Vermont Coach Fired for Saying There’s Difference Between Boys and Girls

Coach David Bloch was discussing the matter with several of his players when someone overheard the conversation and got triggered.

The coach said there are biological and physiological differences between boys and girls.

Coach Bloch had coached the team for more than a decade. He actually started the snowboarding program at the school back in 2011.

Bloch is a practicing Roman Catholic who believes that God created males and females with immutable sex, and that, based on scientific evidence, there are only two sexes, male and female and that sex is determined by a person’s chromosomes.

The following day, the superintendent of Windsor Central Supervisory Union summoned Bloch to her office and handed him a notice of “immediate termination,” while admitting that the investigation into Bloch’s conversation was not complete.

The notice accused Bloch of violating Windsor Central Supervisory Union Board’s Harassment, Hazing, and Bullying policy and the Vermont Principals’ Association related policy for “ma[king] reference to [a] student in a manner that questioned the legitimacy and appropriateness of the student competing on the girls’ team to members of the WUHS snowboard team”—all outside the student’s presence.

Ancient Hebrew Curse Reveals True Name of God

For Scott Stripling, one archaeologist’s trash has become his treasure.

Through a process called wet sifting—a methodological revolution bringing to light small or hidden artifacts that were previously missed at many archaeological digs—Stripling and his team have made an incredible discovery on Mount Ebal in the mountains of Samaria that could very well be one of the most significant finds in biblical history.

Stripling, the Director of Excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research, and his team traveled to Mount Ebal, about 50 miles north of Jerusalem, for a dig at the altar described in Joshua 8:30: “Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel on Mount Ebal, as Moses commanded the children of Israel.”

It was a site that Stripling said Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal had excavated in the 1980s and had “done a very good job on it.” Stripling said he wanted to “check his dump pile there” to see if Zertal had missed anything of significance.

Through wet sifting, what Stripling and his team found in Zertal’s “dump pile” was a lead folding tablet with writing on the inside estimated to be 3,400 years old. Stripling says it’s the oldest Hebrew writing that has ever been found, in a proto-alphabetic script.

“That predates biblical Hebrew, or paleo-Hebrew, which is what we think of from the First Temple period, the earliest writings we had previously,” Stripling says.

The entire context of Stripling’s team’s findings can be found here.

The inscription on the tablet included the name of Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God used in the Bible, twice.

Ancient Hebrew Curse Reveals True Name of God

For Scott Stripling, one archaeologist’s trash has become his treasure.

“That predates biblical Hebrew, or paleo-Hebrew, which is what we think of from the First Temple period, the earliest writings we had previously,” Stripling says.

The entire context of Stripling’s team’s findings can be found here.

The inscription on the tablet included the name of Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God used in the Bible, twice.

Stripling said the tablet was about the “size of a business card folded in half.

“Think about the book of Job, for example, which is the oldest book in the Bible,” Stripling says. “And listen to what Job said in Job 19:23-24: ‘Oh, that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!'”

Stripling said hundreds of these types of tablets have been found in Israel, what they call death pixels or curse tablets. But all of them to this point, Stripling says, had writing with very “petty or stupid” curses on them.” But this one, he says, was a “very serious thing.”

“In this case, this is a judicial type of curse and it’s self-imprecatory (to invoke or call down evil or curses upon a person), which is exactly what they did at the end of Deuteronomy. They pronounced blessings from Mount Gerazim and self-imprecatory curses from Mount Ebal. And what did we find on Mount Ebal, on the altar, by the way, the one that Joshua built, but a table with a curse inscription on it.”

All my life I’ve wanted to be known as a blessing, but as it turns out, what we found was a curse,” Stripling says. “And the curse is actually a blessing in disguise. Essentially, there are 48 very small letters and the curse reads like this: ‘Cursed, cursed, cursed, cursed are you by the God, Yahweh. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed you are by Yahweh, cursed, cursed, cursed.’ It has a literary structure to it what we call a chiasm. Some of the Psalms are written this way.

