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Last year, Aaron Hertzberg compiled an idiot’s guide on how to convince the masses that there is a deadly pandemic, when there isn’t one, and pretend there are no injuries caused by the vaccine, when there are.
He has written the text for aspiring propagandists who would like to learn the art: “For the beginner, [the art of propaganda] can be very difficult to master. Even the experienced propagandist can at times fall into the trap of thinking that creating and disseminating propaganda is a straightforward enterprise – which is a good way to win a permanent all-expenses paid Siberian vacation,” he said.
“The following short guidebook will provide the aspiring propagandist, WEF lackey, Communist Apparatchik, Woke Marxist and seasoned government bureaucrat alike with the tools and knowledge necessary to develop their promising talent into full-bloom mastery of the art of propaganda.”
As one can imagine, Herzberg’s guide is necessarily long. We are publishing one section at a time so hopeful propagandists don’t feel overwhelmed and give up on their dreams of a career in propaganda after the first hurdle.
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By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. (The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023.)
Take a close look at the above slide from an international poll conducted a few months after covid struck: This is what effective propaganda looks like. And the true effect was even greater because the “real world” numbers used to calculate how badly people exaggerated the risks of covid were of course themselves derived from … the world’s preeminent propaganda organisations (masquerading as public health agencies). Who were themselves already wildly exaggerating the risks of covid.
The art of effective propaganda is an encompassing discipline that requires careful and thorough study – and review – from time to time. For the beginner, it can be very difficult to master. Even the experienced propagandist can at times fall into the trap of thinking that creating and disseminating propaganda is a straightforward enterprise – which is a good way to win a permanent all-expenses paid Siberian vacation. It is not usually so simple a task to befuddle the entire society every day, 365 days a year, indefinitely.
The following short guidebook will provide the aspiring propagandist, WEF lackey, Communist Apparatchik, Woke Marxist and seasoned government bureaucrat alike with the tools and knowledge necessary to develop their promising talent into full-bloom mastery of the art of propaganda.
This book is a bit long!! So don’t feel as though you must read it from start to finish in one shot, for that is a recipe for burnout and to not retain the critical information contained within.
This manual is divided into the following sections:
- Section I. Definitions – How to redefine words, terms and metrics to keep them in line with the regime narrative.
- Section II. Curating Data – How to hijack the processes of recording, reporting and publishing data.
- Section III. Vetting which data are considered to be part of Official Science – How to vet and data and dispose of regime nonconforming data so it never appears in any Official Science or regime datasets.
- Section IV. How to rig a study – Exactly what it sounds like.
- Section V. Doctoring the datasets – Sometimes, you will need to go in and do a little data ‘surgery’ to modify the content of databases that contradict regime talking points you can’t simply eradicate.
- Section VI. Control the standards of evidence – How to set up a hierarchy of evidence that puts regime-friendly Science at the top and regime-unfriendly science at the bottom (of the Mariana Trench).
- Section VII. The Ecclesiastical Authorities of Science – How to ensure that Scientific Authorities reliably parrot the regime’s facts and narratives.
- Afterword – Tying it all up nicely, like one of Peter Hotez’s bow ties (he’s a particularly grating Regime Celebrity Scientist).
[Note from The Exposé: Because Hertzberg’s ‘Idiot’s Guide to Cooking Data for Aspiring Propagandists’ is so long, we are publishing one section a day over seven days. If you wish to read ahead, you can follow the links to the sections as provided above or read the entire guide on the Brownstone Institute’s website HERE.]
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Table of Contents
“He who controls the language controls the masses.”— Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
How we define concepts or categories determines what tidbits of the real world they communicate or represent – or what they don’t communicate or represent.
Malleable definitions, and an arbitrary and capricious standard for assigning definitions, are an absolute must for any effective propagandist. Despite the best efforts, even seasoned, expert propagandists will inevitably confront situations where the curated data that exists, or people’s lived experiences, are problematic to the official regime narrative.
