In a person’s search for a true religion, they may eschew what’s mainstream because they see that something is wrong. As they do so, they may consider an alternative that catches their attention because it happens to be more outspoken.

One such outspoken religious organization might be the Restored Church of God (RCG), which was founded and led by David Pack.

Some have risen the concern that Pack leads a cult, and that his church is one that a person is better off staying away from. It’s because of this that I’ve decided to evaluate the RCG to determine whether it’s a cult.

David Pack’s RCG is part of a greater movement colloquially referred to as Armstrongism. This movement is named for Herbert Armstrong, who departed from Adventism over doctrinal disagreements, then went on to form his own church. Armstrong’s church was controversial for its disagreement with mainstream orthodoxy, especially concerning Sabbath observance, and for favoring Biblical holy days over more mainstream holidays, which Armstrong pointed out were of pagan origin.

After Armstrong passed away, some members of his church broke away and formed their own sects, citing his successor’s departure from the church’s doctrine. David Pack belonged to a particularly large breakaway group which was insistent on maintaining Armstrongism’s teachings. However, Pack was fired from his pastoral position shortly after the group’s founding, citing the spiritual condition of those under his leadership.

I was already aware that, when it comes to cults, there’s something about them that inspires some strong feelings. It’s because of this that it’s hard to find someone willing to write about them with an impartial viewpoint. However, I’ve found that there’s something about Armstrongism in particular that especially upsets people, even if they can’t get an accusation against most Armstrongian groups to stick, besides that they disagree with them. I suspect that this has a lot to do with the fact that Armstrongism disagrees with their own church, and that the mere existence of Armstrongism as a movement is challenging to them. People really don’t like having their own religion challenged, even by the mere existence of people staying in their own lane. It’s because of this that researching David Pack has turned up some results that were interesting.

Before I begin the analysis, I want to point out that I’m not personally familiar with David Pack or with anyone in his church. While there may be a focus on some of his more concerning behavior, its not my intention to present the worst of David Pack to render an unfair verdict.

To perform my analysis, I’ll start with the general criteria that I use to determine whether a group is a cult. This criteria can serve a person well to form a skeptical viewpoint based on a first impression. While dangerous cults tend to be abusive, exploitative, manipulative, or deceptive, this is usually not evident upon the first impression. This list focuses mainly on what a person would likely take notice of upon first impression, or with a little research.

Also, I’d like to point out that an organization does not need to be religious in nature in order to be a cult. However, because the RCG is a religious organization, in this case that is a moot point.

Here is the five-factor criteria I use to find red flags that an organization may be a cult. Of course, there can be other signs that might make this evident to you, besides the ones listed here:

• A cult tends to try to convince prospective members that they have a problem, then present themselves as the solution to that problem,
• Cults tend to have an adversarial relationship with its host society, may appeal to tribalism, or has a tendency to split the world in two,
• There is particular esteem placed on leadership, which is usually not held accountable,
• Membership can appear exclusive or valuable, attention in marketing may be placed on prominent members,
• There is an obvious mechanism with which to extract value.

With this criteria, let’s examine how David Pack’s RCG holds up.

• A cult tends to try to convince prospective members that they have a problem, then present themselves as the solution to that problem,

To be fair, this is basic marketing, and most organizations exist to the end of solving at least one problem. What makes cults concerning is the amount of pressure that they place on prospective members to turn to them to solve the problem the cult convinces them that they have.

Most churches point out that humanity is in need of salvation. The RCG is not unusual in this regard. What is unusual about the RCG is David Pack’s insistence that a person is not in the true church unless they are in his church, which would be the RCG specifically. While Armstrongian churches believe that most of the Christian world has gone astray, few churches are as narrow as Pack’s RCG.

• Cults tend to have an adversarial relationship with its host society, may appeal to tribalism, or has a tendency to split the world in two,

Most Christian churches believe that humanity is in a fallen state, and in need of restoration. Their general outlook when it comes to sin is “hate the sin, love the sinner”. The RCG tends to be consistent with most of the Christian world in this regard, to their credit. Of course, there may be more judgmental individuals who speak for themselves.

• There is particular esteem placed on leadership, which is usually not held accountable,

The Pastor General of RCG, David Pack, is usually featured prominently in RCG’s materials. While this is interesting in itself, Pack also attempts to authenticate his authority with his claim to have known Herbert Armstrong personally. Pack refers to Armstrong as though he were a prophet, and refers to himself as an apostle.

