This article is written to let you know: WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT.
He knows, she knows, you know, we know, they know — is never the same as I know. Above all, God knows, the Lord knows. What God knows and the Lord knows are the same. God knows everything, no limitations; God knows the secrets of individuals, institutions, and nations. Nothing can hide from God. The Almighty is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient.
What I know and what you know may be different. In the final analysis, if the person singular and personal “I” does not exist, everything else won’t matter.
Here “I” represents many individuals, not just my own personal entity or identity. The most important thing God also speaks with the first person, you better listen when God says, “I know.” There are those who are pretending they know, actually they know nothing. This is the kind of individuals you have to beware of and avoid by all means.
Albert Einstein said, “The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.”
The difference between what man knows and what God knows is infinite, and the human knowledge is practically nothing.
Rev 3:1, “To the angel of the church in Sardis write:
He who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, and yet you are dead.”
God knows America and Europe are practicing a false version of Christianity. I know under the name of a country, the church which is against the truth in Christ, and yet it has a name of Christian church. Many churches in America are social clubs, making preachers very rich.
Zep 3:5, “The LORD is righteous within her;
He will do no injustice.
Every morning He brings His justice to light;
He does not fail. But the criminal knows no shame.”
There are more criminals in the last days, political, financial and military. The Internet and emails and mass media are run amok by criminals. The criminal knows no shame.
INTRODUCTION
Someone was so wrong to say, “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
Divine knowledge cannot be acquired by study, it is beyond science and philosophy. Heavenly wisdom cannot be acquired by just observation. Wisdom above comes from God.
2Co 4:6, “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
God is Light. God has shone in the hearts of believers to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Eph 1:17, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom
and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”
You see the knowledge of God must be given through revelation with the Spirit of wisdom. You will never through science and philosophy receive revelation and the Spirit of wisdom.
It was Confucius who said, “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”
Do you know, the children of God are given the right to ask God for the Spirit of Wisdom? It is so precious that money cannot buy and human efforts cannot acquire.
I KNOW
I DON’T THINK YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HAVE STUDIED.
Although I have been poor most of my life, yet I have spent a large sum of money on books and a life-long pursuit of knowledge and the truth.
I have studied from Augustine to Martin Luther.
I have studied from Confucius to Mencius.
I have studied from Homer to Longfellow.
I have studied from Plato to Kant.
I have studied from Goethe to Kierkegaard.
WHO AM I?
I am a Christian by grace, a Chinese by race, and an American by nationality. In Politics I am Nixonian, in Management I am Koontzian, in English I am Ruskinian, in Philosophy I am Willie Wong Thought. I am neither a capitalist nor a communist. I am a Christian who stands for truth and justice and with the poor and oppressed peoples in the world. Above all, I am a disciple and servant of Jesus Christ. Willie Wong Thought is the system of thinking and world-view of Willie Wong.
Please also read the article People Who Have Been Great
Nicolaus Copernicus said, “To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”
I believe Confucius said something much earlier to that effect. Copernicus was born in 1473, while Confucius was born in 551 BC. The problem is the practice of Western academia and intelligentsia to play down the achievement of Chinese civilization.
There is no true knowledge in the world.
I think Henry Ford was well-meaning when he said, “If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.”
What Mr. Ford said is generally true; but there is no real security in this world. I recalled once America was in very bad economic condition, a Ph.D. could not find a suitable job and became a taxi driver. If you have plenty of money, and you do not have to work for a living, then you might be free. But of course there are other things that may upset you, such as gun violence or a terminal cancer.
Samuel Johnson had another point of view when he said, “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”
There are many in American government who have knowledge without integrity. They even advised the government America can win a nuclear war against China. They advise Taiwan how to use military force to separate from China. Those so-called leaders and politicians in Taiwan are actually nincompoops extraordinary who bought costly weapons of mass destruction at premium price from America. The end result is Taiwan will be destroyed. That is why it is dangerous and dreadful.
Mark Twain had something for the nincompoops of Taiwan when he said, “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.”
Traitors of Taiwan believe America will save them, when they are executed then they will realize things are just aren’t so.
I agree with George Bernard Shaw in saying, “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
There are many in this world who have false knowledge but they think they had true knowledge. Of course they do not know that false knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance. American leaders and politicians make knowledgeable citizens desperate because they deem their ignorance as true knowledge.
Confucius said, “What you know, you know, what you don’t know, you don’t know. This is true wisdom.”
Confucius also said, “To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.”
I agree with William Cowper who said, “Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.”
The greatest strategist Sun Tzu said, “The peak efficiency of knowledge and strategy is to make conflict unnecessary.”
Isn’t it strange that with all that knowledge and strategy that America and Europe possess, they boldly and deliberately pursue the policy of conflict with Russia and China? The problems are not Russia and China; the problems America and Europe (and pagan Japan) want to dominate the world!
A great scientist Karl Popper pointed out the limits of science by saying, “It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.”
There is no one in government and politics and business who are in critical quest for truth.
If John Milton were alive today, he would be greatly disappointed because Americans and Europeans reject his advice,
“The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.”
In America most people learn medical, military, legal, financial and scientific knowledge to make as much money as they can for the love of money, power and pleasure. They do not love God, they love themselves, money and pleasure.
Isaac Asimov said something quite correct, “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
Where is the wisdom of leaders and politicians of a nation who are neglecting its pressing national problems while wasting trillions of dollars to attack, sanction and terrorize the whole world just because they want to dominate the world?
I agree with Immanuel Kant who said, “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”
What is the reason of lying, killing, and robbing many nations just to dominate them? For centuries and centuries Europe practiced lying, killing, and robbing its colonies without regret, repentance, and recompense for its victims. America not only followed the old Europe, it is now the leader of the West who traumatizes and terrorizes the whole world in order to become the supreme dictator of the world. They use wars and proxy wars to strengthen their position.
There are few individuals in America who are so arrogant and self-righteous think America should have wars and destroy Russia and China. Their most flimsy reason is that America is democratic, while Russia and China are not. Well, these ignorant nincompoops do not really know what democracy is. One percent of America population rules over 99 percent of American population, and owns most of the power and wealth in America– that is the model of American democracy. Less than 10 individuals in America determine the destiny and future of America. These 10 individuals decide to have war or not, to attack other nations or not.
I. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE
According to https://conceptdaily.com/theory-of-knowledge-concept-epistemology-and-gnoseology/
“What is knowledge?
Generally, by knowledge we mean:
Facts or information that a person acquires through experience or through education, and thanks to whose understanding he is able to refer to a particular matter of reality.
The intellectual content that a person can accumulate with respect to an area of knowledge, a specific subject or the entire universe.
All kinds of cognitive certainty to answer the questions what? how? when? and where?
The very definition of what knowledge is, is already part of knowledge and therefore of the disciplines that study it.
Certain forms of knowledge have been more valued than others in each epoch of history, such as the religious one in medieval Europe, or as the scientific one is in post-industrial today. However, the underlying philosophical question as to what knowledge is continues to challenge us and give us much to think about.”
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary
“Definition of knowledge
1a(1): the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association
(2): acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique
b(1): the fact or condition of being aware of something
(2): the range of one’s information or understanding answered to the best of my knowledge
c: the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : COGNITION
d: the fact or condition of having information or of being learned a person of unusual knowledge
2a: the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind
barchaic : a branch of learning
3archaic : SEXUAL INTERCOURSE
4obsolete : COGNIZANCE”
Gen 2:9, “Out of the ground the LORD God caused every tree to grow that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Knowledge in Hebrew is daʿaṯ which means perception; skill; discernment; understanding; knowing; the fact of being aware of something; – which occurs 93 times in the Old Testament.
Luk 1:77, “To give His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.”
Knowledge in Greek is gnōsis which means knowledge signifies in general intelligence; understand; moral wisdom; the general knowledge of Christian religion; apprehension of truths; – which occurs 29 times in the New Testament.
The knowledge of salvation is a divine knowledge by revelation, you cannot obtain it from science or philosophy. Human knowledge must be verified, divine knowledge is revealed. The knowledge of God is beyond science and philosophy — beyond mankind.
George Bernard Shaw said something quite true, “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
The problem is that billions of peoples in this world do not know they have false knowledge, including Ph.D.s, scientists and philosophers. People want to believe what they want to believe, no matter true or false. For example, Western leaders and politicians do not know they are causing great troubles and tragedies in the world, they thought they are doing good in promoting democracy, freedom, equality and security. In truth, they are the greatest threats to the world today. It would be better-off if NATO, EU, GANG-7, QUAD, Japan and Western political and military alliances do not exist at all. Another example, many leaders of many nations believe and think they inherit great national treasures in their culture or civilization, if I point out each nation what they considered cultural treasures are nothing but trash, won’t I be hated by all nations?
According to
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
“nō , nol´ej (in Hebrew chiefly ידע , yādha‛ , noun דּעת , da‛ath ; in Greek γινώσκω , ginṓskō , οῖδα , oı́da ; “to know fully,” ἐπιγινώσκω , epiginṓskō , noun γνώσις , gnṓsis ἐπίγνωσις , epignōsis ): Knowledge strictly is the apprehension by the mind of some fact or truth in accordance with its real nature; in a personal relation the intellectual act is necessarily conjoined with the element of affection and will (choice, love, favor, or, conversely, repugnance, dislike, etc.). Knowledge is distinguished from “opinion” by its greater certainty. The mind is constituted with the capacity for knowledge, and the desire to possess and increase it. The character of knowledge varies with its object. The senses give knowledge of outward appearances; the intellect connects and reasons about these appearances, and arrives at general laws or truths; moral truth is apprehended through the power inherently possessed by men of distinguishing right and wrong in the light of moral principles; spiritual qualities require for their apprehension spiritual sympathy (“They are spiritually judged,” 1 Corinthians 2:14 ). The highest knowledge possible to man is the knowledge of God, and while there is that in God’s infinity which transcends man’s power of comprehension (Job 11:7 , Job 11:9 ), God is knowable in the measure in which He has revealed Himself in creation (Romans 1:19 , Romans 1:20 , “that which is known of God,” etc.), and supremely in Jesus Christ, who alone perfectly knows the Father, and reveals Him to man (Matthew 11:27 ). This knowledge of God in Jesus Christ is “life eternal” (John 17:3 ). Knowledge is affirmed of both God and man, but with the wide contrast that God’s knowledge is absolute, unerring, complete, intuitive, embracing all things, past, present, and future, and searching the inmost thoughts of the heart (Psalm 139:1 , Psalm 139:23 ); whereas man’s is partial, imperfect, relative, gradually acquired, and largely mixed with error (“Now we see in a mirror darkly … in part,” 1 Corinthians 13:12 ). All these points about knowledge are amply brought out in the Scripture usage of the terms. A large part of the usage necessarily relates to natural knowledge (sometimes with a carnal connotation, as Genesis 4:1 , Genesis 4:17 ), but the greatest stress also is laid on the possession of moral and spiritual knowledge (e.g. Psalm 119:66; Proverbs 1:4 , Proverbs 1:7 , Proverbs 1:22 , Proverbs 1:29; Proverbs 8:10 , etc.; Luke 1:77; Romans 15:14; 2 Peter 1:5 , 2 Peter 1:6 ). The highest knowledge, as said, is the knowledge of God and Christ, and of God’s will (Hosea 6:6; Romans 11:33; Ephesians 1:17; Ephesians 4:13; Philippians 1:9; Philippians 3:8; Colossians 1:9 , Colossians 1:10 , etc.). The moral conditions of spiritual knowledge are continually insisted on (“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God,” John 7:17 ). On the. other hand, the pride of intellectual knowledge is condemned; it must be joined with love (“Knowledge puffeth up, 1 Corinthians 8:1 ). The stronger term epignōsis is used to denote the full and more perfect knowledge which is possessed in Christ, the conditions of which are humility and love. Of knowledge as connoting favor, choice, on the part of God, there are many examples (Psalm 1:6 , Yahweh knoweth the way of the righteous”; Galatians 4:9 , “know God, or rather to be known by God”; compare Romans 8:29 , “whom he fore-knew”). See FOREKNOWLEDGE.”