Effective propaganda therefore requires the capacity for nimble and highly adaptive flexibility to control the content of data, especially pre-existing conventional metrics that the public is accustomed to hearing about which are notoriously difficult to simply make disappear (unlike the ease by which you can vanish a dissident scientist off of YouTube or Facebook). For example, you won’t be able to avoid talking about “deaths” in the context of a novel Dreaded Disease Pandemic – the primary way people will relate to gauging the severity of a disease will always be first and foremost: “How many people died from the disease?” But you can change what “death” refers to in the context of the novel Dreaded Disease if you want to increase or decrease people’s sense of how deadly it is.
In practice, this means that when the normal understanding of a term or concept shows that the reality does not quite fit the regime’s desired narrative, just change a few definitions and voilà, problem solved.
As many a prominent communist propagandist throughout history has also observed, “He who controls the language rules the world.”
There are a variety of ways to alter or transition definitions from problematic to acceptable.
I-1. Limit a Definition
If the conventional definition of something includes concepts, data or information that is at odds with regime dogma, limit the definition so it no longer includes the unwanted information. There are plenty of ways to do this. So, we’ll list a few of the more common types of characteristics you can use to effectively limit a definition:
Limit the definition by time interval: Suppose that vaccinated people get the Dreaded Disease at very high rates in the first 30 days following vaccination and after 90+ days from vaccination with the Glorious Vaccine. This is a big problem because people will think that the Glorious Vaccine is not effective:
The red line shows the case rate per million people after getting vaccinated with the Glorious Vaccine, by the number of days since vaccination. As you can see, in the first 30 days, the rate of breakthrough infections is very high, but between days 30-90 the case rate is practically 0, and after day 90 the case rate starts climbing again.
In plain English, what you see on the above chart is that the number of cases per million people goes as follows:
- Before vaccination: 500 cases of Dreaded Disease/million people
- 10 days after vaccination: 3,000 cases of Dreaded Disease/million people
- 20 days after vaccination: 1,700 cases of Dreaded Disease/million people
- 30 days after vaccination: 100 cases per million people
That’s very inglorious efficacy for the Glorious Vaccine – something that cannot be allowed to stand. One solution is to simply change the definition of “vaccinated” to mean someone who is between 30 and 90 days after being injected with the Glorious Vaccine – in other words, anyone who is within 30 days of being vaccinated, or after 90 days from vaccination, is not considered “vaccinated:”
This particular tactic was pioneered by pretty much every public health agency in the civilized world, where the definition of “fully vaccinated” for the covid vaccines was limited to “14 days after your second dose”:
Limit the definition by quantity, such as the number of exposures: For instance, if a bunch of people who received 1 dose or 5 doses of the Miraculous Treatment Mirafaucivir died (the first dose kills off people who are particularly susceptible to its toxicity, and 5 doses is too toxic for pretty much anyone), limit the definition of “treated with MiraFaucivir” to between 2-4 doses:
Limit a definition by adding absurd conditions into the definition that are almost impossible to fulfil: For instance, you might try using the following conditions to limit the definition of a “vaccine death” in the context of a mass vaccination campaign with the newly-minted Glorious Vaccine:
It’s pretty hard to ever manage to get a “confirmed” case of someone dying from the Glorious Vaccine under conditions like these.
(You must remember to obstruct autopsies as much as possible to make this example definition fully effective.)
I-2. Expand a Definition
Conversely, sometimes you may want more of something than there actually is. Expanding definitions is a great solution – just reverse the above instructions for limiting definitions.
So, if you need more deaths from the Dreaded Disease than there are people actually killed by the Dreaded Disease, you can expand the definition of a ‘Dreaded Disease Death’ to “any death within 30 days of a positive test,” and just like magic, you have a full-scale pandemic on your hands.
