Between 2022 and 2024, covid-19 killed roughly 100,000 Americans annually, new research by CDC scientists shows.

WASHINGTON — In a stunning instance of miscommunication between departments, ICE agents have deported Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro back to Venezuela just hours after he was abducted by the DEA. “ICE is simply doing its job and keeping America safe,” said a defensive Kristi Noem when reached for comment. “I don’t know how the liberal media is trying to spin this, but Maduro is a bad hombre. He is a dangerous man, has known ties to drug cartels, and has absolutely no legal right to be in the United States. Adios, buster!” The move has been met with strong criticism from the rest of Trump’s cabinet, most vocally from RFK, who reportedly had high hopes that Maduro could “Hook it up with some Molly.”

For the P&M; collection, I scour the web for the highest fidelity uploads of films, whether that be here on the Archive, elsewhere on the web, on bittorrent or...

Children across Australia will wake up on Wednesday with no access to their social media accounts under a world-first ban designed to shelter those under 16 from addictive algorithms, online predators, and digital bullies.

#### Ezekiel 37.1-10. You’re likely thinking, “How is an _Ezekiel_ passage a scripture for advent? Well, the passage is about resurrection, and resurrection takes place at the second coming of Christ Jesus. _Ezekiel_ is the first time the LORD explicitly shows a resurrection to someone—in the Valley of Dry Bones Story. The title of this article comes from the gospel song, “Dem Bones.” Most people have no idea it’s a spiritual, ’cause all they know is, “Ankle bone connected to the shin bone, shin bone connected to the knee bone…” They think it’s about anatomy. Or skeletons. Well anyway. The point of this passage actually _isn’t_ the literal resurrection of the dead. It’s the LORD trying to bring hope to ancient Israel. At this point in history, Israel had been conquered by Nabú-kudúrri-usúr 2 of the neo-Babylonian Empire (KJV “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon”), and deported to Tel Aviv, Iraq. (Tel Aviv, Israel is named after Ezekiel’s village.) Ezekiel and his family had been part of the first deportation, a decade before that destruction, so he wasn’t around to witness the temple get destroyed. He heard about it after the fact, from survivors. Nabú had installed Mattaniah ben Joash—whom Nabú renamed Zedekiah—to rule Jerusalem as his puppet king. Zedekiah proved insubordinate, and after 12 years Nabú had enough, and personally overthrew him. He invaded, besieged, and destroyed Jerusalem. His soldiers burnt the temple down. (The first temple was made of gold-plated cedar, which made it far easier to destroy than the stone temple the Romans knocked over.) Word got back to Tel Aviv. Up to that point, the refugees had hoped some day they’d go home. Didn’t know when; just knew Jerusalem was waiting for them. Now it wasn’t. No more homeland. No more city. No more daily worship for the LORD, so for priests like Ezekiel, no job to return to. They were gonna die in Iraq. If you’re an American who’s old enough to remember when the World Trade Center was destroyed in 2001, the destruction of the temple felt _way_ worse. For Israelis it was a blow to both their patriotism _and_ their religion. It didn’t only feel like their country was destroyed, but like they were now utterly cut off from the LORD. It felt like being damned. So, through Ezekiel, God sent ’em a message of hope. _Ezekiel_ 37.1-10 KWL 1The LORD’s hand took me, and by the LORD’s Spirit he brought me out: 2 _God_ put me in a valley full of bones. He made me walk round and round them. _“Look how very many, all over the surface of the valley!_ _Look, how very dry!”_ 3 _God_ told me, _“Son of Adam._ _Can these bones live?”_ I said, “Master LORD, _only_ you know.” 4 _God_ told me, _“Prophesy over these bones._ _Tell these dry bones, ‘Listen to the L ORD’s word.’ ”_ 5My Master LORD tells these bones, _“Look!_ _I put a spirit in you._Live.__ 6 _I put sinews on you. I grow muscle on you._ _I encase you in skin. I give you the Spirit._ _Live. Know I’m the L ORD.”_ 7I prophesied as instructed. At the sound of my prophecy, look: Shaking, and bone came together with bone. 8I saw—look!