This strong insistence on bringing attention to himself indicates that Pack has a high degree of insecurity, and desires attention. This would not be unusual for a cult leader, at all.

David Pack is famous, particularly among other Armstrongians, for his antics. More on this coming up.

• Membership can appear exclusive or valuable, attention in marketing may be placed on prominent members,

Believe me: David Pack is, by far, the RCG’s most prominent member. But I get the idea that, if someone famous were to join the RCG, David Pack might not let them outshine him.

Also, prospectives should be warned that, once a person joins the RCG, they are expected to remain a part of it for as long as they live. This is due to a belief which was once popular among Armstrongians that it’s considered an unpardonable sin to leave the church. However, many Armstrongians seem to be backing away from this belief.

• There is an obvious mechanism with which to extract value.

Most churches encourage tithing, which is usually just 10% of a person’s income. If that were all that the RCG were asking for, they would not be unusual in this regard. However, Armstrongian churches tend to hit their member’s incomes almost as hard as government, and the RCG is not an exception.

In addition to what’s called a “first tithe”, Armstrongians are encouraged to save up a “second tithe” throughout the year, to help them observe yearly festivals, particularly the weeklong Feast of Tabernacles, which is usually observed at hotels and resorts. I still don’t know how it’s considered religious to spend a tenth of a year’s income in a week, but Armstrongians seldom question it. Some members might keep a “third tithe”, but that’s not usually compulsory, due to the history that Armstrong’s church has with it.

In addition to all this, members are encouraged to make special offerings at festivals, in addition to other offerings that members may voluntarily make (usually in the form of money). Considering all the money that Armstrongian churches hit their members for, it’s vexing that they use the material they distribute to ask for more money. It must be expensive to run their office space while renting convention halls and other churches for services.

Sometimes, I suspect that Armstrongism is as unpopular as it is because normal people cannot afford to join.

Before I continue on, I’d like to point out that I have no animosity against Armstrongism. I bring this up because a lot of material that I found while researching was evidently written by people with an axe to grind. These people really need to get over the fact that there are some people who have religious viewpoints that are different from theirs.

Having said that, David Pack is a seriously interesting guy. While I can write an essay on some of his more concerning behavior, I think I can get the point across by briefly mentioning some select antics, which should be plenty to paint a picture of the kind of guy he’s like.

Why focus on Pack? Because he’s made himself such a central figure in his own church that examining him provides clues as to what kind of church he runs.

For one thing, Pack seems completely serious on the idea that these are the end times. Armstrong himself claimed as much, but Armstrong made the mistake of setting a date on which he believed that Jesus would return, by saying that the Great Tribulation would begin by the year 1975. While Armstrong did change his mind when it became clear to him that his prediction would not come to pass, the fact is, it was a prediction that he made based on his interpretation of Bible prophecy. What’s especially disappointing about this in Armstrong’s case is that Armstrong was a former Adventist. Adventism’s most famous failure was setting a specific date for Jesus’ return, but the date passed without this occurring. Being a former Adventist, Armstrong should have known better.

Nonetheless, Herbert Armstrong was the kind of guy that David Pack could look to and think, “prophet”. So, Pack would later attempt to establish a connection between himself and Armstrong in an effort to establish his own apostleship.

But remember, Pack believes that his small church (of perhaps 1000 members) is the only true church, so because he believes that this is the time of the end, he believes that the two witnesses of Revelation would be in his church. Pack has suggested that he may be one of the two, though he seems to go back and forth on this.

This is to say nothing of the 144,000 or the innumerable multitude, but perhaps Pack is enthusiastic about his church’s potential for growth.

While it may not be specific to David Pack, there is a popular opinion among Armstrongians that Herbert Armstrong was the “Elijah to come”. But Jesus said that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of that prophecy. Did all these people somehow miss this when they read the Gospels?

While this says a lot about Pack and his background, he also likes to combine his passion for false prophecy with his hatred for competing ministers. And boy, how passionately he hates them.

In the early-to-mid 2010s, David Pack made a prediction that three prominent figures from other Armstrongian congregations would all die, all on the same day. And he somehow arrived at this conclusion from some supposed hidden message that he somehow read from the book of Haggai.

Don’t feel intimidated about reading the book of Haggai for yourself to see what it says, as it’s only about 1 or 2 pages long in most Bibles.

David Pack should have lost whatever following he had the moment he made that prediction. But he didn’t. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the date that Pack set came and went without any people of repute in other Armstrongian groups dying. It seems as though Pack didn’t learn from Armstrong’s mistakes concerning setting specific dates when making predictions that end up not coming to pass.