To illustrate this, suppose that after 12 months of Dreaded Disease circulation, only 7 people per 100,000 infections were actually killed by the Dreaded Disease – not exactly scary. You pull a little switcharoo and expand the definition of a ‘Dreaded Disease Death’ to something like what the CDC pulled – “any death within 30 days of testing positive for the Dreaded Disease.” Since plenty of people die every day, if you mass test them all, you will inevitably “discover” a whole boatload of dead people who happened to have the Dreaded Disease when they died, even though they were killed by something completely unrelated like cancer or a car crash. Look at what a difference this makes:
New York State offers a classic illustration of how to expand the definition of ‘Dreaded Disease Death’ to create the appearance of a once-in-history super-duper scary apocalyptic pandemic – just look at the following gorgeous open-ended definition for a “probable” covid death:
NOTE OF CAUTION: You must always take care to NEVER, EVER, EVER – EVER!!! – articulate to the public how you’re gaslighting them in clear, concise language they can understand. The following unforced error in 2020 from Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike is the sort of thing that gets you a quick one-way ticket to the Gulag – she actually said the following at a public press conference (see embedded video below):
“So, the case definition is very simplistic. It means at the time of death, it was a covid-positive diagnosis. So that means that if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live and then you also were found to have covid, that would be counted as a covid death. It means that, technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had covid at the same time, it’s still listed as a covid death.”
She was doing the right thing of course by using such a wonderfully expansive definition for covid deaths, but she stupidly and carelessly let the cat out of the bag for the whole world to see. That’s the kind of careless blunder that can demolish an entire propaganda campaign overnight. And also, the kind of thing that can be a career-ender (or worse):
I-3. Invent a Brand-New Definition
Sometimes it is simply not possible to hide the common understanding of something by merely playing with the definition at the margins. In that case, you can take the gutsy step of redefining a word, concept, or category altogether to fit your propaganda needs. Just beware that it may be a tad more difficult to convince people that the old definition is a figment of their imaginations.
Take the CDC (yup, we’re gonna be quoting CDC a lot; they are the preeminent health propaganda organisation in the world after all), which changed the definition of “vaccination” multiple times over a span of 6 years:
(Sidebar: The above tweet offers a lesson in the need to control rogue legislators who might try to dissent or even expose your propaganda efforts. You don’t need the additional headache of dealing with clear evidence of your linguistic treachery broadcast to the public from the floor of Congress or Parliament (or the even bigger headache of being banished to Siberia as the fall guy for allowing such a thing to happen).
On occasion, you may even find that you are trapped by the ordinary conversational meaning of words, where they highlight something you can’t afford people paying attention to. Should this occur, you will be forced to implement a fundamental change to the very essence of the language. This is a sort of nuclear option for when you can’t hide something any other way, and also can’t afford to not hide it. (Beware!! Such an audacious endeavour comes with a significant degree of difficulty as many people will be inclined to resist such open and bold language transitioning – similar to how many unenlightened Luddites resist going along with gender transitions).
For example, take the term “peaceful protest”:
Of course, ‘limited’ is a subjective term whose precise contours are ill-defined, which gives you a lot of latitude to apply the description to almost anything regardless of how incoherent or misfit the application is, as evidenced by this real-life media report that needs no further description:
I-4. Combine Categories
Sometimes, it just isn’t practical or feasible to mould the data simply by changing definitions. Not to worry though – if you can’t change the definition, you can instead change the datapoint or category itself that folks are used to the word or phrase referring to. People aren’t attuned to subtle or nuanced differences in categories or data points, and the media helpfully conflate most things anyway, making this an easy and convenient trick. For instance, you can try:
Combining different age groups:
Suppose the Glorious Vaccine is causing a bunch of kiddies to turn into zombies. That’s pretty bad for the regime. (Which means you should reassign a few scientists to work at a climate research station in Antarctica for the remainder of their careers. Without socks.)
First, you must always refer to this novel condition as “Safe and Effective Transformation into Carnivorous Zombie.” The reason for the carnivorous part is simple: ‘flesh eating zombie” sounds too scary, and plain “zombie” feels like the zombies are basically dead – i.e. the precious kiddies are dead – neither of which is an impression you want people to come away with. (Even though our hypothetical example here is unlikely to materialise in practice, the principle is relevant and applicable to any situation: you must always name something in a way that conveys a sense of what you want people’s impressions to be.)
