Tag: religion

US commanders tell troops Iran war ‘God’s divine plan,’ Trump anointed to ‘ignite Armageddon’: Report

Independent journalist Jonathan Larsen reported on 2 March that numerous US service members have lodged dozens of complaints saying senior officers are calling the war on Iran part of “God’s divine plan,” with claims that US President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus” to spark Armageddon.

“President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” one combat-unit commander allegedly told troops during a readiness briefing, according to a complaint submitted to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

The complaint is one of more than 110 logged within 48 hours, spanning over 40 units across at least 30 military installations, with soldiers telling the MRFF that commanders are describing the Iran campaign as divinely ordained and tied to the Book of Revelation.

The Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) stated they were writing on behalf of 15 troops, including at least 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jew, and described the remarks as “so toxic and over the line” that they shocked those present. 

The email sent to Larsen argued that such rhetoric “destroy[s] morale and unit cohesion and [is] in violation of the oaths we swore to support the Constitution.”

MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said the over 110 reports share “one damn thing in freaking common” – what he called “the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders” who view the war as “biblically-sanctioned” and a sign of the approaching “End Times.”

Weinstein warned that commanders celebrating how “bloody all of this must become” in order to align with “fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology” may be violating constitutional and military law. 

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Cardinal found with phone during secret conclave to elect Pope Leo, book says

The secret conclave that elected Pope Leo head of the Catholic Church in May 2025 was interrupted when one of the 133 cardinals involved was found carrying a cellphone, a massive security breach, a book released on March 1 revealed.

As the clerics were preparing to take their first vote inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, which was fitted with jamming equipment to prevent outside communications, security officials picked up the signal of an active mobile connection.

The cardinals stared at each other incredulously, then one of the older clerics discovered he had a phone in his pocket and handed it over, according to The Election of Pope Leo XIV, a new book by two long-time Vatican correspondents.

The book does not name the cardinal or suggest he had any motive for keeping his phone, saying the moment left him “disoriented and distressed”.

Security breach was ‘better than fiction’

The scene was “unimaginable even for a film and never before seen in the history of modern conclaves”, wrote authors Gerard O’Connell and Elisabetta Pique.

One such film, the 2024 hit Conclave, imagined a tangled web of intrigues during the fictional selection of a pontiff. The unprecedented discovery of a phone in 2025 was in its own way more startling than anything portrayed in that movie, O’Connell told Reuters. “Reality (was) better than fiction,” he said.

Clerics taking part in a conclave take a vow not to communicate with the outside world and surrender their phones and all other communication devices for the duration of the proceedings, which can last for days.

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Ukrainian Christians Go Underground in Face of Persecution and Church Seizures

Some Ukrainian Christians have been forced to retreat to the “catacombs” to worship because of persecution and church seizures, the Daily Caller reported Friday.

Furthermore, the embattled Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is in danger of being shut down under a 2024 law prohibiting churches from having any ties to Russia.

The UOC — which, according to the Daily Caller, “traces its roots to the 17th-century Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)” — claims to have full autonomy from Moscow except for its canonical relationship. (For instance, sacraments performed by the UOC are considered valid in the ROC and vice versa.)

However, wrote the Daily Caller, “Opponents claim the UOC’s divine liturgy often includes Russian propaganda — such as prayers for Patriarch Kirill, head of the ROC, and vocal supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

OCU vs. UOC

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which has no Russian connections, benefits enormously from the government’s antipathy toward the UOC. This is not surprising since the OCU was, at Kyiv’s instigation, “artificially constructed” in 2018 from two schismatic Orthodox branches to serve “the political interests of the government,” Metropolitan Feodosii, head of the Cherkasy UOC, told the Daily Caller.

UOC churches are being seized and transferred to the OCU, with priests and parishioners often brutalized in the process, Feodosii and other UOC leaders allege.

The Daily Caller recounted one such incident:

Nearly a dozen UOC parishioners described to the Caller an alleged violent takeover of St. Michael’s Cathedral in Cherkasy in October 2024.

Parishioners claimed more than 500 men — many wearing masks, camouflage and armed with crowbars and bolt cutters — arrived just after liturgy ended. The men allegedly used tear gas and trapped nearby residents in their homes before parishioners briefly fended them off.

One parishioner showed the Caller bruises still visible on his legs. Another claimed her husband was beaten so badly he could not even talk, and he suffered “many fractures of his bones.” The woman’s youngest child was so traumatized by the event that he went almost a whole year only addressing himself as “kitten” instead of his given name, she told the Caller.

Feodosii allegedly suffered burns and a concussion during the fracas and ended up in the hospital.

“Parishioners alleged priests from the OCU stood along the fence laughing with the police as they waited to take over the property,” wrote the Daily Caller.

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Huckabee Defends Pollard Meeting, Says God Promised Israel the Entire Middle East

During a nearly two-and-a-half-hour interview with Tucker Carlson, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee defended meeting with American traitor Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel while a Navy intelligence officer and landed in prison for 30 years.