In any case, Pack should have lost whatever following he had left, but he didn’t. This can seem confounding, but not so much when you understand that when someone is in a cult, they tend to be less critical of the shortcomings of their leaders. In light of this, consider the fact that many Armstrongian sermons place a heavy emphasis on “being a good follower” and obedience to leadership.

Also in David Pack’s list of prophecies is his prediction about a reunification, which would supposedly see a few Armstrongian groups coming together. This must have sounded nice to most Armstrongians, considering that with all the divisions in their history, a reunification would be a change of pace. But because it was a David Pack prophecy, it would have a David Pack twist: they would be united under his leadership.

Of course. No surprise, there. What’s also not a surprise is that it was yet another David Pack prophecy that did not come true.

Another interesting fact about the RCG is that it purchases a high amount of advertising on social media. One might imagine that such outreach attempts would be strongly successful. Or, they would be, except most people don’t seem to respond to them. Perhaps it’s evident to many people who see these ads that something is wrong. Some of these ads contain the names of other Armstrongian groups, which makes it evident that Pack was trying to pluck away members of Armstrongian groups which aren’t as cultish.

Also, the RCG once celebrated the fact that their website has been accessed at least once from each country in the world (though I imagine that there were some exceptions). They took this to mean that the Gospel has effectively reached the whole world. That the Gospel would reach the whole world is accepted by Christianity as a precondition for the end of the current age. Apparently, the RCG only counted access to their own website, because apparently they think that other churches don’t count. Perhaps RCG is using the accessing of their website as the metric for their success because the RCG sees itself as an “online ministry”.

Considering all this, you might be able to predict my verdict as to whether David Pack’s RCG is a dangerous cult. If you were to join the RCG, it would be very dangerous to your pocketbook. Putting that aside, when one considers how narcissistic and out-of-touch with reality it’s leadership apparently is, it’s strongly likely that there is exploitation taking place, especially when considering much of Armstrongism’s heavy emphasis on submission to leadership.

The mechanism for the extraction of a high amount of financial value is abundantly obvious. What’s also obvious is that Pack uses the RCG as a mechanism for the extraction of admiration, which would be a dream come true for a narcissistic person, which David Pack evidently is.

There are obvious signs that David Pack’s RCG is a dangerous cult. It’s not acceptable that as much value is extracted from its members as the RCG extracts from them. While we don’t currently have more immediate evidence that it’s members are being exploited, if the RCG were to be more carefully investigated, it wouldn’t be surprising to discover some more serious abuses.

While Jack Murphy is not as relevant today as he was a year ago, he does sometimes still come up as a prime example of a grifter. In light of this, I’ve decided that it might be fun to hold his little club, The Liminal Order, under a microscope to determine whether it is a cult.

The answer to this endeavor seems obvious, when you consider that Jack employs imagery that indicates that he’s doing absolutely nothing to run from the image of a cult leader. However, when his organization is examined, Jack Murphy’s peepee club is not merely the pillow fort that it might appear to be.

Before diving into the evidence, I’d first like to share the general criteria that I use to help determine whether an organization is a dangerous cult. Keep in mind that organizations don’t need to have a religious or spiritual element to classify as a cult. Also, please note that this list is non-exhaustive.

Here we go:

• A cult tends to try to convince prospective members that they have a problem, then present themselves as the solution to that problem,
• Cults tend to have an adversarial relationship with its host society, appeals to tribalism, or has a tendency to split the world in two,
• There is particular esteem placed on leadership, which is usually not held accountable,
• Membership can appear exclusive, with attention in marketing placed on prominent members,
• There is an obvious mechanism with which to extract value.

Cults are dangerous because they tend to be exploitative, and they tend to employ deceptive or manipulative practices, such as control of information, to create or maintain a following. However, these practices tend to not be as obvious as what’s listed above. The above list works well at raising flags from the perspective of being on the outside looking in, when exploitation isn’t immediately evident.

Also, to answer those who may raise the suspicion that I’m presenting the worst of The Liminal Order in order to render an unfair verdict, please know that the information mainly compared against the points above will be what The Liminal Order says about itself, as revealed on its own website.

Now, let’s get started.

• A cult tends to try to convince prospective members that they have a problem, then present themselves as the solution to that problem,

This is Marketing 101. And, to be fair, pretty much every organization exists towards the end of solving some problem. Cults tend to place a particular emphasis on self-improvement or living up to one’s own potential, and are sometimes strong in an insistence that that self-realization can only be achieved through them, or that it’s at least hard to come by.