Second, because the rate of Zombification in the 12-17 age cohort is so high that it is obvious to anyone who looks at the data (below chart), you will probably have to deal with that. So instead of presenting the data broken down by age, where people will immediately notice the surge of kiddie zombification, present the data as a combined age group that is big enough to hide or launder out the signal:
What you are doing in essence is taking the term “rate of Zombification after the Glorious Vaccine” which can be used to refer to the various different age groups and making it refer to the rate of all age groups combined.
Now nobody will notice that the data shows a clear risk to kiddies of being turned into carnivorous zombies by the Glorious Vaccine.
Or conversely, supposing that the youngsters aren’t dying from the Dreaded Disease at high enough rates to scare the mommies, you can present Dreaded Disease death data from a combined age group of 0-50 that makes it seem like there are soooo many deaths from a group that includes the kiddies:
Combining different demographic cohorts
Same idea as the age groups; suppose you need to avoid the citizens figuring out that the Dreaded Disease is really only dangerous to the morbidly obese people – which is bad:
- Firstly, because then they won’t be scared of the Dreaded Disease.
- Secondly, because people might start to question whether fat is healthy, which you can’t allow because they might begin to question the regime narrative regarding ‘fat positivity’ and then who knows what else afterwards.
So, you should just present the Dreaded Disease death data using a combined category that covers all types of weight identities:
Combining different time periods
Suppose you notice that the deaths from the Dreaded Disease are decreasing month over month – which can be catastrophic to regime plans that require the people to believe that the Dreaded Disease Pandemic is in full circulation for another few months. If the people get the idea that the Dreaded Disease is winding down, well, that’s a lot of lost opportunity to use the Dreaded Disease crisis as a means of effecting societal transformation to consolidate and solidify the regime’s power.
So instead of presenting the death data by month, combine all three months into a new category of “monthly average over the three months” which will mask the decrease from January to March, illustrated below:
Combining different geographical jurisdictions
Suppose that there’s a rogue state within the country that is making problems for the regime that doesn’t follow regime guidance for dealing with the Dreaded Disease, which we’ll call Death Santistan. If they show better or even equal results to the rest of the country where they are good citizens and follow regime guidance, that would be pretty bad. Suppose further that there’s a city or county within this bad state that is a loyal regime county following all regime guidance but whose death rate is much higher than the rest of Death Santistan. Which is very very bad. Solution? You can present data from the entire state so people can’t tell that the loyal county following regime guidance has a death rate 10 times the rest of the state. There’s even a bonus benefit: you can point to the whole state of Death Santistan as a failure because the loyal regime county will make the whole state look much worse!!
Combining all the cities and counties in a disloyal state to hide the problems unique to loyal regime cities is one of the go-to propaganda tactics used to try and hide unflattering information such as the vastly higher crime rates in regime-loyal cities compared to cities controlled by the evil opposition.
(Sidebar: High crime rates are a good thing of course that is a deliberate choice of the regime by design – high crime rates are useful for the regime because instability makes people more willing to accept tyrannical government as a solution.)
To illustrate, here is a brilliant piece of gaslighting from one of the mainstay regime media mouthpieces:
Look at the subtitle in the crimson box – see how they adroitly finger the red states for the high crime rates that are all in the blue cities within the red states but not in the rest of the state where the governance is “red”? Exactly.
Combining different types of the effect or phenomenon.
For instance, if there is an increase in a specific subtype of disease condition – like alarming increases in rare cancers following the rollout of the Glorious Vaccine, which might make people question the official regime narrative that the Glorious Vaccine is the safest entity ever created or discovered in universal history – you can use the general category of cancer – which is 1,000x as big – to hide the signal.
Another way to think of combining categories is that you never give out the specific data for different groups or subsets, something that was pulled off to absolute perfection when covid struck. Consider the following polling results, showing the share of covid deaths for each age group side by side with the percentage of each age group who were worried they would be killed by covid. (The blue bars show the percentage of each age group who were worried about getting killed by covid, the green bars show the percentage of the total number of covid deaths that were in each age group.)
Had people understood what their actual risk of dying was, the blue bars should be at least in the ballpark of the green bars. When the blue bars are dramatically higher, that is the result of brutally effective propaganda by combining all age groups into one category without ever differentiating:
Smashing success indeed!!
