. And again, there's an element of truth to that. James says, "Count it all joy when you face trials of every kind." He's not saying that the trials you're facing are in themselves joyful. You don't have to love when you get sick. You don't have to, you don't have to man up and put a smile on or s- pull yourself up by your bootstraps or whatever analogy you wanna use. It's okay to be sad when bad things happen. It's actually good, right? If we're to weep with those who weep, there's an element of sadness that must come with that, not to mention the one who's weeping is not chastised. But the idea that that only leads to this, that that's just one step in the chain, that's not really the mindset the Bible has. All across the Psalms, in the lament Psalms, all across the prophetic literature, the Book of Lamentations, Habakkuk has this long prayer at the end that's very similar, the entire Book of Job, suffering and sanctification, trials and joy and restoration, they're all sandwiched right there, and there is usually this statement in the middle of it that God will do what is right This is Jonah's example for us, and what an example it is. We'll talk in a little bit about all the ways that this whole scenario is typological of Christ. We'll, we'll get to that. But just for a minute in the middle of this book, Jonah is not such a bad guy. And it's because he still has all his faults that he can be this example for us [00:30:26] Genesis Deep Imagery [00:30:26] Tony Arsenal: As though it wasn't clear enough, Jonah in verse five says that the purpose of the waters closing over him was explicitly to take his life. He's now in the belly of the sea. He's being dragged down to the very roots of the mountain, to the very core of the earth in his mind. He, he thinks he's going to hell in the, the Hebrew mind. There's both this idea that God is dragging him to hell in a very real sense. The Hebrew mind, Sheol was a physical place that people went to, and we learn more about it and that becomes clarified as revelation is progressive, not contradictory, but as, as it's clarified But he uses this word deep, and this is where he's drawing again from Genesis. Genesis 1:2, he says, "The earth was without form and void. The darkness was over the face of the deep." The deep is this sort of like unformed chaotic water. It's what exists before God makes everything orderly and good. And in the fall, and especially in the flood in chapter seven, uh, chapter seven verse 11, the f- the flood itself is a sort of undoing of the order. God opens the floods from beneath, from the bottom of the earth, from the wellspring of the deep, as well as the chaotic waters from outside the firmament, and it all pours back in together and the entire world becomes again this deep, primordial, chaotic water And just as in Genesis God separates the land, in, in Genesis 7 or in Genesis 8, he separates out the land by drying it up, drying up the water. We also see that Jonah has this trust that he will return to the dry land. Again, he's the God of heaven and sea and dry earth. We could even read this phrase, depending on the context, as the abyss, which is this, a- again, is some borrowed language from Greek here that the Hebrews use. But it's this deep, watery, murky place th- full of shadows and darkness. Sounds familiar, I think, right? Christ says that those who are apart from him who refuse to obey will be cast into the outer darkness. This is the imagery that Jonah is seeing. All outside visible indicators was that he was gonna die and he was going to hell. Yet he trusted in the Lord that he would see his holy temple again Apart from God's gracious intervention, Jonah was right. So although God is the one that's bringing him to the depth, bringing him to the pit, dragging him down, using the very currents of the sea, weaponizing these underwater currents that only thousands of years later do we understand, and even then only this much, he also graciously rescues him from this by miraculously appointing a whale or a great fish who comes and swallows Jonah, takes him whole, and keeps him there in his own belly, keeps him there in her own womb when we get to chapter 2. In chapter six, or in verse six, Jonah makes this pivot. Again, he says he's brought to the very bottom of the sea, to the roots of the mountain, which is these deep underwater trenches. He conceptualizes himself now in this locked city behind bars. Again, this jail imagery, this pit imagery, it's all meant to evoke this idea of the final punishment of the wicked. This place of murky, gross water, this place of darkness and, uh, limitations of freedom, he's being taken there. This is the section here where people would actually argue that Jonah dies. He actually dies and is resurrected when he's swallowed by the whale. This comes from language where it says God does not prevent him from going to the pit. God actually draws him to the pit and then raises his life up