Do you purchase something because some celebrity advertises it? Well, the climate scam has brought Oprah and Katy Perry together to push their pantheistic religion.
‘Food science startups aren’t your typical magnet for celebrity investors. But today, Apeel Sciences, which creates a natural coating for the exterior of fruits and vegetables such as avocados, asparagus, and citrus to extend their shelf life and prevent food waste, is announcing a $250 million funding round in which Katy Perry and Oprah Winfrey are participating.
Apeel CEO James Rogers says that the opportunity to have Perry and Winfrey invest came via their inbound interest. “I never tracked back exactly know how they first heard about what we’re doing,” he admits, via a Zoom call from his living room, where a “35 and quarantined” banner celebrating his recent birthday hung in the background. “We’ve been very focused on the technology itself, but these are folks who want to join in our mission to help build a more participatory food system that’s based on nature. Although we were going about it in different ways, the end goal was the same.”
Perry, who has been a longtime champion of addressing and mitigating the effects of climate change and is also an investor in Impossible Foods (maker of the Impossible Burger), says she got involved after getting a tip from Chris Lyons, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (the firm helped lead Apeel’s $33 million fundraising back in December 2016). “I met James, and I went to Apeel and toured the offices and the labs and saw the science in real time and was just so blown away I thought it was witchcraft—in the best of ways,” Perry says in a phone call. “This is one of the definitions of sustainability. [Apeel] has so many prongs to it. It makes economies. It gives farmers a chance. It gives us more options as a consumer. It takes produce shipping off of planes and back onto shipping containers, so it lowers our CO2 emissions.”
Winfrey’s environmental advocacy dates back to at least the 1990s, and her most prominent sustainable food investment to date has been True Food Kitchen, the healthy, seasonal restaurant chain. Her interest in Apeel, which is available at such grocers as Costco and Kroger, connects to her interest in both a healthier food system and planet. “I hate to see food wasted, when there are so many people in the world who are going without,” said Winfrey in a statement. “Apeel can extend the life of fresh produce, which is critical to our food supply and our planet, too.”
Approximately 11% of the greenhouse gas emissions created by the food system could be eliminated by the eradication of food waste, according to the World Wildlife Federation. A March 2020 study by Project Drawdown, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping society achieve the goal of reducing rather than growing greenhouse gas emissions, states that solving food waste, along with embracing more plant-based diets, can have the single-greatest impact on reducing emissions. “Roughly a third of the world’s food is never eaten,” says the study, “which means land and resources used and greenhouse gases emitted in producing it were unnecessary.”’https://www.fastcompany.com/90507946/katy-perry-and-oprah-winfrey-just-invested-in-this-startup-to-eliminate-food-waste-one-avocado-at-a-time
Katy and Oprah are pantheists. They believe so it seems ‘This beautiful Planet Earth is our mother and our home. This sacred Earth is our ark and all the plants and animals that live in it are our fellow passengers. That ark is threatened now, as never before in history, by human actions and inactions.’https://www.pantheism.net/earth/
‘Following the media’s projection of his victory in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden has made “sweeping promises” to LGBT activists, according to The Associated Press.
Biden, a Democrat, plans to “carry out virtually every proposal” that LGBT activists have pushed for in recent years, the AP said. Biden’s agenda includes allowing individuals who identify as transgender to enlist in the military, as well as allow trans-identified servicemen to enter women’s-only areas (and vice versa), and cover trans-surgeries and cross-sex hormones for members of the military. He also plans to require all government contractors to have anti-LGBT discrimination policies, and will create LGBT rights positions at the State Department, National Security Agency, and other federal agencies.
Romans 1:17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. Galatians 3:11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. Hebrews 10:38 Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
It isn’t any surprise that the CCP has rewritten the Bible to suit its own purpose but one would not think a supposedly ‘Christian’ organization would be in agreement with such. Well, that is exactly what has occurred as ‘The central message of the Christian gospels is love and forgiveness. In various parables, Jesus upsets the strict Judaic laws by preaching a message of compassion and pardon. Well known amongst these parables is John’s account of the woman taken in adultery and brought by the Pharisees to Jesus, asking if, in accordance with the laws of Moses, she should be stoned. When pressed for an answer, Jesus responded: ‘If any of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Shamed by these words, the crowd retreated, leaving Jesus alone with the woman. ‘Has no one condemned you?’ he asked. ‘No one, Sir,’ she replied. ‘Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.’
One doesn’t have to be a Christian to understand the essential message of this 2,000-year-old account. Imagine then the scandal to the Christian church of a re-writing of this central Gospel message. But that is what the Chinese Communist Party has done. In a textbook published by the CCP-approved University of Electronic Science and Technology Press for teaching ‘professional ethics and law’ in secondary vocational education, the story is obscenely changed: ‘The crowd wanted to stone the woman to death as per their law. But Jesus said, “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.” Hearing this, they slipped away one by one. When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, “I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead”.’
This rewriting of Christian doctrine is but the latest event in the increasing repression of religion in China. Religious buildings have been closed and torn down, Communist party symbols and photos of Xi Jinping have replaced sacred images, believers have been persecuted, imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. No religion is immune: Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and others have all been targeted.
Not only is religion being repressed under Xi, the CCP is seeking to ‘sinicise’ it. Speaking to the National Conference on Religion in 2016, President Xi said: ‘In order to encourage religions to adapt to our socialist society, we need to lead believers to… embrace the leadership of the CCP and the socialist system, adhere to the Chinese socialist path, practice core socialist values, promote Chinese culture and endeavour to integrate religious tenets with Chinese culture, abide by state laws and regulations and voluntarily comply with the law-based management by the state…’.