I-5. Split Categories
Sometimes you will need to split up a category instead of combining it with another one. Just reverse the framework laid out above for combining categories.
This neat little manoeuvre is especially useful when you need to get something below the threshold for statistical significance. Since statistical significance is a pretty important concept in data and Science, it’s a good idea to explain how this works.
Statistical significance as used in conventional medical academic or scientific language basically means that the likelihood of something not due to random chance is less than 5%.
If you flip a coin 10 times, the odds of getting 7 heads because of random chance is 11.72% – NOT statistically significant. If you flip a coin 100 times, the odds of getting 70 heads because of random chance is a minuscule 0.0023% – VERY statistically significant (cuz that’s much less than 5%) – meaning that it is not reasonably attributable to random chance, rather something specific (like cheating) caused the coin to flip 70% for heads.
Why is this? To get 7/10, all you need is two extra coin flips to go your way – going on a bit of a streak. Small deviations like this can easily happen at random. However, to get 70/100 requires 20 extra coin flips to go your way – the odds of getting *20* extra coin flips out of a total of only 100 by random chance are negligible. So, if we see 70 heads out of 100 flips, we can presume that there is some kind of cheating going on, because that’s very very unlikely to happen by random chance.
You can use this to your advantage to divide and conquer a statistically significant signal – you can divide a category where there is a statistically significant signal for something against regime doctrine into smaller categories in order to break up the signal from a “70/100” into a bunch of “7/10”s that are individually not statistically significant.
So, if, for example, there is a signal that there are more deaths per 100,000 per year after the Wondrous Glorious Vaccine Campaign, you can publish the death data broken down by age group where no one age group will show a statistically significant increase in deaths (and you can claim that it’s probably leftover excess death from “Long Dreaded Disease” from complications of getting the Dreaded Disease):
Note of caution: This particular tactic should ideally be combined with something else otherwise people could reverse-engineer the breakdown by doing a bit of simple arithmetic to add all the age groups together. So, make sure to add in other confounding tricks.
I-6. Redistribute / Redraw Categories
A more finely tuned alternative to combining categories outright is to redistribute them – to redraw the lines so to speak. This can be done using any characteristic by which categories are differentiated.
To illustrate, returning to our example of the evil disloyal state of Death Santistan, instead of combining the entire state into one statewide statistic, you can surreptitiously redraw the geographic boundaries of the counties inside the state for the purposes of Dreaded Disease data like this – look at what happens when we change the county borders to the green lines:
Note: This does not mean you have to literally redraw the counties for political and other purposes like voting districts; all you’re doing is using different borders for the sole purpose of Dreaded Disease statistics. (The population however will assume that you mean the actual counties that exist and will therefore not realise you pulled a fast one over them. It’s called propaganda for a reason.)
I-7. Fluid Definitions
There are times when you may have the paradoxical need to use a specific definition for one thing but must also avoid that specific definition for something else. For such cases, you must act like a dictionary – dictionaries typically have multiple distinct definitions for one word, you can do the same.
For instance, the word “woman” is sometimes defined as “an adult human that possesses female anatomical and genetic characteristics,” such as when discussing a woman’s right to choose; and is sometimes defined as “a person who identifies as woman,” such as in the context of organised sports.
About the Author
Aaron Hertzberg is a writer on all aspects of the pandemic response. You can find more of his writing at his Substack: ‘Resisting the Intellectual Illiteratti’.
Featured image taken from the front Cover of ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cooking Data for Aspiring Propagandists’.
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“We are publishing one section at a time so hopeful propagandists don’t feel overwhelmed and give up on their dreams of a career in propaganda” – thank you. I’m learning all the time.
Recently I have spotted several BBC propaganda stunts using a tactic that I’m sure will be mentioned in the up-coming sections of this article – misinformation, or to use the word that has caught on in recent years – disinformation (is it a new word or have I imagined that?)
Yesterday they reported on the protests in Germany following the terrorist attack in Magdeburg. They told us that the people were angry about the lack of security. That was was an issue, but the main cause of their anger was how the political leaders had changed the country (and not for the better) through mass immigration. The BBC didn’t want to mention that.