Here is what The Liminal Order claims to offer on their site:

We are men who seek to improve ourselves so we may better serve our family, community, and the Nation.

We know that strong men make strong countries and we have committed ourselves to a collective action that emphasizes accountability, personal choice, and leadership.

The Liminal Order, Who We Are

The Liminal Order places a heavy emphasis on self-improvement, focusing on young to middle-aged men, to help them to develop leadership qualities and become societal difference-makers. To this end, online sessions are held, with Jack Murphy usually being involved, which often involves brainstorming and coaching.

Basically an expensive chat room where the economy revolves around Jack Murphy’s time.

• Cults tend to have an adversarial relationship with its host society, appeals to tribalism, or has a tendency to split the world in two,

Tribalism tends to be a powerful motivator, and cult leaders exploit this by convincing prospectives to take a side. Or, they may point out all that’s wrong with society, and paint the group as being one of the few “fighting the good fight”. Or, more cynically, they may point to the existence of “enemies” in an effort to stir up fanaticism.

What path does The Liminal Order take?

In this postmodern, post-Truth era, people in your proximity may be your literal enemy. Today they frown at your public display of patriotism. Tomorrow they may turn you in to the re-education camps.

Your coworkers might blast your religion on social media and call for your church to be burned to the ground. If you’re a police officer, you’ve got to watch your back. Even while you’re mowing your lawn. Because anyone can find out where you live.

The Liminal Order, What We Are

That escalated quick. It would seem like Jack Murphy is going down the paranoid delusion route in inspiring his members. Whether he believes what he’s writing, or sees something to gain in inspiring schizophrenics to action, it’s not a good look.

When a cult is convinced that they have literal enemies who are literally out to kill them, they tend towards extremes, quickly. Based on what we read above, I wouldn’t be surprised if a member of The Liminal Order made the news, for a very bad reason.

• There is particular esteem placed on leadership, which is usually not held accountable,

Just about everything about The Liminal Order revolves around the character of Jack Murphy, who presents himself as an example of manliness to aspire to. Like many such people, he eventually became a disappointment. More on him later.

• Membership can appear exclusive, with attention in marketing placed on prominent members,

Jack Murphy vets his prospective members through an interview process, which places an appearance of value on membership. Those who make it in are less likely to take their membership for granted. Because acquiring a membership requires an investment of time and finances, and not everyone overcomes the vetting process, it’s to be expected that members would avoid the risk of losing their membership, and perhaps even tend towards extremes in an effort to demonstrate their loyalty.

What’s more, Jack touts the positions of influence held by members of his club:

Some of our members are:

– Former Military Officers
– Hedge Fund Operators
– Tech Entrepreneurs
– Medical Doctors
– PhD Academics
– Lawyers
– Government Officials
– Media Publishers and Personalities
– Authors
– Artists
– Truckers
– Riggers
– Tech Specialists
– and recent graduates finding their way.

The Liminal Order, Who We Are

I find amusement in that entries such as “PhD Academics” and “Lawyers” are mentioned in the plural sense, as though any lawyer or doctor would consider it a good idea to associate with Jack Murphy. But, as I’m well aware, there are many different kinds.

The obvious draw to listing all these different professions is to create the impression that, if you were to join Jack Murphy’s cult, you’d get to bump elbows with some highly influential people. Of course, that all these heavily-educated and influential people would see someone like Jack Murphy as someone to look up to requires quite a suspension of disbelief.

Because to me, he seems like a guy with a fetish.

• There is an obvious mechanism with which to extract value.

Jack’s little chat room costs $99/month to access. Of course, there are other pricing tiers for those willing to commit to Jack Murphy’s brand of manliness. Last I heard, Jack Murphy has been raking in about $200,000/year, so he’s doing pretty well for himself with his little grift.

Now that we’ve analyzed his little group, let’s move on to the main feature of Jack Murphy’s cult: the man himself. For this analysis, we’ll be sticking to the public aspects of Jack Murphy’s character, as this is most relevant to his cult. It would seem that Jack himself would prefer this, considering that “Jack Murphy” is a pen name.

Jack Murphy was a lesser-known left-wing influencer who rose to prominence as part of the “walk away movement”, which saw left-wing personalities turn away from the left, and identify as conservative (or, at least, decide to vote for Trump after having previously voted for Obama). Jack Murphy even authored a book on the matter, titled, “Democrat to Deplorable”. During the height of Jack Murphy’s influence, he was a guest on various podcasts, including the one hosted by Tim Pool.