It shouldn’t be any surprise to those who know the Bible that the present day leader of the Roman establishment is preparing for that future one world religion.
1Timothy 5:22 Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure.
‘Hillsong founding pastor Brian Houston notified staff and members of Hillsong East Coast by email on Wednesday afternoon (Nov. 4) that Carl Lentz has been terminated as lead pastor for the megachurch’s New York City location.
The email, which was obtained by Religion News Service, cited the reason for termination as “leadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures.”
“I know this will come as a shock to you, but please know that this action was not taken lightly and was done in the best interests of everyone, including Pastor Carl,” Houston wrote.
“Please understand that it would not be appropriate for us to go into detail about the events that led to this decision. However you can be assured that this decision was made in order to honor God and pastorally care for you, our East Coast family, Pastor Carl and his family,” Houston continued.
In a statement Houston posted on the church site later in the evening on Wednesday, he repeated much of the initial email but added praise for Lentz’s work at Hillsong and said he was grateful for the years of service Lentz and his wife gave to Hillsong NYC.
“They have a heart for people and we are confident that after a time of rest and restoration, God will use Carl in another way outside of Hillsong church. In terminating his tenure, we in no way want to diminish the good work he did here,” the statement said.
Genesis 11:9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
‘Growing numbers of people gathered on the fertile plain watered by the two great rivers. There, in the sunny warm climate, they could easily harvest multiple crops per year. And they could easily mold bricks and set them with tar and asphalt from the abundant pits. “So they said, ‘Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name (for ourselves), lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’” (Genesis 11:4).
You know the history. The people were in direct disobedience to the Lord’s repeated command – a resistance to his divine will to venture forth and populate the whole earth. And they were caught up in their own humanistic pride. Jewish historian Josephus wrote regarding Babel in his Antiquities of the Jews. He described how Nimrod was the principal one to excite the post-flood world population in their rebellion against God and attempt of a humanist utopia. He noted in a 2,000-year-old statement, keenly insightful in its understanding of the antichrist spirit: “Nimrod … gradually changed the government into a tyranny, seeing no other way of turning man from the fear of God but by bringing them into a constant dependence upon its power” (Josephus: The Complete Works, Volume 40).
As we continue through prolonged pandemic lockdowns, we should realize that there is “a method to this madness” – one of conditioning peopleto government authority, control and provision in the place of God. This displacement of freedom under God by big government is also the goal of communism and the thinking of Karl Marx. He and his fellows realized that a government tyranny can be established with violence and revolution from stirred-up grievances – the “oppressed” against the “oppressor”. And a great deception is employed that power and abundance will accrue from a new humanist utopia to the oppressed people.
Yet, because of man’s fundamental depravity, this never happens. Any kind of humanism is flawed because mankind is fundamentally flawed. And an elite group brings in their new mandated “utopia” with more godless oppression and their own addiction to government power. As with Nimrod and with the various forms of Marxism, godlessness must be invoked to properly support an all-powerful and all-wise State in the minds of the people. The biblical God and Christianity stand in the way.
Marx was intent on subverting Christianity and was a man fascinated and inspired by the devil and his domain (Marx and Satan, R. Wurmbrand, 1986; The Devil and Karl Marx, P. Kengor, 2020). He rejoiced with the publishing of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, seeing it as scientific corroboration of godlessness – of his anti-God ideology. Today, we can see his ideas emerging in all the “wokeness”, “cancel culture”, “social justice” and the “cultural Marxism” of our time.
In fact, the founders of the organization Black Lives Matter (BLM) have publicly called themselves “trained Marxists”. And Antifa groups first arose during the Russian Revolution, migrated to Germany, where they fought to bring about another Marxist revolution, and have then come to the USA. Many of them are Satanists as well as Marxists.
The founders of BLM are also practitioners of witchcraft, with co-founder Patrisse Cullors and others advocating the system of Ifa, a West African religion of divination through calling up the dead, the “ancestor spirits” (wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifá). They credit it and Marxism for empowering themselves and their movement. (The empowerment is like that of the Tower of Babel – used as a temple to commune with spirits. The name Babel in Babylonian is “Babili”, which means “the gate of god”.)
And indeed there is a power that has taken hold worldwide – with reactions of support all across the world, taking knees of submission, chanting the names of the favored dead, and flooding the coffers of BLM with over $1.6 billion. Professional sports enterprises, major corporations, universities, young people with desires to advance “social justice” and a major political party have all championed the cause. Yet, so much of the rush to judgment has been without all the facts. And so much of the reaction has been in a spirit of hatred, thuggery, violence, intimidation, condemnation, guilt and fear. This is not of God, but of a dark power.
BLM – along with much of academia, government, and business today, corrupted by humanist values and lack of moral clarity – advocates “Critical Race Theory” (CRT), which is not true civil rights. CRT, which arose in the 1990s, is an extension of “Critical Theory”, which came from the cultural Marxists – those who realized that revolution could only happen when the institutions of Western Civilization were sufficiently worn down. Undermine the institutions – education, family values, religion, social cohesion, etc. – and you can set things up for Marxism. CRT applies cultural Marxism to race, defining the “white” race as “the oppressor” and “blacks” as “the oppressed”.
Therefore, it is not good enough to say, “I am a person who happens to be black.” We must not say that we are, first and foremost, people, created by God and are of “one blood” (Acts 17:26) … and were divided at Babel into different languages and family groups. Rather, in CRT, people of color must say: “I am Black” because my “race” is the definition of my being, including being a person who is oppressed. This hearkens back to “scientific racism”, where human beings were supposedly not one subspecies, homo-sapiens, but had multiple origins. Race supposedly determined most all things about us. “Scientific racism” comes out of early evolutionary theory and is actually a “pseudo-science”.