“It is a self-imprecatory curse the Israelites [used], just like Deuteronomy says: ‘We’re bringing upon themselves and it may happen to us if we don’t keep the terms of God’s Covenant.'”

Stripling says that most scholars and places of higher learning have denied the literacy of Moses and Joshua, but this tablet proves otherwise.

“[Scholars assumed] The Bible couldn’t have been written until 1000 years later because there was no alphabet with which they could write,” Stripling says. “Well, now we know there was. They have said the Israelites were illiterate. Well, then why is God telling them to write, why was He telling the people to read. Why would people write things down if nobody could read it. And now we have proof of that literacy.

The Israelis set for new Jewish temple on Al-Aqsa site

With imported sacrificial cows, ancient hymns and growing support, some nationalist Jews hope to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem’s Old City, at a site at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

In a suburb of Tel Aviv, a group of choristers were getting ready for the moment they will rejoice at the reconstruction of the Jewish temple some 2,000 years after its destruction, which they believe will accelerate the arrival of the messiah.

But for others, realising their goal would massively inflame tensions around the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Chorister Shmuel Kam said Jews have been “waiting” two millennia for the revival of the temple.

Members of the Orthodox Jewish group claim to be descendants of the biblical Tribe of Levi, which performed hymns and music at the holy site.

“When the temple will be built, we will ask the Levites to come sing and they won’t know. They have to learn,” said Menahem Rozenthal, director of the men-only choir created a few months ago by the Temple Institute.

Founded in 1987, the institute aims to rebuild the temple, training choirs and clerics and making objects for use in religious rites.

While apprentice choristers come from across Israel to delve into the collection of ancient hymns, the Temple Institute has made all of the objects deemed necessary for Jewish rites according to rabbinical instructions.

These include priestly robes, baking moulds for bread, incense burners and musical instruments.

Florida AG Says Meta Has a Human Trafficking Problem

The metaverse has a dark side, it seems. Florida’s attorney general wants answers from social media giant Meta over human trafficking activities on its platforms. Since Meta platforms host up to 85% of child sex trafficking incidents reported on social media, it’s an urgent crisis that needs addressing.

As leftist media outlets launch disgusting attacks on the movie exposing child sex trafficking, “Sound of Freedom,” it turns out there’s another human trafficking problem not being discussed — except by Florida’s attorney general. AG Ashley Moody sent a letter on July 10 to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighting the issue of human trafficking activities on Meta-owned platforms lnstagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.

Moody also serves as Chair of Florida’s Statewide Council on Human Trafficking. The Council, under orders from the state legislature, recently looked into the “frequency and extent to which social media platforms are used to assist, facilitate or support human trafficking” in Florida, with the help of law enforcement agencies, the letter explained. Moody called the results “extraordinary.” They were also sobering.

From Moody’s letter to Zuckerberg:

According to the survey, 146 of the 271 reported instances of social media platform use in human trafficking were attributable to Meta platforms (lnstagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger), more than 53% of the reported instances involved. To put this number in perspective, after Meta platforms, the next-highest social media platform used in human trafficking was Snapchat, and it was utilized 19 times, seven times less than Meta platforms.

According to the 2022 Federal Human Trafficking Report, Facebook was the top platform used in recruitment of human trafficking victims from 2019-2022. Facebook and Instagram combined to make up 60% of the top ten platforms included in the study.

Now, if you discuss election fraud, a Hunter Biden scandal, or problems with transgender indoctrination of kids, Meta will be on you like a ton of bricks. But it doesn’t seem to be doing nearly enough to target human trafficking. Talk about messed-up priorities.

‘It’s the Devil Masquerading’: Ex-Psychic Warns of Bizarre, Spiritually Dangerous ‘Starseeds’ Phenomenon Reportedly Sweeping Social Media

An ex-psychic medium is addressing yet another occultic phenomenon spreading across social media: the concept of so-called “starseeds.”

Jenn Nizza, host of “Ex-Psychic Saved Podcast,” tackled the issue on the most recent episode of her show, noting the hashtag for starseeds has more than 950 million views.