However, Jack Murphy’s past would come back to haunt him. In the year 2015, he had penned a blog post touting cuckolding, explaining an experience in which he allowed his own girlfriend to get intimately involved with a man the two met through Tinder.

Obviously, to act on a fetish for being cuckolded is not befitting a man who is prominent in the manosphere. Or for a man who would claim to coach other men on manliness. Or any man, for that matter. The reason why the term “cuck” is considered derogatory is because it implies that a man lacks the strength or confidence to protect or keep for himself what most men would be expected to.

Jack’s article, titled “Cultivating Erotic Energy From a Surprising Source”, was brought up during a podcast with a streamer named Sydney Watson. During the stream, host Sydney Watson read a superchat asking Jack to explain his article about cuckolding. Jack responded by lashing out at the host, in a manner which was disproportionate and uncalled for.

The following is a video from Sydney Watson, offering her take on the matter:

That was the moment in which Jack Murphy’s career began to collapse.

As men began to withdraw from The Liminal Order, Jack set out to attempt to fight back against his critics. In so doing, he made himself look worse. He set out to scrub his own article from the internet, even going as far as having it removed from The Wayback Machine.

Not that you’d have much trouble finding it if you were to go looking for it. After all, once something is on the internet, it’s on the internet forever.

He was so desperate to save face, that he even tried recruiting from his own super-expensive The Liminal Order chat room to create his own personal war room.

If you’re wondering why the photograph, Jack Murphy has measures to attempt to disable screengrab attempts in his chatroom, and notify him when screengrab attempts are made.

I wonder how many of his loyal followers experienced a moment of clarity and decided to nope out at that point. There’s something about spending $99/month for the dubious honor of doing damage control for a fetishist that merits a hard pass.

It is entirely possible for a person to recover from an embarrassing past. However, this usually takes handling the matter a certain way. Jack Murphy failed to do so spectacularly, and in so doing, became another victim of what’s called “the Streisand Effect”, where an attempt to hide something results in more attention for what one is attempting to hide.

If someone is presenting themselves as a pinnacle of manliness, odds are, they’re a narcissist. And if he’s trying to sell you his self-improvement plan, he’s likely running a cult. For a cult to be successful, it doesn’t need to convince the majority of people, it would only need to convince just enough to make the cult leader rich.

Is The Liminal Order a cult? Yes, I believe that The Liminal Order is undoubtedly a cult. But even if not, it’s apparent that Jack Murphy is selling a faulty product. And Jack Murphy himself is that product.

Elon Musk just revealed that when Twitter audits for bot accounts, they only poll 100 accounts at a time. Because of this, Musk is putting the deal to buy Twitter on hold, and subsequently, Twitter is accusing him of breaking a non-disclosure agreement.

Oh, no! Don’t go telling people that the product you plan on buying might be faulty!

When a platform is as huge as Twitter, 100 is a trivially pathetic sample size, especially when sampling for bots, which is a huge problem for Twitter.

But the problem goes beyond just Twitter being annoying for humans to use. The fact is, advertisers pay a premium to advertise on Twitter because of Twitter’s perceived value. For advertisers, to be seen by more human eyes means more value. However, if a huge chunk of Twitter’s value is actually bots, then that’s a huge chunk of Twitter that advertisers would consider absolutely worthless.

When you know this, you see a greater problem. If Twitter is only putting forward a pathetic, statistically insignificant attempt to poll for bots, Twitter may be greatly overstating its own value to advertisers.

It might not be overselling it to say that Elon Musk may have just uncovered the greatest fraud the tech world has ever seen.

In any case, I think we can agree that when a platform’s daily active user count is in the hundreds of millions, a sample size of only 100 is pretty pathetic.

There are a lot of advertisers and investors who are going to be pissed.

If you’re like me, you pay attention to job postings for your field, to see how your current hourly rate compares with what’s being offered, considering your level of experience, or whether your raises are keeping up with inflation.

There is a trend that I’ve been noticing, and that’s that more employers and recruiters are offering sign-on bonuses in an effort to entice applicants. Many of these sign-on bonuses appear to be substantial. After all, who wouldn’t like to receive an extra $3000 to the checking account after about 6 months on the job?

Except, it’s not really a great deal. And if you’ve noticed that many employers and recruiters are not specifying the hourly rate in the same posting as the sign-on bonus, you should consider that a great big red flag.

What it comes down to is an attempt to impress you with a big-sounding number. But when you perform some simple math, you see that a sign-on bonus of $3000 is not a big screaming deal.