from the pit. Now, I'm not convinced, um, that we should think that Jonah actually died. I don't, I don't think that the text fully supports that. But it certainly is using this imagery [00:34:45] Christ Typology [00:34:45] Tony Arsenal: This is where we get to some typology about Christ. This is where Jonah really shines as a prophet. Sometimes people wonder why the Book of Jonah is considered a prophetic book, and this along with it is part of that. Jonah, although the sign of Jonah in Matthew and in the other Gospels refers to the belly of the whale, that just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so also Christ will be in the heart of the earth, the pit, for three days and three nights. When we're talking about typology, we can't get too tripped up on the details. We're not talking about strict allegory where this figure is that person and this signpost represents that thing. This isn't Pilgrim's Progress or Chronicles of Narnia, which is not allegory, but it's similar. Topology functions often on sort of these big picture concepts, right? Although there are some typological references that are super detailed, there are also some that are just sort of evocative The idea that Jonah died and was raised to life and sort of incubated in the earth, in- incubated in the whale and sort of reborn into the world, that certainly sounds a lot like a picture of the resurrection And I think we should see it that way. When Christ says that the sign of Jonah is roughly His resurrection, He is tying it to the three days and three nights, but He's not limiting to that Jonah comes to this pivot, and now he starts to reflect on the context of his deliverance. This whole s- this whole prayer should be seen sort of in the light of the thanksgiving psalms. There's a situation in which Jonah is in, and then God rescues him, and he begins to praise him for it. There's elements of lament, but it's really a thanksgiving psalm that he's drawing on here or that he's, he's writing In 2:7, Jonah is either dead or he's actively dying. I don't know about you, but if you've ever, uh, dove into a pool and got a little deeper than you thought you were, and you-- there's that, like, two seconds before you get to the top where you're sure the lights are going out and you've really only been underwater for, like, 45 seconds, but everything in you tells you if you don't get there, you're gonna die. Every instinct you have is to scramble for the surface. Think about how long it took Jonah to be dragged to the bottom of the ocean. Even at this accelerated pace, we're talking about a long time. And we have no reason to believe, and lots of reasons to think otherwise, Jonah was not preserved from the pain and the terror and the difficulty of feeling like you're drowning because he was drowning. He was without oxygen. His life was fading away. And it is in this context of him being on the brink of death, at death's door, in the belly of Sheol, being drawn into the very pit itself, that his prayer reaches the Lord in His holy temple. Right? This gives further evidence to the thought that Jonah is not talking about the temple in Jerusalem. There was, there was theology, and I, I think it's fine theology, that God lived in the temple in a special way. This is the reason that Daniel faces Jerusalem when he prays. There is a sense in the Old Testament that God's special place of presence is the temple in Jerusalem, and that the prayers of the people physically go to that place to be received by God. But Jonah doesn't know which direction the temple is. He's underwater. He's been tossed around by breakers. He has no sense of geography at this point He knows that his prayers are reaching the Lord in his heavenly temple. And they reach him in his heavenly temple just as his life is being lost in the pit. And it is from this moment that God raises him to life, or preserves his life, depending how you read it, and appoints the well to come reach him And some read this next verse as a little bit of a step back for Jonah, and it may be.  [00:39:02] Vows and Idols [00:39:02] Tony Arsenal: He reads, "Those who pay vain regard to i- regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. And what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord." Jonah didn't see the sailors on the ship vow their vows and offer their sacrifices. That happened after they threw him into the pit and the current sucked him under So we may read this with a little bit of a, "Thank God I'm not like that tax collector," kind of a lens. And there's probably some wisdom for us in that, to recognize that Jonah still hasn't quite gotten there. But it's also very common in the Old Testament to recognize that God treats His people differently because they are different. God brings people to a place of sanctification, and through that process of sanctification, they cease to worship vain idols. And it is absolutely true that those who worship vain idols