Nizza, who brought on a guest named Hannah (@mustardseedhannah on TikTok) to discuss the matter, encouraged people to “mark and avoid” anything affiliated with starseeds. Like Nizza, Hannah also has an occultic background, having been taught palm reading and divination at an early age.

Now a Christian, Hannah speaks out against these practices and warns Christians to avoid such trends.

“First of all, let’s address what a starseed is,” Nizza said. “They believe [they are] an advanced spiritual being from other planets and realms.”

Hannah said the starseed paradigm is one in which people are told they have a “spark and it’s part of the universe and you can change the universe through this spark.” She said starseed ideology is akin to Scientology, claiming they “share doctrinal similarities.”

“The starseed ideology is so dangerous because it pulls in people who already feel lost and it gives them a place to think they can flourish and … walk into their identity, ascend, grow,” Hannah said. “What they’re looking for, they don’t know it, but it’s sanctification. But, instead, they found the counterfeit, which is ascension.”

The power people believe they contain within the starseed paradigm is dependent upon “other entities and frequencies,” with Hannah noting these individuals might point to chakras and negative energies to explain what might be unfolding in a person’s life.

Hannah specifically warned kids who have been “parented poorly” and don’t have a biblical worldview might seek out counterfeit lies and the New Age to try and find power and protection, making the starseed paradigm attractive to these individuals.

“When you don’t have a foundation on Christ Jesus, you are susceptible to all of the lies of the evil one,” Nizza added. “And he loves to prey on vulnerability.”

SCOTUS Unanimously Strengthens Religious Liberty In The Workplace

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously strengthened religious liberty in the workplace Thursday, ruling in favor of a Christian postal worker who lost his job for refusing to work on Sundays.

The Court’s unanimous opinion in Groff v. DeJoy, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, overruled the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that the United States Postal Service (USPS) did not violate the religious accommodation rights of postal worker Gerald Groff under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

“This decision will give those religious minorities a fair shot in court and, one would hope, encourage more employers to adopt more inclusive workplace policies so that religious employees won’t have to choose between their livelihood and their faith,” Joshua McDaniel, director of Harvard Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic, said.

After clarifying Title VII’s requirements, the Court gave the case back to the Third Circuit to retry the case because of its factual complexity. This means that either Groff or the USPS could eventually prevail, but the USPS — and all employers — must meet a much higher standard to deny a religious accommodation.

Groff, an Evangelical Christian and longtime employee of the USPS, never worked Sundays in line with his religious beliefs and his initial job description. But when the USPS started to deliver packages on Sundays because of a deal with Amazon, the postal service would require him to work on his Sabbath. To avoid conflict, he transferred to a different location.

His new location started delivering on Sundays, and he claimed that USPS “progressive[ly] discipline[d]” him because he refused to work Sundays. He then resigned and sued the USPS for religious discrimination. The Third Circuit rejected his claim.

The controversy in this case surrounded a 50-year-old standard from Trans World Airlines v. Hardison. In that case, the Court held that an employer could deny an accommodation if it causes a “more than de minimis cost” — a legal term meaning that anything more than a “very small” cost would be enough for an employer to legally deny any religious accommodation.

The Court held that Title VII’s “undue hardship” language requires employers to show that the accommodation would impose a burden that “is substantial in the overall context of an employer’s business.” Justice Alito stated that a business proving the accommodation would cause a small cost is not enough “to establish ‘undue hardship’ under Title VII.” This means that an employer now needs to show a substantial hardship would be caused by the religious accommodation in order to deny it.

Texas Heartbeat Act Resulted In 10K Additional Babies Born Last Year, Study Suggests

A new study released Thursday estimates that Texas’ abortion ban resulted in almost 10,000 more babies being born in the state.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that between April and December 2022, 9,799 more babies were born likely because of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortion with few exceptions after a fetal heartbeat is detected — usually five to six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual cycle.

“Every baby saved from elective abortion should be celebrated,” Texas Right to Life president John Seago told The Texas Tribune. “This new study highlights the significant success of our movement in the last two years, while we look forward to helping the mothers and families of our state care for their children.”