The more evolution is accepted without question, the easier it becomes for Marxism and its various aberrations (like Critical Race Theory) to take root in the university setting. This is, in fact, what has happened. Evolution has held the intellectual ground in our educational institutions for a long time, so it is easy to see why Marxist theories and Socialism are accepted in our society today. It isthe legitimizing of godlessness that Marx rejoiced in!‘https://creationmoments.com/newsletter/how-godless-evolution-and-marxism-are-conditioning-people-to-replace-god/?mc_cid=0b091796e7&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
What is it we do not understand? 1Timothy 5:19-22 Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. 20 Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. 21 I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality. 22 Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure.
Here the details of this sordid story. ‘After a pastor at Antioch Baptist Academy repeatedly raped a student, the church called the boy a liar and the “instigator of his own rape,” the boy claims in court. John Doe claims he was younger than 14 when he was repeatedly raped and sodomized in 2009-10 by defendant Christopher Settlemoir, a “29-year-old serial pedophile who was posing as a man of God, a church pastor and a parochial school principal of the defendant Antioch Baptist Church dba Antioch Baptist Academy.” Doe also sued Settlemoir’s wife, who is or was a teacher at the academy, other employees and the 10 members of the church’s board of directors, who allegedly knew about Settlemoir’s molestations but failed to stop them. According to the complaint in Macomb County Court: “Defendant Antioch hired the pedophile Christopher Settlemoir as a teacher, pastor and principal even though defendant Settlemoir, while still in college, began showing signs of sexual perversion by racking up $100 in gay porn charges on the cable at the apartment where he was staying as part of the pastor internship program. “Defendant Settlemoir was eventually kicked out of the internship program for not adhering to the rules, which included bringing teen-age boys to his apartment and being along with the boys for ‘Movie Night.’” In his own case, Doe says: “For a period of 14 months, the pedophile Christopher Settlemoir openly and freely vetted, targeted and then sexually abused, exploited and raped John Doe in his office during school hours as well as in defendant Christopher Settlemoir’s house and/or within the domains of other property under the control of defendant Antioch Baptist Church and/or its agents. “John Doe was a boy, a student and a parishioner of the defendant Antioch when he was routinely and inappropriately abducted from classrooms during class time by the pedophile Settlemoir, or by other staff members of the defendant Antioch who delivered the boy to the pedophile Settlemoir, who thereafter would rape the boy.” Doe claims Antioch knew or should have known of Settlemoir’s “overt sexual aggression” and “sexual misconduct” with male students. He claims Settlemoir raped him “dozens of times” while the staff turned a blind eye to the crimes. By February 2009 or earlier, Settlemoir “initiated contact with John Doe and other male students requesting that these children forward pictures of their erect penises to defendant Christopher Settlemoir via cell phone images, pretending that this conduct was just a ‘game,’” the complaint states. “Defendant Christopher Settlemoir also sent, via text, pictures of his own erect penis to minor children, including plaintiff John Doe.” After singling him out, Doe says, “Settlemoir would routinely take John Doe to his office, a room with only one door. “Defendant Christopher Settlemoir would have to pass other teachers as well as his secretary, Ms. Boggs, when bringing John Doe, or other minor male children, to his office where he would lock himself and the child alone in the officer for long periods of time. … “Defendant Christopher Settlemoir’s conduct became so flagrant that another minor child was solicited by the defendant Christopher Settlemoir for pornographic images in exchange of [sic] ‘monster drinks’ aka energy drinks, another ‘grooming’ technique commonly known to be used by pedophiles. … “Although members of the staff at the defendant Antioch were aware that defendant Christopher Settlemoir was engaged in overt sexual misconduct and/or witnessed this pedophile systematically engaged in ‘grooming’ specific students as targets, the defendant Antioch’s staff never reported the conduct to legal authorities.” When he finally did report the rapes, Doe says, the church “lashed out” at him: “After John Doe and his mother came forward and reported to police that Christopher Settlemoir was molesting and raping him, defendants, through their employees and agents, lashed out at John Doe, disparaging him, his mother and his father, through accusations against John Doe. After being raped by Christopher Settlemoir, John Doe was publicly accused by the defendants’ staff of being a liar and the instigator of his own rape, by the very people who failed to protect him from the pedophile defendant Christopher Settlemoir,” the complaint states. Doe claims that Eunice Settlemoir, the pastor’s wife, “attempted to conceal and later recruited other members of the defendant Antioch to destroy a laptop belonging to her husband to prevent police from obtaining evidence of the molestation and rape of John Doe.” Settlemoir is serving a prison sentence of 7 to 15 years for the rape John Doe, according to the complaint. He seeks punitive damages of $10 million for assault and battery and negligence. He is represented by James Simasko, of Simasko, Simasko and Simasko, and John Perrin.’https://www.courthousenews.com/church-blamed-the-pastors-victim-boy-says/
White supremacy, hatred and loathing of other human beings is part and parcel of the hellish evolutionary belief system. In Part Two of Evolution = Racism it was ‘…reported in July 2020, The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS, which runs the zoo) said:
“We deeply regret that many people and generations have been hurt by these actions or by our failure previously to publicly condemn and denounce them,” WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper wrote. “We recognize that overt and systemic racism persists, and our institution must play a greater role to confront it.”
But was it really racism?
At the time of writing, the Black Lives Matter movement has gained widespread traction around the world. Statues of colonialists and slavery advocates are being removed or defaced, and similar apologies abound at all levels. However, although one might claim that actions of slavery advocates were racist and/or prejudiced against other humans (slavery existed in many non-white cultures too), it was undoubtedly evolutionary beliefs that led to the humiliation of this young man. Most scientists of the day had uniformly accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the popular idea that humans had evolved from ape-like creatures. Indeed, the display in the monkey house where Ota Benga was exhibited was called ‘Ancient Ancestors of Man’.