Like it or not, knowledge makes who you are and what you are. I hold undergraduate and graduate degrees from a top American university, one year away from Ph.D. 95% of my knowledge is derived from the English language, the other 5% includes Chinese, German, Hebrew, and Greek. I have a lifetime pursuit of Bible study, and advanced study in theology and philosophy. The person who knows only one language cannot help to be narrow-minded. This is objective, not prejudicial. Can you imagine an Englishman always uses capital “I” in saying anything, not knowing in almost all other languages the pronoun “I” is in small letter?
According to
Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology
Know, Knowledge
“The Old Testament . The Hebrew root yada [ ], translated “know”/”knowledge, ” appears almost 950 times in the Hebrew Bible. It has a wider sweep than our English word “know, ” including perceiving, learning, understanding, willing, performing, and experiencing. To know is not to be intellectually informed about some abstract principle, but to apprehend and experience reality. Knowledge is not the possession of information, but rather its exercise or actualization.
Thus, biblically to know God is not to know about him in an abstract and impersonal manner, but rather to enter into his saving actions (Micah 6:5 ). To know God is not to struggle philosophically with his eternal essence, but rather to recognize and accept his claims. It is not some mystical contemplation, but dutiful obedience.
In the doing of justice and righteousness, Josiah is said to have known God (Jeremiah 22:15-16 ). True knowledge of God involves obeying the stipulations of his covenant. It is expressed in living conformity to his will. The opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, but rebellion (Jeremiah 22:11-14 ).
To know is to realize the loss of children (Isaiah 47:8 ), grief (Isaiah 53:3 ), guilt (Jeremiah 3:13 ), expediency (Ecclesiastes 8:5 ), conversion (Jeremiah 16:19-21 ), and judgment (Ezekiel 25:14 ).
The word “know” reflects a variety of skills and professional abilities such as hunting (Genesis 25:27 ), sailing (1 Kings 9:27 ), playing the harp (1 Samuel 16:16 ), professional mourning (Amos 5:16 ), and reading (Isaiah 29:11 ). It also is used to indicate the ability to distinguish between good and evil (Genesis 3:5; Isaiah 7:15 ), the left and right hand (Jonah 4:11 ), the wise and the foolish (Ecclesiastes 2:19 ), the desirable and the undesirable (2 Samuel 19:35 ), and life and death (2 Samuel 12:22 ).
The word “know” is used as a euphemism for sex and intercourse: Adam knew his wife Eve and she became pregnant (Genesis 4:1 ). Women who have “known” a man are no longer virgins (Numbers 31:17,35 ). In his declining days David had an attractive attendant who served him but did not have sexual relationships with him (1 Kings 1:4 ). Even sexual perversions such as sodomy (Genesis 19:5; Judges 19:22 ) and rape (Judges 19:25 ) are designated by the word “know.”
The word “know” is used also to express acquaintance with a person. Jacob questioned the shepherds of Haran, “Do you know Laban?” (Genesis 29:5 ). The pual participle of the Hebrew word indicates a close friend (Job 19:14; Psalm 55:13 ), a neighbor (Psalm 31:11 ), a companion (Psalm 88:8,18 ), and a relative (Ruth 2:1 ).
Divine-human relationships are also expressed by this term. The Lord knew Moses very well—”by name” (Exodus 33:11,12,17 ). Moses sought a reciprocal acquaintance with God (Exodus 33:13 ). The psalmist is amazed at God’s intimate knowledge (Psalm 139:6 ) of his personal life, his daily activities (139:1-2), even his unuttered and unformed thoughts (139:4).
The fact that God knows often indicates divine choice. He knew Jeremiah before his birth, singling him out to be a prophet (Jeremiah 1:5 ). He chose Abraham to be the father of a great nation (Genesis 18:19 ). The statement of Amos 3:2 , “You (Israel) only have I chosen of all the families of the earth, ” indicates divine selection. It is the way of the righteous that the Lord knows, endorses, and cherishes (Psalm 1:6 ).
The New Testament . The Greek words commonly translated know are oida [ ] and ginosko [ ]. These words have the various nuances of meaning of the English word “know.” They have been influenced by the Hebrew word yada [ ], such influence having been mediated through the Septuagint, but they also reflect an adaptation demanded by a pagan world ignorant of God’s existence.
The New Testament emphasizes that knowing God is not simply an intellectual apprehension, but a response of faith and an acceptance of Christ. It is he who has made God known (John 1:18 ). To know Christ is to know God (John 14:7 ). Eternal life is to know the true God and Jesus Christ (John 17:3 ). Paul desires to know Christ in his death and resurrection (Philippians 3:10 ). Failure to know Jesus as Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36 ) resulted in his rejection and crucifixion (1 Corinthians 2:8 ).
To know Christ is to know truth (John 8:32 ). While this is personal, it is also propositional. Knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Timothy 2:25; 3:7; Titus 1:1 ) is both enlightenment and acceptance of the cognitive aspects of faith.
Paul uses the rhetorical question, “Don’t you know?” several times in 1Corinthians (3:16; 5:6; 6:2,3, 9,15; 9:13,24). This may be an appeal to common knowledge, or a reference to a corpus of teaching that the apostle had communicated.
Affirmations about God’s knowledge are more limited in the New Testament than in the Old Testament. He knows the human heart (Luke 16:15 ). He knows his children’s needs such as clothing and food (Matthew 6:32 ). He even anticipates our petitions (Matthew 6:8 ). In fact, he knows everything (1 John 3:20 ).
Jesus uniquely knows God (John 8:55 — here knowledge and obedience are equated ). He knows the hidden designs of his questioners ( Luke 11:17 ). He is also perceptive of humankind. Nowhere is his penetrating knowledge noted more than it is in the Fourth Gospel (2:25; 5:42; 6:64; 10:14; 13:1,11; 18:4; 19:28).
The limits of human knowledge are recognized in the New Testament. It is not through wisdom that the world knows God, but rather through the divine initiative (Galatians 4:8-9 ). It is through the kerygma that humans can know God (1 Corinthians 1:20-25 ). Spiritual discernment is not the result of profane reasoning (1 Timothy 6:20 ). God’s revelation in Christ has made knowledge of him possible. But at best, this knowledge is partial. Perfection in the area of knowledge is reserved for the age to come (1 Corinthians 13:12 ).”
Based on the references cited, we should know what we are talking about knowledge.
George Bernard Shaw says, “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
I give you an illustration how false knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance. You ask someone about the street, the person gave you a wrong direction, so you waste your time going the wrong way. This is only involves time and walking. Some false knowledge can lead you into big trouble and ruin and destruction.
2Pe 1:8, “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they do not make you useless nor
unproductive in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
A person who has the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be useless nor unproductive. I may offend people if I say most of the peoples I had met in this world are useless and unproductive.
II. SPECIAL AND ARTISTIC KNOWLEDGE
The Skilled Craftsmen
Exo 31:1-11, “Now the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
“See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah.
And I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship, to create artistic designs for work in gold, in silver, and in bronze,
and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood, so that he may work in all kinds of craftsmanship. And behold, I Myself have
appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all who are skillful I have put skill, so that they may make everything that I have commanded you:
the tent of meeting, the ark of testimony, the atoning cover that is on it, and all the furniture of the tent, the table and its utensils, the pure gold
lampstand with all its utensils, and the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the basin and its stand, the woven garments as well: the holy garments for Aaron the priest and the garments of his sons, with which to carry out their priesthood; the anointing oil also, and the fragrant
incense for the Holy Place, they are to make them
according to everything that I have commanded
you.”
Probably Bezalel and Oholiab were the progenitors of all craftsmen.
The skill craftsmen must not only be skillful in crafts, they must be able to make everything according to what God had commanded.
2Ch 2:14, “the son of a Danite woman and a Tyrian father, who knows how to work in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, violet, linen, and crimson fabrics, and who knows how to make all kinds of engravings and to execute any
design which is assigned to him, to work with your skilled workers and with those of my lord, your father David.”
The Chinese craftsmen in Ming and Qing Dynasties were able to create the most beautiful and precious and priceless China’s antiques — China’s treasures.
III. TYPES OF CRAFTS
According to https://www.craftsglossary.com/types-of-crafts/#:~:text=When%20many%20people%
Types Of Crafts
“When many people think of crafts, they only consider a few like knitting or scrapbooking. But there are more than 100 different types of crafts that fall into ten core categories. We’ll explain each of those ten types to help you learn more about the world of crafting. You’re sure to find your favorites, but we hope you’ll also learn about new types of crafts that you’ve never heard of!
“Stained glass is the most common glasswork to combine with ceramic. In this art, the multitude of colors enhances the beauty of the ceramic piece. This is a cool way to give the appearance of precious stones. You might think you need a glass kiln to achieve this type of design, but that’s not true. Ceramic kilns are fine for ceramics that incorporate glassworks. The main concern is the volume of space inside the ceramic kiln as glass tends to expand when heated.”
You know Chinese porcelain antiques of Ming and Qing Dynasties are priceless treasures. I saw many items of Chinese national treasures in Europe and America, robbed and looted from China during the infamous Opium Wars and the burning of the Yuan Ming Garden. They are worth the market value of US$100,000 trillions not counting the interest of many years. They should be returned to China as soon as possible. Except the pagan Japan, Europe and America claim to be Christians nations. Jesus Christ says, Mar 12:17, “And Jesus said to them, “Pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were utterly amazed at Him.”
Chinese national treasures should be returned.
According to cn.bing.com/search?q=the+highest+price+of+chinese+porcelain
“Perfect bodies, wide variation of colors, and skillful decoration techniques characterized the period. An
elaborately decorated 18th century Qing Dynasty
porcelain vase was sold for $84 million to a rich
Chinese industrialist, making it the highest price
ever paid for a porcelain item and a piece of Chinese
art.”
FIBER AND TEXTILE CRAFTS
Fiber and textile crafts involve the creation of an item by using fabric or textile.
They’re more often created in mass-production factories.
Textile and fiber crafts include an array of crafting processes. Common examples include papermaking, basketry, needlework, weaving and more. Sometimes crafters must prepare the fiber or textile beforehand. Preparations include methods like spinning, bleaching, and finishing. The treated product is then combined with other processes to gain the desired look. This can include methods like screen printing or painting. Sometimes artists may treat the material with chemicals to make it last longer.
Fiber and textile arts have sustained their popularity across the ages. Clothing is a necessity for all and also a valuable means of self-expression. These days, we hold grand events like New York Fashion Week to celebrate our textile designs. Textiles are also used in our homes as bedding, rugs, and other decorative accents.
FLOWER CRAFTS
Flower crafting includes a variety of arts and crafts that incorporate flowers. This includes bouquet making, pressed flowers, ikebana, and more.
The art of flower crafting dates back to ancient Egypt. Flowers held spiritual importance as a symbol of rebirth. Ancient Egyptians used floral arrangements to decorate and perfume their homes. They also used flowers to create perfumed ointments. The oldest known book for flower-crafting was found in Japan and dates back to 1445.
Several types of beautiful flower crafting arts are still popular today. We still value the fragrance, importance, and beauty of flowers. Many use these creations during sacred events like weddings, funerals, and celebrations. They may also offer congratulations, well wishes, and to express love...
LEATHERWORKING
Leatherworking is an ancient process of creating items out of animal skins. During ancient times, hunters used the skins of the animals they hunted for clothing. The clothing would, unfortunately, stiffen and rot over time. To solve this problem, they created primitive techniques for crafting leather.
The most common animal skin used for leatherworking cow. First, the leatherworker must clean the skin. Then they remove the hair or fur. Next begins a process called tanning. This process helps to preserve the material. Finally, leatherworking may include decorative elements. Leather carving, stamping, boiling, painting, and dying are the most common techniques. Most leather is black or brown, but you can also dye it any color of the rainbow.
MIXED MEDIA CRAFTS
Mixed media involves the act of incorporating a variety of media to form a work of art. The two most common types of mixed media are assemblages and collages. Artists may use a variety of different materials in a mixed-media design. Elements that are most often incorporated are paper, cloth, plastic items, and wood.