Through statistical modeling and analyzing historical birth data from all 50 states, researchers were able to estimate that 287,289 Texan children would have been born in the nine-month period if the Heartbeat Act was not in place. In that time period, 297,088 babies were actually born, presumably because of the abortion ban.

The Heartbeat Act went into effect in September 2021, before the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, which allowed private individuals to sue abortion providers, effectively banning the practice in the state.

The Johns Hopkins study is the first to examine how the Texas law impacted the number of births in the state, and it was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

“Although our study doesn’t detail why these extra births occurred, our findings strongly suggest that a considerable number of pregnant individuals in Texas were unable to overcome barriers to abortion access,” said Dr. Alison Gemmill, one of the study’s lead authors.

An earlier study released before Dobbs suggested that Texan women were traveling to neighboring states like Oklahoma and Louisiana to get abortions. However, since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, every neighboring state except New Mexico restricted the practice. The authors of the study believe that this may lead to even greater increases in births.

Lab-Grown Meat Suffers Significant Setback With Shocking New Scientific Findings

Earlier this year, the Grocery Gazette reported that the UK was set to be a world-leading developer of lab-grown meat. In the recent past, Guardian climate hysteric George Monbiot claimed lab-grown food “will soon destroy farming – and save the planet“. Alas, such boosterism is being challenged by hard facts. Lab-grown meat is up to 25 times worse for the environment since it needs ‘pharmaceutical-grade’ production to make it fit for human consumption. In particular, there is a need to remove endotoxin from the cultured mix, a substance that in concentrations as low as one billionth of a gram per millilitrie can reduce human IVF pregnancy success rate by up to four fold.

These are the startling conclusions of ground-breaking work recently published by a group of chemists and food scientists from the University of California. It turns out that ‘pharma to food’ production is a significant technological challenge. The major problem with lab meat is that it uses growth organisms that have to be highly purified to help animal cells multiply. Compared with environmental savings on land, water and greenhouses gases, the whole bio-process is noted to be “orders of magnitude” higher than rearing the actual animal.

“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea,” said co-author Edward Spang, an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology. The study found that even across scenarios using lower pharma standards, efficient beef production outperforms cultured meat within a range from four to 25 times. This suggests that investment to advance more ‘climate-friendly’ beef production may yield greater reductions in emissions.

The route to New Zero is littered with improbable technologies that promise much – and give endless opportunities for virtue signalling – but deliver little. While many countries press ahead with plans to destroy conventional animal husbandry, the options for new ways of actually feeding populations look thin on the ground. To be fair to Monbiot, he has picked up on the problems of lab meat, noting in a recent blog post that “the more I’ve read about cultured meat and fish, and the more I’ve come to appreciate the phenomenal complexities involved… the more I doubt this vision will come to pass”. Always the worrier, Monbiot asks, “How can mass starvation best be averted”? Not removing the 337.18 million tonnes of global meat production in favour of flaky factory solutions might be a start.

The California study could throw a major stick into the spokes of the lab-grown meat bandwagon, which to date has had a largely uncritical mainstream media ride. Grocery Gazette’s cheer-leading report noted that the sector was predicted to “rapidly increase its market share within the food industry”. Research was quoted suggesting cell cultured meat was expected to make up almost quarter of global meat consumption by 2035.

The authors in California acknowledge that lab-grown meat ventures have attracted around $2 billion of investment to date. Early reports on feasibility were bullish with some predicting a 60-70% displacement of beef by 2030-2040. But of late, sentiment has waned with more conservative estimates noting a 0.5% share of meat products by 2030. As noted, the huge problem in producing lab meat is the presence of endotoxin which is said have a variety of side effects including harm to in vitro fertilisation. In pharmaceutical labs, animal cell culture is traditional done with endotoxin having been removed. There are many ways to remove the unwanted substance, but the use of these refinement methods “contributes significantly to the economic and environmental costs associated with pharmaceutical products since they are both energy and resource intensive”.

The Bible Will Stay in a Utah School District

After facing removal, the Bible will remain in Utah’s Davis School District. Tuesday the district’s board of education unanimously voted to keep the Bible in school libraries. The Bible will not be taught in schools, but will still be available for students to read.