forfeit their hope of steadfast love from the Lord. That's straight out of the Ten Commandments, right? He visits the iniquity of, specifically of idolatry. He visits the iniquity unto the children to the third and fourth generation. But for those who love the Lord, He loves them with a steadfast love unto thousands We can recognize in Jonah that although he had made great progress in faith, that he still wasn't there yet. And we can recognize that in him because we can recognize that in ourselves. Jonah is the example in this because he is not perfect, because he has not arrived, 'cause he doesn't do a 180 about-face and get everything right going forward We can read this in light of Jonah in chapter four, where he takes big steps back Or we can read this as the regular up and down progress of sanctification in the life of all believers everywhere It is also ironic again, we're back now to Jonah being a little bit behind the curve. He was sent to Nineveh to evangelize the heathens, some of the worst enemies that Israel was going to face, and he ignores that call. And he, instead of going to Nineveh, he goes to Tarshish. He goes the opposite direction, and he does something that would be unthinkable to most Israelites. He goes out on the open ocean. That's just insanity to someone living in the ancient world He should have recognized that the sailors were fearing the Lord when they refused to throw him overboard. I think we all have a sort of innate sense when someone's behavior suddenly changes, and I think most of us, and not in some sort of strange, kooky, charismatic sense, but I think most of us can sort of go, "I think I know why that is." Right, when you, when you see someone at work that suddenly stops lying about everything and stops backbiting and stops taking credit for other people's work, and then you find out a little while linger- longer that they've come to faith in Christ, if we're being honest, we're not all that surprised. But Jonah doesn't get it. Jonah here promises the same things that the sailors already did, so now we're again back behind the curve [00:42:37] Sanctification Confession [00:42:37] Tony Arsenal: To wrap this out, I, I wanna, um, I wanna ground this in something that I think is really vital for us to understand. As I said, Jonah is an example to us because he demonstrates the limited nature of sanctification, but he also demonstrates in a certain sense the fact that sanctification is real and has real effects. So this is a little out of the ordinary, but grab your Trinity Hymnal from the pew in front of you. If you happen to have a copy of the Confession, you could use that if you'd prefer. But open with me to page 927 I have, um, I've been, uh, broadly Reformed most of my Christian life and didn't realize it until I got to seminary. And since I discovered the Westminster Confession of Faith a decade ago, it's not new, uh, not new to me, um, I realized how valuable this resource was. This is essentially a search engine without the internet. And so I wanna just read a little bit out of chapter 13 here, which is our Confessions chapter on sanctification. I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but the, the first, uh, the first section here essentially says that sanctification is real, and it happens throughout the whole person. We talk about total depravity, and there is a sense in which the Christian remains totally depraved after regeneration, in that there still is, there still is corruption within our entire being, uh, that is depraved. There's also an equal sense in which we can say we are totally sanctified in Christ because sanctification is throughout the whole man in which we are renewed after the image of God. So that's section one. And then section two says, "This sanctification is throughout," again, throughout the whole man, "in the whole man, yet imperfect in this life. There abiding still some remnant of corruption in every part, whence ariseth a continual and irre- irreconcilable war, the flesh left lusting after the spirit, and the spirit lusting after the flesh." Now, that may feel like just a crushing burden if you stop reading there, but it lines up with our experience, right? This is Paul in Romans 7, "The good things I wanna do, I do not, and the bad things that I, I kn- I do not want to do, I somehow do. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." We shouldn't read that as though somehow our spirits are purified entirely and our bodies are what's really causing us to sin. This is a picture of the spirit being, uh, our, our spiritual part of us. The part of us that's regenerated is willing, but the part of us that remains corrupt is our flesh And our confession goes on to say, "In which war, although the remaining corruption for a time may much prevail, yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctification- sanctifying spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome." And so the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. This is revolutionary in our broader evangelical world. The storybook Bible, Jonah did a bad thing and he gets punished, and he did a good thing and so he gets better, cannot understand this concept. This is why I think we have to be so careful when we choose what books to give to our little ones, right? I, I make jokes about VeggieTales. I loved VeggieTales when I was in VeggieTales age range. I probably would sit down and watch VeggieTales with Augie when he gets old enough. But we have to be so careful not to let those messages come to our children, or to ourselves for that matter, uninterpreted by the scriptures first and foremost, and our Reformed tradition that we all believe. Amen.  [00:46:49] Assurance in the Pit [00:46:49] Tony Arsenal: This is vital for us When all is said and done, salvation, whether we're talking about justification, sanctification, glorification, resurrection, all of the different stages and phases of our salvation, it is entirely of the Lord. And it's for this reason that Jonah says, "I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay." Salvation belongs to the Lord So this is the application of the sermon, loved ones. No matter how close to or actually into the pit itself we have fallen The, the chapter on assurance of faith, I won't go there, but the chapter in our confession on assurance of faith is very honest with us that our assurance will be shaken, and at times we may not feel as though we have any assurance at all But even when we have fallen that deep into the pit of despair, even when we feel as though we are in the very depths of hell No matter how much our spiritual or physical life is fainting away as we starve for spiritual breath, as we feel that impulse in us that recognizes we're moments away from losing the faith entirely. No matter how much the remnants of corruption in every part swirl around our heads like seaweed, how often do we feel wrapped up in sin? Whatever it is, I don't need to get specific 'cause I'm sure all of you are thinking of something in your head right now that has been swirling around you for years. Maybe it's months, maybe it's years. Maybe you've never felt, since coming to Christ, you've never felt like it wasn't wrapped up around you like seaweed. Besetting sin is something that we need to be serious about, and it's a good cause for us to think hard and deep about our status as Christians, and to go to our pastor and seek the elders' assistance in this. But besetting sin is not, is not a mark that excludes you from, from Christianity. Right? We're justified by faith alone, in Christ alone, by His grace alone. Not because we've overcome our besetting sin alone, right? That's not one of the five solas God redeems our life from the pit. From the very depths of hell itself, he snatched us like brands from the fire And though it is the case that we often are shaken, and at times God, just as he let Jonah, he let Jonah go to Tarshish. God had every ability to stop him from doing a stupid thing, and sometimes he does that, right? I'm sure there's plenty of times we can think about in our lives where we were heading towards sin and God just pulled a U-turn on us, and we are thankful for that. But there are times that he does not, and he lets us, he lets us do that. He lets us suffer the consequences, and he does that to chastise us and bring us back to him And even in the context of that, it is through this continual supply of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, right?  [00:50:19] God Beautifies His Bride [00:50:19] Tony Arsenal: Christ was anointed by the Holy Spirit from the womb beyond measure. That's in the Book of John. There was never a time where Christ did not have the totality of the infinite sanctifying Spirit of the God, of God. We do not have the totality of the sanctifying Spirit of God. Now, we can get into a discussion after the service about divine simplicity and all the complexity of that, but the reality is that God sanctifies us more and more and more, and He does it by giving us the Spirit more and more. Might be more accurate to say He gives more of us to the Spirit. He gives us to the Spirit more and more. He gives us to Jesus more and more. We are Christ's inheritance. We are His bride. And just as the bride, as they're approaching the wedding, is made more and more beautiful, they start their, their beauty treatments weeks and months ahead of time, right? They're already making their hair appointments. They're already doing what they need to do to feel as beautiful as they can and to be as beautiful as they can on their wedding day. If that's the way we treat human weddings; guys do it too, just not as much. If that's the way we treat human weddings, how much more does God treat the heavenly wedding of His Son to His beloved bride? He's beautifying us, Church. Doesn't always feel like it. Doesn't always look like it, but He is. 