The New York Times revealed the meeting in November and called it “secret,” which Huckabee denied to Carlson, claiming that he meets with people all the time.

Huckabee also defended the historical and theological claim that present day Israel is the Israel of the Bible, as have GOP U.S. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Huckabee said the Bible would justify Israel’s seizing territory in the Middle East from the Euphrates River in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt.

The genesis of the Pollard discussion was the revelation in the Times.

The meeting was secret, the Times reported, and for good reason. No other American envoy thought meeting with Pollard was a good idea.

“The highly unusual meeting caught some U.S. officials by surprise, and appeared to be a sharp break with years of precedent for American diplomats,” the newspaper disclosed:

The New York Times learned of the meeting from three U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. When The Times asked Mr. Pollard about the meeting, he confirmed it.

The meeting was not on Huckabee’s schedule, which “alarmed” the CIA station chief.

And the top U.S. spy in Israel isn’t the only American official that Huckabee kept in the dark, the Times continued:

The White House was not aware of the meeting in advance, according to a White House official and two people briefed on the matter. The White House official also said that senior officials there were alarmed when they learned it had taken place.

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It’s Not Racist To Say Muslims Can’t Tell Us To Reject Dogs

Shortly after Nerdeen Kiswani, a pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist activist and organizer, said on X that pet dogs have no place in homes because “they are unclean,” several other videos surfaced reportedly demonstrating Muslim attitudes toward dogs.

There’s the video purportedly showing a Muslim threatening to behead a woman’s dog. And the video of “Sneako,” a Muslim streamer in Miami, telling Americans, “F-ck your dog. … Dogs are haram. … Dogs are gross.” And then the video allegedly capturing Muslim kids torturing a lone dog. Added to those were reports of Morocco engaging in a campaign to slaughter three million dogs ahead of the 2030 World Cup.  

The obvious conclusion is that Muslim culture does not like dogs and has no qualms about being cruel toward them.  

But the issue is not about dogs specifically. It is about Islam forcing Americans — who have been dog-loving and dog-using people since the Mayflower — to change our habits and our way of life in order to accommodate Muslims. It is about conquest and control. As Dana Loesch put it, it is primarily about submission, with Muslims pushing the boundaries of what they can do in America.  

In cases like this, it is very important to see who supports the suppressors and who supports the people being told to submit. Unsurprisingly, Democrats haven’t reacted with the common-sense, American response: If you don’t like dogs, don’t have a dog. But we are not going to tell Americans they can’t have dogs or that they cannot have their dogs in their own homes.

Instead, leftists from Jake Tapper to AOC have called Congressman Randy Fine of Florida a “bigot” for responding to Kiswani’s original tweet, with a sentence most Americans would agree with: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” And the reactions have gone well beyond that. Hakeem Jefferies has promised retribution if the Democrats retake the House in November. Ahead of that threatened retribution, Democrats (and some gutless wonder Republicans, if rumors are to be believed) want Fine to be censured.  

It’s important to understand what is unfolding. It is easy to see this as just another example of the left being the left and throwing down the “Racist!” card because that is largely what their entire deck consists of. But it is more than that. The old legal maximum “Silence means consent” (qui tacet consentire videtur) is still true. Every Democrat who has only been able to try and spin this as another example of xenophobic, Islamophobic conservatives proving their xenophobia and Islamophobia is advertising that he is an ally of Islamists — Islamists who, if given the chance, will exert power to change our way of life.  

The proof of this is not the fact that Islam is currently the fastest growing religion in the world, while also rising in the United States — religion obviously changed the Roman Empire after Constantine, Mexico after the conquistadors toppled the Aztecs, the Christian Middle East after the Muslims conquered it, so of course an Islam-majority United States isn’t going to be the United States we inherited. Nor is the proof that blue cities like New York are now blasting the Muslim call to prayer, changing their own rules to allow the disturbance. The proof can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. 

Dearborn, with a population of about 100,000 people, is the city whose Muslim mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, named a street after Osama Siblani, reportedly a public defender of U.S.-designated terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. He also publicly told a Christian man he “was not welcome” in the city when the man expressed mild disapproval of Hammoud’s plan. Hammoud also said that he would throw a parade when the man left Dearborn.

Telling Americans to leave Dearborn seems to be habitual for its Muslim overlords: Muslim agitators shouted down one of Nick Shirley’s interviews in Dearborn, after which Shirley was told that “racists” were “not welcome.” Dearborn was also the locale where Muslims shouted, “Death to America!” so it’s not surprising that Islamists would tell Americans to leave what they clearly see as a conquered city.

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More Christians Killed in Nigeria as Media and Democrats Deny Genocide

If mainstream media and American Democrats and liberals are correct that the mass killing of Christians in Nigeria is merely a conflict over grazing land rather than a genocide, then why are so many Christians not only being killed but also abducted? Abduction has never been a defining feature of disputes between herders and farmers in other countries.