—sinews and flesh grew on them. Skin encased them. _But_ there was no Spirit in them. 9 _God_ told me, _“Prophesy to the Spirit._ _Prophesy, son of Adam!_ _Tell the Spirit this: ‘My Master L ORD says this._ _Spirit, come from the four winds!_ _Blow into these who were killed._ _They _will_ live.”_ 10I prophesied as instructed. The Spirit came into them. They live! They stand on their feet—a very, very great army. #### It’s not actually about _our_ resurrection. At about this point, Christians stop reading _Ezekiel_ and start preaching about how this passage foretells our resurrection from the dead. Because we _will_ rise from the dead at Jesus’s second coming. We’ll be dry bones and dust—or ashes, if we’ve been cremated or died in a fire. But God will reassemble us and we’ll live forever. And while that’s true, _Ezekiel_ is actually _not_ about us. It’s about the restoration of ancient Israel, which was fulfilled when Zerubabel ben Šealtiel brought exiles back to Jerusalem to reestablish it and rebuild the temple. As you can tell from the next batch of verses. Sometimes Christian preachers will actually read ’em to their audiences. But then they suffer a freakish bout of amnesia: They read it, then forget it, and _still_ interpret the passage to suit themselves. You remember how James wrote about a person who looks at his reflection, then immediately forgets it? Jm 1.22-25 You’d _think_ James was using hyperbole, but that’s precisely how some preachers behave with the bible. They read it, then it blinks out of their brains, and they preach their own agenda. Now let’s read it and _actually_ look at it. _Ezekiel_ 37.11-14 KWL 11 _God_ told me, _“Son of Adam,_ _these bones are the whole house of Israel._ _Look, they say, ‘Our bones are dry._ _Our hope is dead. We’re cut off.’_ 12 _So prophesy! Tell them this:_ _‘My Master L ORD says this.’_ _Look, I’m opening your tombs._ _I’m taking you out of your tombs, my people._ _I bring you to the _very_ ground of Israel._ 13 _You’ll know I’m the L ORD when I open your tombs._ _When I bring you out of your tombs, my people,_ 14 __I’ll_ put my Spirit in you. Live._ __I’ll_ put you on the ground, and you’ll know I’m the LORD._ _I said it; I’ll do it,”_ promises the LORD. The Jews were calling themselves dead. God reminded them he _raises_ the dead. Losing Jerusalem and the temple felt like the end of the world. Obviously it wasn’t. And the _real_ end of the world is actually the beginning of the _next_ world, so God’s followers _still_ have no reason to despair. That is, unless we’ve only put our hope in earthly things, like homelands, temples, wealth, heritage, good reputation, family, jobs, _anything_ with an expiration date. Our hope needs to be in God alone. ’Cause everything ends. But God raises the dead. And yeah, it took a few decades after Ezekiel’s prophecy, but God _did_ let his people return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. You _should_ know this from the fact Jesus went to temple. (You _do_ read your bible, right?) Anyway, because God resurrected the dead in this vision in _Ezekiel_ , Pharisees realized he’s gonna raise the dead at the end of the world, and made it part of their End Times teachings. Sadducees, who didn’t consider _Ezekiel_ to be bible, didn’t believe in resurrection either—even though the LORD had told Moses and the Hebrews, “I kill and make alive” Dt 32.39 in the books they _did_ consider bible. God can create humans from dust, Ge 2.7 and God can re-create humans from the dust we decayed into. Jesus’s own resurrection demonstrates how Pharisees weren’t wrong about resurrection. He will raise us at the End, same as he raised Jesus. Same as he raised those folks in Ezekiel’s vision. It’ll happen. #### Illegitimately borrowing the story. But like I said, people gotta borrow this story and make it about ourselves, and many a preacher will do just that. Wrongly. Because unless the Holy Spirit personally tells us, “I’m gonna do for you as I showed Ezekiel I can do for dry bones,” we have no basis for claiming this story for our personal circumstances. No Christian does. Imagine a Christian wants to have a kid, reads in _Genesis_ about how the LORD promised Abraham a kid, and now says, “See, God tells _me_ , through these verses, _I’m_ gonna have a kid.” Or if a Christian reads about how the LORD told Solomon he’d make him rich, and says, “See, God tells _me_ he’s gonna make me richer than every other king.” Or if I took God’s message to Joseph that his son would save his people from their sins, and start claiming, “See, God tells _me_ my son’s gonna be Messiah.” It’s just that stupid. But Christians commit this kind of stupidity on a regular basis. And because they do it, we get the idea _we_ can do it. _We_ can take prophecies which don’t belong to us, and claim ’em for ourselves. We’re even _taught_ this by various Christians: If you _don’t_ carjack a prophecy, it means you lack faith. You just gotta believe harder. Yeah, these people are only setting themselves up for failure and grave disappointment. ’Cause God is under no obligation at all to follow through with what they’re claiming for themselves. They’ll never prosper in the way they expect. The result is they’ll wind up doing one of these three things: > **SPIN.** When the prophecy doesn’t come true for them, they’ll stretch its meaning till it fits their circumstances. If they expect God will give them a child and he doesn’t, they’ll claim the prophecy actually meant _spiritual_ children, and the kids in Sunday School count as their own. If they expect God’ll give them money and he doesn’t, they’ll claim he meant _spiritually_ wealthy—or that God makes them comfortable despite their monthly struggle to keep ahead of their bills. The Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed Jesus’s second coming would happen in 1914, and when it didn’t they claimed they _really_ meant he took on a new heavenly position that year. Not that anything on earth really changed any. Or at all. > > Such people will claim, “God has fulfilled his every promise to me!” And they’re right; he has; he fulfilled his _legitimate_ promises to them. But he didn’t fulfill any of his _imaginary_ promises to them, and they’re totally lying to themselves about _that_. > > It may be misplaced faith. But their denial is actually damaging _all_ their faith, both misplaced _and_ well-placed. And when other Christians realize they’re claiming God fulfilled stuff when he didn’t really, it’s gonna ding _their_ faith. (As for people who don’t believe in prophecy and God’s promises, it’s just gonna give them something more to mock.) > > **STAGGER.** When the prophecy doesn’t come true for them, they’ll back up, look at what they’ve done, and realize they were wrong. “Wait: That verse wasn’t for _me_. Well, don’t I feel silly.” > > Which is great! But the reason I say they’re staggering, is because most of them don’t learn their lesson and never do this again. They totally do it again. Many times. Hey, everybody _else_ they know is doing it. > > I once had a pastor who’d regularly claim God wanted him to do some huge project… only for him to backtrack a few years later because nothing would come of it. I gotta give him props for admitting _he_ got God wrong. Problem is, in the beginning, he was so sure he was right, he’d nudge people out of leadership—even the church—because he was so insistent the project was God’s will, and _must_ go through. And he never _did_ learn his lesson: Get confirmation before you run amok with “God’s plan.” (And get it from _real_ prophets, not yes-men.) > > **QUIT.** Worst-case scenario: Their faith not only takes a massive hit, but they give up altogether. They quit God. > > After all, the only reason they glommed onto these promises, and insisted God was gonna come through for them, was because they wanted the stuff in those promises. They didn’t want _God_ so much; just the stuff. They wanted God to grant them a worry-free life, riches, good health, the usual. God promises none of those things. Mammon will, but it can’t raise the dead, y’know. This is why we gotta steer people away from faith-damaging misinterpretations of out-of-context scriptures. Our takeaway from Ezekiel’s vision is to remember: God _can_ restore anything. You may think it’s dead and gone forever, but if God gets involved, he can always bring it back. The catch is, he’s gotta _say_ he’s bringing it back, like he told Ezekiel and the Israelis he was bringing their nation back. If he doesn’t, we can’t hold him to the stuff he never promised.