Register for Luminosity: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Register⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign Up for Prayer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Orbis Prayer Ministry Network – Receive prayer for healing, prophecy, inner healing and deliverance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Donate: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Give - Orbis Ministries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠In this episode of God Is Not a Theory, Ken Fish is joined by Middle East expert and longtime ministry leader Avner Boskey for an in-depth discussion on the Iran Deal, Israel's security challenges, and the rapidly changing landscape of the Middle East.As headlines continue to focus on negotiations, ceasefires, and regional tensions, many Christians are asking important questions:What is actually in the Iran Deal? Why are Iran's proxy armies such a major concern? How do these developments affect Israel and America's allies in the region? And what role, if any, do biblical prophecies play in understanding the times we're living in?Drawing on decades of experience in Israel and extensive knowledge of Middle Eastern history, Avner provides valuable context behind the headlines while helping believers think biblically and wisely about current events.Topics Include:What the Iran Deal actually proposesIran's proxy armies and regional influenceHezbollah, Hamas, and the HouthisIsrael's current security challengesThe role of Gulf nations in the conflictGeopolitics and diplomacy in the Middle EastBiblical prophecy and current eventsWhy Christians should pay attentionDiscernment in an age of information overloadPraying for Israel and the nationsThis is a challenging, candid episode that pulls current events into a biblical frame and calls believers to sober, prayerful attention to the times.Key Takeaways:The Middle East cannot be understood without historical contextIran's influence extends far beyond its bordersRegional conflicts have global implicationsChristians should approach current events with wisdom rather than fearBiblical prophecy deserves careful and responsible studyPrayer remains a vital response to turbulent timesUnderstanding the headlines requires looking beyond the headlines

The United States and the Iranian regime have signed a 14-point memo of understanding, establishing a 60-day window to negotiate the war's end. To work out the details—which include an end to sanctions and international monitoring of Iran's uranium—J.D. Vance met with Iran's diplomats in Switzerland, while Secretary Marco Rubio is slated to confer with Middle Eastern allies this week. Meanwhile, U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer has resigned amid a breakdown of government trust, sparked by the Labour government's failure to take immigration and related crime seriously.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claremontinstitute.substack.com/subscribe

The political landscape is fracturing from the coast of South Carolina to the streets of New York, and we are breaking down every angle of the fallout!

Katalin Schäfer is a Hungarian dancer, choreographer, teacher, costume designer, and psychology student whose work bridges Middle Eastern dance, modern fusion, somatic movement, and self-awareness practices. With more than 20 years of international teaching, performing, and judging experience, she is the creator of the NEUture Dance method, a neuroaffirmative approach that integrates movement, body awareness, creativity, and nervous system regulation. Katalin is the director of GoldenScarf Arabic Folklore Dance Theater, founder of numerous artistic and retreat projects, and an award-winning performer whose career has taken her to festivals and events across Europe, North America, and Asia. Currently pursuing a degree in psychology, she combines her extensive dance background with research into neurodiversity, somatic practices, and personal development, helping participants cultivate authentic expression, resilience, and deeper connection through movement.In this episode you will learn about:- How an ADHD and autism diagnosis completely changed Katalin's understanding of herself- Why dance became a healing tool long before she understood the science behind it- The surprising ways neurodivergent traits can become strengths in dance and creativity- The difference between a dance retreat, somatic practice, and actual therapy—and why the distinction matters- The challenges of balancing motherhood, a dance career, university studies, and personal wellbeingShow Notes to this episode:Follow Katalin Schäfer on FB, Instagram, YouTube, and website.Previous interview with Katalin Schäfer:Ep 107. Katalin Schäfer: Accepting Art Instead of Defining ArtDetails the BDE shows and training programs are available at www.JoinBDE.comFollow Iana on Instagram, FB, and Youtube . Check out her online classes and intensives at the Iana Dance Club.Find information on how you can support Ukraine and Ukrainian belly dancers HERE.Podcast: www.ianadance.com/podcast

The Global AI Power Play Is Here, And It's Already Shaping Your Career and Business. What if I told you that a $600 billion handshake in Saudi Arabia just reshaped the future of AI and your career, and most professionals have no idea?In this video, I'll show you what REALLY happened when Trump met with Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Nvidia's CEO, and Middle Eastern leaders, and how their deal is already shifting the AI, cybersecurity, and business landscapes forever.We'll dive into: the tech arms race and how it's redefining power in 2025; why 3.5M cybersecurity jobs remain unfilled despite mass layoffs; how AI is transforming careers, security, and global policies; the 5 risks in AI that are creating new job roles and business models; why YOU are right on time, not too late for AI leadership opportunitiesWhether you're a professional in cybersecurity, a business leader, or someone navigating this AI wave, this video will help you stay ahead of the curve.Looking to go from chaos and unpredictability to resilience in the world of AI? Start here with The Predictability Factor newsletter at The Monica Talks Cyber (https://www.monicatalkscyber.com).

