ONE SHOW. TWO MEN. NO RULES..

In Jesus’ day, a handful of Jewish groups and political parties sought to govern or influence the day-to-day life of the Jews living in Palestine. Given their views, many of these groups would have taken a keen interest in the life and ministry of Jesus, and not always in favor or support.

The historian Josephus write of four prominent groups:

The Pharisees, who Jesus frequently clashed with and admonished for their legalism and hypocrisy, were fastidious about the Law and its application. As religious fundamentalists, they were often the most rigid and overbearing, maneuvering to protect their wealth and preserve their political power at all costs, even if it meant blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:22-29) or partnering with the Romans to have Jesus crucified (John 18).

The Sadducees, also mentioned in the gospels, were a more wealthy, aristocratic, and liberal group, known for their denial of the supernatural.

The Essenes, though not mentioned in Scripture, were a third Jewish party and a more monk-like group of aesthetics and celibates who lived in the desert and devoted themselves to the study of the Old Testament.

The fourth group, and the most politically minded and feared among the Jews, were the Zealots.

In the first century, The Zealots were a notorious sect of Jewish patriots who sought to overthrow the Roman occupation of Palestine through violence, terror, and political intimidation, often resorting to murder, assassination, and militant action to further their agenda. Ironically, one of Jesus’ own disciples, Simon the Zealot, was a member of this group before being called to follow Christ.

Their name, derived from the Greek work zelos, fit the Zealots’ reputation as those with a passion, zeal, or fervor of spirit.

Of course, this begs the question: what were the Zealots so fervent and passionate about?

Although they held many religious views with the Pharisees, the Zealots were known more for their hatred of Rome than anything else. It was this resentment and animus towards the Roman occupation that inspired the Zealots to become one of the most violent and aggressive groups in the region.

5 Ways to Know if Your Relationship is Worth Saving

Article by Christine Eartheart (Life Coach)

1. Are you committed to growth?

When couples reach out for support, they are often in a difficult time of heightened conflict, betrayal, or disconnect. During our first session, it’s common for them to ask: “can this relationship be saved?”

After supporting thousands of couples, we’re convinced this is the most important predictor when it comes to the chances of a couple succeeding.

No matter how big your challenges may be, if both of you are committed to learning everything possible from what hasn’t worked in the past and implementing positive changes, there is tremendous potential to turn your relationship into the one you’ve both always wanted.

2. Do you genuinely respect one another?

Compatibility does not mean you have to be the same. In fact, it is your differences that can keep things exciting, and most of us unconsciously seek someone who will balance us and help us grow.

However, a thriving relationship requires each of you to honor one another in mind, body, heart, and spirit. You need to be interested in and respectful of each other’s feelings, perspective, and physicality.

3. Do you share values?

When you live your life in alignment with your values, you feel happy, confident, and fulfilled.

Some examples of values would be honesty, integrity, joy, love, kindness, generosity, compassion, ambition, courage, accountability, faith, family, fun, freedom, discipline, harmony, awareness, equality, positivity, acceptance, passion, ease, balance, adventure, and peace.

4. Do you share a vision?

For example, if one of you wants to have children and the other prefers a child-free life, your visions may not match up. If one of you wants a free-spirited life of travelling the world year-round, and the other wants to settle down and grow all your own food, your visions may be best pursued apart.

Of course, be flexible and find creative ways for each of your dreams to coexist. At the end of your lives, you just want to know that you both have fully lived, without regret or sacrificing too much.

5. Are you willing to forgive one another?

However, the key is that you both are willing to eventually forgive one another for whatever has happened in the past, allowing you to fully open your hearts to all that can be in the future.

It’s natural to question your relationship over time. This does not at all mean you are doomed or not meant to be. In fact, most couples have vast untapped potential and, chances are, so do you!

10 advantages of full-time employment

1. A steady income

2. Fixed working patterns

4. Paid time off

5. Greater career advancement opportunities

7. Professional training opportunities

9. More perks

The term “brainwashing” was first used in the 1950s by American journalist Edward Hunter, reporting on the treatment of American soldiers in Chinese prison camps during the Korean War. Brainwashing techniques have been documented as far back as the Egyptian Book of the Dead and used by abusive spouses and parents, self-proclaimed psychics, cult leaders, secret societies, revolutionaries, and dictators to bring others under their thumbs and manipulate them seemingly willingly. These techniques don’t involve fantastic weapons or exotic powers, but they do involve an understanding of the human psyche and a desire to exploit it. By understanding these techniques better, you can learn how to protect yourself and others from them.

