Sky Links, 8-25

A Vision For These Times
The Lord said, “Now lift my hammer and let it fall.”
I saw a large hammer with handle about 20 feet long. It was prepared by God for me. I went to it and saw a pad like a mattress was there as well. A large screen was up so we could see the people in front of the stage, it did not show the stage but the people. I lifted the hammer and dropped it upon the pad. It was all I could do to raise the weight 20 feet above me. I lifted it again and dropped it. Each time it became easier, but the head of the hammer seemed to begin to grow as well. Everyone was pleased. I couldn’t understand why the pad, but a man near me said, “it is not yet time but continue to drop it.” There was a frequency it produced that seemed to draw a few more threw the curtains from the front of the stage to the back. I continued to lift and drop and lift and drop until the pad was destroyed and I started to pound the earth with each blow.
Now there was several hundred behind the stage. Musicians of all types and those who could not play an instrument but were given something in their hand. The Lord said, “I am now forming my hammer to begin to release a sound into the earth to destroy all that is not of me.” I continued lifting and dropping and lifting and dropping. The power of the Lords hammer was coming from heaven to earth. It seemed when the hammer was lifted his power came upon it and when it dropped it was released. The frequency was starting to permeate the earth and I could see the side curtains miles away begin to shake. I could also see the great crowd of tens of thousands who had come to watch now beginning to shake as well.
The Lord said, “The hammer of the Lord is now beginning to shake everything that can be shaken. The whole earth will shake with my power and a realigning will now begin. The day of the hammer has started.
Vision: The Hammer of The Lord -Greg Crawford




A Story About Walking With God Outside
The other day I saw a comment about the bliss of community, and I was astounded at my change. He’d changed me so gently and subtly and slowly. No church, or community, or tribe could ever compare.
I still remember the veil superimposed over His face. And the clawing, tearful desperation for Him. We stayed behind the veil, never breaking through to this. Always needing each other to hear and to see, and to guide through the fog.
Oh, the desperate addiction to the community for another fix.

And now they get mad at me when I talk about this. It seems rude, like a slap-in-the-face to them who are still there. It looks arrogant, or impossible, or a scam to discredit them. In the least, they are sad for me because I lost the bliss of community.
There is a price to obtain the pearl.

And I have to share the experience because it really happened. I didn’t make it up and it’s not a lie. I have to share it because there are others who have also come to this place. They know what I know. But they also want to know they aren’t the only ones.
He is in all things because He created all things. And He is living out loud inside me.
I’m never desperate for more of Him because He’s already here, in my face, beside my arm, touching my heart, speaking to my mind, showing me visions and dreams that mean something. And even more. Healing and miracles. They’re here in His presence, manifesting every time.
And when I ask, I receive. Just like it says in scripture.

For those who believe but are still desperate, I tell this story to encourage you to be brave. He is right there waiting for you to shed everything, laying aside “the weight that besets you”. Scripture calls it sin to have anything before Him. And it seems odd that we can’t see it while we are inside it.
These other gods and their veils are subtly deceitful.

But it isn’t something to fear. It’s simply the magic we do inside our own mind when we aren’t ready to let go of an illusion. We create it to feel secure even when that security is a curtain we pull over our own eyes.
It’s fear of the unknown.

Father asked if I wanted to go forward, and I knew I’d see things that might frighten me. So, I had a condition. I asked Him, if it was possible, to take me forward, to show me everything, “but please don’t scare me”.
I wasn’t very brave. But He didn’t mind.
In His great Love, He honored my request. And when some time had passed, I took down the condition myself. I’d traveled far enough, seen enough, experienced enough to be confident that I’m safe with Him. He really is right here and there’s nothing bigger than Him. I can trust Him.

There is no other god before Him. We really can see Him face to face. It doesn’t have to be through a glass darkly.
I know now that, “when” we see Him face to face, doesn’t mean when we die. It means, when we trust Him enough to step forward, lay it all down, and risk everything.

