Devon

THREAD: Bad News and Good News After a brief survey of my Tweets over the past weeks, months, and even years, I have come to realize that I have passed along a great deal of Bad News. Why bear witness to so much Bad News?

@PhilTucker15 @OleasterBranch Many thanks for the encouragement, Phil! I hope you’re doing well, too.

@devoninMENA @OleasterBranch Thank you! I always appreciate your content and enjoy revisiting it. Hope you’re doing great!

Reposting the @OleasterBranch Advent Series in hopes it is a comfort in this season of expectation. Luke 2:30-32 …for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” oleaster.org/tag/advent-ser…

It’s also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud, if you’re more an audio person. 🎧 open.spotify.com/episode/6yzBif… 🔊 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ole… 🎙️ soundcloud.com/oleasterbranch…

(Here are the Substack links if that is your preferred platform) 1️⃣ oleaster.substack.com/p/maranatha-ou… 2️⃣ oleaster.substack.com/p/son-of-abrah… 3️⃣ oleaster.substack.com/p/born-under-t… 4️⃣ oleaster.substack.com/p/great-davids… 5️⃣ oleaster.substack.com/p/the-house-of…

One of the distinguished speakers, an intelligent man by any measure, said, “Do not be afraid to plunder the Egyptians.” It is an understandable sentiment, and perhaps there is a wisdom in it. Yet the metaphor bears its own warning, if not judgment, for we all remember what Israel first did with all that Egyptian gold.

I recently attended a Christian conference devoted to the question of how to live faithfully in a post-Christian negative age. To my alarm, I found that many Christians, in their awakening to the ruins of Christianity, have turned for guidance to the very critical theory texts that I know Islamists in Cairo had already exhausted by the early 2000s. Their attraction is understandable: these works often provide the only penetrating critique of the vast machinery of lies and deceit in which modern life is enclosed, especially within liberal societies. Yet they are, in truth, oppressive and soul-crushing, more domineering than many of the modern idols they denounce. They are the very theological articulations of the radically atheistic and negative world itself. Nothing good can come of them.

ברוך אתה ה' אלקינו מלך העולם, שהחיינו וקיימנו והגיענו לזמן הזה

A Gospel Meditation on Resurrection: oleaster.org/wonders-for-th…

Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? -Psalm 88:10–12

On this day 80 years ago the British troops liberated Bergen Belsen. What they found there was unimaginable horror. People had been left dying of typhus and with no food for weeks. There were bodies everywhere. Richard Dimbleby’s report for the BBC (below) remains one of the rawest and most devastating pieces of journalism ever transmitted. At first the BBC refused to let him go on air with it. He threatened to walk out unless they let him describe what happened. 3/3

@CrownVic2023 🙏❤️

Over a year later and the thorn is still there. For those who struggle, you are not alone.

We conclude, then, that particular sin-offerings are to be brought for sins that have particular ramifications for the collective.

Rav Meir Shpiegelman's interesting commentary on this week's parasha: '...The sin-offering depends on the individual’s social standing. The reason for this seems obvious: the more important a person’s social position, the more serious the ramifications of his sin;

Very helpful context for what’s happening in Syria.

🧵 THREAD: Palm Sunday Foreshadowed Over the course of Biblical history, God raised up various Messianic figures for Israel. Curiously, however, quite a few of them were accepted by the Gentiles before they were accepted by Israel.

@CrownVic2023 Many thanks for reading, Victoria! I keep losing track of time and forgetting that Purim is coming up. Thank you for the timely reminder. 🎊

Universe Reversed: A Meditation on Purim // FAI ONLINE by ⁦@devoninMENA⁩ fai.online/articles/purim

@wayfarer_tweets Oo I have not read this work, but it is certainly added to my list now! Many thanks for the recommendation, Rose-Marie!

@devoninMENA have you read Jacque Ellul׳s Propaganda? let me think of more

Hi friends—I’ve started work on a series on being anchored in Truth in an age of disinformation, which is a subject I’ve been wrestling with a lot these last few years especially. It’s such an enormous topic I’m having trouble whittling down my outline, so I thought I would ask