The apology misses the mark, completely
As part of its mission to be more transparent, WCS is making all records and archives related to Benga publicly available.
While being politically correct and being swept up in a cultural tide, they are actually failing to be transparent. Although the zoo apologized for this racist action, nowhere in the zoo’s apologies or statements do they mention the real reason Ota Benga was put on display. It was a belief in evolution, as clearly stated by the main players of the day themselves. All five owners associated with Ota Benga—Samuel Verner, William McGee, William Hornaday, Henry Osborn, and Madison Grant—were well-known evolutionists of their day.
The climate of the day
Note this popular reconstruction of Homo erectus dark skin (current at the time of writing).
In CMI’s groundbreaking documentary The Voyage that Shook the World, we interviewed Darwin historian, Peter Bowler, in Charles Darwin’s old Cambridge office. Bowler, although an evolutionist himself, noted about Darwin:
That by the time he writes The Descent of Man in 1871 it’s pretty clear that he, by that time, shares the growing suspicion or conviction of many Europeans. The non-white races simply do not have the capacity to be elevated properly into civilised human beings; that they are mentally and morally at a more limited level. In a sense they are stuck at an early stage in the biological evolution of the human species.
So their way of life may offer us a so fossilised relic of what our own ancestors lived like in the distant prehistoric past. But now Darwin and many of his contemporaries are beginning to realise that what they needed to claim that they are biologically relics of the past. They are in fact equivalent to earlier stages in the ascent from the apes who have been preserved in isolated locations, preserved with those earlier levels of mental and moral development. [sic]
Note the following timeline prior to Ota Benga’s humiliation:
1833: British Empire abolished slavery.
1859: Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species (26 years after abolition of slavery).
1865: The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in USA.
1871: Darwin wrote The Descent of Man (38 years after abolition in UK and 6 years after USA).
Slavery had been outlawed for more than forty years by the time of Ota Benga’s 1906’s misadventure. In other words, Ota Benga’s humiliation had very little to do with slavery.
The aforementioned Verner (Ota Benga’s captor) was also an academic. Darwin’s views intrigued him when he wrote:
Famous anthropologist adorns the cover of Time with a ‘black man’ wearing a mask of Homo habilis.
Are they men, or the highest apes? Who and what were their ancestors? What are their ethnic relations to the other races of men? Have they degenerated from larger men, or are the larger men a development of Pygmy forefathers? These questions arise naturally, and plunge the inquirer at once into the depths of the most heated scientific discussions of this generation. ‘Pygmies present a case of unmodified structure from the beginning [a view which is] … against both evolution and degeneracy. It is true that these little people have apparently preserved an unchanged physical entity for five thousand years. But that only carries the question back into the debated ground of the origin of species.
Authors Bradford (Verner’s grandson) and Plume cited some of the visitor’s questions to Ota Benga’s display.
Was he a man or monkey? Was he something in between? “Ist das ein Mensch?” asked a German spectator. “Is it a man?” … No one really mistook apes or parrots for human beings. This—it—came so much closer. Was it a man? Was it a monkey? Was it a forgotten stage of evolution?
Clearly, the display was not lost on the public of the day. It was Darwin’s views that caused this small man to be viewed as an evolutionary ‘throwback’.
But, notably, nowhere around the world do we see Darwin’s statue being removed for his offensive ideas that the non-white races were lower on the evolutionary scale.
In fact, many of the racist taunts still being used today have their roots in Darwinian ideology or the idea that black people are ‘closer to the apes’ on the evolutionary scale. For example, see our articles Do monkeys play football? and Ape’ slur against Australian indigenous footballer. Is it any wonder when we still see displays and photos in evolutionary textbooks such as the ones pictured above?
Not the only example
We’ve also previously reported about the killing and removal of various ethnic groups around the world due to evolutionary beliefs. For example, in Australia we cited reports that perhaps the bodies of 10,000 Aboriginal people were shipped to British museums.10
‘US evolutionists were also strongly involved in this flourishing ’industry‘ of gathering specimens of ’subhumans‘. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington holds the remains of 15,000 individuals of various races. And then in April 2019, The State Ethnographic Collections department and the Martin Luther University in Germany, decided to return the bones of 53 Aboriginal people to the Yawuru indigenous group from Western Australia.
The BBC reported:
Aboriginal remains being returned at a ceremony in Germany.
Skulls and bones of Aboriginal Australians were removed by researchers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and put on show in museums around the world. However, they were displaced by settlers two centuries ago and thousands were killed. For more than 150 years, their remains were removed and sent to museums, universities and private collections in Australia and elsewhere.
But note, never once did the German institutions or the BBC mention the evolutionary reasons for their removal of these bodies from their homeland, except the evolutionary timeline invoked with it:
Australia’s native Aboriginal population has occupied the country for about 50,000 years.
It also reported that:
Germany also has large holdings of African human remains. The country has previously repatriated remains to Namibia, where it killed tens of thousands of indigenous Herero and Nama people from 1904 to 1908.
Today, the remains of tens of thousands of ethnically diverse people remain in academic institutions around the world.
‘Fess up’, Bronx Zoo!