A few days ago, the biased BBC was giving us a sob story of homeless asylum seekers. This was propaganda deliberately created because of other media telling us about, and YouTube videos showing us, the immigrants living in the luxurious Madeley Court Hotel. It is funny how the BBC report comes out just after the Madeley Court news.
In the last month, the biased BBC reported on a village in Ireland where the local are objecting to having a large number of asylum seekers deposited there. We were told that the migrants were ALL women and children. For many months, other media and citizen reporters have been showing the many examples of Irish villages where buildings have been commandeered to accommodate migrants – and in every case, the migrants were all men. Men don’t attract sympathy the way women and children do. I won’t accuse the BBC of lying, but I suspect they have waited for a long time to find a case of a hotel being taken over for women and children migrants.
As I said, I am still learning, so maybe I am wrong and this is not propaganda.
“Even the experienced propagandist can at times fall into the trap of thinking that creating and disseminating propaganda is a straightforward enterprise-which is a good way to win a permanent all-expenses paid Siberian vacation.”
So very true!
Satanically inspired people are so skilled in chicanery (wicked politics), creating problems, which most think to be accidental; coming up with ‘solutions’ which are anything but!
Satan is a master strategist, and his man the coming Antichrist will be fully energised by him!
Of the Antichrist, it is said of him that he will be so clever, sagacious, cunning, evil and versed in wicked craft and policy-having the art of inveigling and deceiving men; that he will be a king of fierce countenance, understanding dark sentences. Daniel 8:23.
Not someone you would want to deal with?!
It will only be God in Christ that shall destroy him with the brightness of His coming. 2 Thessalonians 2:8.
Hi Islander, you forgot to mention that the anti-Christ will also be charming and handsome, so much so that the world will fall in love with him.
I can’t think of any charming handsome global leader in the world today – that’s how we know he hasn’t yet been revealed to the world 🙂
Rhoda,
I KNOW Antichrist will be “charming” for he will be a flatterer par excellence! As for him being “handsome”, well, I’d have you know that I’m NOT attracted to men-you might be-I hope!!
Yes, you are CORRECT to assert that the unbelieving “world will fall in love with him.”
The Scriptures aren’t explicit as to the appearance of Antichrist, but we can glean much from what is said. I don’t doubt he will be “handsome”, for Antichrist will be Grecian, that is he will be born in Greece. He will have all the characteristics of the leopard (Daniel 7:6)-the Grecian beast.
It is hard to imagine this man to be anything other than physically attractive, and beguiling in all his ways, for he will be the ultimate deceiver.
I wouldn’t think Mr. Hertzberg would like my comments-for, with a name as he has, I would believe him to be an unbelieving Jew? But Here I digress!
Hi Islander, Putting your last paragraph aside – you are right in all you say and you’re right to say it. As long as we are prepared and know what to watch out for, and keep looking to God for guidance, we will not be deceived or if we are because we take our eyes off the ball for moment, it won’t be for long.
Rhoda, regarding my “last paragraph” please be assured, I try my best not to be contentious-but inadvertently, it happens. Nevertheless, I stand by what I say.
We know that the Jews (am I allowed to speak thus?) are God’s chosen, and covenant people.
Aaron Hertzberg is obviously an intelligent man with much wisdom to impart, but is he a believer in the crucified Son of God?
Hi Islander, What does “chosen” mean? Does it mean favoured? No. It means chosen to be a witness or an example (as in God will make an example of them) for the world.
E.g., if Jews (as a nation) are obedient to God they are blessed. If they are disobedient they are punished. Just as any other nation is. But when Jews (as a nation) are punished, for example, it is in such a way that the world gets to hear of it – i.e. the punishment is necessarily harsher or more shocking so that other nations sit up and take notice. So while other nations are punished for disobedience to God, it is merely a message to that nation. But when Jews are punished it is a message/lesson to the world. The Jews were chosen to be God’s witness – its not favouritism. Being chosen to be a witness is, for Jews, both a blessing and a curse. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years. How many other entire nations were enslaved by another nation? How many times did God threaten to wipe the Jews off the face of the Earth for disobedience? A few times. How many times has God threatened any other nation the same? None.