Four Sundays before Christmas, the advent season begins with Advent Sunday. That’d be today, 30 November 2025. (Next year it’ll be 29 November. It moves.) Our word _advent_ comes from the Latin _advenire_ , “come to [someplace].” Who’s coming to where? That’d be Jesus, formally coming to earth. We’re not talking about the frequent appearances he makes here and there to various Christians and pre-Christians. It refers to the two _formal_ appearances: 1. His first coming, when he was born in the year 7BC, which is what we celebrate with Christmas. 2. His second coming, when he takes possession of his kingdom. Hasn’t happened yet. _Maybe_ it’ll happen within our lifetimes. Maybe not. Many American Evangelicals have lost sight of the advent tradition, figuring it’s only a Roman Catholic thing—as if American Catholics haven’t _likewise_ lost sight of this tradition. In the United States we’ve permitted popular culture to define the Christmas season for us. And of course popular culture much prefers Mammonism. Gotta buy stuff for Christmas! Gotta boost the retail economy. How much did people spend on Black Friday weekend? How early did you put up your Christmas lights and inflatables? Gotta buy seasonal Christmas food and drinks, and go to Christmas parties and give Christmas gifts, and fly home for Christmas to be with family, or at least send them expensive gift cards so _they_ can go shopping. Popular culture reduces the advent season to advent calendars: Those 25-day calendars which count down from 1 December (regardless of when Advent Sunday actually starts). Every day you get a little piece of chocolate-flavored shortening, unless you bought the calendars made with the _good_ chocolate, with the cacao beans hand-picked by slave labor. Or bought one of those advent calendars with different treats—like Lego minifigures, or a different-flavored coffee pod each day (admittedly I really like this one), or a daily bottle of wine— It actually turns out these bottles are table markers, but this photo’s been making the rounds of the internet described as an advent calendar. Still, you can easily find wine advent calendars on almost every wine-seller’s website. Pinterest —which, if you drink it all by yourself, means you’re an alcoholic. These 25-day calendars are pretty much the only “advent” most American Christians know about. And on the years where Advent Sunday falls in November, they’ve _no idea_ they’ve been shortchanged. As for the rest of the Christmas season: Nobody’s actually getting ready for Jesus. We’re getting ready for _Christmas_. We’re getting ready for pageants and parties and gift-giving. Wrong focus and attitude—meaning more humbug and hypocrisy, more Santa Claus and reindeer and snowmen somehow brought to life _without_ the aid of evil spirits. And less Jesus and good fruit and hope. You see the problem. It’s why so many _Christians_ dislike Christmas. Too much fake sentiment. Too much “magic.” Too many feigned happy smiles when really they _don’t_ like what so much of the “season” is about. So lemme recommend an alternative: Let’s skip the Christmas season, and focus on the advent season. Let’s look to Jesus. He’s coming back, y’know. Could return at any time. #### The advent candles. Yep, there are some traditional advent practices. Not many, so there’s lots of room for us to improvise if we wanna. First of all there’s the color scheme: Purple. _Not_ red and green. I like red and green too, but if we’re doing advent, the traditional liturgical color is purple. ’Cause Jesus is our king, and ancient kings wore purple. (Ancient purple dye was crazy expensive, so usually it was only the king who could afford it. Although some of them banned other people from wearing it too; it was _their_ color.) So if you’re not a big fan of red and green, that’s okay. Hope you like purple! Then there’s the advent wreath. That’s a relatively new tradition, started by Lutherans in the 1600s. (Yep, it’s _not_ a Catholic thing. Although today’s Catholics do advent wreaths too.) Ancient Greek and Roman kings wore olive-leaf wreaths around their heads, like Olympic athletes; yep, that’s the “crown” Jesus is gonna give his people when he returns. Rv 2.10 That’s the στέφανος/_stéfanos_ , “crown,” you see in the New Testament. _That’s_ what all the Christmas wreaths are about. An advent wreath lies flat on a table, and has four candles in it, which represent the four Sundays before Christmas. Although there was this one German who made a _huge_ wreath, put six little candles inbetween each of the four candles, and lit a new candle for each day before Christmas. That’s probably way too many candles, and your local fire department would discourage such behavior unless they’re electric candles. Originally the candles were white, but lately they’ve been purple or pink. Really they can be any color—white, purple, pink, red, blue, striped like candy canes, whatever. Often there’s a fifth, a big white one, put in the center of the wreath; sometimes it’s used to light the others, or it represents Jesus and is only lit on Christmas. Like I said, the four candles represent the four Sundays. But Christians have decided that’s just not good enough, so we’ve attached all sorts of _other_ special meanings to them. I’ve heard preachers claim, “So here’s what each of the candles mean,” and preach whole sermons on “their historical meaning.” And _none of these “historical meanings” are true_. Seriously. The Lutherans never formally declared the candles have any special meanings. None of the meanings we’ve come up with since, are consistent