Blessings on your journey to see the other gods today.
 Looking and Discovering Other Gods -Faith Living




Dr. James Dobson Speaks Out
Nazi success was made possible by one primary factor. It was their complete and utter control of the means of communication. There was no internet or television at that time, of course, but what did exist reached every dimension of the nation. Radio was highly effective in those days, as were newspapers, films, speeches, books and magazines, posters, rallies and yes, public schools and universities. Every word spoken in Germany was scrutinized, and those who rejected Nazi lies publicly were often murdered or sent to concentration camps, from which most didn't return. Terror was the stock-in-trade of the Gestapo. It was a common occurrence for secret police to knock on the doors of anyone who didn't conform to the party line. An offender would be dragged outside and shot, leaving terrifying images and warnings for the neighbors to see. It told them what would happen if they also got out of line. Even children were urged to report the activities and private conversations of their parents who talked at home about their opposition to the gangsters in government. They were tortured or murdered too. What a ghastly period in human history.
Speaking of children, one of the most wretched elements of the dictatorship was the complete domination of public schools. Parents had no influence on how their boys and girls were educated. In fact, all schools became training centers for Nazi propaganda. The boys were prepared for war, and girls in their mid-teens were actually sent to camps, where they were expected to get pregnant from sexual contact with nearby boys. Babies born out of wedlock from these encounters became wards of the state to replace men likely to be killed in battle.
Here's how Adolf Hitler viewed public schools. He said, "Your child belongs to us already ... what are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing but this new community." Later, as war approached, he said, "This new Reich will give its youth to no one."

If you want to know more about this tragic era, read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer.
Why Am I Recalling These Bitter Memories?
This historical account is relevant today because America and other Western nations have for decades been losing their God-given rights that define us as a free people. We are not experiencing Nazi-like tyranny yet, but we are steadily being expected to think, speak, write and act in a prescribed manner in conformity with what is now called "political correctness." The mainstream media has become a tool to influence elections and spread this belief system. Sadly, the rights handed down to us by our forefathers more than 200 years ago are gradually being overridden, ignored, contradicted or disregarded by the courts and legislatures. Alas, we are less free now than we were even five years ago.
As I hope you learned in school, although it is unlikely, the principles on which our freedom was built are spelled out in the first ten amendments to our Constitution. They are called the Bill of Rights. The first among them addresses the most important guarantee. It promises religious liberty and includes these words: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Despite what you may have heard, nothing within the Constitution mentions the separation of church and state. To paraphrase the First Amendment, it not only offers an ironclad guarantee that we will enjoy freedom of religion, but also promises freedom of speech, a free press, protects the rights of the people to assemble peacefully and to petition the government when citizens are aggrieved. These rights are fundamental for a liberated people.
The other nine amendments within the Bill of Rights enumerate additional assurances to the people that their government will have restricted authority over them. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper 84 that the Constitution tells Congress what limited powers it has to make law, and the Bill of Rights reiterates to Congress what powers it does not have to infringe on our rights.
Reflecting this affirmation, Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address that ours is a government "of the people, by the people and for the people." These assurances are precious to us today, and I thank God for the dedicated men who inspired and fought for them. We dare not let officious justices, judges, legislators or politicians take even one of them away from us. But some liberals today are diligently trying to do just that. We must stop them, but how? Our rights are being trampled every day. The only way to defend our liberties is at the ballot box.
Unfortunately, more than half of Americans, including the majority of Christians, don't even bother to vote. Shame on them all! Don't they know that tyranny for us and our children is only one generation, or even one election, away? We must vote, vote, vote to elect leaders who will defend what has been purchased with the blood of patriots who died to protect our liberty. We owe it to the memory of their sacrifice to preserve what they did for us. We must not fritter it away on our watch! 

Americans! Read This Urgent Warning From Dr. James Dobson





What Happens When an Academic Steps Out of Line?

It is well documented that American universities today, more than ever before, are dominated by academics on the left end of the political spectrum. How should these academics handle opinions that depart, even quite sharply, from their “politically correct” views? The proper response would be to engage in reasoned debate—to attempt to explain, using logic, evidence, facts, and substantive arguments, why those opinions are wrong. This kind of civil discourse is obviously important at law schools like mine, because law schools are dedicated to teaching students how to think about and argue all sides of a question. But academic institutions in general should also be places where people are free to think and reason about important questions that affect our society and our way of life—something not possible in today’s atmosphere of enforced orthodoxy.

What those of us in academia should certainly not do is engage in unreasoned speech: hurling slurs and epithets, name-calling, vilification, and mindless labeling. Likewise we should not reject the views of others without providing reasoned arguments. Yet these once common standards of practice have been violated repeatedly at my own and at other academic institutions in recent years—and we increasingly see this trend in society as well.