Let’s perform that simple math. There are 40 hours in a work week, and there are approximately 26 weeks in six months. That comes to 1040 hours worked in six months. Using this number, we can determine pretty quick how $3000 divides into that time to determine the hourly rate.

And it’s only an additional $2.88 per hour.

That’s it. And it’s a one-time bonus, so after six months, there goes the equivalent of $2.88 from your hourly rate. And considering that the $3000 gets taxed, you’re not getting the full amount.

And it gets worse. When it comes time to negotiate a higher salary, that $3000 number may come back to haunt you when your cheap-o employer will come at you by saying, “What? We just gave you $3000. And you want even more money?”

Even worse is the initial grift, that the $3000 number is a nice, big, attractive number that’s designed to override your better judgement so you’d be more likely to overlook that your hourly rate may be substantially below industry average. It may even be at least $2.88 below industry average.

Suppose that you’re an engineer looking for work. On the one hand, you see a posting offering $48/hr, but on the other, you’d see a posting for $39/hr, but they’re offering you a $3000 sign-on bonus if you stay on for six months. Hopefully, you’d go for the $48/hr job, because that gets you nearly $50,000 in six months. If you’d instead go for the job that would get you $40,560 in the same time with an additional $3000 bonus, you’d probably be too stupid to be an engineer.

Cheap-o employers have found another way to cheat people out of wages. Please stop falling for it.

Biden just added a new dog to the Biden family, named Commander! The new dog is a German Shepherd, just like Biden’s previous dog, Major.

Oh, you’re wondering what happened to Major, right? The Bidens just handed him over to a new home. Why? You may remember Major as Biden’s presidential show dog, which had problems with biting White House staff.

As anyone who has owned a German Shepherd should know, what a German Shepherd needs is a strong leadership presence, otherwise, it will test limits and misbehave. And considering that Major’s leadership presence was Joe Biden, it’s quite predictable how things turned out.

I don’t see much reason to be nice about this, as few things are as upsetting as people who purchase animals for frivolous reasons, then get rid of them when they require too much attention. It’s even worse when these people then proceed to adopt another of the exact same animal. When people do this, it’s obvious that it’s just a show animal, purchased for narcissistic reasons.

I know that it’s somewhat of a tradition for presidents to have dogs, and it looks better when that dog furthers an image of strength. A German Shepard is indeed a manly dog to have and properly take care of. But when Major ran wild, biting people as it pleased, that goes to show just what kind of leadership that Major had to look up to.

That Biden got another German Shepherd immediately afterwards goes to show that he did not learn his lesson. And it might be interesting to pay attention to just how things go with the new dog, but we’re getting a far more interesting show as we watch Biden’s inability to run a country.

When I first heard about this, I had my doubts. After all, it sounds too crazy to be true. But as it turns out, the United Nations is now displaying a statue that fits the description of the beasts described in both Daniel and Revelation, right outside their headquarters in New York City.

As in, the adversarial figure mentioned in Bible prophecy as being a ruling power that’s the enemy of the saints.

Pictured above is the statue named, “The Guardian of International Peace and Security”. It’s said to be a mixture between a jaguar and an eagle, but it looks like an artistic representation of the beast described by the Biblical prophet Daniel, and again in the book of Revelation.

Here is Revelation 13:2:

“And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.”

Revelation 13:2

According to the above verse, the beast is supposed to be like a leopard. Here is a picture of a leopard:

And here’s a Jaguar:

There are many similarities, as they are both large orange cats with black spots.

Here’s what a bear paw looks like:

There’s one more claw than the statue, but notice how the claws are exposed, as they are on the statue? Seems like the statue’s paws seem more like a bear than a cat. A cat’s claws are retractable, but they have to spread their claws to expose them.

And here is a lion with it’s mouth open.

A lion’s mouth is similar to that of a jaguar, but is conspicuously wider, which can also be said about the statue.

Finally, the verse says that the beast got it’s authority from the dragon. As it so happens, the statue looks dragon-like, with wings and spiky ridges starting from the top of its head, and going down along it’s back to the tip of its tail.

Considering how well this fits the Biblical description of the first beast of Revelation 13, some might wonder whether it’s a fulfillment of that prophecy. Personally, I suspect that it isn’t, considering that it’s apparent that the descriptions of the beasts in Bible prophecy were intended to be allegories for the attributes of ruling powers.

Because the descriptions of the beasts are among the better-known Bible symbols, I suspect that the design of the statue was a deliberate move, and was intended to communicate that the U.N. is well aware of their adversarial relationship with Christianity, and is yet another method to communicate to the Christian world that they do not have their values.

