The Faithful Watchman

The U.N. Is Planning To Seize Global ‘Emergency’ Powers With Biden’s Support

The proposal might be the biggest attempted power grab in the history of the United Nations. If approved, the United States as we know it could cease to exist.

In September 2024, less than two months before the next U.S. presidential election, the United Nations will host a landmark “Summit of the Future,” where member nations will adopt a Pact for the Future. The agreement will solidify numerous policy reforms offered by the U.N. over the past two years as part of its sweeping Our Common Agenda platform.

Although there are numerous radical proposals included in the agenda, perhaps none are more important than the U.N. plan for a new “emergency platform,” a stunning proposal to give the U.N. significant powers in the event of future “global shocks,” such as another worldwide pandemic.

Many of the details of the U.N. emergency platform were laid out in a March 2023 policy paper titled “Strengthening the International Response to Complex Global Shocks — An Emergency Platform.” In the paper, the U.N. secretary-general writes, “I propose that the General Assembly provide the Secretary-General and the United Nations system with a standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform in the event of a future complex global shock of sufficient scale, severity and reach.”

Once triggered, the emergency platform would give the U.N. the ability to “actively promote and drive an international response that places the principles of equity and solidarity at the centre of its work.” The U.N. would bring together the “stakeholders” of the world, including academics, governments, private sector actors, and “international financial institutions” to ensure there is a unified, global response to the crisis.

The emergency platform would also give the United Nations the power to “Ensure that all participating actors make commitments that can contribute meaningfully to the response and that they are held to account for delivery on those commitments.”

In other words, the United Nations would be given unprecedented authority over the public and private sectors of huge swaths of the world, all in the name of battling a yet unknown crisis.

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.

Senator Says 200,000 Babies Have Been Saved From Abortions Since Dobbs

As the nation celebrates the first anniversary of the Supreme Court decision returning abortion to democratic control, national leaders celebrated the birth of tens, or hundreds, of thousands of unborn children saved by pro-life laws.

Although precise estimates vary, “the best guess that we have is about 200,000 children were born this year that would not have been born” apart from the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) at a news conference Tuesday. “That’s 200,000 kids. That’s 200,000 smiling faces on playgrounds. That’s 200,000 silly songs, starting in kindergarten. That’s 200,000 families that will be blessed with looking in the eyes of a child.”

The Dobbs decision, which took the shackles off voters and lawmakers to enact life-saving protections for the unborn, eliminated 96% of abortions in the 13 states that enacted pro-life protections between the June 24 decision and year’s end, The Daily Caller found. Although abortion rates had risen early in 2022, state pro-life laws prevented 32,260 abortions in the first six months following the ruling, according to the WeCount report from the Society of Family Planning released in April. A total of 25 states have since enacted some pro-life protections, since they “now have an opportunity in the United States to see this message in the hands of lawmakers and the people,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told Newsmax on Friday.

Saving 200,000 babies — the upper end of an estimate analysis from Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America — would be enough people to fill a city the size of Grand Rapids, Michigan; Vancouver, Washington; or Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Republicans and Democrats had starkly different reactions to the one-year anniversary, much as they did to the landmark pro-life ruling.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) led 20 fellow Republican senators in introducing a resolution praising the Dobbs decision. “[M]odern science has illuminated our understanding of the humanity of unborn life,” the resolution reads. Their motion “celebrates the millions of lives that will be saved as a result of the ruling in Dobbs” and “commits to proclaiming the humanity of the unborn, consistent with the findings of modern science and the unswerving demands of justice.”

“Thank God Almighty for the Dobbs decision!” Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference Friday. In an online ad, Scott highlighted Biden administration Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the Dobbs decision would prove “very damaging” for the U.S. economy. “That’s unconscionable,” Scott replies in the 60-second spot. “As a black man born to a woman living at the poverty line, I’m so thankful my mama chose life.”

The “Gospel truth” is “the foundation of this nation,” he says.

By contrast, Democrats seethed, cursed, and vowed to remove the voters’ newfound right of democratic consultation in the life-or-death issue.

Video: Church recites ‘The Sparkle Creed,’ which proclaims belief in ‘non-binary God whose pronouns are plural,’ Jesus Christ who ‘had two dads’

A Minneapolis church’s livestream Sunday caught the moment when one of its pastors led the congregation in the recitation of “The Sparkle Creed,” which proclaims belief in the “non-binary God whose pronouns are plural” and to Jesus Christ who “had two dads,” among other things.

What are the details?

Anna Helgen, one of the pastors at Edina Community Lutheran Church, asked those in the sanctuary to “confess our faith today in the words of The Sparkle Creed,” which is a radical variation of “The Apostles’ Creed.” Here’s what was recited:

I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity. I believe in the church of everyday saints, as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in Wonder. I believe in the calling to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved, let us love. I believe, glorious God. Help my unbelief. Amen.

After “The Sparkle Creed,” Helgen led a congregational prayer to the God of “expansive and inclusive love” for “the summer solstice” and for “honey bee populations experiencing extreme loss,” as well as “climate justice,” Pride events, and “all LGBTQIA+ leaders.”

