I was at Mass last evening. Feb 1 readings. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt the distance between Scripture and power so viscerally.

The First Reading comes from the Book of Zephaniah — from what Judaism itself calls the Tanakh, not the Christian “Old Testament.” No translation tricks. No theological footnotes. Just the text, naked and accusatory:

“The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth… and there shall be none to make them afraid.”

Pause there.

Not conquest. Not dominion. Not chosen to dominate.

Humility. Truth. Meekness. A people who do not lie.

Now overlay that onto the present moment — onto Gaza reduced to powdered bone and rebranded by Israeli officials as a “future planned community.” Onto ministers casually invoking Hitler with better branding while standing atop mass graves. Onto casualty figures that stopped being counted (estimated at over 600,000 —mostly women and children) not because the killing stopped, but because the institutions that counted the dead were themselves obliterated.

The grotesque irony is unbearable: a state claiming fidelity to the Tanakh while violating its moral spine line by line.

And then the Gospel.

Christ ascends the mountain in the Gospel of Matthew, and what follows is not ambiguity, not metaphor, not wiggle room. It is the Beatitudes — the most radical moral inversion ever spoken into history:

Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.

Tell me? Where does industrial siege fit into this? Where do mass bombings, drone assassinations, starvation blockades, and collective punishment hide in that mountain sermon?

They don’t.

And yet... here is the most disturbing layer, this carnage is not merely tolerated by large segments of Western Christianity, it is theologically lubricated by it.

American evangelical Zionism did not fall from the sky. It was soft-installed over a century, beginning with the Scofield Reference Bible — a theological hack-job that fused apocalyptic prophecy with subservience to Zionism, to political Israel. A footnoted scripture that quietly taught generations of Christians that allegiance to Israel — any Israel, any action, was obedience to God.

So when bombs fall, they call it destiny.
When children die, they call it prophecy.
When Israel pushes relentlessly for war with Iran, they call it “biblical inevitability,” even as the region edges toward a civilizational detonation.

This is not Christianity. This is not Judaism. This is eschatology weaponized for empire.

And here’s the final, bitter irony:
The Jesus of the Gospels — meek, merciful, hunted by power, would not be allowed past the security gate of the very conferences where His name is invoked to justify mass death.

The prophets warned against this exact inversion. Christ wept over it.

So perhaps the readings today were not comfort. Perhaps they were indictment.

A reminder that Scripture is not a shield for power, but a mirror. And right now, that mirror is unforgiving.

Scripture is not on trial here.
Power is. And the evidence has already been entered into the record.

The prophets spoke of humility, truth, and mercy — not siege and deceit.
Christ blessed the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, not those who starve cities and baptize violence with scripture.

Blessed are the peacemakers, which is why they are silenced. Blessed are the meek, which is why they are buried.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, which is precisely why justice now terrifies power.

Scripture has already rendered its judgment. What remains is the historical sentence.

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Epstein's documents show that Jeffrey Epstein told Peter Thiel that he 'represented the Rothschilds', when he was arranging meetings and inviting him to his island.

In another email correspondence, Ariana de Rothschild discusses allegations that Hitler lived in a shelter funded by three wealthy Jewish families - the Rothschilds, Epsteins, and Gutman - before the First World War.

The case materials repeatedly mention the connections between Epstein and Rothschild.

JFC

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‘Iran ready for total war’ — officials to WaPo

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