Possible candidates include:

People who have lost their jobs and fear for their future.

Those suffering from lingering illness, especially one they don’t understand.

Young people away from home for the first time. These are particular favorites of religious cult leaders.

People who are regarded as socially awkward by their mainstream peers. They frequently tend to be loners but seek like minded people who might be few and far between.

One particular predatory tactic is to find out enough information about the person and his or her belief system to explain the tragedy the person has experienced in a manner consistent with that belief system. This can later be expanded to explain history in general through that belief system, while subtly modifying it to the brainwasher’s interpretation.

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Brainwashing is used to describe an abrupt, induced attitudinal change. Methods used to induce this change include isolation, monopolization, debilitation and exhaustion, drugs, torture, enforcement of routine, and hypnosis.  

It can also include news coverage, government manipulation, scare tactics, product marketing, advertising campaigns, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and of course Twitter. Another heavily used source of Brainwashing is Social Media influencers and of course, peer pressure.

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1: Understand that those who attempt to brainwash others tend to prey upon the weak and vulnerable. Not everyone is a target for mind control, but certain people are more susceptible to forms of it at different times. A skillful manipulator knows what to look for and targets people who are going through a difficult period in their life or a change that may or may not be of their own making. 

2: Be aware of people who try to isolate you or someone you know from outside influences. As people who are experiencing a personal tragedy or other major life change are inclined to feel lonely, a skillful brain-washer works to amplify those feelings of loneliness. This isolation can take several forms.

3: Watch for attacks on the victim’s self-esteem. Brainwashing only works when the brainwasher is in a superior position to the victim. This means that the victim has to be broken down, so the brainwasher can rebuild the victim in his or her image. This can be done through mental, emotional, or ultimately physical means for long enough to physical and emotionally wear down the target.

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Emotional tortures are not kind, of course, but may begin with verbal insults, then progress to badgering, spitting, or more dehumanizing things such as stripping the victim to be photographed or just looked at. The goal of these activities is to break down your natural instinct to fight back so that you become placid.

Physical tortures may include starvation, freezing, sleep deprivation, beatings, mutilations, and others, none are acceptable in society. Physical torture is commonly used by abusive parents and spouses, as well as in prison and “re-education” camps.

Although brainwashing can produce profound alterations in character, values, and disposition, it cannot easily be accommodated by such current criminal defenses as mental incapacity, automatism, or coercion. A justification for making brainwashing an excusing condition can be found in each of three major approaches to excusing criminal liability: (1) that punishment should be withheld where it is incapable of having a deterrent effect, (2) that a moral license to punish should not extend to cases where the defendant's actions could not be regarded as voluntary, and (3) that excusing conditions are those that preclude an inference from the act to the actor's character. Although several criticisms might be advanced against the proposed defense, psychological evidence exists to establish beyond doubt the brainwashing phenomenon and its causal link with illegal acts. There are valid moral arguments that brainwashing should afford an excuse to all crimes. They are based on the idea that a person acting when brainwashed is not properly regarded as the same person who reverts to normal behavior after deprogramming. A total of 52 footnotes are provided.

Possible candidates include:

People who have lost their jobs and fear for their future.

Those suffering from lingering illness, especially one they don’t understand.

Young people away from home for the first time. These are particular favorites of religious cult leaders.

People who are regarded as socially awkward by their mainstream peers. They frequently tend to be loners but seek like minded people who might be few and far between.

One particular predatory tactic is to find out enough information about the person and his or her belief system to explain the tragedy the person has experienced in a manner consistent with that belief system. This can later be expanded to explain history in general through that belief system, while subtly modifying it to the brainwasher’s interpretation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brainwashing is used to describe an abrupt, induced attitudinal change. Methods used to induce this change include isolation, monopolization, debilitation and exhaustion, drugs, torture, enforcement of routine, and hypnosis.  