An artist can achieve many impressive effects with mixed media. One popular technique is a three-dimensional effect. When a painter is creating a mixed media artwork, they must allow each design to dry. This prevents paint mixing between combined layers or pieces in the design.
Today we have digital mixed media too. This involves creating graphic designs with computer software. Digital, mixed media collages are common on social networks. Apps have made it even easier to create these designs.
NEEDLEWORK
Needlework is any type of art form involving a needle to construct an item. Since this is such a broad category, there are a vast variety of techniques included. Some of the most popular methods are sewing, knitting, crocheting, quilting, and tatting.
Needleworking is also an ancient art form. Experts have dated a Peruvian cross-stitch sampler back to 200-500 AD. The materials used to create early needlework were most likely stems and grasses. Twisting short fibers to create yarns and string did not evolve as a technique until around 10,000 BC. Historians have discovered early examples. Some of these included half cross stitches and satin stitches into intricate designs.
Want to learn more about needlework crafting? Grab a craftsy coupon or read up on the top craft stores online. We’ve also got an incredibly useful list of free patterns for sewing, knitting, and crochet.
PAPER CRAFTS
Paper crafts are designs formed using paper. Some familiar paper crafting techniques are origami, paper marbling, decoupage, embossing, scrapbooking, quilting and more.
The word “paper” comes from the term “papyrus,” which is the material used by Egyptians for paperwork. This creation dates back to the third millennium BC. Paper as we know it today was invented in China around 105 AD. This advancement opened up a world of possibilities for creating with paper. The types of paper available and techniques for crafting have evolved over time.
Paper is one of the most common materials used for artistic expression. It is easy to find, easy to maneuver, and inexpensive. As children, most of us used paper as our material of choice for creative work. We cut snowflakes out of paper, colored it, glued it and more. As adults, there are almost endless options for papercrafting. If you’re into paper crafts, you may like our Cricut coupons.
WOOD CRAFTS
Works created primarily out of wood are wood crafts. Wood is actually one of the oldest materials man has used creatively. Archaeologists have found ancient woodworking tools dated back to the era of the Neanderthals. This art form is so enduring because we use wooden items for so many everyday, practical uses.
The most common wood crafts include furniture making, wood burning, cabinet making, carving, and carpentry. To become a master woodworker, you’ll need a great deal of expertise. This is because of the large variety in types of wood. Each kind of tree has its own set of unique properties, resulting in different strengths and uses.
STONE CRAFTS
Creative works made out of stone are stone crafts. The profession of stone crafting is stonemasonry. Masons create everyday items like monuments, buildings, bridges and so much more. You’re probably familiar with many of the most famous works constructed from stone. The Taj Mahal, the Moai Heads of Easter Island, Stonehenge, and the Egyptian Pyramids are excellent examples.
There are many types of stone used for masonry construction and stone sculpting. These include various sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks. In masonry, the most common varieties used include limestone and sandstone. Sculptors of stone are more likely to work with alabaster or marble. Common tools used to shape stone include mallets, chisels, and metal straightedges. In modern times, power-tools may make the stone crafting process much easier.
Metal crafters construct objects out of materials derived from the ores of the earth. You may also hear these crafts referred to as metal arts or metallurgy. Popular types of metal crafting include smithing, casting, welding, and enameling.
Out of the 118 elements on the periodic table, 90 are metals. That’s a massive variety for metalworkers to choose from! Some of the most common metals used for crafting include silver, gold, bronze, steel, iron, and lead.
Some forms of metal crafting can trace their routes back to ancient times. We’ve found crafted copper artifacts in Northern Iraq dated to 8,700 BC. Around 4,500 BC, tin was first added to copper to create bronze. Archaeologists have found iron artifacts in Turkey from 2,500 BC. Sometime around 1,400 BC, steel working began in East Africa.
Metal crafts remain a high priority in our society today. We still recognize both the precious beauty and the usefulness of various metals. Crafters use metal in large, sturdy constructions like cars, buildings, and bridges. We also use it in small, delicate items such as jewelry, electronics, fasteners, and tools. In the modern world, metal crafts are all around us!
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading up on different kinds of crafts. Keep an eye on Crafts Glossary for more articles and ideas for crafts.”
Although crafts are not like physics or philosophy, I consider all crafts are special knowledge and skill to make things beautiful and useful. My mother was not only a Master’s Chef and she was also gifted in FLOWER CRAFTS. I recall she was teaching a beautiful girl to make flowers in paper and cloth at our home. The girl was older than me. I was sad to learn years later that she died of child birth in a hospital. I thought the modern medicine should be able to make giving birth to a child a safe procedure so that women need not die.
IV. GOVERNMENT SECRETS
The following are some of the US government secrets which are available on the Internet, which I knew nothing about it. As American citizens, do you know anything about the secrets of American government? God knows all the secrets of all nations, HIDDEN AND UNDISCLOSED.
According to https://bestlifeonline.com/hidden-government-secrets/
20 U.S. Government Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know
THERE ARE SECRET BUNKERS LITERALLY EVERYWHERE.
“Fact: there’s definitely a lot our government isn’t telling us. We’re not talking about conspiracy theories, like who really shot JFK or that Area 51 is really populated by little green men. We mean the government secrets hiding in plain sight, some of which we’ve found out about, and some of which are still mysterious. Speaking of Area 51—whatever is going on there the government is still weirdly secretive about. As that old saying goes, if you’re not a little bit paranoid, you’re not paying attention. Here are the government secrets the U.S. has tried to keep from its citizens, and what we do (and don’t) know about them so far.
1
CIA Mind-Control Experiments
Could drugs and hypnosis be used to control people’s minds and turn them into unwitting assassins for the CIA? That’s what the agency attempted to discover in the 50s, with a top-secret research program called Project MK-ULTRA. Turns out, LSD just makes people want to listen to 45 minute guitar solos.
2
The U.S. Government Had a Plot to Kill Castro (with a Seashell)
Shutterstock
There were a lot of crazy attempts to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro during the 70s, from booby-trapped cigars to poison milkshakes, but none quite so nutty as the exploding seashell. The CIA knew that Castro was a big fan of scuba-diving, so they plotted to plant a brightly colored conch shell in one of his favorite dive spots, triggered to explode when he touched it. They never followed through on it, although the CIA director did purchase two books on Caribbean mollusks. And for more great trivia, check out the 28 most enduring myths in American history.
3
Track 61: The President’s Secret Underground Train
President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t want the public to see him using a wheelchair, so to keep that secret during his visits to New York, his train didn’t stop directly at Grand Central Station, but rather a secret station called Track 61 that was never listed on any train map. Although it’s now abandoned, the station was used by wealthy travelers and high-profile politicians who wanted to come and go to New York without being noticed. And for more historical facts, here are 30 things you never knew about royal weddings.
4
The U.S. Government Once Tried to Train Spy Kitties
No, this isn’t a joke. The CIA seriously spent millions in the late 60s investigating whether domesticated cats could be trained to spy on the Soviet Union. The project was named Acoustic Kitty, because of course it was. It didn’t work out, much to the surprise of nobody, but we still have this memorandum, published by the National Security Archive, to prove that spy kitties was almost a real thing. Oh, and speaking of cats: Here are 15 Amazing Benefits of Adopting a Pet.
5
Project Sunshine: Stealing Corpses
Listen, if you need to test what happens to human bodies during radioactive fallout and you need around 900 human cadavers to do so, you can’t be expected to “ask” all the deceased’s families for their permission. Or at least that’s what researchers for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission thought during the 50s. Decades later, in the mid-90s, President Bill Clinton formed an advisory committee to investigate and learned the whole staggering truth.
6
Nukes on the Moon
Wikimedia Commons/US Department of Energy
Long before we landed on the moon in 1969, the U.S. Air Force had other plans for the lunar surface. They proposed a “Lunar Based Earth Bombardment System” in 1959, which apparently involved blowing up a nuclear weapon on the moon. Why? According to physicist Leonard Reiffel, who was involved in the project, the whole point was to “impress the world with the prowess of the United States.” Personally, we’re glad they went with the “one small step for man” plan instead.
7
Operation Paperclip: Let’s Hire Some Nazi Scientists
Alamy
No one could have accused the U.S. government of having discriminatory hiring practices in 1945. Well, at least not if you were a Nazi. Post-World War II, President Harry Truman approved the hiring of thousands of German scientists and engineers, including Walter Schreiber, a medical military officer for the Nazis who found a second job at the Air Force School of Medicine in Texas.
8
Blame Cuba
Public Domain
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but the CIA actually did propose committing acts of terrorism against American citizens and then blaming it on Cuba. A memo from March 13, 1962, delivered to the president by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and dubbed Operation Northwoods, suggested ways to justify a military conflict with the Castro’s communist regime, including “Sink (a) ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims” and “…blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.” President Kennedy rejected the proposal.
9
Government Controlled Flying Saucers
Project 1794, a program created by the U.S. Air Force in the 50s, attempted to do what every science fiction-loving kid dreamed about: Create a flying saucer. Their saucer-shaped aircraft, which they never got around to completing, would have been capable of shooting down enemy bombers and flying at ridiculously fast speeds. If you feel up to the task of making your own saucer, check out the declassified blueprints.
10
The My Lai Massacre
Public Domain
Hundreds of unarmed civilians—anywhere from 347 to 504, including women and children—in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, were murdered by a platoon of American soldiers during March of 1968. High-ranking army officers tried to cover up the massacre for years before it was revealed by U.S. reporters, but even then only one commanding officer was found guilty and served just a few years under house arrest.
11
The Missing Hydrogen Bomb
Wikimedia Commons/Croquet
When a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed in Greenland in 1968, the government acted fast to make sure all the radioactive material was recovered. They got everything, or so they claimed. But in 2008, a BBC investigation revealed that one of the nukes was maaaaaaaybe still in Greenland somewhere.
12
The Mystery of the USS Jimmy Carter
This U.S. Navy attack submarine—the third and last last Seawolf-class submarine in existence, whose primary mission is finding and destroying enemy vessels—has been up to something recently, but nobody is entirely sure what. In September of this year, it was spotted flying the Jolly Roger, the skull and crossbones pirate flag normally displayed after a successful mission. But what exactly was that mission? The Navy isn’t telling.
13
Secret Congress Bunker
You’d never guess by looking at the Greenbriar Hotel in West Virginia that there’s a 112,544-square-foot bunker hidden underneath the resort, with enough bedrooms to accommodate over a thousand Congressmen. The shelter was built in the 60s specifically for members of Congress, just in case Russia bombed us and a nuclear winter made the country uninhabitable.
14
The CIA Torture Files
They called it “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but according to a Senate Report released in 2014, the CIA has possibly been engaged in wrongful torture of suspected criminals for years.
15
Julia Child, CIA Shark Expert
You probably know Julia Child as a famous American chef and TV host. But according to files released by the U.S. National Archives in 2008, she was also one of our secret weapons during World War II, when she worked for the Office of Strategic Services (which would become the CIA) and personally developed shark repellent to protect Navy men in shark-infested waters. That’s right, her first recipe was shark repellent.
16
Spying on reporters
Think journalists have it hard today? They had nothing on reporters in 1963, some of whom were spied on by CIA agents as part of Operation Mockingbird. In documents declassified in 2007, there were reports of several journalists having their home and office telephones wiretapped, solely because they had contacts with “senators, members of Congress, and other well-placed individuals.”
17
The Secret Basement Under Grand Central
Shutterstock
You won’t find it on any city map, but 13 stories below Grand Central Terminal in New York is a secret basement known only as M42, which housed the rotary power converters that kept the railroads running during the second World War. Adolf Hitler wanted to sabotage the converters, which apparently would be as easy as pouring sand into them. Armed guards protected the room, with orders to shoot anyone who tried to enter carrying a bag or bucket of sand. At least one attempt was made, by four saboteurs working for Hitler, but they were stopped before they ever found the secret basement.
18
The X-37B
Shutterstock
Here’s what we know about the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B space plane. It’s been in orbit around the Earth (off and on) since 2010, it’s only 29 feet long, and nobody has any idea what it’s doing up there. Well, the Air Force does, obviously, but they’re not telling. Some have speculated that it’s a battle ship of some kind, capable of shooting down or capturing enemy satellites.