One might respond, of course, that unreasoned slurs and outright condemnations are also speech and must be defended. My recent experience has caused me to rethink this position. In debating others, we should have higher standards. Of course one has the right to hurl labels like “racist,” “sexist,” and “xenophobic” without good reason—but that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Hurling such labels doesn’t enlighten, inform, edify, or educate. Indeed, it undermines these goals by discouraging or stifling dissent...


...Democracy thrives on talk and debate, and it is not for the faint of heart. I read things every day in the media and hear things every day at my job that I find exasperating and insulting, including falsehoods and half-truths about people who are my friends. Offense and upset go with the territory; they are part and parcel of an open society. We should be teaching our young people to get used to these things, but instead we are teaching them the opposite.

Disliking, avoiding, and shunning people who don’t share our politics is not good for our country. We live together, and we need to solve our problems together. It is also always possible that people we disagree with have something to offer, something to contribute, something to teach us. We ignore this at our peril. As Heather Mac Donald wrote in National Review on August 29: “What if the progressive analysis of inequality is wrong . . . and a cultural analysis is closest to the truth? If confronting the need to change behavior is punishable ‘hate speech,’ then it is hard to see how the country can resolve its social problems.” In other words, we are at risk of being led astray by received opinion.

The American way is to conduct free and open debate in a civil manner. We should return to doing that on our college campuses and in our society at large.

Are We Free to Discuss America’s Real Problems? -Amy Wax




The Senate Voted to Keep Funding Planned Parenthood This Week:
All Democrats, including Manchin, Donnelly and other 2018ers, voted against defunding Planned Parenthood. So did Collins and Murkowski; rest of GOP supported stripping funding.  (48-45)
 Planned Parenthood’s favorite Republicans block the Senate’s latest defund effort




Have You Been Shadowbanned on Twitter Lately?
“The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone, but they don’t know they’ve been banned,” one former Twitter engineer told an undercover Veritas journalist. “They keep posting, but no one sees their content.” 
The opacity of these all-important metrics means that, even if Twitter was dedicated to fairness and a rejection of viewpoint discrimination as company policy, ideologically committed employees could use their own metrics to decide which accounts to throttle.
We have been disappointed with Twitter’s lack of candor when discussing this issue. The social media company has acknowledged that some users’ visibility is affected due to Quality Filter penalties, it’s nearly impossible to pin down Twitter employees on the mechanics of what’s happening to so many conservatives who use the platform. Nearly all their answers are unsatisfactory or gaslighting. Rather than admit that we were possibly “shadowbanned” or had our tweets’ visibility artificially throttled, they suggested that our tweets were not being seen or shared because the content was bad or uninspired. 
Despite this obfuscation from Twitter, the stifling of conservative speech on the platform is very real. 
Many are, we believe, rightly supporting an effort by some lawmakers to require transparency and an internet “bill of rights” that would prohibit massive and ubiquitous tech companies from throttling the free expression of their users for ideological reasons. Americans from across the political spectrum are beginning to realize that unaccountable tech oligarchs are no better enforcers of political morality than a government censor.
 But it doesn’t need to get there; Twitter can fix this problem very quickly by examining and eliminating the elements of the Quality Filter used by activists to mount mass attacks by viewpoint. We understand that some users on the political left may want a more curated experience on Twitter, where their interaction with any right-leaning voices would be severely limited. But they should not pressure Twitter to turn the most vibrant and popular forum for political debate in America into their own “safe space".
The Stifling  of Conservative Speech on Twitter is Real -David Readoi and Nick Short




Facebook Community Standards
I am a regular Facebook user. Not a typical one, I expect. You'll see only an occasional family picture post from me, and absolutely no photos of kittens. No, nor those little "Hallmark Card" (as I call them) posts, either – the touchy-feely "feel good" ones with Snoopy, rainbows, hearts, unicorns, and flowers along with a bit of "ain't life sweet" poetry.

No, I post different types of things. Themed postings under titles such as "My Morning Read" – often a thoughtful post, not a few of which are links to articles here on American Thinker. Or shorter posts, often with irony, under the heading "My Daily Uh Huh."

Some weeks back, a Facebook friend – someone I never met face to face but with whom I share several interests including a love of traditional Western values and music-making – wrote to say he had a received a message from Facebook with a few short questions about whether or not he found my Facebook posts positive and encouraging or the opposite.

His response, he said, was positive, and I heard nothing more on the subject. But I was then aware that on some level I had come to the attention of Facebook's thought police.

A Facebook Story -Don Sucher



A Very Interesting Movie About Alternative Cancer Treatments

Cancer - The Forbidden Cures


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