We see the same in the Bible with those who were chosen to be priests, prophets or kings. Their punishment for disobedience was harsher than the folk who were not the “chosen ones.” Why? Because they were chosen to be God’s messenger, witness etc. to the people and as such were responsible to God.
I don’t know what Aaron Hertzberg’s religious beliefs are or aren’t. Unless it’s an article that is about or refers to religious beliefs, the author’s beliefs are not something I consider. In his article, he represents himself and his opinions and not those of the entire Jewish nation, nor for all Christians, Muslims, Hindus, gnostics, agnostics, athiests (place whatever religion here that’s possible) in the world.
Why do you wonder about Aaron Hertzberg’s religious beliefs but don’t question other authors’ religion/faith?
Rhoda,
Do you believe that God’s promises to the patriarchs; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, (and by extension to their linear descendants) are conditional, or unconditional upon their obedience to His commandments?
If I had anything remotely like your influence on “our millions of readers” I’d make pretty damn sure that when I post an article of any kind, I WOULD tell them in no uncertain terms whether the author of such were a Christian or not!
Many Christian expositors over the centuries have quoted from many and diverse sources-I haven’t a problem with this, all I ask that we should speak thus, and heed what is said in Jude 3.
Hi Islander, how do you tell if someone is a Christian or not? Would you vouch for a stranger’s beliefs, a stranger you had never met in person? Even if you meet someone who says they are a Christian, do you really know if they are – some people are good at faking it, with some it can take time to establish what fruits they possess. If someone declares themselves to be a Christian, the best I can do is repeat their words, but then bear in mind words are just words.
What I believe is that I don’t need to follow Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Their stories are lessons for us to get to know God but not for us to live our lives by. When Jesus came, he gave His own example and words for us to follow.
Another thing that happened when Jesus came is the world changed because God’s relationship with man changed. The biggest change was that it was no longer only Jews that were God’s chosen people (as individuals), we all became God’s chosen people.
So while the Jewish nation is chosen to be God’s witness to the world at a national level, individually we are all chosen to be God’s witnesses to those around us. We, on an individual basis, do not have to be from “chosen” bloodlines to realise God’s promise because through Jesus’ blood, who our ancestors were (our bloodlines) became irrelevant.
I believe we are each judged for our own words and actions and not for those of our ancestors. And it is the same with God’s blessings and promises. We are given these, not because who our ancestors were, but because of who we, ourselves, are and our relationship with God. In short, we are inheriting God’s promises, blessings etc from God and not from our ancestors. Jesus made God equally accessible to all, He truly changed the world – forever!
You didn’t answer my question-were God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, conditional on their obedience?
Hi Islander, I can’t think of a particular passage that answers your question. So here’s what I think (which would need checking to the Bible).
If they were, which I would say they were, it is because God already knew they would be obedient. God is not bound by time as humans are, He sees the past, present and future at the same time. He already knows what you are going to do the day you die on the same day you are born.
But also remember that God is a forgiving God and there are instances in the Bible where God would stop himself from punishing people even though he said he would.
So the question is what test/condition of obedience did God set for them? I don’t know (except for those specifically mentioned in the Bible, e.g. Abraham almost sacrificing his only son, Isaac). But I do know that God will never test anyone beyond what they can handle.
Why do I answer this way? Because for us to receive God’s promises is conditional – it is conditional on us accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour (which is obedience). And God never changes. As He was in the beginning so he will be till the end. As he dealt with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so he deals with us today. So the answer to your question also lies in the answer to: For us to receive God’s promises is it conditional on our obedience?
Good morning Rhoda,
And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. Genesis 15:6.
But why did Abram believe? This is the grand question-God in Christ chose him.
And I will GIVE unto thee, and thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. Genesis 17:8.
God’s gift to Abraham and his seed was unconditional- regardless of whether they were obedient or not.
The Son of God, Jesus Christ, took not on Him the nature of angels: but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Hebrews 2:16.