In the past twenty-four hours, more reports of the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria have emerged. Priests and laypeople on the ground are posting videos and impassioned cries for help on social media.

Al Jazeera has said Christian genocide is a myth, while mainstream U.S. media have described it as a Republican conspiracy theory and lies made up by President Trump.

Apparently, people in Nigeria have fallen so deeply for Republican lies that they mistakenly believe their own families and parishioners are being killed.

On Thursday, February 19, an armed group invaded the Tungan Duste community in Anka Local Government Area. Although the attack occurred late last week, casualty figures were officially confirmed by police on Monday, February 23.

Thirty-eight people were killed, and numerous residents, primarily women and children, were abducted. Police stated they had prior intelligence about the attack, but were unable to reach the area in time due to poor road access.

Simultaneous attacks also took place late last week in Kebbi State, with official reports and statements from the African Union released over the last 48 hours, February 22–23. Thirty-three people were killed in those raids.

In Taraba State, particularly in Mchia and Donga, reports emerging as of February 23 describe a worsening crisis in the southern region. Ten people were killed in a recent massacre in the village of Mchia.

Church leaders from the Wukari Diocese held a press briefing on February 18, calling for an end to the ongoing attacks on Christians by Fulani militias.

They also released a separate statement detailing that more than 100 people have been killed in the region since early February and that over 200 communities and churches have been destroyed.

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Historic London Church BURNS To The Ground Amid SILENCE From Government

A massive fire ravaged the historic Kings Hall Methodist Church in Southall, West London, late Sunday night, reducing much of the over 100-year-old building to ashes. 

Dozens of firefighters and ten engines battled the inferno for hours, but the damage was extensive, erasing a piece of Britain’s Christian heritage in a matter of moments.

Footage from the scene shows flames bursting through windows and thick smoke billowing into the night sky, as crowds gathered to watch the destruction unfold. 

The church, a community staple since the early 1900s, survived world wars and countless storms—only to succumb to this suspicious blaze. Local reports confirm the fire started around 9:30 p.m., with emergency services flooding the area after multiple 911 calls.

Witnesses and online commentators wasted no time pointing out the eerie pattern: churches across the UK and beyond keep going up in flames, with little outcry from authorities or mainstream outlets. 

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Epstein Obsessed With Vatican, Conspired With Steve Bannon

Newly released documents from the Justice Department have cast fresh light on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s long-running fixation with the Catholic Church and his private exchanges with Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, about efforts to “take down” Pope Francis.

The tranche of emails and text messages, dating primarily from 2014 to 2019, reveals a pattern of mockery, ideological hostility, and political strategizing centered on the Vatican.

Epstein was convicted in 2008 of child sex offenses and later died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. 

The records showed that in the years between those events he remained engaged with powerful political and media figures — including Bannon — and expressed particular contempt for the Roman Catholic Church and its papacy.

The most politically charged revelations involve text messages exchanged in 2018 and 2019 between Epstein and Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who had become an adviser to Epstein in the years after he was found guilty of sex charges.

In a June 2019 message, Bannon wrote to Epstein: “Will take down [Pope] Francis. The Clintons, [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping], Francis, EU — come on brother.”

The language suggests that Francis was viewed by Bannon as part of a broader set of geopolitical and ideological adversaries.

At the time, Francis was a vocal critic of nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant policies — positions that placed him at odds with segments of the populist right and traditional Catholics.

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For years the Taliban told women to cover up in public. Now they’re cracking down

In stop-start efforts since November, Taliban officials have cracked down on women and girls in the western city of Herat who have been ignoring the hardline group’s rules by showing their faces. Enforcement agents are preventing them from entering hospitals and seminaries and pulling them out of public transport.

Initially, women and girls were punished for not wearing a burka — the Afghan burka is typically blue, has a netted opening for the eyes and drapes down around the body, largely constraining the woman wearing it. Later, after what residents described as pushback, officials enforcing the rules relented and allowed women to wear the typical conservative dress in this part of Afghanistan, a voluminous cloak known as a chaddar, along with a face mask.

At the main hospital in the Western city of Herat, one health worker described female staff milling outside the entryway for hours, waiting for colleagues on the night shift to hand over their burkas so they could enter — like a token that allowed them “entry permission,” the worker said. In another incident, Human Rights Watch reported on a female surgeon, who was detained for several hours for not donning the burka.

Forcing women to don burkas, to cover their faces or even to wear a hijab, or head covering, “is part of the Taliban’s policy of controlling women’s bodies to make women invisible,” said Sahar Fetrat, a researcher in the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. She said in a statement: “Afghan women and United Nations human rights experts have called this “gender apartheid.”

In interviews conducted since November, more than a dozen Herat residents described different incidents to NPR. They all requested anonymity, or that we only use an initial of their first names, fearing reprisal from Taliban officials. The crackdown was run by officials of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which is tasked with the implementation of the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law.

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