It can also include news coverage, government manipulation, scare tactics, product marketing, advertising campaigns, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and of course Twitter. Another heavily used source of Brainwashing is Social Media influencers and of course, peer pressure.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1: Understand that those who attempt to brainwash others tend to prey upon the weak and vulnerable. Not everyone is a target for mind control, but certain people are more susceptible to forms of it at different times. A skillful manipulator knows what to look for and targets people who are going through a difficult period in their life or a change that may or may not be of their own making. 

2: Be aware of people who try to isolate you or someone you know from outside influences. As people who are experiencing a personal tragedy or other major life change are inclined to feel lonely, a skillful brain-washer works to amplify those feelings of loneliness. This isolation can take several forms.

3: Watch for attacks on the victim’s self-esteem. Brainwashing only works when the brainwasher is in a superior position to the victim. This means that the victim has to be broken down, so the brainwasher can rebuild the victim in his or her image. This can be done through mental, emotional, or ultimately physical means for long enough to physical and emotionally wear down the target.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Emotional tortures are not kind, of course, but may begin with verbal insults, then progress to badgering, spitting, or more dehumanizing things such as stripping the victim to be photographed or just looked at. The goal of these activities is to break down your natural instinct to fight back so that you become placid.

Physical tortures may include starvation, freezing, sleep deprivation, beatings, mutilations, and others, none are acceptable in society. Physical torture is commonly used by abusive parents and spouses, as well as in prison and “re-education” camps.

Although brainwashing can produce profound alterations in character, values, and disposition, it cannot easily be accommodated by such current criminal defenses as mental incapacity, automatism, or coercion. A justification for making brainwashing an excusing condition can be found in each of three major approaches to excusing criminal liability: (1) that punishment should be withheld where it is incapable of having a deterrent effect, (2) that a moral license to punish should not extend to cases where the defendant's actions could not be regarded as voluntary, and (3) that excusing conditions are those that preclude an inference from the act to the actor's character. Although several criticisms might be advanced against the proposed defense, psychological evidence exists to establish beyond doubt the brainwashing phenomenon and its causal link with illegal acts. There are valid moral arguments that brainwashing should afford an excuse to all crimes. They are based on the idea that a person acting when brainwashed is not properly regarded as the same person who reverts to normal behavior after deprogramming. A total of 52 footnotes are provided.

"And that no man might buy or sell, unless that he had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty and six. (666)?

Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616)

A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: "This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people's names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula."

The Book of Revelation is traditionally considered to be written by John, a disciple of Jesus; it identifies 666 as the mark of the Antichrist. In America, the fundamentalist Christian right often use the number in sermons about the coming Apocalypse.

The mark of the beast has been a popular topic among Christians and non-Christians for centuries, gaining momentum in recent times. As our world becomes increasingly chaotic, talk of the apocalypse abounds. As our world becomes more technologically advanced, some worry that they might accept the mark of the beast unknowingly.

The Mark of the Beast in the Bible

The apostle John recorded a vision in Revelation that gives us some details about the mark of the beast. John sees two beasts in his vision. The second beast exercises authority and performs miracles on behalf of the first beast. The second beast “also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16–17). From this description, we know that the mark of the beast, whatever it is, will be forced on all people, not just certain populations. We also know that the mark is tied to commerce and will be required for any type of financial transaction. People will be forced to take this mark on the right hand or in the forehead, and somehow the mark will incorporate the name of the beast or the number representing his name—a number that verse 18 identifies as 666.

THE MARK OF THE BEAST - PUBLIC OPINION

A simple internet search for “mark of the beast” will open an endless jumble of speculation and conjecture. Some believe the mark of the beast will be akin to the chip found in today’s “smart” credit cards. The thought is that a similar chip will be implanted in the skin (where it cannot be lost) and give the bearer access to his or her financial data. Others believe that the mark will be a tattoo or a type of bar code. Another theory is that the mark of the beast will involve artificial intelligence or a genetic modification to “boost” humanity to the next level of evolution. Some worry that many have already taken the mark of the beast unknowingly and point to the COVID-19 vaccinations as the vehicle to administer it. Such claims agitate people’s fears unnecessarily. The mark of the beast does not exist yet. And when, in the future, the mark is forced on the world, it will be impossible to receive it unwittingly.