19
Area 51
Probably the most famous secret military base in the country, Area 51 is located in the middle of the Nevada desert, 83 miles outside Las Vegas, and is used for… something. There have been wild rumors of extraterrestrials and crashed alien spacecraft being stored somewhere in the facility. The CIA didn’t even acknowledge that Area 51 existed until 2013, and all they’ll admit to is that the base has been used to test spy planes.
20
Bohemian Grove
Wikimedia Commons/Aarkwilde
Every July, the rich and powerful and politically connected gather together at a 2,700 acre campground in northern California for their own version of Burning Man. What really goes on there is anybody’s guess, but the guest list has included U.S. presidents and oil barons, and activities have included everything from druid worship to planning for the Manhattan Project. This isn’t some conspiracy theory, this is where guys like Rumsfeld, Kissinger, and Rockefeller go to vacation and do things they don’t want the rest of us to see.”
According to https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35197/the-department-of-energy-may-be-the-best-place-to-keep-a-secret#:~:
“The U.S. Government Hides Some Of Its Darkest Secrets At The Department Of Energy
The Department of Energy controls many ‘black projects’ that live outside of the limelight that is intrinsic to the DoD and the intel community.
BYBRETT TINGLEYMAY 13, 2021 7:37 PM
BRETT TINGLEYView Brett Tingley’s Articles
When it comes to discussions of government secrecy, much of the conversation tends to revolve around the Department of Defense (DOD) or the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). After all, the U.S. military develops many of the United States’ most sensitive weapon systems used to defend America and project its power globally, and the IC gathers and analyzes sensitive information on foreign threats and external national security matters. Each year, the budget requests from the U.S. military are packed with classified and Special Access Programs, or SAPs, sporting vague code names, many of which never see the light of day. When we talk of the “black world,” most often that conversation centers around these programs and technologies suspected to be housed deep within the classified ends of the Pentagon and its various service branches.
Often left out of this conversation is the fact that there is a wholly separate cabinet-level department of the U.S. government that is arguably even more opaque in terms of secrecy and oversight than the Department of Defense. Over the last few years, allegations of secret, exotic technologies have reinvigorated claims that the DOD may be concealing scientific breakthroughs from the American public. However, if the U.S. government, or some faction within it, hypothetically came across a groundbreaking development in energy production or applied physics, a very strong case could be made that such a revolution would likely be housed deep within the Department of Energy (DOE) rather than DOD.
The DOE is tasked with maintaining America’s nuclear weapons stockpile, among many other things. , DOE
Laying The Atomic Groundwork
The Department of Energy was officially formed in 1977, although its roots were planted in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. The Atomic Energy Act established the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), an agency designed to manage and control the United States’ nuclear technology under a civilian regime, rather than one overseen directly by the military itself. This is a gray area of sorts, however, as there are and have always been numerous positions at both the DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) filled by uniformed military officers. For example, NNSA’s Deputy Administrator for Naval Reactors, who also heads up the joint Navy-DOE Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, is and has always been an admiral.
Ultimately, one of the main points of the AEC was to bring all of the United States’ nuclear technologies firmly together under one roof. From the beginning, the AEC focused almost exclusively on designing and manufacturing nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors for naval use. With the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the AEC also began exclusively regulating the growing commercial nuclear power industry.”Like the DOE of today, AEC was focused on much more than simply the weaponization of nuclear technologies. Many atomic scientists intended nuclear explosives to be used for much more than simply weapons. As early as the 1950s, scientists at what are today Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories held classified discussions “to discuss the possibilities of using energy unleashed by nuclear explosions to produce power, dig excavations, and produce isotopes.” The AEC continued looking into these industrial uses of atomic technologies throughout the 1960s and early 1970s as part of its Plowshare Program.
President Harry Truman signing the Atomic Energy Act of 1946., Wikimedia Commons
Motivated in large part by the oil crisis of the early 1970s, the United States government under President Jimmy Carter passed The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977. With that, the DOE as we know it today was formed by bringing together many different energy and science programs and administrations under one roof. This new department would oversee “long-term, high-risk research and development of energy technology, federal power marketing, energy conservation, the nuclear weapons program, energy regulatory programs, and a central energy data collection and analysis program.”
One of the main tasks of DOE today is to develop, test, and maintain the United States’ nuclear weapons stockpile. While the DOD develops, operates, and maintains the systems that deliver those nuclear weapons, the DOE is the department actually tasked with the development and acquisition of nuclear warhead technologies. DOE handles all functions not related to warhead delivery: storing and securing nuclear warheads that are not deployed onboard DOD systems, securing the materials that are used in nuclear weapons, and dismantling older nuclear weapons which have been removed from the national stockpile. To facilitate cooperation between the two, the Nuclear Weapons Council was established in 1986. This council consists of senior level officials from both the DOE and the DOD who coordinate on interagency activities related to the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
An organizational chart from the 2018 DOD manual “DOD Procedures for Joint DOD-Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) Nuclear Weapon Life-Cycle Activities.”, DOD OIG
In addition to controlling and producing America’s nuclear power and weapons technologies, today’s DOE fosters research and innovation into clean energy solutions, energy efficiency, climate change mitigation, and alternative fuel technologies for the transportation sector. As its name implies, DOE has a hand in all of America’s short- and long-term energy needs. That’s far from all that the DOE oversees, however, as it also conducts a significant amount of secret and classified research and manufacturing.
Secrecy And Classification In The Department Of Energy
In many cases, DOE has its own classification systems and policies, some of which are even classified themselves. The highest level of these DOE security clearances is the Q clearance, equivalent to a Top Secret clearance in the DOD. That doesn’t mean that anyone with a Q clearance can access all classified information overseen by DOE. According to its Personnel Security FAQs page, “for access to some classified information, such as Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) or Special Access Programs (SAPS), additional requirements or special conditions may be imposed by the information owner even if the person is otherwise eligible to be granted a security clearance or access authorization.”
“DOE Security Clearance Chart listing various clearances for different levels of information: Confidential (C), Secret (S), Top Secret (TS), Restricted Data (RD), Formerly Restricted Data (FRD), and National Security Information (NSI), special nuclear material (SNM), Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information (CNWDI)., DOE
Groups, such as the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), through its Project on Government Secrecy, are actively pursuing further declassification of DOE records and have managed to get the DOE to declassify many records related to American nuclear technology. Despite these efforts, the DOE still remains one of the most secretive institutions of the U.S. government.
Steven Aftergood, director of FAS’s Project on Government Secrecy, told The War Zone that these extreme levels of secrecy were baked right into the DOE from the beginning, explaining:
One of the unique features of government secrecy at the Department of Energy is that it is shaped in part by law – the Atomic Energy Act – and not just by executive order. So it can be even slower and more difficult to change or to update than at some other agencies.
Not only that, DOE secrecy policy on nuclear weapons is intertwined to a great extent with the policy of the Department of Defense. When the two agencies differ on whether to declassify and disclose information, either one can veto the decision.
We’ve seen this happen repeatedly. So, for example, the size of the US nuclear arsenal was declassified most recently in 2017. We asked for the number of weapons to be updated in 2018 and 2019, and DOE was willing to do so, but the Department of Defense blocked the disclosure.
Protecting this highly sensitive information is obviously a top priority for the DOE, and for that reason, the agency operates its own independent intelligence and counterintelligence arms, which are part of its relatively extensive and uniquely equipped apparatus of security forces. The DOE’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (OICI) was founded along with the Department in 1977, and aims to “identify and mitigate threats to U.S. national security and the DOE Enterprise and inform national security decision making through scientific and technical expertise.”
Members of NNSA’s Special Response Force train to protect a Safeguards Transporter (SGT) tractor-trailer used to transport nuclear weapons and related cargoes. This picture offers a rare look at the inside of the armored doors on the cab., GAO
The OICI answers to the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Energy. A declassified and highly redacted copy of the DOE’s 2001 Classification Guide for Intelligence Information outlines the scope of the Office of Intelligence, specifically, within OICI. The document states that as a member of the Intelligence Community (IC), the DOE shall:
Participate with the Department of State in overtly collecting information with respect to foreign energy matters;
Produce and disseminate foreign intelligence necessary for the [Department of Energy] Secretary to fulfill his/her responsibilities;
Participate in formulating intelligence collection and analysis requirements where the special expert capability of the Department can contribute; and
Provide expert technical, analytical, and research capabilities to other agencies within the IC.
In 1999, Congress created another semi-autonomous DOE outfit known as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to oversee military applications of nuclear sciences. NNSA’s duties include maintaining and protecting the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, attempting to counter nuclear proliferation, and responding to nuclear emergencies. NNSA is part of DOE, but operates with significant autonomy given its role and the sensitive nature of its work. There had even been an initial proposal to establish it as a completely independent entity. In yet another example of the many gray areas in terms of civilian vs. military control of the DOE, the first person to head up NNSA was John Alexander Gordon, a uniformed Air Force officer (who was also CIA Deputy Director at the time).
According to the FY 2021 Department of Energy budget request, NNSA requested over $26 billion in 2021 for defense activities, while $1 billion was requested for undisclosed “Other Defense Activities.” In 2017, the Congressional Research Service reported that roughly 3% of National Defense funding went to the Department of Energy and other federal agencies for “Atomic Energy Defense Activities,” which is one of NNSA’s primary tasks.
One of the other main objectives of NNSA is overseeing and operating some of the most secure facilities in the United States, including several national laboratories, the Nevada National Security Site, the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, which produces nuclear weapons, and the Y-12 National Security Complex near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which produces all of the United States’ enriched uranium. Y-12 is also home to the production facility for the mysterious Fogbank, a material so sensitive to U.S. nuclear weapon technology that its manufacturing process, composition, use, and even the material itself remain classified. In fact, Fogbank is wrapped in so much secrecy that the DOE once “forgot” how to manufacture it due to a lack of actual records about how to make it and dwindling institutional knowledge as a result of read-in employees aging out of the workforce.
The Y-12 facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee., Wikimedia Commons
Among the other facilities the NNSA oversees is the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), formerly known as the Nevada Test Site. The site, which boasts extreme security measures including its own security forces, stretches across some 1,400 square miles of desert and includes a nuclear weapons assembly plant, an experimental flight test facility, and explosive testing sites. The Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), which includes the notorious Area 51, surrounds the NNSS on three sides.
Public Domain
The Nevada National Security Site contains many DOE facilities for nuclear research including subcritical experiments and special nuclear material staging. The NNSS is also home to underground test facilities, and is among the United States’ most highly classified, restricted access areas. The NNSS offers limited tours, but these are conducted under the utmost security at pre-arranged times. During the Cold War, the Nevada Test Site, now NNSS, was home to hundreds of above-ground nuclear weapons tests which spread radioactive fallout across large swaths of the American West and Midwest. The DOE also maintains many “tombs” throughout the desert, where it stores the radioactive remains of nuclear experiments, spent nuclear fuel or enrichment products, and other remnants of America’s nuclear activities that are too dangerous to be disposed of anywhere else.
In another example of highly compartmentalized knowledge being lost due to workforce losses, a dismantling program had to be specially designed for the B53 nuclear bomb due to the fact that the scientists who knew its inner workings were either retired or dead. That program concluded in 2013 when the last one of these 10,000-pound bombs was successfully dismantled.
More recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published the 2021 report “DOD and DOE Face Challenges Mitigating Risks to U.S. Deterrence Efforts” about the Nuclear Triad, which presently consists of Ohio class ballistic missile submarines, Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and B-2 and B-52 bomber aircraft. The GAO report found that DOE frequently “loses” valuable knowledge about its highly explosive weapon systems due to its knowledge base growing old:
As we reported in June 2019, there are about 100 different nuclear weapon components that contain explosive materials, some of which are highly specialized and limited in supply. For example, only a single container of one specialized material remains. DOE officials and contractor representatives said that the agency is working to replenish the supply of such materials, but the agency faces challenges because some specialized explosive materials were created decades ago, and the knowledge base to successfully produce them is now gone. Moreover, even if DOE can replicate the “lost recipes” for specialized explosive materials, it faces the challenge of finding suppliers willing and able to provide small quantities of specialized raw materials that meet the exacting standards required for use in nuclear weapons.