دکتر ولی نصر، استاد برجسته روابط بین‌الملل در دانشگاه جانز هاپکینز و مشاور سابق وزارت امور خارجه آمریکا است. او به عنوان یکی از کلیدی‌ترین تحلیل‌گران ژئوپولیتیک خاورمیانه در محافل آکادمیک و رسانه‌های غربی شناخته می‌شود که سیاست‌ها و رفتارهای منطقه‌ای را تحلیل و تبیین می‌کند. در این گفتگو، فارغ از قالب‌های رسمی، به زبان فارسی درباره وضعیت امروز ایران، پیامدهای روانی و ساختاری بحران‌های اخیر، و چالش‌های عمیق میان توسعه اقتصادی و رویکرد مقاومت به بحث نشسته‌ایم.00:00:00 — ریشه‌های سیاست خارجی ایران00:17:00 — شکاف جامعه داخل و خارج00:34:00 — نقش رسانه‌ها و الگوریتم‌ها00:51:00 — واقعیت‌های داخل و مدیریت ریسک01:08:00 — جرقه‌های اقتصادی و فرهنگی01:25:00 — توافق ایران و آمریکا؛ خرید زمان؟01:42:00 — بن‌بست توسعه و مقاومت01:59:00 — تاریخ ایران و سناریوهای آینده02:16:00 — درس‌های جنگ و بار روانی غربتDr. Vali Nasr is a distinguished Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University and a former advisor to the U.S. State Department. Renowned in Western media and academic circles as a leading interpreter of Middle Eastern geopolitics, he provides deep strategic insights into regional foreign policy. In this episode, stepping away from formal diplomatic constraints, we sit down for a rare Persian-language conversation to dissect the current state of Iran, the deep psychological aftermath of recent crises, the widening gap between the diaspora and domestic society, and the structural tension between economic development and regional resistance.Tabaghe 16

In Episode 483 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Hamidreza Azizi — expert on Iranian foreign policy and international security, and author of The Axis of Resistance: Iran, Israel, and the Struggle for the Middle East — about the evolution of the US-Israeli war against Iran since the early weeks of Operation Epic Fury, the contours of the emerging peace process, and the broader transformation of the Middle Eastern order in its wake. The first hour picks up from Azizi's previous appearance and traces how the war has developed: the transformation of Iran's leadership following the assassination of Ali Khamenei and the consolidation of power within the IRGC, the memorandum of understanding signed between the US and Iran, whether Iran's demonstrated control over the Strait of Hormuz has negated its need for a nuclear weapon, the role of Hezbollah and Lebanon as the most volatile variable in any lasting peace arrangement, and an honest accounting of what Iran has lost — and why those losses, not just its leverage, are driving Tehran to the negotiating table. The second hour turns to the broader regional and geopolitical consequences of the conflict. They examine whether the Islamic Republic's ruling mandate has fundamentally shifted and what that means for its relationship with the United States going forward, how Netanyahu faces elections with a war record that looks nothing like the total victory he promised, and how Trump's willingness to negotiate with Iran without Israeli participation has forced a reckoning with the limits of that alliance. They also discuss what a new Middle Eastern order looks like in the face of a potential US strategic withdrawal or retrenchment — defined less by competing visions than by fluid, transactional balance-of-power dynamics — before closing with China: what Iran's foreign minister's recent comments about a new era of cooperation between Beijing and Tehran mean in practice, how China's behavior during the war signals a qualitative shift in its strategic calculus, and what three scenarios could cause the current peace process to collapse before a comprehensive deal is reached. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Join our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 06/17/2026