Will the Bronx Zoo and these institutions admit the real reasons for these atrocities? Will they provide a proper apology for the evolutionary teaching that these are sub-humans—mere beasts to be studied and displayed for the advancement of mankind? Sadly these ideas still permeate the evolutionary community literature/images. Racism will continue to rear its ugly head until the underlying root philosophy is addressed. As philosopher Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
A lesson for the church also
As we’ve shown on this issue, the scientific consensus of evolution was an unstoppable juggernaut. I think of Christian missionaries who went to continents like Africa to preach the Gospel to people like Ota Benga and his kin. They did not have the DNA-science of today that confirms that all humanity is more than 99.99% percent similar. But they stood on God’s Word where it says, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). Evolutionists in Ota Benga’s day would insist that the ‘science’ was on their side, but they were wrong. Christians who are only too happy to embrace evolution should learn from these atrocities of history in the name of (evolutionary) ‘science’.’ https://creation.com/bronx-zoo-apologizes?utm_campaign=infobytes_au&utm_content=Bronx+Zoo+apologizes+for+putting+an+African+man+in+their+Monkey+House&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mailing.creation.com&utm_term=Fortnightly+Digest+-+2020.08.21
Evolution is a teaching from the pit of Hell! The theory of evolution is a fairy tale from Satan’s book on how to miss Heaven and go to Hell. The following is the first part of an article concerning evolutionary belief and ‘…the horrific and inhumane treatment of Ota Benga, a young African man who was taken from Congo in 1904 by noted African explorer and former slave trader Samuel Verner. Samuel Verner was known for his belief in evolution and for his support of white supremacist ideals. On his maiden voyage onboard the Roquelle from Antwerp to Congo, Verner was surprised that dark-skinned individuals were allowed to dine together with Caucasian shipmates. In a letter to his mother, he lamented that, “the helplessness of that race is simply appalling.” So from the very beginning of his journey to the West, Ota found himself strongly influenced by racist evolutionists.
Ota was first displayed as an ‘emblematic savage’ in the anthropology wing at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair with other pygmies. He was eventually presented by Verner to the Bronx Zoo director, William Hornaday who came up with the idea of using Ota Benga to ‘educate’ the public about human evolution. At this time Ota Benga was just twenty-three years old. His height was only 1.5 metres (4 feet 11 eleven inches) and he only weighed 46.7 kg (103 lb). Ota Benga, which meant ‘friend’ in his native language, was often thought to be just a boy, but he was actually a twice-married father. His first wife and two children were murdered by white colonists, and his second spouse died from a poisonous snake bite.
Ota Benga became a sensation, drawing large crowds to the Zoo including over 40,000 on Sunday, 16 September 1906. Despite criticism, particularly from some church leaders at the time, Dr Hornaday insisted that he was merely offering an ‘intriguing exhibit’ for the public’s education and:
… apparently saw no difference between a wild beast and the little black man; [and] for the first time in any American zoo, a human being was displayed in a cage. Benga was given cage-mates to keep him company in his captivity—a parrot and an orang-utan named Dohong.
Nevertheless, Hornaday’s racist Darwinian ideas were clear elsewhere in his writings where he described Ota Benga as:
“… a genuine African pigmy, belonging to the subrace commonly miscalled ‘the Dwarfs.’”
The other co-founder of the Bronx Zoo was Henry Osborn. Henry Osborn was regarded as the leading evolutionist of his day, and is famed for the discovery of many dinosaurs, including the T. rex. Like Hornaday, Henry Osborn was highly racist as a result of his belief in evolution. For example, before Madison Grant (who was also influential in the founding of the Bronx Zoo) wrote his racist book, On the Passing of a Great Race, Grant shared his transcript with Osborn who made many suggestions. In the preface to the fourth edition Osborn wrote:
[I]n no other human stock which has come to this country is there displayed the unanimity of heart, mind and action which is now being displayed by the descendants of the blue-eyed, fair-haired peoples of the north of Europe. If I were asked: “What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic to-day? I would certainly reply: The gradual dying out among our people of those hereditary traits through which the principles of our religious, political and social foundations were laid down and their insidious replacement by traits of less noble character.”
Grant’s book, as we know, was largely influential on Adolf Hitler. Hitler called the book, ‘his bible’ for it advocated a rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit.
With Marxism and Islam growing worldwide be assured the following story will be repeated again just as spoken of in the Word of God! Mark 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains
‘Tibor Spitz, a retired chemical engineer turned renowned artist and educator, spoke to Aish.com about the extraordinary events of his life before, during and after the Holocaust.
Born in 1929, Tibor Spitz grew up in the small town of Dolny Kubin, nestled in a picturesque mountainous region of Orava, Slovakia, shouldering the country’s border with Poland. “It was a very beautiful place to grow up, but it wasn’t in my parents plans to live in Slovakia at all,” Spitz explains. “Several years earlier they had moved to the Land of Israel but had to return to Europe.”
Tibor Spitz, one year old, in 1930
Tibor’s parents Yosef Tzvi and Shoshana Spitz had realized their dream to settle in the Land of Israel in 1920, living in what was then the small town of Bnei Brak. “It was there that my oldest sister Esther Spitz was born, but she died at a young age from illness.” The couple’s fortunes continued to decline when Yosef Tzvi was shot by Arab marauders. Suffering from an infection to the wound, and with Shoshana pregnant, they were advised to return to Europe to receive medical care.
The Spitz family in 1936. Tibor is on the left
Back in Slovakia, the Spitz’s had three children, Ernest, Chava and Tibor. “It was more or less a happy childhood. Living in the mountains made us tough, there was snow on the ground for around eight or ten months of the year and we became strong and healthy.”
“My father had the most beautiful voice. Before moving to Israel, he had trained as an opera singer in Vienna and he had mixed with so many well-known composers.“ In Slovakia he found work as a chazan. “My father was angelic person, and his voice was a healer.”
“Music was a basic part of my life, our home was filled with singing. My father often played music on a gramophone, and aside from leading services, he taught Hebrew and would give talks about living in the Land of Israel.” Tibor’s father also acted as the shochet (ritual slaughterer). “He did everything except circumcisions, and I was like the rabbi’s son.”