Considering what else Revelation 13 has to say about the first beast it describes, it’s interesting that the U.N. would decide to display such an adversarial figure:

“And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

Revelation 13:3-8

Considering that it says, “it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them:”, the statue might be the U.N.’s way of saying that they don’t want to be friends with Christians. What’s more, Revelation continues, “and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.”, the statue may be the U.N.’s way of saying that they aspire to achieve total domination over global affairs. Which wouldn’t be terribly surprising, considering their behavior as of late.

Interestingly, Revelation 13 mentions a second beast, and here is a link to the chapter so you can read it. Interestingly, the chapter culminates in a warning for us about a system of identification for all people, down to the individual level, without which a person would not be permitted to participate in commercial activities (verses 16-18).

As much as I could speculate that the artists Jacobo and Maria Angeles were trolling the U.N. to have the statue displayed completely unaware of the symbolism involved, even a person who never bothered to read a word of the Scriptures with any intention other than to smugly criticize them should be familiar with the symbolism, as it is one of the most recognizable symbols in the cultural frame of reference of many (perhaps most) U.N. officials. That’s why I suspect that its prominent display outside the United Nations building in New York City was in deliberate consideration of the symbolism.

The officials who understand the symbolism may actually find the display of the statue funny, but I suspect that many people of Christian background, such as myself, do not. But if their choice to display the statue wasn’t for humor, that might indicate some different problems.

The global leadership that’s in power today does not have the same values as the people that they govern, and we didn’t need some statue to tell us that.

We’d all have a better shot at peace and security if the United Nations would collectively shut their mouths and leave the rest of us be.

A YouTuber by the handle Coach Red Pill is having a black pill moment. In one of his newer videos, dated October 8, he suggested leaving western counties while you still can, citing the rise of the authoritarian left. While he is astute in his assessing their control of the major institutions and how the checks and balances have all but disappeared from this republic, I can take issue with his idea that the way to properly handle this development is to flee to some third-world country in an effort to escape the surveillance state, and it’s increasingly systematic suppression of dissent.

While I disagree with him, he still has an interesting opinion, and if you have about 14 minutes of time, it’s worth giving it a listen. For your convenience, here it is, embedded:

While the failure on the part of the American government to recognize basic Americans’ freedoms, and the wild flit towards authoritarianism to contain a mere case of the sniffles is indeed a tragic thing to endure, one can hear Coach’s suggestion to flee to a pallet-jack home in a country such as Argentina (or Ukraine, where he apparently shot his video), and ask, “Is this really what you managed to come up with?”

Seriously, is that it? To just run? After all that careful thought, to run off and surrender what ground you were standing was the best you could come up with?

Look, I know that it hurts to be punched, or to be beaten with bike locks. I also know that the left has a near-endless supply of unemployed losers to carry out violent activism as foot soldiers, all while being virtually indemnified by corrupt left-wing prosecutors. But when our own culture is being suppressed in an accelerating rate, to flee the battle comes off as little more than timid self-preservation.

While I recognize the desire to see the left “snap out of it” and recognize that they’ve been going too far, that becomes far less likely to happen when the very people who should be serving as a check to their power surrenders the ground they should be standing.

Stand your ground. This is where the battle is being fought, and where it will be won. Or lost.

But if you were to run off to some place that hardly has running water, what makes you think that whatever peace you find will be anything but temporary? The left’s flit towards extremism isn’t merely a local event, it’s global. If the people who stand the best chance of fighting back were instead to just run off somewhere, there soon won’t be a place where one can flee.

Right now, the enemies of truth, freedom, human intellect, and individual liberties have just about any advantage that one could possibly think of: control of information through corporate media, social engineering through advertisers and social media, extensive psychological profiles on each one of us, surveillance with drones that can monitor a pedestrian from miles away, tremendous amounts of wealth through garnishing the paychecks of most people who work, the list goes on and on.

But the greatest advantage that they could ask for is an opposition that’s willing to flee when sufficiently demoralized. After all, if the police who disagreed with authoritarianism were the only ones who were to resign from the force, we’d only be left with authoritarian police, and the trend would only be expected to accelerate.

Sometimes, the battle looks tough. I get that. As enthusiastic as we may have been when we took up the fight, we’re bound to run into days in which we don’t feel like fighting it. There will be times when it looks like the enemy has an overwhelming advantage, which has a lot to do with the fact that they’ve presented themselves that way. However, the outcome of a conflict isn’t always apparent in the moment. Need I remind you that in the days of American independence, the British had a world-spanning empire?