Donate (no account necessary) | Subscribe (account required) Join Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA Operations Officer, as he dives into today's top stories shaping America and the world. In this Special Brief of The Wright Report, Bryan breaks down the Iran Peace Memo in full, the document that will shape global oil prices, your mortgage and credit card rates, Middle Eastern security, and American electoral politics for years to come. Bryan walks through every major section of the Memo, from Iran's effective new control over the Strait of Hormuz and a $300 billion reparations framework, to the shocking reversals on missiles and nuclear enrichment that contradict what Trump, Rubio, and Vance themselves argued just months ago. He also explains why the White House is now calling this a "gentlemen's agreement," why CIA Director Ratcliffe and Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth opposed it, and why the Fed is now signaling interest rate hikes instead of cuts because of oil-driven inflation tied directly to this conflict. Plus, Senate Republicans are breaking with Trump over the deal and blocking the SAVE Act out of spite, the UAE is spending billions to reroute oil pipelines away from Iranian-controlled waters, and Bryan closes with his unvarnished assessment of what this Memo means for American power on the world stage. "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32   Keywords: Wright Report, Bryan Dean Wright, Iran Peace Memo, Strait of Hormuz, Operation Epic Fury, nuclear enrichment Iran, Iran missiles, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Iran sanctions, $300 billion reparations, Federal Reserve interest rates, oil prices global economy, SAVE Act election integrity, Senate Republicans Trump, UAE oil pipelines, Abraham Accords, Hezbollah Lebanon, Ahmed al-Sharaa Syria, American military decline, drone warfare

Sponsors: Pique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impactTruemed: Check your eligibility and start saving at https://truemed.com/impactQuo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impactNetsuite: Right now, get our free business guide, Demystifying AI, at https://NetSuite.com/TheoryQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodPlaudAI: Get 10% off with code IMPACT at https://plaud.ai/impactWhatnot: Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order.ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.comShopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactKetone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription orderWelcome back to another episode of The Tom Bilyeu Show with Cohost Drew and moderator, Ryan! The conversation focused on a whirlwind of pressing global and domestic issues shaping today's world. The discussion explored the evolving negotiations between the US and Iran, questioning the mysterious terms of a new “deal” and the shifting sands of Middle Eastern politics. Several points were raised, including the challenges of US debt refinancing, the economic ripple effects of AI investment, and Japan's pivotal role in global debt markets.One concept discussed was the increasing calls to overhaul tax policies, examining whether taxing capital gains like ordinary income truly addresses the nation's financial woes—or if it instead threatens the innovation engine powering the US economy. The episode also tackled stories from the FBI's headline-grabbing terror prevention efforts, to dramatic revelations involving non-profits and undercover operations, to the relentless advance of surveillance technology, including insect-sized drones.A key theme that emerged was the existential tension between government intervention, personal responsibility, and technological progress—with cultural, economic, and ethical implications unpacked at every turn. Whether examining the West's response to social media, the future of AR glasses, or the cycle of business innovation and decline, the conversation painted a vivid picture of a world in flux, demanding both critical scrutiny and bold action.Chapters: 00:00 JD Vance on US-Iran negotiations07:56 Iran's strategy during US midterms11:29 Economic focus for Middle East peace22:33 Trump's economic leverage with Iran24:11 Economic strategies and potential impacts30:56 Questioning the drone attack plot38:22 Japan's economic challenges post-COVID39:37 AI investment and financial concerns44:51 Discussing new tax proposals53:42 Critique of Economic Approaches56:42 Inherited debt and tax myths01:02:07 Discussing budget cuts and taxation01:08:29 Discussing national debt solutions01:13:31 Criticism of Southern Poverty Law Center01:17:35 Questioning goodness of NGOs01:23:19 Privacy concerns in online safety01:27:50 Future of AR Glasses and Contacts01:32:53 Future AI and reality confusion01:41:15 Industry veterans discuss company failures01:44:01 Startup lifecycle and innovation turnover01:48:28 Reevaluating Game Development StrategiesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