The Jewish community of Dolny Kubin numbered just 100 families. “We were not big enough to have a cheder, (Jewish school) so I along with the other Jewish children went to public school. Despite the small size of the community, it was rich in its diversity.”
Tibor was ten years old when the Nazis began their conquest of Europe.
Anti-Semitic measures
In March 1939, Slovakia aligned itself as an ally to the Nazis, with Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest turned politician, introducing harsh anti-Jewish measures. (After the war in 1947, Tiso would be tried and executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity).
One day Tibor returned home with tears in his eyes. “As the only Jewish boy in a large elementary class, I asked my mother what I should do, as I was being cursed for being Jewish. She gave me this advice, ‘You better live the way that people would have reasons to envy you rather than feel sorry for you.’ It was then that I learned in any situation to try to remain a mensch, a decent human being.”
“In 1940, we were kicked out of public school and overnight my mother became a teacher to the town’s 24 Jewish children aged 6 to 16.”
Josef Tiso meeting Adolph Hitler. Slovakia aligned itself as a Nazi client state
In 1941, the Jews of Slovakia were forced to wear a star, and in the same year, the Slovak government negotiated with Nazi Germany for the mass deportation of Jews to German-occupied Poland. By 1942 deportations had begun. By the end of the war, around 69,000 of the country’s estimated 90,000 Jews had been murdered, although the deportations were staggered and typically shrouded in false promises.
“I used to ask myself: why they didn’t just deport all of the Jews straight away? But I realized, of course, that we would have tried to run away.”
“Tiso announced that the country would remain civilized, but each week or two, another measure was introduced against us. They took our property, musical equipment, eventually also our fur coats, jewelry and our money but life somehow just seemed to carry on.”
It was all a ruse; we were being sent to our deaths.
“When deportation orders were given, they told us to learn a manual trade for our new lives in the East, and they even provided workshops.” Tibor learned to be a bricklayer, while his father learned glass making. “It was all a ruse; we were being sent to our deaths. They turned up the heat of the water little by little until we were too weak and were trapped.”
On the last train
After the deportations began, some Jews were left to run some confiscated businesses, pharmacies, essential services including the cemetery. “Part of my father’s duties had been to officiate at the Jewish funerals. My brother and I also helped with the manual cemetery work.” Yosef Zvi was told that his family would be deported on the last train.
“We didn’t trust the authorities and every time there was a deportation, we went into hiding.”
In 1943 Germans began to lose ground against the Russians on the Eastern front. “By that time, almost all Jews were gone and only some remained in either Slovak Labor camps or waiting in limbo, as we did.”
This situation continued until 1944 when part of the Slovak army along with many civilians joined partisans and started an uprising against the Slovak fascist government. The Red Army was already in neighboring Ukraine in the east and in Poland across the northern border, so the rebels expected a quick victory. But the Germans crushed the uprising and took over the entire territory of Slovakia.
Escape to the forest
Amid aerial bombardment and mortar fire, the Nazi invasion had seen many Slovaks leave the cities to seek refuge in the outlying villages. “One night, accompanied by my grandfather who had been staying with us, we collected our things and left, pretending to be refugees. It was chaos.
“The Germans put up posters – ‘Come back to your homes, even Jews! You will have rights.’” The Spitz family was not convinced. “My parents said we would be crazy to go back to our homes.”
Briefly renting a room in a nearby village but knowing it still might take the Red Army months to break through on the Eastern front, Tibor’s brother Ernest came up with a plan.
“The Nazis were on every corner looking at documents. We were thinking of hiding under the ground in a forest for several months before my brother Ernest thought it over to the smallest detail. He said we needed to find a stream that would give us a water supply, in a steep valley far enough off the beaten track that no one would pass through.”
Ernest’s plan was to cut a triangle out of the slope near to the floor of the valley, which would provide the family with cover from the rain and shade from the sun.
“With neither pen, nor ink or paper to draw on, he used charcoal from the brick stove to draw a plan on the wall of the apartment we were hiding in, and we tried to remember every detail.”
After Ernest had located a steep valley that closely matched their needs, they began to prepare for their escape.
“During the day we would stay in the village, pretending to be war refugees helping the villagers with their harvest, but at nights we would build our shelter. We had neither tools, nor nails or ropes. Just a small military trench shovel we found, a small hatchet, and our bare hands.
“It was extremely difficult to dig the ground in a pristine forest, pull out boulders and rocks, cut roots, and move the dirt. Our hands were bloody. To make a hole to squeeze six people into the side of a steep hill took days. We improvised, used fallen tree trunks and branches and then camouflaged the area so that nothing would reveal any human presence.”
After completing the shelter and camouflaging the area the family disappeared into the forest.
Illustration by Spitz of how the family built their forest hideout
Surviving
“Not all Slovaks were fanatical believers in the Nazi victory, and the German Army was close to collapse, so it did not even cross our minds that we would have to spent such a long time in the snow-covered mountain. Also nobody forecast that 1944 would be the coldest winter of the century.
“We hid for 200 days, and every day was the longest I have ever experienced. As patrols on horseback and foot searched the forests, each day could have been our last.
“Under the ground, we didn’t feel the cold so much, and we also had three layers of clothes. I vividly remember that the hole was smaller than we needed and we could not stretch or lie out. We were squeezed into uncomfortable positions.
A painting by Spitz of the family’s underground hideout. Patrols were a common threat
“We lived like animals, like foxes, instinctively, surviving from one minute to the next. We ate berries, we knew the mushrooms that we could eat, and sucked the water from the snow and ice to stay alive. The forests and the wild nature felt like friends helping us to hide from the human predators and murderers.