Right now, the battle is here, and this is where you’re needed. But if you’re just going to turn coward and run, don’t be surprised when we don’t take you back. After all, what father, perceiving the difficulties of providing for his family, would simply run off and abandon them when things get hard? Would anyone have pity for him? In the same way, if someone were to run off when things got hard, would it be accepted of him if he were to thank us for the easy times?

But if he’s really serious about it, Coach Red Pill is free to run off to some Pacific island or somewhere to set up “Freedomistan”, if he’s really just up for his own self-preservation. Who knows, if a bunch of Trump supporters were to somehow claim some mound in an otherwise Sharia state, they might butterfly effect their way to some bastion of freedom that resembles the one that they abandoned.

Before getting started on this, I’ll first share what I’m drinking. It’s called a Painkiller. It’s three parts rum, four parts pineapple juice, one part orange juice, and one part cream of coconut, garnished with nutmeg:

It’s a great thing to drink after a day of making circuit boards for the U.S. Armed Forces, which they then leave in the middle of the desert for some thugs to take. As though I haven’t said enough to point out how rewarding the Electronics Technology career path is.

About two decades back, I actually did buy into all the jingoism and flag-waving, so if you’re wondering what becomes of such a guy when consequent affairs take nearly 20 years to fall to shit, here you go.

In case it hasn’t been evident enough, I’m reacting to the American pullout of Afghanistan, which the Taliban has immediately took over, in just a few days. It’s almost as though the Taliban was poised and ready for it to happen, and the people merely surrendered to its inevitability. I don’t remember the initial American invasion as being nearly as quick. Of course, Iraq fractured shortly after American forces withdrew. What was the invasion of Iraq about, again? Weapons of mass destruction which were never found?

As it is, it seems the only enduring legacy of the War on Terror is the Patriot Act, which enables the federal government to spy on its citizens as they masturbate. And now that the War on Terror is officially over (with terrorism overwhelmingly victorious), America’s trained armed forces have surrendered an entire country to a bunch of hairy men who think that pedophilia is normal.

Getting right down to business, the Taliban has announced their plans for the protection of women by having each woman over a certain age compelled to be married. Which makes the new Afghanistan sound like an incel’s dream come true. As weird as that may sound, America’s elites already work around the clock to ensure that the American working poor are screwed, albeit in a different way.

I think we can agree that no American administration has failed harder than the Biden administration. In just a few months he is already by far the worst president in the history of the republic, unless he can somehow pull off some mythical feat comparable to curing cancer.

But hey, the Abraham Accords were a solid example of peace-brokering and leadership. It involved Bahrain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. It seemed unlikely that it would ever happen, and yet, America’s President pulled it off.

Oh, hold on. It was the Trump administration that pulled off the Abraham Accords, not the Biden Administration. Oopsie.

And speaking of, Biden has already tried blaming Trump for the Afghan withdraw, as though the current person-in-charge has no say in the matter. Then what? Biden just retreats from view again, not to address the public for another few days?

Why were there even any Taliban to negotiate with? If you go to war with someone, and they are the enemy, aren’t you supposed to kill them? If they can be so quickly deposed and forced into the mountains, what have American soldiers have been doing in Afghanistan for nearly two decades? They can find Saddam Hussein in some hole, and they can blow up Osama Bin Laden, but the most advanced military on the planet can’t beat a bunch of religious zealots whose most advanced technology may have been a PS2?

As much as we can blame Biden for what’s gone down, he’s playing his part. When Afghanistan was invaded, it ensured that the U.S. military remained skilled, destabilized a key region, spent down some dated technology (such as the Daisy Cutter bombs), and they left when it was time. Osama Bin Laden confessed to a crime he didn’t commit: the 9/11 terror attacks were committed by Saudis that were ideological rivals with the Al Qaeda terror network, all of which were taught in a mosque that operated in Hamburg, Germany. And last I checked, the same mosque remained open. We can also blame George W. Bush for the part he played, but when it comes down to it, George W. Bush did as he was told.

I think the question now is, “who’s next?” China may be pointing the finger and laughing now, but America’s next target may be specifically chosen to limit China’s influence. And militarily speaking, China is in little position to do anything about it.

“I know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you’re right, yet to fail nonetheless. It’s frightening, turns the legs to jelly. I ask you, to what end? Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives, all the same. And now, it’s here. Or should I say… I am.”

Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War