Clearly, the extent to which knowledge and operations within DOE are protected can make it difficult to understand or even be aware of the full scope of its activities. To help us contextualize the high levels of secrecy and classification at the Department of Energy, The War Zone spoke with nuclear historian Dr. Alex Wellerstein, Director of Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute in New Jersey. Wellerstein’s latest book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, “traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century.”
Wellerstein told The War Zone that the levels of secrecy at the DOE are not common knowledge, saying:
I think most people are surprised to learn that there are basically two classification systems in the United States. There’s national defense information which is all the secrets and top secrets, everything to do with the military and the state department and all of that stuff, then there’s nuclear stuff. It has a different statutory basis, the Atomic Energy Act, it’s handled differently and conceived of differently by the Restricted Data clause, it has its own clearances, and is meant to be a parallel classification system. The fact that only nuclear weapons have this, that no other weapons technology has its own category – not even biological weapons or chemical weapons, they’re national defense information – is highly reflective of its origins in the Cold War.
When the first nuclear technologies were developed and the AEC was formed, the U.S. government saw a need for higher levels of secrecy in order to protect these terrifying new weapons. That’s not to say that those higher levels of secrecy were approved of by the entire government or even the AEC. “It’s been a point of contention since the very beginning whether this particular technology is so dangerous or so apt to carry secrets that it needs its own separate classification systems,” Wellerstein says. “The secrecy was created out of fear, out of a belief that nuclear technology could be easily communicated as information. Whether that’s true has been debated since the 1940s.”
Many experts have questioned whether these levels of extreme secrecy are beneficial or even needed. Many of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project or in science administration during World War II felt that secrecy would not be an effective way to control nuclear weapons, and that international agreements would ultimately be the only way. “Any competent nation with any sort of technical or industrial base would, if they devoted resources to it, would be able to reinvent them – even if the secrecy was total, which it wasn’t,” Wellerstein says. “I don’t think that secrecy is what keeps new nations from developing nuclear weapons and I don’t think it’s what’s keeping terrorists from getting nuclear weapons. I think its impact is not that large on preventing those kinds of things. Its impact on policy and public knowledge is very high by contrast.” Still, Wellerstein adds, “I’ve talked with government officials who emphasize that nuclear weapons are so disproportionately powerful that maybe it’s worth being disproportionately cautious about the unknown.”
Image of “The Gadget” being prepared for detonation at the Trinity test site. It was used for the first atomic weapon explosion on July 16th, 1945. , Public Domain
Again, it’s natural that the DOE would not disclose specific parts of its most sensitive and dangerous weapons and associated technologies due to the ramifications of these potentially falling into the wrong hands. Still, by concealing many of its activities under the blanket of national security, NNSA and DOE leave plenty of room for activities or research programs that are never disclosed to the public.
The Question Of Oversight
Even with the high level of compartmentalization and autonomy surrounding the DOE, as well as America’s nuclear weapons stockpile, the department has its own oversight bureaucracies, as well. After all, if you allow only the DOE to control and produce your nuclear weapons and related research, you also need your own separate oversight systems in place to watch over how that control and production is managed. To that end, the DOE has its own Office of Inspector General (DOE OIG), whose mission is to “help the Department and the American taxpayer” by identifying management shortfalls, assessing vulnerabilities, auditing the agency’s financial activities, and investigating crimes against the Department. The DOE OIG advises and makes key recommendations to the Secretary of Energy.
A slide from a presentation given by the DOE OIG at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulatory Information Conference in March 2019., DOE OIG
Aside from the OIG, the DOE is advised by the independent Federal Energy Regulation Commission, which oversees the transmission and sale of electricity and natural gas in interstate commerce, including oil pipelines. The DOE also has an Oversight Board, which monitors the environmental impacts of its operations specifically in New Mexico, including activities at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico (SNL/NM), and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
There are a variety of mechanisms through which the U.S. government exercises oversight of the DOE and NNSA. The U.S. Congress, for one, has two subcommittees devoted to energy-related issues including nuclear weapons and facilities. The Energy Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Subcommittee on Energy of the Senate Committee on Energy and National Resources oversee the creation of legislation regarding a wide range of energy issues beyond nuclear matters alone. The House’s Energy Subcommittee oversees nuclear energy, nuclear facilities, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, while also legislating on national energy policy, fossil fuels, and other government activities affecting energy matters. While the Senate’s Subcommittee on Energy has oversight jurisdiction over nuclear fuels research and development, nuclear commercialization projects, nuclear fuel cycle policy, and the DOE National Laboratories, it also oversees energy-related issues such as fossil fuel management, pipeline development, strategic fuel reserves, and sustainable energy research.
Steven Aftergood told The War Zone that, while there are Congressional structures in place to provide oversight of the DOE, “the quality of oversight depends on many factors, including Members’ level of interest, the expertise of committee staff, the cooperation of the agency, and the attention of the press and public interest organizations… With respect to secrecy and classification at DOE, my impression is that congressional oversight is nearly non-existent. But that is true regarding classification policy across the board.”
It is certainly true that these committees have a huge portfolio and it isn’t clear how they would effectively oversee a huge swathe of deeply classified programs the DOE is executing at any given time, some of which have many sub-programs and unique facets beyond their topline justification.
To bolster DOE oversight, Congress established the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) in 1988 as an independent organization that would provide oversight of the DOE’s nuclear production and testing facilities. Through this board, Congress is theoretically granted oversight of the DOE’s and NNSA’s operations and management, and Congress is responsible for the authorization and appropriation of funds for America’s Nuclear Security Enterprise. The DNFSB was set up as an independent oversight organization, which would offer recommendations to the Secretary of Energy that concerned public health and safety at the DOE’s nuclear weapons complex. Members of the board are appointed by the U.S. Senate. A full record of correspondence between the DOE and the DNFSB can be found on the DOE’s website, including all recommendations the board made between 2012 and today.
That doesn’t mean the DNFSB has always had full cooperation from the DOE. As recently as 2018, there were complaints that the DOE was stonewalling the DNFSB and preventing it from carrying out its oversight duties. According to one Senate staffer who helped draft the original DNFSB legislation, the DOE was trying to “isolate and fence off” the board, as part of a “constant effort to chip away at the ability of the board to do oversight.” There have even been calls from within the board to abolish itself entirely, and the NNSA has frequently tried to limit the board’s access to information.
A DOE special investigative panel concluded in 1999 that the department is “a dysfunctional bureaucracy that has proven it is incapable of reforming itself” and that “accountability at DOE has been spread so thinly and erratically that it is now almost impossible to find.” The panel added that, “Never before has the panel found an agency with the bureaucratic insolence to dispute, delay, and resist implementation of a Presidential directive on security,” and that “Never have the members of the Special Investigative Panel witnessed a bureaucratic culture so thoroughly saturated with cynicism and disregard for authority.”
One reason for this dysfunction could be that on the legislative side, the DOE does not get the public or official scrutiny the DOD or the IC gets. “What’s interesting to me about the AEC and the DOE is that unlike a lot of federal agencies, they don’t have natural allies in the political ecosystem,” Dr. Alex Wellerstein told The War Zone. “They don’t have a constituency in the same way that, say, the Dept. of Agriculture does, or how the DOD has the military, for example.”
Bruce Hamilton, who at the time was chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, said DOE officials routinely flout new regulations which were to limit the amount of information that the DNFSB could obtain directly from nuclear facilities and instead restrict the board from obtaining the same information directly from DOE administration. “We have repeatedly heard from DOE representatives that they really don’t mean what they wrote (in the rule) or at least that they really don’t intend to follow what they wrote,” said Hamilton, adding that this is a “particularly bizarre argument coming out of the nuclear culture that has set the standard for following the written rules to the letter.” Those new measures, outlined in DOE Order 140.1 A, also excluded many of the DOE’s weapons complex facilities from DNFSB’s formal safety recommendations, and changed the definition of “public health and safety” under DNFSB oversight to exclude the safety of workers at nuclear facilities
In 2020, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, even went so far as to accuse DOE officials of being “rogue actors” who to “undermine” the security of America’s nuclear activities. The Department of Energy Organization and Management Improvement Act, introduced in the House in September 2020 by then-Representative Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican, would, if made law, give the DOE even more control over the NNSA. This means it could operate with even less government oversight than it already has now.
Holding The Keys To America’s Most Sensitive Research
Aside from developing and maintaining the United States nuclear weapons stockpile, there is a great deal of advanced research being performed at Department of Energy laboratories, including pioneering work on some of the most cutting-edge topics science has to offer. Nearly $5.9 billion was allocated to the DOE’s Office of Science (SC) in 2021 to “deliver scientific discoveries and major scientific tools to transform our understanding of nature and advance the energy, economic and national security of the United States.”
DOE
A large part of this research is conducted at the 17 United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and Technology Centers, which are spread across the country. Much of the research and technology development conducted at these labs goes straight to the DOD: LANL has conducted space-based directed energy weapon experiments for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA); the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has developed advanced munitions for the Air Force; Sandia has had a hand in producing some of America’s first hypersonic weapon prototypes.
A slide from 2021 highlighting the unique capabilities Los Alamos National Laboratory offers the DOD, including technology demonstration., LANL
One of the reasons why the DOE-controlled laboratories develop advanced weapons technologies designed for transfer to the DOD is that they, as well as various other facilities today under NNSA, have the capacity for specialized research and development and unique manufacturing work that just cannot be done in many places. If you need to do novel manufacturing on a large scale, and are looking to do so within a system that already has significant security measures in place, the DOE laboratories are the place to go, and it’s been that way for decades.
For instance, when the Air Force decided to try using massive floating bombs during the Vietnam War to blow up the Thanh Hoa bridge, there was simply no one else within the national security apparatus besides Y-12 at Oak Ridge that could build large metal structures to the kind of exacting specifications the service needed. Some details of that top-secret mission, known as Operation Carolina Moon, are still classified.
Hand-drawn Air Force art depicting the design and basic concept of operation of a floating bomb, built in part at Oak Ridge, which was developed as part of Operation Carolina Moon, which was obtained by Joseph Trevithick via the Freedom of Information Act., USAF via FOIA
More recently, the DOE signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Defense to confirm and enhance the “the longstanding partnership between DOE and DOD on space-related research and technology development in support of U.S. national space policy goals.” In a press release that accompanied the MOU, then-Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes called the agreement “historic,” and claimed it “lays out the framework for DOE to harness the world’s greatest science and technology researchers at DOE’s National Labs, and program offices, to augment DOD’s critical national security space mission and will play a crucial role for future space developments across the two departments.”
More specifically, the MOU establishes joint working groups and promotes scientific exchange between the two departments in emerging and disruptive research fields such as advanced power and propulsion, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, next-generation communications, and autonomous or remotely piloted vehicles. That MOU came on the heels of one of President Donald Trump’s final Executive Orders that called for the DOE to work together with NASA and the Department of Defense to research and develop miniaturized nuclear reactor technologies for space exploration and powering military bases.
An NNSA slide highlighting the multi-agency efforts the MOU will support., NNSA
The DOE also currently operates a Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program, an Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, and a Nuclear Sciences program, the latter of which seeks to put together “a roadmap of matter that will help unlock the secrets of how the universe is put together.” To that end, in April 2020, the DOE put together a 10-year plan to invest in plasma physics research encompassing both “discovery” plasma sciences, which involves understanding the properties of plasma and non-energy applications of plasmas; and fusion science and technology, which is related to fusion energy generation. “Research in high energy physics not only advances our understanding of the universe, but is also critical to maintaining American leadership in science,” former Under Secretary of Energy for Science Paul Dabbar said in a 2019 DOE press release. “These research efforts, at dozens of universities across the nation, will not only yield fresh insights into such problems as dark matter and dark energy, but also help build and sustain the nation’s science and technology workforce.”
A nuclear reactor at Palo Verde in Arizona. , Energy.gov
DOE also funds research initiatives in sustainable and alternative energies, AI and machine learning, quantum computing, and even genomics, one of the more controversial areas of its scientific endeavors. According to the “Genomics” section on Energy.gov, the Human Genome Project was initially launched by DOE to better understand the genetic effects of radiation exposure, “but there was clear awareness that success in the project would have much broader consequences for both science and society.”