Local TV station KSL notes that the district reviewed the Bible and then voted earlier to remove it from elementary and junior high school students. The complaint that started the controversy was from a parent who was angered by a state law that made it easier to remove books that contained what many consider to be obscene material. This complainant pointed out that the Bible contains passages depicting violence and sexual themes, and should therefore be removed along with books that parents found objectionable. And the district concurred.

That sparked outrage among parents and state lawmakers alike. Fox 13 reported that, during a June hearing, State Senator Curt Bramble highlighted explicit content in a book that was approved to remain in the schools after the Bible had been banned. He commented, “Adults can tell the difference between a religious text from the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, even though they depict historic or evidence of various acts, relative to pornography, that which is sexually explicit. I mean, come on, folks!”

Rep. Kera Birkeland queried, “How do we write and change this law to where books where a woman naked over a man with a gun to his head is allowed in the libraries of your junior high, and the Bible is not?”

Prophetic Anticipation Builds: Unblemished Red Heifers for Temple Ceremony Soon Come of Age

Last September, five red heifers arrived in Israel amid great fanfare, because some Jews and Gentiles believe red heifers are a key element leading to the building of the Third Jewish Temple.

The heifers are now in a secure, undisclosed location in Israel. Plans include moving them, sometime soon, to a visitor’s center in Shiloh, where the tabernacle of the Lord once stood for nearly 400 years.

The book of Numbers explains that ashes of the red heifer are used to purify priests for their service in the Temple:

“Now, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying: Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come.  You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him … its offal shall be burned … for the water of purification; it is for purifying from sin.’” (Numbers 19:1-5)

These red heifers are now between 1 ½ and 2 years old. To replicate the ceremony mentioned in the Bible, they need to be at least 3 years old. And within that time span, they cannot have a blemish or anything that would disqualify them for the ceremony, even one white or black hair.

According to those working on the project, the ceremony of the red heifer needs to be performed on the Mount of Olives, and in a place that would have looked directly into where the Temple stood. The land directly east of the Temple Mount, purchased 12 years ago, meets both of those standards.

Rabbi Yitshak Mamo owns that land on the Mount of Olives. Mamo is with Uvne Yerusalim, a group that preserves Israel’s history and works to educate future generations.

Concerning the specifics of the land, he told CBN News, “It had to be exactly at the front of the place that the priest that made this ceremony can see the Holy of the Holy Place.”

Rabbi Mamo added, “And we hope that in a year and a half from today, we can make here in this area the ceremony of the red heifer that actually will be the first step to the Temple.”

He says the ceremony needs priests who have not been defiled by touching anything dead.

“The Temple Institute actually have, nine pure priests,” the rabbi explained.  “They didn’t born in hospital, okay? They born at home. Because they are priests. So anyway, they don’t go to any cemetery. And the parents keep them in a situation that they will not get to any cemetery, not going to other, any problematic place.”

He added, “And they are pure, and they are waiting.  So, we have the priest, we have the red heifer, we have the land.  We have everything ready. We just need to wait another one and a half year.”

Byron Stinson from Boneh Israel helped find the red heifers in the United States.

“So we believe that it’s very likely that the ceremony would happen somewhere in the area of Passover, 2024, out to the possibility of Shavuot, 2024,” Stinson said. “Somewhere in that timeline, the cows would be old enough and it would be the proper timeline for that ceremony.”

Stinson believes this would be the first possibility for such a ceremony in 2,000 years, and that the process toward building a Third Jewish Temple began when the Jewish people started their return to the Promised Land from the four corners of the world, culminating with Israel becoming a nation.

“And then in 1948, in one day, they were reborn as a nation, and nobody said that could happen. And then, you move forward, and Israel continues to be this strong nation and all of these prophecies start fulfilling,” he said. “There’s so many now being fulfilled, is just incredible. The evidence of what God is doing with Jerusalem is the center of that. And the Temple is the center of Jerusalem, and so how can it happen and how will it happen?  I don’t think anyone really knows for sure.”