“When I would go to find food, I would fill in my footprints with snow to prevent anyone discovering our whereabouts.”
“It was just a biological level of survival. That’s all.” Spitz says, “On the most basic level that you could imagine, nothing else mattered.”
Brush with death
In February 1944, just over two months into hiding, Ukrainian partisans assisting the Red Army and operating in the forest discovered the Spitz family.
“They lined us up, one of them guarded us while the other went through our things. My mother said we should pray, but my father just wanted it to be over with, they began arguing. ‘We are not your enemies,’ my mother pleaded with them. ‘It’s not worth it, Hitler wants to kill us all,’ my father interrupted her. Meanwhile, the soldiers began laughing watching them argue it out.”
The end of family, by Spitz
Amid the scene, Tibor hedged his bets and ran away, returning hours later after he hadn’t heard any shots.
“It turned out that they had been under strict orders not to kill civilians, but they had taken all of our clothes and the primitive food supply we had. It was a miracle to not be killed, but that winter was the coldest of the century and it was practically a death sentence.”
That night, the family wondered whether they should risk going to a nearby village to ask for help, or stay where they were and freeze or starve to death. “The SS Gestapo was absolutely desperate to kill us; we had witnessed enough of their crimes to know how much money they put on Jewish heads.”
Miracle
“As we were freezing, something incredible happened to us that I look at as a miracle. We were so cold, and from nowhere, there erupted a warm spring of water with a strong smell of sulphur. It warmed our tiny hole in the valley. It was such a healer and raised our spirits.”
With renewed hope, Tibor’s mother took the risk of asking for help. “These villages were stricken with poverty. Eventually she found partisans who also had very little but they were sympathetic to our family’s needs.”
Menorah, by Tibor Spitz, a message of hope
“If you are alive come out”
In April 1945 news of the end of the war reached the Spitz family hiding in the forest. Tibor was 14 years old. “One day peasants came through the forests calling out, ‘If you are alive, come out.’ This was our liberation.”
“At first, we went back to my grandfather’s home where he and our grandmother had raised their seven children.” The grandfather had suffered from the physical and emotional strain of the war. “Aside from us, all of his other children and grandchildren were wiped out. He was broken by the loss, and lasted just three months before he died.”
In July, 1945 the family returned to Dolny Kubin. “People looked at us like we were ghosts, and were even coming up to us and touching us. Because of all that had happened, we couldn’t have been real people.
“Life was so unpleasant, yet we tried to continue our lives. At the end of that summer, in September we went back to school. I had lost a year of studies and it was not easy.”
Later, the Spitz family moved to another town, Liptovsky Mikulas, 50km away, where Yosef Zvi once again took on the role of rabbi and cantor for the Jews that remained there. Later Tibor and Ernest headed to Prague to complete high school and then university. “I went on to study chemistry while my brother studied art.
“Prague was the best place to be as a chemistry student.” He scored the highest grades in his school. Meanwhile, Ernest was making a reputation as a talented artist.
“He was outspoken in fighting against the communist regime for artists’ expression. He opened a gallery, and shared messages through his paintings and murals promoting human rights.” Sadly, he died a young man aged 33. “I don’t have the proof, but I think the authorities were behind his death.”
Self portrait by Ernest Spitz, 1955, five years before his death aged 33
Judaism seen as a hostile ideology
“When I look back now, what motivates me to tell my story is my forced silence while living in communist Czechoslovakia. Judaism was considered a hostile, subversive ideology and Jewish suffering and the subject of the Holocaust became practically forbidden in politics, cultural life, art and literature alike.
“There was no outlet for either healing or reducing the pain. To the contrary, we were constantly reminded and suspected of having connections to democratic Israel that was oriented towards the West and became an adversary to the USSR. Religious institutions were persecuted but the accumulated traditional hatred and hostility against the Jewish religion became specifically intense. Judaism, with its wisdom and promotion of freedom, particularly irritated the dictators who considered the Jews to be subversive enemies.”
Tibor’s family
During his time in Prague, Tibor’s father also passed away. “He was taken to hospital with something trivial and never came out. He was not even 60.”
His sister Chava cared for their mother who died in Slovakia in 1986. “Chava later moved to Kfar Saba in Israel and was married and had children but died just ten years later.”
In 1967, aged 38, after graduating with a PhD in chemistry, Spitz was encouraged to meet Noemi, a daughter of the head of the Jewish community of Bratislava, and also a survivor of the Holocaust.
“I was raised deeply as a Jew, and so after the war it was absolutely essential to me that I could only marry a Jew. I was a good catch,” he laughs. “As a husband, I had everything a girl could imagine, I was educated, and had job prospects, but for years I resisted marriage as I felt a built-in conflict. Life was still far from normal, where a person could just walk up to you and call you a dirty Jew.”
Tibor and Noemi met and their second meeting was their wedding – a private ceremony in Prague City Hall.
Escaping communist rule
“God gives us the strength to survive.” Tibor says. “Survival is not only about dodging the bullets, God gave us a ‘seichel’ a brain, and we are given all the tools we need.”
Accepting a work contract in Cuba, Tibor and Noemi left Prague. Nine months later, they made a successful attempt to escape from a refueling Cuban airplane and became political refugees living in Canada. “At home the courts sentenced us to 15 years in prison.”
After nine years in Canada, they settled in the US in Kingston, where Tibor worked for a company pioneering magnetic recording heads.
Holocaust education
Over the years, Spitz has taken a prominent role in Holocaust education and is a regular speaker at universities, high schools and embassies in the US. Last year, he gave 26 lectures alone.