DOE has quite a checkered past when it comes to its biological experimentation. In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton formed an advisory committee to look into DOE’s human radiation experiments, releasing nearly two million pages of formerly classified documents that detailed unwitting human test subjects such as orphans, hospital patients, or mentally disabled children being fed or injected radioactive materials.
In the Executive Summary released by the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, it was reported that close to 4,000 human radiation experiments were carried out by the U.S. government between 1944 and 1974. The Committee’s report was conveniently, or coincidentally, released by the White House on Tuesday, October 3, 1995, the same day that the O.J. Simpson murder trial verdict was announced.
That report did not stop DOE’s interest in human subject research (HSR). As recently as 2018, it was still actively conducting classified research on human subjects, arguing that “research using human subjects provides important medical and scientific benefits to individuals and to society.” Because many of these projects use code names such as “Moose Drool” and “Little Workers,” it’s unknown what exactly they are studying with these human subjects.
DOE via FOIA
When it comes to whether there is a chance that advanced energy research or other groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs could possibly be locked away deep behind DOE secrecy, Wellerstein told The War Zone it’s certainly possible, although it’s more likely funding, rather than secrecy, is what keeps these programs in the dark. “It’s possible, although a lot of the peaceful aspects have been declassified over the years starting in the 1950s. Whether that’s all been beneficial or not is a topic for debate since a lot of those things are dual-use, like reactors. But it’s always possible. The most important thing for the development of reactor technology or say, nuclear fusion, is less the classification, but funding.”
Wellerstein told The War Zone that there are plenty of avenues by which the DOE might use its budget for classified or non-disclosed activities. According to the FY 2021 DOE budget request, for example, the NNSA was allocated $15.6 billion for “Weapons Activities to maintain the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile, continue the nuclear modernization program, and modernize and recapitalize NNSA’s nuclear security infrastructure portfolio.” In the volume of the budget request dedicated to descriptions of the NNSA’s spending, there is little clarification as to the specific technologies and capabilities the NNSA is developing:
The Weapon Technology and Manufacturing Maturation program is responsible for developing agile, affordable, assured, and responsive technologies and capabilities for nuclear stockpile sustainment and modernization to enable Defense Programs’ mission success and the future success of the NSE [Nuclear Security Enterprise] and will continue these activities in FY 2021. The core areas of work include agile, assured, and affordable technologies; partnership with stakeholders to meet stockpile and customer requirements; qualification and certification; and skilled technical workforce and enhanced capabilities.
A W80 nuclear warhead undergoing handling., Public Domain
Keepers of America’s Secrets
With both the extreme levels of secrecy surrounding much of the Department of Energy’s research and even the scope of DOE’s research, it’s possible, if not probable, that there are more radical and more exotic developments than these hidden behind the doors of DOE laboratories. It would be hard to argue that breakthroughs in advanced physics, nuclear aerospace propulsion, or energy production would live somewhere other than the Department of Energy. While that much may ultimately be impossible to verify, it certainly seems possible that the DOE could conceal such a breakthrough given how compartmentalized and classified much of its work remains and how specialized and advanced its facilities are. And once again, while maintaining a very close relationship with the U.S. military, as the two institutions are tied together strategically very tightly, the DOE really doesn’t get the attention the DOD does and that may be true in terms of oversight, as well.
Still, it makes complete sense that DOE would be one of the most secretive departments of the United States government. Nuclear technologies are among the most dangerous and sensitive in the world, and the risk of nuclear weaponry falling into the wrong hands remains near the top of the most pressing threats faced by the modern world. But more so, the nuclear secrets that underpin America’s nuclear deterrent, as well as those that could define it in the future, would be considered among the country’s ‘crown jewels’ when it comes to sensitive technologies.
All this seems to provide a uniquely fertile and undisturbed environment in which bringing new, highly powerful, and potentially very destructive technologies from concept to reality could flourish. In fact, one could argue that is historically bred right into the DNA of the agency. Unfortunately, all this is hard to quantify, but then again, that seems to be the point.
Contact the author: Brett@TheDrive.com
According to https://popularresistance.org/who-will-hold-the-us-eu-nato-accountable-for-its-many-war-crimes/
WHO WILL HOLD THE US/EU/NATO
ACCOUNTABLE FOR ITS MANY WAR CRIMES?
- · By Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report.
- · April 18, 2022
- · Educate!
Above Photo: George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images.
U.S. Presidents And Their NATO Counterparts Have Committed War Crimes All Over The World.
But they exempt themselves from prosecution, and use corporate media to act as their personal advocates. Only the little people end up at the Hague.
The US State-Department-sponsored media apparatus is declaring that there were war crimes committed by Russian troops as they left the town of Bucha, just west of Kyiv. Soon After the Ukrainian army retook the town, there were published reports of bodies with bound hands and feet and of mass graves of civilians in international media, all with accompanying pictures and presumed satellite imagery of those bodies.
I am not going to say that Russian troops committed no atrocities. I do find the accusations dubious and opportunistic since the very same media outlets demanding war crimes charges and tribunals for Bucha have completely ignored the war crimes committed by Ukrainian forces in the 8-year civil war in the country. In 2016, for example, a report by the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) pointed to “summary executions and arbitrary killings” and observed “an apparent lack of motivation to investigate in some cases…especially when it concerns acts allegedly committed by Ukrainian forces.” The report does indicate that the pro-Russian “separatist forces” in the eastern Ukraine regions fighting against the pro-Western Kyiv government may also have committed atrocities against members of the Kyiv army – the army that started the civil war against the largely ethnic Russian Donbas, and Crimean regions – and pointed out that the use of rocket systems in urban areas could be “recognized” as war crimes.
But there were no demands from the US government or NATO or any of its allies for investigating any of these incidents in the past 8 years, especially not against the Kyiv army and the neo-Nazis in that army, when they aimed those rockets against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. And there never will be because, then the western media would have to acknowledge that there has been a civil war in Ukraine and the reasons for that war, which would force the recognition that the US/NATO instigated a coup in Ukraine in 2014.
And the fact that the State-Department sponsored media outlets are posting pictures of the gruesomeness of war to document these allegations of war crimes against Russia is interesting because they never published pictures of the Highway of Death in Iraq. You know about the Highway of Death, right? After Iraqi forces invaded and annexed Kuwait (and its oil reserves) in 1990, the UN Security Council, at the urging of the Western countries angry that they no longer had access to Kuwait’s oil, urged all necessary means to compel Iraqi forces to withdraw from Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm was launched on January 17, 1991 in response, which decimated the Iraqi forces. The Iraqis realized they had no choice but to retreat from Kuwait and were reported to have committed atrocities against Kuwaiti resistance fighters themselves. But during their retreat from Kuwait, beginning on the night of February 26, 1991, the US and its allies (France, England, and Canada) launched a combined ground, air, and sea assault on Highway 80 – the main artery out of Kuwait – targeting Iraqi vehicles as they left Kuwait along that highway. The Iraqi army was retreating. US coalition forces targeted those retreating vehicles and bombed the highway incessantly for 10 hours.
Hundreds of vehicles were destroyed and left burning on the road, creating a huge and deadly traffic jam. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers were trapped in the carnage and burned to death.
The international community was outraged, but not one war crime charge or tribunal convened against the perpetrators – the US and its coalition. But whenever the Highway of Hell is brought up, we’re reminded of Iraqi army atrocities with the quickness.
It’s probably easy to recount that Trump pardoned war criminals who were tried and convicted in military court for their crimes: Seven former platoon members have accused one of the men, Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, of routinely targeting women and children as a sniper in Iraq, as well as murdering a teenage captive in cold blood. Nicholas Slatten is a mercenary who is, so far, the only man convicted of any war crimes in Iraq, found guilty of committing a massacre of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007.
But let’s not act as if the war crimes committed by the US government and its NATO allies are limited to those two men and their actions. The whole reason Julian Assange is still in prison in England, and why Chelsea Manning was imprisoned by the US government, was because they released information exposing all the civilians the US military were killing in Afghanistan, including the horrific “Collateral Murder” video of two US helicopter gunships killing a dozen people, among them many civilians and two Reuters journalists in a 2007 strike.
Or how about the war crimes committed by the US/NATO allies in Libya. The “Report of the Independent Civil Society Fact-Finding Mission to Libya ” was published by The Independent Civil Society Mission to Libya, which was established by the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR) in cooperation with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). The report calls for the investigation of evidence that NATO targeted civilian sites, causing many deaths and injuries. Civilian facilities targeted by NATO bombs and missiles included schools, government buildings, at least one food warehouse, and private homes. The report presents evidence of systematic murder, torture, expulsion, and abuse of suspected Gaddafi loyalists by the NATO-backed “rebel” forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC). The NTC is the opposition group that seemed to declare itself the legitimate opposition to Quadaffi in Libya, saying that they spoke for all Libyans, even though the organic protests in opposition to Gaddafi which emerged in February 2011 were unorganized locally-based groups without any discernible connective structure. The NTC quickly became the darlings of Western forces, receiving training from NATO forces – those nebulous advisors that always seem to be present. The report describes the forced expulsion of the mostly Black inhabitants of Tawergha and the ongoing persecution of Black African migrant workers by forces allied to the NTC and its transitional government. Those are the slave markets, folks, that the NATO-Trained NTC perpetrated.
And let’s not forget that the US military is the largest polluter on the planet. That, as far as I am concerned, is also a war crime since the pollution the US military produces negatively affects the lives of millions of people around the world.
All of these are war crimes. All of these have been documented to have been committed by the US/NATO and their European allies. Should it be found that Russian troops have committed these heinous acts they were accused of in Bucha, they should absolutely be made accountable for them.
But who will prosecute or sanction or even hold accountable the US/EU/NATO in any of their war crimes? Already the UN has voted to remove Russia from the Human Rights Council in an unprecedented move, doing so without a shred of evidence that Russian forces have committed the alleged atrocities in Bucha. This was done at the demand of the US and its puppet Volodymyr Zelensky, who threatened that the UN should dissolve itself if it did not deal with Russia .
When the alleged human rights court of the world operates at the whim of the United States and its puppets and proxies, who will ever hold the United States accountable for its enumerable war crimes?
No one. And that in itself is a crime against humanity.”
Who will ever hold the United States, EU/NATO, and Japan accountable for their enumerable war crimes?
Apparently, no nation or international institution is powerful enough to hold them accountable for their too many war crimes. History will. There is ONE who most people do not know.
Rom 2:16, “on the day when, according to my Gospel, God will judge the secrets of mankind through
Christ Jesus.”
On that day, what day? The Day Jesus Christ returns to earth to be the King of kings and Lord of lords. Not only Jesus Christ will judge the known war crimes of the US/EU/NATO/Japan, God will judge the secrets of mankind. No one will escape the judgement of God. The day is coming.
Mal 4:1, “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of armies, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branches.”
Joe 2:1, “Blow a trumpet in Zion,
And sound an alarm on My holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
For the day of the LORD is coming;
Indeed, it is near.”
Mal 3:2, “But who can endure the Day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire, and like launderer’s soap.”
Mat 24:42, “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which Day your Lord is coming.”
Therefore and Hereby I warn the leaders and politicians of the US/EU/NATO/Japan to repent of their sins now before it is TOO LATE! American citizens, even with full knowledge of American secrets, they have no right, no authority, now power to do anything about it. This is the beauty of so-called American democracy.
V. KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
Gen 22:12, “He said, “Do not reach out your hand against the boy, and do not do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
God said He knew Abraham feared God, and did not withheld anything from God.
God also knows whether you fear God or not. I do not know any Western leader or politician who fears God. GOD KNOWS EVERYTHING.
I agree with Aiden Wilson Tozer who said, “God answers our prayers not because we are good, but because He is good.”
Psa 73:28, “But as for me, the nearness of God
is good for me; I have made the Lord GOD
my refuge, so that I may tell of all Your works.”
God is good to His children, so Christians may tell of all God’s works.
Exo 3:19, “But I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go, except under compulsion.”