President Trump spoke of America's relationship with Israel, and his feelings on Prime Minister Netanyahu. How will Trump work with our Middle Eastern ally going forward as the Iran deal is finalized? The Knicks fans rioting in New York is not the problem; right-wing media pointing it out is the problem, at least according to Jon Stewart. Let's see if he can pull any other Leftist cliches out of the bag. You'll be pleasantly surprised. After Rick Chow was found not guilty, Killer Mike decided to stir up racial tensions. Are people falling for it anymore? Prime Minister Keir Starmer says kids under 16 are banned from social media. Good move or misguided overreach? We'll take a look. GUEST: Josh Firestine Link to today's sources: https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/sources-june-16-2026 Protect your vehicle from the unexpected. Go to http://CarShield.com and use code CROWDER for 20% off. Download Rumble Wallet now and enjoy the benefits of financial and personal freedom! https://rumblewallet.onelink.me/bJsX/crowder Share clips from the show & compete to get a mention on the show! Where to get clips: Telegram: http://t.me/LWCClips Discord: https://discord.gg/nfRAZxEbAV Submit link for tracking: https://forms.gle/HZwz7Q7C9hkHecxTA Foundation Daily is made up of premium ingredients to reduce inflammation and stress and promote clean energy and mental clarity. Subscribe now and receive 40% off for life. https://foundationdaily.com/ DOWNLOAD THE RUMBLE APP TODAY: https://rumble.com/our-apps Join Rumble Premium to watch this show every day! http://louderwithcrowder.com/Premium Get your favorite LWC gear: https://crowdershop.com/ Bite-Sized Content: https://rumble.com/c/CrowderBits Subscribe to my podcast: https://feeds.libsyn.com/576250/rss FOLLOW ME: Website: https://louderwithcrowder.com/ X: https://x.com/scrowder Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louderwithcrowder Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stevencrowderofficial Music by @Pogo

The media claims Trump is isolated and the midterms are lost, but they are ignoring the reality of a crippled Iran and a redrawn map of Middle Eastern alliances. By shifting from appeasement to strength, the administration has effectively shut out Russia and China while setting the stage for a massive drop in oil prices. This strategy doesn't just secure the Strait—it puts the MAGA movement in the driver's seat heading into the midterms.

In this episode of the Derek Hunter Podcast, Dean Karayanis — New York Sun columnist and former Rush Limbaugh staffer — delivers hard-hitting, unfiltered breakdown of media double standards, establishment narratives, and foreign policy failures. Dean confronts retired General Mark Hertling over his appearance on Morning Joe, contrasting how the media coddles establishment military figures while demonizing anyone aligned with the right. He tears into Hertling's lectures on Middle Eastern culture and the flawed strategy regarding Iran's Karg Island, drawing sharp historical parallels to World War II, the Iraq War, and the Art of the Deal. Later in the show, the focus shifts across the Atlantic to Canada and Europe. Dean dissects a troubling clip from Canadian politician Mark Carney regarding a "New World Order" built out of Europe, exposing the left's sudden pivot from “diversity to an all-white, all European heritage focus on heritage. Plus, Senator John Fetterman (Democrat-Pennsylvania) challenges the media to confront the Democratic Senate candidate, Graham Platner (Nazi-Maine), over trolling on the child-rape app Kik. The media is trying to run interference for Platner, as illustrated in the Meet the Press conversation Senator Raphael Warnock. Asked if Platner has the character to serve in the Senate, the so-called reverend engages in a textbook filibuster and shills his new book. Free speech crackdowns in Ireland following civil unrest, where the beheading is fine but the people who shared the video are the problem. Plus, a quick-fire review of Steven Spielberg's latest sci-fi letdown, Disclosure Day and World Cup fever. Get yourself a cold beer, put on your sunscreen, and buckle up for a Monday reality check.