And who is the Seed?
The Seed of the woman is Jesus Christ-first prophecy of Messiah is Genesis 3:15:
I will put enmity between thee (Satan) and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.
God keeps His promises.
All the promises of God in Him (Jesus Christ), are yea, and in Him Amen. 2 Corinthians 1:20.
I hope you didn’t stuff yourself with too much turkey and whatnot! Not that we do Christmas, you understand, but anyway I hope you’ve had a good break, and happy new year to you all!
I wonder what 2025 will be like? Apparently there’s an 874 mile “snow bomb” coming toward the UK…
I don’t know who’s been down voting you-NOT me!
Hi Islander, not every user of this site means well. In a childish way they think if they continuously post negative messages to us in the comment section and downvote e.g. my comments I will give up. Which makes me smile if not laugh because they’re clueless about what motivates me and how strong that motivation is. If they had any understanding of what is in my heart and mind, they would know how futile their attempts are.
Hello Islander!
Unfortunately I did eat too much. I always promise myself I won’t and then I do ….
I’m with you about “doing” Christmas. My way is not the commercial way which I think a lot of people take a long time to get used to 🙂
What will 2025 be like? I don’t know, I have been praying about this in the last few days because I want God’s presence to be known and felt in a powerful way by all – that’s the 2025 I dream of. I have been asking God what I can do to play my part in making 2025 “God’s year” but sadly I already know I am woefully inadequate to have any noticeable impact. I also don’t know if this is God’s plan – it could just be wishful thinking that the time has come for God’s glory and power to be known, globally.
Hi Rhoda,
Do you think this is propaganda, by Dr Bryan Ardis.
https://beforeitsnews.com/prophecy/2024/12/live-dr-ardis-what-the-fda-is-hiding-about-nicotine-will-shock-you-2561170.html
Hi Dave Owen, anything is possible but personally I get the feeling Dr. Bryan Ardis is genuine and acting with integrity.
Hi Rhoda,
Pleased you said that.
Have you noticed that we were given the wrong message about nicotine.
It was propaganda to take us away from the truth.
Seems nicotine patches can cure several complaints.
Hi Dave Owen, the weird thing is people are willing to accept cannabis as medicinal but not tobacco. Yet both are leaves from plants. I still can’t work out how people justify that in their own minds.
An excellent comment-but, so profound!
Thanks for posting 🙂
Hi Aaron Hertzberg, thank you for writing it. I think its a guide everyone should read!
[…] I-1. Limit a Definition […]
[…] – An Idiot’s Guide to Propaganda: How to cook the data (Part 1) […]
Was this propaganda, or the truth.
[…] An Idiot’s Guide to Propaganda: How to cook the data (Part 1) […]
https://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=249636
How Climate Change in UK is made up from nothing.
[…] By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE. […]
[…] By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE. […]
[…] De Aaron Hertzberg așa cum este publicat de Institutul Brownstone la 20 decembrie 2024. Articolul a fost publicat inițial pe pagina Substack a lui Hertzberg pe 15 iunie 2023. Pentru introducere, care include link-uri către toate secțiunile și „Secțiunea I – Definiții”, citiți AICI. […]
[…] I-1. Limit a Definition […]
[…] I-4. Combine Categories […]
[…] By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE. […]
[…] By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE. […]
[…] By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE. […]
[…] De Aaron Hertzberg așa cum este publicat de Institutul Brownstone la 20 decembrie 2024. Articolul a fost publicat inițial pe pagina Substack a lui Hertzberg pe 15 iunie 2023. Pentru introducere, care include link-uri către toate secțiunile și „Secțiunea I – Definiții”, citiți AICI. […]
[…] By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE. […]
[…] By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024. The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE. […]
[…] De Aaron Hertzberg așa cum este publicat de Institutul Brownstone la 20 decembrie 2024. Articolul a fost publicat inițial pe pagina Substack a lui Hertzberg pe 15 iunie 2023. Pentru introducere, care include link-uri către toate secțiunile și „Secțiunea I – Definiții”, citiți AICI. […]