From the beginning God knew that the Pharaoh of Egypt would not let the people of Israel go. God is the only ONE who knows the end of all things from the beginning. The Sovereign God sometimes has to use compulsion to force people to do what is right.
Exo 4:14, “Then the anger of the LORD burned
against Moses, and He said, “Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he speaks
fluently. And moreover, behold, he is coming out to meet you; when he sees you, he will be overjoyed.”
To be able to speak fluently is a gift. I met some funny Chinese at airports who spoke very rapidly to pretend they could speak English fluently who made themselves incomprehensible. Very few foreigners have learned how to speak English correctly.
For ten thousands who could speak, one can write. For a million who can write, only one who can think.
Deu 31:21, “Then it will come about, when many evils and troubles find them, that this song will testify before them as a witness (for it shall not be forgotten from the mouth of their descendants); for I know their inclination which they are developing today, before I bring them into the land which I swore.”
Inclination in Hebrew is yēṣer which means imagination; mind; framework; purpose; conception; thought; – which occurs 10 times in the Old Testament. God knew the inclination of the children of Israel before it developed. God knows your inclination before things happen. God knows the inclination of US, EU, NATO, GANG-7, UK, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, and Japan as they are developing and why they are causing evils and troubles in the world.
I agree with Horatius Bonar in saying, “It is not opinions that man needs: it is TRUTH. It is not theology; it is God. It is not religion: it is Christ. It is not literature and science; but the knowledge of the free love of God in the gift of His only-begotten Son.”
This is true knowledge.
Jos 22:22, “The Mighty One, God, the LORD, the Mighty One, God, the LORD! He knows, and may Israel itself know. If it was in rebellion, or if in an unfaithful act against the LORD, do not save us this day!”
The Lord knows the rebellion and unfaithful act of the West against the Lord.
Someone was so wrong to say, “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
You can observe all your life and still be a fool. For wisdom comes from above, from God.
2Ki 19:27, “But I know your sitting down, your going
out, your coming in, and your raging against Me.”
Raging in Hebrew is rāḡaz which means trembling; shaking; quaking; enraging; agitating; disturbing; – which occurs 41 times in the Old Testament.
God knows your sitting down, your going out, your coming in, and your agitating against Him. God knows everything about His enemies. God knows the West is raging in the world.
Euclid said, “The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.”
Job 28:23, “God understands its way, and He knows
its place.”
God understands the way of wisdom, and He know its place. The problem is mankind does not know what God knows. The world has no wisdom.
Psa 1:6, “For the LORD knows the way of the
righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
The US, EU, NATO, UK, GANG-7, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZELAND, Japan have gone the way of the wicked, the Lord knows, the way of the wicked will perish.
Psa 44:21, “Would God not find this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.”
American citizens could never find out the top secrets that American leaders and politicians’ plan and plot. I estimate there are less than 10 individuals in America who decide war, nuclear weapons, money, destiny and direction of America. God could and would find out all the secrets of nations, business and industry, doctors and hospitals, drug and insurance companies, the Washington-WallStreet-Hollywood, the military-industrial-security-complex. For God knows the secrets of the heart –my heart, your heart, everybody’s heart. God knows the US and Europe have extended their hands to a strange god -the evil trinity of money, power, and pleasure.
Psa 94:11, “The LORD knows human thoughts,
That they are mere breath.”
Human thoughts are as lighter than breath, and they do not matter.
It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” Someone was so stupid to say he is an atheist and he thanks God for it.
Psa 138:6, “For the LORD is exalted,
Yet He looks after the lowly,
But He knows the haughty from afar.”
The Lord knows the haughty from afar.
I can know the haughty just by looking.
Jer 29:11, “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
God’s plan for His children is for prosperity and not for disaster, to give them a future and a hope. The future belongs to Christians.
Jer 29:23, “because they acted foolishly in Israel, and committed adultery with their neighbors’ wives, and falsely spoke words in My name which I did not command them. I am He who knows, and a witness,” declares the LORD.’”
To commit adultery with your neighbors’ wives is to act foolishly. God is He who knows everything.
Nah 1:7, “The LORD is good,
A stronghold in the day of trouble,
And He knows those who take refuge in Him.”
Lord, you are my refuge from my childhood, do not forget me, my Stronghold.
Amo 5:12, “For I know your offenses are many and your sins are great, you who are hostile to the righteous and accept bribes, and turn away the poor
from justice at the gate.”
The offenses of world leaders are many and the sins of politicians are great. They practice injustice.
Luk 16:15, “And He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the sight of people, but God knows your hearts; because that which is highly esteemed among people is detestable in the
sight of God.”
Jesus said to the Pharisees, God knows your hearts; because that which is highly esteemed among people is detestable in the sight of God. Aren’t world leaders and politicians highly esteemed among people? Jesus says, they are detestable in the sight of God.
Jhn 5:42, “but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves.”
Jesus said to the Jews, “I know you, that you do have the love of God in yourselves.”
Do you think the White Christians have the love of God in themselves? God knows you.
Act 15:8, “And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us.”
Them refers to the Gentiles believers. God who knows the heart, testified to the Gentiles believers by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to Jewish believers. To God there is no distinction between Jewish believers and Gentile believers. God gave them both the the Holy Spirit.
Rom 8:27, “and He who searches the hearts knows
what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Christians pray and must pray according to the will of God. God searches the hearts of men.
1Co 2:11, “For who among people knows the
thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him? So also the thoughts
of God no one knows, except the Spirit of God.”
The Word of God reveals the thoughts of God.
1Co 3:20, “and again, “THE LORD KNOWS THE
THOUGHTS of the wise, THAT THEY ARE useless.”
The thoughts of Western leaders and politicians are deemed wise, but they are useless.
2Ti 2:19, “Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His;” and, “Everyone who names the name of the Lord is to keep away from wickedness.”
1Jo 3:20, “that if our heart condemns us, that God is greater than our heart, and He knows all things.”
Scientists and philosophers only know a little in their fields, God knows all things.
Rev 3:15-16, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
God knows many who are called Christians are neither cold nor hot; because they are lukewarm.
Rev 3:1, “To the angel of the church in Sardis write:
He who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, and yet you are dead.”
God also knows there are several churches under the names of their countries, they have the name of Christian churches, and yet they are dead, not only dead the are contrary to the Christian Faith.
According to
· Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology /
“Knowledge of God
The key biblical terms for knowledge assume a personal familiarity, even an intimate involvement, with the known object. Similarly, knowing God entails acknowledging him as Lord in obedience and praise. As a result, human knowledge of God is decisively shaped by the fall and God’s salvation.
Adam and Eve knew God. They acknowledged him as their Lord and obediently carried out their responsibilities as his stewards in creation. However, eating from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil decisively shaped humanity’s future ( Genesis 2:9 Genesis 2:17 ). The knowledge derived from eating this fruit is called godlike ( Genesis 3:5 Genesis 3:22 ), denoting a rebellious attempt to decide good and evil independently of the Creator.
The fall, however, did not destroy the availability of God’s knowledge. General revelation, God’s universal revelation, still exists. However, Scripture treats general revelation as ineffective in guiding humanity to God. Just as “the ox knows his master” ( Isa 1:3 ),humanity ought to recognize the Creator, but does not. Sin is the obstacle. Nothing in general revelation hints that God is gracious to the sinner. The sinner distorts the realities of general revelation, fabricating a suitable idea of God ( Rom 8:7-8 ; Php 3:19 ). This failure to know God issues in all other sin. Consequently, Scripture indicts humans who do not know the one and only God as morally perverse ( Isa 1:2-4 ; Hosea 4:1-2 ),rebellious sinners ( 1Sam 2:12 ; Jer 2:8 ),apostates ( Jer9:1-6 ; Hosea 4:6 ),idolaters ( Psalm 79:6 ; Hosea 2:13 ), and deceivers engrossed in an delusion ( John 1:5 John 1:10 ; 1 Col 1:18-2:16 ).After explicating these dynamics in Romans 1:18-2:1, Paul concludes that after the fall, general revelation only renders sinners inexcusable before God.
After the fall, saving knowledge of God is grounded solely in God’s decision to reveal himself to sinners ( Gen 18:18-19 ; Exod 33:17 ; Ps. 139 Jer 1:5 ; Eph 3:35 ). In these Acts of special revelation, God chooses a people for his purposes and guides them back to himself ( Amos 3:2 ).For sinners can come into fellowship with God only through God’s prior act, which objectively makes known his mercy, and subjectively makes us rightly related to Him.
Seeking God is dependent on the proper perspective. God has revealed himself through his prior Acts, and this revelation forms the proper historical context for understanding God in the present ( Deut 4:29-39 ; 1 Chron 16:11-12 ).Consequently, knowledge of God frequently depends on the witness of others to whom God has revealed himself ( Psalm44:1-4 ; Isa51:1-2 ). Only those who know God may seek him. In the New Testament, for example, the first step toward knowledge consists of receiving Jesus’ message ( John 7:16-17 ; 12:37-46 ; 20:30-31 ). Only those willing to believe that Jesus is doing the will of the Father receive the light enabling them to discern that he is the Son of God. On this path, followers are led to the full truth. Sinners, on the other hand, come to a knowledge of God through judgment and repentance. In repentance one recognizes the holy God who demands righteousness: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ( Psalm 25:14 ; 111:10 ; Prov 1:7 ; 2:5 ; 9:10 ).
Unlike other types of knowing, God engages and draws us to himself ( John 6:44 ). When we surrender to him and acknowledge him as Lord, God “shows us the way we should go” ( Psalm143:8 ; John 14:6 ).The biblical terms associated with knowing God, like trusting, acknowledging, and believing in God as Lord ( 1 Chron 28:9 ; Psalm 36:10 ; 79:6 ; Isa 43:10 ; Hosea 6:3 ), have a covenantal context. As a result, knowledge of God involves not simply propositions about God, but encountering and embracing God as Lord ( Psalms 25:4 Psalms 25:12 ; 119:104 ), so that God becomes the center of our desires, affections, and knowledge.
Paul reinforces these connections by linking the love, knowledge, and glory of Jesus Christ: Christians know this love, are established in love ( Eph 3:16-19 ),and perceive the glory of God in his face ( 2 Cor 4:6 ). Knowing Christ is a living relationship ( John 7:29 ; 10:14 ; 11:25 ) in which he abides in and transforms the believer into his life ( John 14:17 ; 17:3 ; 1 John 3:2 ).
If knowledge of God is the “path of our life, ” this must manifest itself in godly relationships to others ( Matt 7:17-20 ; John 10:27 ; 1 Cor 12:31-13:2 ; Php 4:9 ; Col 1:23 ). “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands” ( 1 John 2:3 ). Those who know God willingly practice his will and thus manifest his character by defending the cause of the poor ( Jer22:16 ; Hosea 6:6 ).In addition, the one following God’s path becomes a co-worker for God’s kingdom ( Isa 43:10-12 ).
Reflecting the messianic promise of knowledge ( Jer 24:7 ; 31:33-34 ),there is a finality to the Christian’s knowledge of God ( Matt 11:27 ; Rom 16:25-27 ; Eph 1:9-10 ; Col 1:26-28 ). In Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” ( Col 2:3 ). Moreover, in contrast to ordinary historical knowledge, this knowledge of God is self-authenticating. God himself personally confronts each individual in the Word ( 2 Cor 4:6 ; 1 John 2:27 ),foreshadowing the future when teaching is no longer necessary ( Jer 31:34 ).
On the other hand, the believer’s knowledge of God in Jesus Christ is only provisional. It is sufficient for recognizing and trusting the object of faith ( John 17:3 ; Rom 10:9 ): “I know my sheep and my sheep know me… My sheep listen to my voice” ( John 10:14 John 10:27 ).Without answering all our questions, it provides an adequate light for the journeyer in this darkened world ( 2Peter 1:19 ). But this knowledge is only a foretaste of knowing God “face to face” in the hereafter ( 1 Cor 13:12 ), when”the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts” ( 2 Peter 1:19 ).
Aldous Huxley said, “Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.”
The knowledge of science cannot enlighten the darkness of soul.
VI. WHAT I KNOW
There are things you and I should know above all. No one can replace you or substitute you. You should know whether you are saved or not, things pertaining your relationship with Jesus Christ, for time and eternity, and “pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”
The knowledge you have may not be true knowledge. Scientists and philosophy have much knowledge which may not be true knowledge.
