Presenting ideas and thoughts about matters of importance
Almost every great story has a moment when everything appears lost. For the people of God, it came twice — in 721 B.C., when Assyria scattered the ten tribes of Israel, and in 586 B.C., when Nebuchadnezzar “set fire to the temple of the Lord” (Jeremiah 52:13, NIV) and dragged Judah into captivity. The date: the 9th of Av — July 23 in 2026.
Europe awakens – detailed in an insightful current column in Foreign Affairs magazine. “For the first time in decades, Europeans recognize the dangers that surround them. They are, accordingly, willing to invest in military resources and serve in their countries’ armed forces. From these shifts a new grand strategy is slowly being forged, which signals … Read more
Tumult. Chaos. Earthquakes. War. The first six months of 2026—leading up to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—delivered astonishing, draining upheaval. The joint U.S.-Israeli assault of Operation Epic Fury triggered unexpected consequences of miscalculation: a blocked Strait of Hormuz and a cascade of uncertainty across the globe. Markets scrambled as … Read more
As noted in a prior post, the faith once delivered was challenged and challenged again until in many respects it bore little resemblance to the continuity of faith that the Messiah taught in the 30s CE. As the apostles themselves warned, the magnification over millennia of revealed biblical truth slowly eroded.
From the end of the first century and on, small groups of disciples held to the biblical truths they understood, including observing a seventh day Sabbath and other biblical tenets that reflected the life, teachings and example of Jesus Christ. But as the faith once delivered plunged into the world of Hellenism and the spiritual politics of men—especially following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE—things began to change.
The teachings of the Apostle Paul—a man who by his own accounts was born, lived, and died a Jew (read that again for emphasis)—were summarily mangled into a contrary position.
Why is this important? If one controls the language, one controls the narrative. Here’s a startling consideration: to truly understand what the Bible—and Paul—teaches, one must consider that the origins of the words “Christian,” “Christianity,” and the “church” from a historical perspective represent potential definitions that are—in the words of scholar Anders Runesson—“inadequate, anachronistic, and misleading.”
Is that true? What happened? And what do more contemporary scholars say today of this shift?
What they triggered instead was the beginning of the worst civilian nuclear accident in human history.
In seconds, the unstable RBMK-1000 reactor—mortally wounded by a disastrous circus of operator violations and a fatally clever design—roared past one hundred times its rated thermal output. Roughly 2,000 tons of radioactive steam, vaporized fuel, and red-hot graphite blasted skyward. As journalist Adam Higginbotham put it in his award-winning Midnight in Chernobyl, by the moment the test commenced the technicians had effectively created a pistol with a cocked hammer. All that remained was for someone to pull the trigger.
Sunday, April 26, 2026, marked the 40th anniversary of what happened when that nuclear trigger was pulled.
For me this is not an academic exercise. My long-time friend Victor Kubik, founder of LifeNets, traveled to Pripyat (the then-all-new privileged city built from scratch to support the construction and operation of the Chernobyl power plant) and the first Chernobyl sarcophagus with an Indianapolis delegation in 2003. As a former technology columnist I have long been interested in matters of nuclear development. Victor recently invited me on his Kubik Report podcast to talk about what really destroyed Reactor No. 4.
The technical answers to the disaster are sobering. But as we jointly explored, the spiritual answers are more sobering still.
Following is a summary of our 40-minute discussion.
An historic week of firsts
The first Day of Unleavened Bread opened with a striking juxtaposition. At 6:24 p.m. EDT on April 1, four astronauts aboard the Artemis II spacecraft thundered skyward on 400,000 pounds of thrust, accelerating past 500 MPH in under two seconds toward a rendezvous with the Moon. It was a breathtaking moment of human achievement.
At the same hour, 6,500 miles away, Iran and Hezbollah rained more than 140 missiles on innocent Israeli citizens celebrating their Passover Seder. Hezbollah then fired dozens more rockets through the night on both civilians and military. On the day after the first Holy Day, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem would pay “a very heavy price” for the “intensified fire toward Israel civilians” as they celebrated Passover.
Back in the United States, as Artemis entered pre-lunar earth orbit, President Donald Trump delivered his first formal address to the American people on the Iranian War — one month into the conflict. The speech said little new but featured contrasting claims that the President never sought regime change, although his initial social media video announcing the war encouraged Iranian citizens to seek same.
As noted in an earlier Seeking the Way column, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance had warned in mid-February that “all options on the table” if Iran didn’t advance in diplomatic talks to both cease any efforts to produce nuclear weaponry and ceasing to jail or kill Iranian protestors calling for an end to the reign of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In early coverage, the Economist summed up the opening salvos: “Weeks of gunboat diplomacy came to an end as American and Israeli warplanes began bombing targets across Iran on February 28th. The first signal to the outside world that war had begun was a siren breaking the Shabbat quiet across Israel, telling residents to remain close to shelters. Minutes later, footage showed columns of smoke rising over Tehran.”
For students of Daniel 11 and the 13th and 19th chapters of Revelation, the events of January and February 2026 offered more than geopolitical intrigue. They offered sobering pause.
Today, a new focus in Germany on “Kriegstüchtig” (“war-ready”) openly describes an intense buildup of German armed forces actively preparing for open conflict with Russia. As profiled in an extended report by the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 14, top German Gen. Carsten Breuer “is racing to prepare Germany’s armed forces for war,” ominously noting that “the clock is ticking.”
The response from Europe?
“If the United States were to choose to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end,” emphasized Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark. “The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance — all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another.”
The collective leaders of NATO – including Prime Ministers and President of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Spain – rushed out a collective joint statement on Jan. 6 that made clear their focus:
“Arctic security remains a key priority for Europe and it is critical for international and transatlantic security. NATO has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European Allies are stepping up. We and many other Allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries.
“The Kingdom of Denmark – including Greenland – is part of NATO. Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States, by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders. These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them.”
In the 1950s, an image captured a stark contradiction: a group of people staring — unprotected — at a rising mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion outside the city of Las Vegas. This is not a fabrication, fantasy or Photoshop. The photo timestamps a genuine moment when many – including U.S. government agencies – thought that nuclear warfare was survivable.
That pool party, framed against an atomic explosion, underscores a dangerous disconnect between visible reality and invisible forces at work—a paradox that frames a worthy topic to explore today.
The unseen power locked in matter
In the two decades following 1952, the United States detonated 1,032 nuclear weapons on American soil, mostly in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas. Globally, over 2,000 nuclear devices were tested before the 1963 partial test ban treaty. Unprotected exposure to radioactive fallout ultimately led to serious health consequences, including numerous cancers.
However, these tests revealed something humbling: the colossal power locked within matter itself. Consider the equation E=mc². The “c²” represents 299,792,458 miles per second, squared. This conversion factor is staggeringly large.
Here’s what this means practically: a penny weighing 0.08 ounces contains enough stored energy to power all of New York City—8.7 million people and their entire infrastructure. That’s not theoretical. The energy exists right now, locked invisibly inside that small coin. It would require temperatures hotter than the sun’s surface to release it, but the power is undeniably there.