across the churches. Here are some of the meanings people _claim_ for the candles: * Hope, peace, joy, love. * Hope, preparation, joy, love. (If you’re a bigger fan of the flurry of preparation than peace, I guess.) * Promise, prophecy, peace, adoration. * Hope of the people, the prophets, John the baptist, Jesus’s mother Mary. * Prophecy, the journey to Bethlehem, shepherds visiting, angels rejoicing. * Expectation, hope, joy, purity. * Three purple candles for penitence, one pink one for joy. (For those who figure we oughta be more penitent.) * Prophecy, faith, joy, peace. * Death, judgment, heaven, hell. (The dark Christian advent, I suppose.) In the Orthodox Church, advent actually starts _six_ weeks before Christmas, ’cause they fast before Christmas same as they do before Easter. It’s like a Christmas version of Lent. So when they do advent wreaths, they have six candles for the six Sundays. Again, the meanings of the six candles vary. But one interpretation I’ve heard is faith, hope, love, peace, repentance, communion. More candles means they can cover more bases. I find most of the advent-wreath resources point to that first list—hope, peace, joy, and love. Unless you’re Catholic; then it’s the one with Jesus’s mom in it, because Catholics _love_ Mary. Wouldn’t be Catholic without Mary. Custom is to light another candle each Sunday, then have some sort of advent devotional time. Sometimes based on the candle’s theme—whatever theme you’ve assigned it—but sometimes it’s just generically on the idea of Jesus’s first or second advent. There are two additional kinds of advent candles: 1. There’s the christingle, which is usually a candle shoved into an orange. Sometimes it’s decorated, sometimes not. It’s a Protestant custom, started by Moravians in the 1700s. It’s meant to represent Jesus as the light of the world. The candle represents the light, the orange represents the world, and the other decorations represent… well, our very human need to overdo things, I guess. 2. And there’s the single advent candle, which is a candle marked with the days of 1 December to 25 December. Each day you burn it down to the next day… then probably fetch your chocolate from the commercial advent calendar. I _would_ suggest drinking your advent-calendar wine too, but y’might get too tipsy, forget to put out the advent candle, and let it burn through multiple days. For those who are nervous about fire, there are always electric and glowstick alternatives. #### Get ready for the Lord! Of course hewing too legalistically to advent-wreath themes (especially since there’s no actual standard!), or ditching ’em in favor of commercial alternatives, are an irritating way to prep for Christmas. The point of advent is to be the _antidote_ to all the rampant materialism. We’re to focus on Jesus! Not social custom. Not even gift-giving. Not all the stuff we’re expected to do every single year. _Jesus._ We claim he’s the reason for the season; now it’s time to take this saying seriously, instead of using it as an excuse to browbeat clerks into telling us “Merry Christmas” like we prefer. Part of getting ready for Jesus’s second advent is to _stop_ being this sort of argumentative, frenzied, self-focused consumer. Start behaving like he’s coming back! ’Cause he is. Maybe not for the whole world just yet; he’s still trying to save everybody. But at some point _you’re_ gonna die. As will I. As will everyone. So he’s coming for _you personally_. Are you ready? _Luke_ 12.35-48 GNT 35 _“Be ready for whatever comes, dressed for action and with your lamps lit, 36like servants who are waiting for their master to come back from a wedding feast. When he comes and knocks, they will open the door for him at once. 37How happy are those servants whose master finds them awake and ready when he returns! I tell you, he will take off his coat, have them sit down, and will wait on them. 38How happy they are if he finds them ready, even if he should come at midnight or even later! 39And you can be sure that if the owner of a house knew the time when the thief would come, he would not let the thief break into his house. 40And you, too, must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you are not expecting him.”_ 41Peter said, “Lord, does this parable apply to us, or do you mean it for everyone?” 42The Lord answered, _“Who, then, is the faithful and wise servant? He is the one that his master will put in charge, to run the household and give the other servants their share of the food at the proper time. 43How happy that servant is if his master finds him doing this when he comes home! 44Indeed, I tell you, the master will put that servant in charge of all his property. 45But if that servant says to himself that his master is taking a long time to come back and if he begins to beat the other servants, both the men and the women, and eats and drinks and gets drunk, 46then the master will come back one day when the servant does not expect him and at a time he does not know. The master will cut him in pieces and make him share the fate of the disobedient._ 47 _“The servant who knows what his master wants him to do, but does not get himself ready and do it, will be punished with a heavy whipping. 48But the servant who does not know what his master wants, and yet does something for which he deserves a whipping, will be punished with a light whipping. Much is required from the person to whom much is given; much more is required from the person to whom much more is given.”_ Do you know what our master expects of you? ’Cause he’s coming when we won’t expect.