Delivering a lecture in May 2019 to Baruch College, NYC
“Jewish collective ignorance, disbelief in unlimited cruelty and lack of unity before and during the Nazi era cost us the lives of a third of all Jews on this planet. No other nation or country would have survived such impact, yet three years after it ended, the Jews proclaimed the existence of the State of Israel on the territory of their ancestors.
“I have visited Israel many times. It is a 2,000-year-old dream. It is a miracle and we live in a generation when it is happening before our eyes. We need to be proud of who we are.
“To be a Jew, for me, is to live with an uncompromising moral fight for justice. I was raised to be proud as a Jew and I still feel that. Every holiday is my favorite holiday, they each teach such important lessons with unprecedented wisdom. But now, I think to myself, I am alive and I see every day as a holiday.”
World leaders have also been guests at his lectures, especially from Slovakia of whom he has been invited to meet successive presidents.
“I stress the importance of seeing world events truthfully without adjusting them to be either more pleasant or harmless, to learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others and to eliminate fear as an emotion.
“We should also remember that Western civilizations based their values on Jewish Scriptures connected to pursuing peace, cooperation and tolerance, including the Jewish principle ‘Do not do to others you do not want done to you.’”
Together with his wife, Noemi and former Slovakian President Andrej Kiska
Revisiting Dolny Kubin
In 2002, Tibor was invited by a film crew to try to relocate their hideout. “An old woman who remembered our family from the war times explained that for many years villagers had visited our hiding place to commemorate the superhuman endurance of a Jewish family hiding in their forest.
“After more than seven decades it was not easy to find the remnants of an underground place covering just a few square yards. Topography of the area had changed significantly as the forest wood was harvested and the areas covered by trees have significantly changed.
At the site in the forest of what remains of the hideout
Five years ago, an annual ‘Peace March’ began, with hundreds of people walking from the nearest village to the hideout, with Tibor and his wife participating as an eyewitness giving public lectures and interviews for local and national TV and radio.
“Revisiting brought memories of the terrible times and so many victims, too many of them children, my cousins, and schoolmates – one of them shot dead while also hiding in the forest. I also felt celebration for freedom and life as well. I was filled with an awareness of breathing, feeling, loving, and the ability to perceive colors, shapes and sounds to listen to music and human speech. Not to be hungry to the level of counting the last drop of energy before your body shuts down and to be in the presence of people you do not have to be afraid of.”
Artwork
Over the last few decades, Tibor Spitz’s artwork has been displayed in the US, Canada and Europe. His artwork shares a variety of themes, not only the Holocaust, but also Kabballah, Jewish heritage and identity. He paints, sculpts and works with ceramic, wood among other artforms.
The March to Eternity, artwork by Tibor Spitz
“In 2002 I received an offer to exhibit my Holocaust paintings in Bratislava, Slovakia. Slovak President Schuster sponsored the event, and arrived there personally together with other government representatives.”
Several additional exhibitions of Tibor’s artwork have also been held in the country since. The last was held in August 2019 in Dolny Kubin on the occasion of Tibor’s 90th birthday.
The Spitz’s living room is adorned with 50 of his own works. One of his latest creations was a wood carving shaped into a horse with a rider, in honor of a local bar mitzvah boy. “This piece of wood had a hole in it, he says. I found a good use for it.” He adds, showing how it became the horse’s eye. “I say, don’t cry over spilt milk, you can turn everything in life into a positive. You have to stay positive; if not, you live your life in disharmony.”’https://www.aish.com/ho/p/Hiding-from-Nazis.html?s=ss2
Some ‘churches’ and denominations are sadly promoting and using yoga as a method of meditation rather than the Word of the living God. What an apostasy that is. True meditation for the Bible believing born again believer is the Word of God!
“Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.” (Psalm 119:27)
‘The remarkable 119th Psalm, with its 22 eight-verse stanzas, is the unique “song of the word,” containing 176 testimonies or prayers concerning God’s Word—one for each verse. Eight times the word “meditate” or “meditation” is used, indicating the importance of this practice in relation to the Scriptures. In our text, this word is translated “talk,” but its basic thrust is to exhort us to meditate on the wonderful works of God, once we understand the way of His precepts.
The other seven references to meditation in this psalm are as follows: “I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways” (v. 15). “Princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy servant did meditate in thy statutes” (v. 23). “My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes” (v. 48). “Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: but I will meditate in thy precepts” (v. 78). “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day” (v. 97). “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation” (v. 99). “Mine eyes prevent [i.e., anticipate] the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word” (v. 148).
There is, of course, a counterfeit form of meditation (e.g., so-called transcendental meditation and other forms of mysticism), not to mention useless daydreaming. These forms of meditation involve clearing one’s mind of all subjects and allowing the mind to wander. In contrast, true meditation involves pondering with awe and thankfulness God’s wonderful Word, His ways, and His works—in connection with prayer and the study of the Holy Scriptures. As an exercise of the mind as well as of the spirit, it is of great blessing and most pleasing to God.’ https://www.icr.org/articles/type/6/?utm_source=phplist8612&utm_medium=email&utm_content=HTML&utm_campaign=July+5+-+Meditation
Tibor Spitz, one year old, in 1930
The Spitz family in 1936. Tibor is on the left
Josef Tiso meeting Adolph Hitler. Slovakia aligned itself as a Nazi client state
Illustration by Spitz of how the family built their forest hideout
A painting by Spitz of the family’s underground hideout. Patrols were a common threat
The end of family, by Spitz
Menorah, by Tibor Spitz, a message of hope
Self portrait by Ernest Spitz, 1955, five years before his death aged 33
Delivering a lecture in May 2019 to Baruch College, NYC
Together with his wife, Noemi and former Slovakian President Andrej Kiska
At the site in the forest of what remains of the hideout
The March to Eternity, artwork by Tibor Spitz
whatyareckon 