It is sad that many do not have true knowledge. As an illustration, the moon is 238,855 miles away from the earth. However, the knowledge is irrelevant unless you are on a travel to the moon. Some years ago I needed to go to the Hospital the opposite of the Shanghai Library but I forgot the name of the street. I got on the wrong taxi because the driver did not know where the Shanghai Library is although there is only one Shanghai Library. How can one be a Shanghai taxi driver and not knowing the whereabouts of the Shanghai Library. You see that taxi drive did not have the true knowledge of how to get to the Shanghai Library, he questioned people repeatedly as he drove. It took a long time and wasted many unnecessary miles and money. If you want to go to Heaven and you did not know Jesus Christ is the Way, you do not have true knowledge of God. You can know the following only through the revelation of God.
The following are true knowledge which not I, not anybody can find out on his/her own. These knowledge are better than all the knowledge scientists and philosophers might have. Because they are not human knowledge, you can obtain it by revelation. What I know based on the Word of God surpassed all worldly knowledge, science and philosophy. This knowledge is more precious to me than anything else I know.
1. I know how to be justified by faith in Jesus Christ.
Job 9:2, “In truth I know that this is so;
but how can a person be in the right with God?”
Every person is wrong and has done wrong. Therefore it is impossible for any person to be in the right with God. How to get right with God?
Rom 9:31, “But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded.”
The people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. Why? No one can keep all the laws to get right with God.
Rom 9:32, “Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path.”
Rom 3:20, “because by the works of the Law none of mankind will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes knowledge of sin.”
The Law only gives you knowledge of sin. By the works of the Law none of mankind will be justified in the sight of God. The Law condemns sinners. The Law does not provide salvation.
Here is the good news.
Rom 3:24, “being justified as a gift by His grace
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, sinners can be justified as a gift of God’s grace. Salvation is a gift of God, no one deserves it. Since it is a gift, it must be grace which mankind is unmerited.
Rom 3:28, “For we maintain that a person is justified
by faith apart from works of the Law.”
Rom 4:2, “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about; but not before God.”
Rom 5:1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
Rom 5:9, “Much more then, having now been
justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”
Rom 8:30, “and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”
1Co 6:11, “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”
Gal 2:16, “nevertheless, knowing that a person is not justified by works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the Law; since by works of the Law no flesh will be justified.”
2. I know that the Lord is great.
Psa 135:5, “For I know that the LORD is great
And that our Lord is above all gods.”
For that reason, all religions are false and useless. There is only one true God, our Heavenly Father; and one true Lord, Jesus Christ our Savior.
Our Lord is above all gods. All religions are useless because they cannot save. There is no one under Heaven except Jesus Christ who can save sinners from their sins, save those who believe, who is able to save your souls. I know that the Lord is great from childhood to old age, and that our Lord is above all gods. I do not want other religion, and I do not want other gods.
I agree with Dwight L. Moody in saying, “Real true faith is man’s weakness leaning on God’s strength.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force – that thoughts rule the world.”
3. I know my Redeemer lives.
Job 19:25, “Yet as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last, He will take His stand on the earth.”
My Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who died for me on the cross and rose again from death by the power of God. I know my Redeemer lives for ever, and so I will live too.
Joseph Addison said, “Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.”
To know that your Redeemer lives truly and essentially raises you above another.
4. I know that God is for me.
Psa 56:9, “Then my enemies will turn back on the day when I call; this I know, that God is for me.”
For childhood to old age, I can testify that God is for me. It is wonderful to know that your Heavenly Father is watching over you. I have travelled to three continents safely.
Oswald Chambers was right in saying, “Never believe that the so-called random events of life are anything less than God’s appointed order. Be ready to discover His divine designs anywhere and everywhere.”
It is most wonderful to know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him.
Alexander the Great said, “I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.”
5. I know the judgments of God are righteous.
Psa 119:75, “I know, LORD, that Your judgments are righteous, and that You have afflicted me in faithfulness.”
The judgments of the Lord are righteous, even when He afflicted me in faithfulness. The good Lord has to discipline His children with affliction. It is good for Christians to be afflicted.
Aeschylus said, “Wisdom comes alone through suffering.”
Psa 119:67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray,
But now I keep Your Word.”
Psa 119:71, “It is good for me that I was afflicted,
So that I may learn Your statutes.”
Someone was so stupid to challenge the judgment of God for killing the peoples of Jericho and Ai.
6. Rejoice and do good.
Ecc 3:12, “I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime.”
No matter under what circumstances, Christians are to rejoice with the truth, rejoice in the Lord always;
and though we have not seen Him, we love Him, and though we do not see Him now, but believe in Him, we greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of
glory. And o the degree that we share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that at the revelation of His glory we may also rejoice and be overjoyed. At the same time, mend our ways, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and do good.
7. Everything God does will remain forever.
Ecc 3:14, “I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it. And God has so worked, that people will fear Him.”
God does not see as man sees, since man looks
at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. “We know that God does not listen to sinners; but if someone is God-fearing and does His will, He listens to him.
“The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
“Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does what is good is of God; the one who does what is evil has not seen God.”
“Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work.”
“Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work
of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
“And we know that God causes all things to work
together for good to those who love God, to those
who are called according to His purpose.”
“Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be firm, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus.”
“for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire
and to work for His good pleasure.”
“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord and not for people.”
“To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will consider you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power.”
“Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be an implement for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.”
“If you address as Father the One who impartially
judges according to each one’s work, conduct
yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth.”
8. It will go well for those who fear God.
Ecc 8:12, “Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and may lengthen his life, still I know that it will go well for those who fear God, who fear Him openly.”
“The conclusion, when everything has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person.”
“Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.”
“and he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the Heaven and the earth, and sea and springs of waters.”
9. The Lord God helps me.
Isa 50:7, “For the Lord GOD helps Me,
Therefore, I am not disgraced;
Therefore, I have made My face like flint,
And I know that I will not be ashamed.”
“Then my enemies will turn back on the day when I call; this I know, that God is for me.”
“The LORD is for me; I will not fear;
What can man do to me?”
“For as long as life is in me,
And the breath of God is in my nostrils,
My lips certainly will not speak unjustly,
Nor will my tongue mutter deceit.”
“My strength, I will sing praises to You;
For God is my refuge, the God who shows me favor.”
“But as for me, my prayer is to You, LORD, at an acceptable time; God, in the greatness of Your mercy,
answer me with Your saving truth.”
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer
I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
10. Good does not dwell in me.
Rom 7:18, “For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.”
Good does not dwell in mankind. There is nothing good in me that can justify me before God.
“Let us choose for ourselves what is right;
Let us understand among ourselves what is good.”
“I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord;
I have nothing good besides You.”
“Taste and see that the LORD is good;
How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!”
“Answer me, LORD, for Your mercy is good;
According to the greatness of Your compassion, turn to me.”
“For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
The LORD gives grace and glory;
He withholds no good thing from those who walk with integrity.”
11. I know how to live in prosperity or poverty.
Phl 4:12,”I know how to get along with little, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.”
Christians do not seek the good life in this world. There is no good life in this world. Even the richest and most powerful people in this world have troubles and tragedies. Paul lived for Christ, and did not seek his own benefit. One of the things that bothers me most are those who seek riches in preaching the gospel. If you have abilities and you see riches I do not blame you. I cannot stand the hypocrites who want to get rich in merchandising the Gospel. Preachers by nature are poor. Christians seek glory, honor, and immortality in the world to come. Apostle Paul said, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with
the glory that is to be revealed to us.” These are the people who have learned how to live. Christ lives in me, prosperity or poverty does not matter.
12. I know WHOM I have believed.
2Ti 1:12, “For this reason I also suffer these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to protect what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”
The most wonderful knowledge is the knowledge of the Lord. The knowledge of the world, its usefulness is temporary and confined only to this world. Your Wall Street knowledge is useless in the Kingdom of Heaven. Your medical and surgical knowledge is useless in the Kingdom of Heaven. Your proud expertise and skill have no relevancy in the Kingdom of Heaven. The knowledge of God is good for eternity. If I know nothing but the Lord Jesus Christ my God and Savior, that will be enough. If I know the world and own the world and do not know Jesus Christ, I will be lost forever. So there is nothing which can compare with the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord.
13. I fear no evil.
Psa 101:4, “A perverse heart shall leave me;
I will know no evil.”
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”
“The fear of the LORD leads to life,
So that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.”
My life is hidden with Christ in God, so I am untouched by evil.
NOTE: The precious and wonderful knowledge cited above not even scientist, surgeon, and philosophy may knowledge because they are revealed knowledge of God, not human knowledge.
Do you have true knowledge cited above? It is not possible for me, for anyone, to acquire the knowledge cited above. Because you can obtain the true knowledge only by revelation.
Eph 1:17, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”
For example, the article 12 cited above, I know WHOM I have believed.
2Ti 1:12, “For this reason I also suffer these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to protect what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”
Only those who have been saved can suffer for Jesus.
I agree with Helen Keller in saying, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
You may know every word of of this verse and vaguely understand its meanings, but if you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, regenerated and enlightened by the Spirit of the Lord, you really know nothing. If you do not know Jesus Christ personally, it is useless to say I know whom I have believed. Salvation is an intimate encounter and involvement between a sinner and the Savior. Sinner realizes the heavy burden of his sin and cannot save himself, and therefore comes to Jesus Christ with repentance and faith so that he might obtain the forgiveness of sins and the new life to participate in the nature of God. The sinner hates his sins and himself, unconditionally accepts the gift of God by grace to justify himself and the Holy Spirit to sanctify himself by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
Rom 5:9, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”
Rom 10:9. “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Tit 3:5, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we did in righteousness, but in accordance with His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.”
To repeat like a parrot has no meaning. The parrot learns to say, “I love you!” You would take it seriously. Salvation is not just words, it is an act accomplished by Jesus Christ as a grace of God and through faith in Jesus Christ. If you are not saved, you fool yourself and others by saying you are saved.
IN CONCLUSION
In summary I know the following:
1. I know the Holy Bible is the Word of God.
Rom 1:2-5, “which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles in behalf of His name.”
2. I know Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who loved me and died for me, rose again from the dead, ascended to the highest Heaven, and He is coming again to be the King of kings, and the Lord of lords.
Gal 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
3. I know my Redeemer lives.
Job 19:25, “Yet as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last, He will take His stand on the earth.”
My Redeemer who is Jesus Christ, once dead, lives forever; He will come again to be King of kings, and Lord of lords. He will rule in the Kingdom of Heaven for ever and ever.
4. I know whom I have believed, Lord Jesus Christ.
2Ti 1:12, “For this reason I also suffer these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to protect what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”
5. I know the Lord is coming again and take me.
Jhn 14:3, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you also will be.”
Phl 3:20-21, “For our citizenship is in Heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with His glorious body, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”
If you really want to be saved, you may.
Jhn 7:17, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is of God, or I am speaking from Myself.”
Jhn 7:37, “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”
Jhn 8:51, “Truly, truly I say to you, if anyone follows My Word, he will never see death.”
Jhn 10:9, “I AM the Door; if anyone enters
through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”
Jhn 12:26, “If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.
Jhn 12:47, “If anyone hears My teachings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.”
Jhn 14:23, “Jesus answered and said to him,
“If anyone loves Me, he will follow My Word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.”
Jhn 15:6, “If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”
Rom 8:9, “However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”
1Co 8:3, “but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.”
1Co 16:22, “If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Maranatha!”
Maranatha in Greek is maranatha which means our Lord comes or will come.
2Co 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
Rev 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”
Behold, Jesus Christ is standing at the door of your heart and knock. If you hear His voice and accept the Lord into your heart, you will be saved.
“If anyone” means all are welcome, no one is rejected. You can be anyone. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for all, for anyone.
I agree with Thomas Huxley in saying, “The great end of life is not knowledge but action.”
Now you hear the Word of God, you can act by coming to accept and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
You can repent of your sins and believe in Jesus Christ now.
WILLIE WONG THOUGHT
WILLIE WONG
AUGUST 8, 2025
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