IRELAND TO INTRODUCE ANTI PRAYER ZONES

Ireland’s government has very little to boast about over the past decade, but it can successfully brag about one achievement, it has successfully reduced birth rates by 25%.

These apocalyptic policies have brought us to a stage where paying a doctor €450 for the intentional killing of an unborn is more of a priority for the government than virtually anything else related to children, apart from perhaps their plans for gruesome new sexual education that includes lessons on pornography.

In a complete panic after the overturn of Roe vs. Wade in the United States, Ireland’s incompetent government is now moving to establish anti prayer zones across the country, where a person can be jailed for praying against abortion or for encouraging people to give birth to their baby instead of killing it.

The establishment has waged a long and lackluster war on prolife prayer in an effort to justify such zones, yet now they are proceeding regardless of any real evidence and are doing so in defiance of the public advice of Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, who has repeatedly rejected the need for such legislation, stating that it was not necessary.

Some of the efforts by the establishment, and we include Sinn Fein, the Social Democrats and Labour in that list, have been ones of pure desperation.

In 2020, Simon Harris claimed that women attending hospital for miscarriages were being asked ‘Are you going to murder your child?’, however the claim was quietly dropped when it emerged that it was linked to an anonymous Antifa Twitter account from someone claiming to have been working in the Department of Justice. In the resulting controversy, proaborts threatened to murder the prolife advocates across social media.

Footage also emerged of Antifa, who appear to support the government, pelting elderly Catholics with eggs because they were praying the Rosary.

In another effort, the Social Democrats, who were founded by current Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, waged a campaign against Catholics who wished to pray outside their closed church under state restrictions. An English born politician was deeply unhappy with this, though thankfully it was captured on film.

Most Americans don’t like Christian celebrity culture, megachurches: study

While a majority of Americans have a positive view of Jesus, most, including Christians, also have a negative opinion of celebrity Christian culture, celebrity pastors, Evangelicals, megachurches and famous worship bands, a new study from Barna Group shows.

And the situation is among a number of drivers inching the nation toward a post-Christian era.

The data for the study, conducted online from Dec. 13–22, 2022, via a consumer research panel, was based on a survey of 2,005 U.S. adults and teenagers called the Spiritually Open project. Gloo and He Gets Us partnered with Barna for the research.

“When we asked Americans whether they have a positive or negative opinion of Jesus, seven in 10 (71%) say they view him positively. Of all U.S. teens and adults, 63 percent say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today,” Barna researchers said. “This is actually most common among millennials, of whom 70 percent say their commitment to Jesus is still important to them.”

For celebrity pastors, only 19% of Christians and people of other faiths had a positive view of those ministers, while just 17% of respondents overall said the same.

Famous people or celebrities who are Christian are also not seen positively. Only 26% of respondents overall in the survey and 30% of Christians approve.

Twenty-six percent of respondents in the study overall also had a positive view of famous or well-known worship bands. Among Christians, just 30% view these bands positively, along with 29% of people from other faiths and 12% of people who profess no faith at all.

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.”

Girl Scouts Encouraged To Earn Rainbow Patch By Reading LGBT Books, Attending ‘Pride Parade’

Girl Scouts as young as kindergarten age can earn a rainbow-striped “fun patch” by celebrating Pride Month through activities such as drawing, creating an LGBTQ+ music playlist, or attending a Gay Pride parade.

According to the Girl Scouts’ website: “The Girl Scout LGBTQ+ Pride Month Celebration Fun Patch is designed for Girl Scouts of all levels and their leaders to honor LGBTQ+ history, to celebrate the diverse cultures and identities of LGBTQ+ people, and to acknowledge the many contributions of the LGBTQ+ community has made and continues to make across our nation,” Girl Scouts of the USA states on a webpage for its multicultural community celebrations.

In a document directed to troop leaders and guardians, the Girl Scouts of the USA details how child participants can earn the “LGBTQ+ Pride Month Fun Patch.”

The Daisy, Brownie and Junior Girl Scout levels, which consist of younger children, must participate in three pride-related activities to earn the patch. Older Girl Scouts at the Cadette, Senior and Ambassador levels must participate in six activities to earn the patch.

In addition to attending a pride parade with their troop or family, the document lists a barrage of other things scouts can do to earn an LGBTQ+ fun patch, including identifying five books by LGBTQ+ authors to read, sketching a portrait of a member of the LGBTQ+ community whom they admire and writing a paragraph about why they chose them, and creating rainbow flags. T artist.

But before starting the activities, Girl Scouts must “familiarize” themselves with the appropriate terminology, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer-identity. Those terms and concepts are provided by a gay activist group called GLSEN (formerly known as Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network).

The document also contains a glossary of LGBT terms, with definitions from the Human Rights Campaign, another advocacy group, designed for elementary school children. It identifies transgender or trans as “when your gender (how you feel) is different than what doctors/midwives assigned to you when you were born (girl/boy or sex assigned at birth).”

The American Family Association (AFA) says Girl Scouts USA’s pride month focus is another sign of the youth organization’s moral decline. The Girl Scouts received backlash years ago for entering the LGBT culture war by announcing that it would allow boys who identify as girls to join.