What's good about "Good Friday"?

Death threat illustrates need for Good Friday

By John Twigg

So it's Good Friday eh, but what's "good" about it? It seems it brings a lot of distress.

The first email message I received this morning was from my online friend Laila Yuile replying to my overnight query about her well-being after her website got hacked yesterday, but her news was bad: she's now become the subject of a death threat!

Though the threat was made openly on Twitter, it is still serious and thus is being investigated by the RCMP who were already looking into the hack of her website, which could cause the loss of all of Yuile's work to date, and now her life is at stake too.

I have never met Laila, and I've talked with her by phone only once or maybe twice, but over the last few years we have traded more than a few emails and become somewhat fellow-travellers with our online blogs and other independent journalism in #bcpoli and B.C. public affairs in which we are fellow travellers in an unformed club of about two dozen independent professional practitioners, with Laila being one of the most prominent with her former stint as a columnist for the Vancouver street paper 24 hours and with her long-running online commentaries in which she regularly questioned authority on a range of issues and especially regarding the too-frequent cost over-runs and design deficiencies in billion-dollar public-sector construction projects, far too many of which errors end up being paid for by B.C. taxpayers.

So I not only like and respect Laila Yuile's work, I also like and admire her personally too because she's a strong and brave soul working hard to make a positive difference in an increasingly-troubled world. But now all her work may have been wiped out and she personally could be next!

Is Canada part of the Third World now? In which Big Money interests run roughshod over citizen and community interests and make moves regardless of laws in place in order to further enrich themselves and entrench their hegemonies?

Which is what Good Friday is supposed to be all about: getting rid of all the corruption in the world so we can have a fair chance to build a new and better society.

Or as Premier Christy Clark worded it in a message sent out as a news release this morning:

"This weekend, Christians throughout B.C. and the world will celebrate 
Easter alongside their friends, family, and congregations.

"For many, Easter is a time to commemorate and reflect on the 
crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians believe God 
sent His only son to Earth to redeem humanity's sins, but also to 
deliver a message of hope - that acts of kindness and love have the 
power to make the world a better place.

"No matter what your personal beliefs or faith may be, Easter weekend 
is an opportunity to spend more time with friends and loved ones.

"I wish all British Columbians a happy Easter Weekend."

Indeed, and though personally I observe Passover and thus I work on Good Fridays and Easters I still respect why people like Premier Clark and hundreds of millions of others take a pause to give thanks to God and Jesus for delivering a plan by which humanity can be saved and society restructured and everyone who ever lived be given a second chance - thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus - to learn to live according to God's original intentions and instructions and thereby gain immortality.

Easter vs. Passover explained

And by the way that practise of observing Passover instead of Easter is done not only by Jews but also by millions of other good Christians and of course yes it IS Bible-based too: see Luke 21:17-20 in which Jesus said "this do in remembrance of me" and thereby He changed the sacrifice of a lamb in the original Passover (Exodus 12) to the sharing of wine and bread symbolic of Jesus's sacrifice of his blood and body as a substitute atonement for the sins of all mankind (or at least for those who choose to accept His sacrifice).

But I also understand why so many more Christians now believe it is acceptable to re-interpret that instruction into the quite different symbology that blended into the Christian church about 190 AD and was formalized by the Roman Catholic Church after the Council of Nicea in 325 AD even though its origins trace back to a pagan Babylonian spring festival of fertility. (There are many sources for that history, a very detailed one of which can be found here .)

The rationale for the liberalization of such instructions is found in scriptures such as Romans 7:6 that says "...now we are delivered from the law, that being dead (and now) we should serve in the newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter."

That however was about how the New Testament modified the Old Testament and it was not about giving humans a right to further modify what Jesus instructed, though that IS what has happened.

Similarly there is Romans 8:2 which says "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." And Romans 8:14 "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." - which suggests that good intent is more important than following rituals, but again it does not say we have gained the right to also change what Jesus taught.

And finally (at least for this short exegesis) there is Colossians 2 in which there is a debate between literalism versus liberalism which apparently concludes in verse 16 that we should not let any man judge us in matters of food, drink, holy days, sabbath days, equinoxes and lunar days, but which actually concludes in verse 17 which (in the KJV) contains a bad mistranslation: " ... but the body is of Christ" in which the word "is" has been erroneously added and when it is removed the meaning becomes clear: that matters such as holy days (i.e. holidays) should be decided only by the body of Christ, i.e. the church, i.e. the church leaders/elders.

World problems worsening

Anyway, the key point is that for better or worse the vast majority of Christians and thus many other people around the world today are observing Good Friday as a key part of the Easter holidays, and the key gist of that holiday is to give thanks for Jesus sacrificing Himself for humanity's sake and for God and Jesus having a plan in which humanity will be saved from exterminating itself due to its ever-mounting wars and other evils.

But meanwhile we are beset by worsening evils, some of which are striking rather too close to home and some of which - such as the latest bombings in Belgium - echo of Bible prophecies that say terrorism and wars will be worldwide shortly before the return of Jesus (Matthew 24:37 cites Genesis 6:11; also Leviticus 26:16 in which God threatens to send terrorists against sinful nations, and Daniel 11, amongst many others.)

Sadly we also are beset by widespread incompetence and corruption in governments and economies all around the world, most especially now in the United States in which the very corrupt hegemony of Big Money is so desperate to maintain control of the government and its global system of central banks that it is intervening directly in the U.S. Presidential election by backing Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton against socialist candidate Bernie Sanders while Republican wild card candidate Donald Trump muddies the waters with over-the-top rhetoric attacking the establishment while himself being part of it.

Bombs in Belgium linked to 9/11

And the second email message I got this morning also was quite disturbing; it was a new posting from David Hawkins of http://www.AbelDanger.net in which they allege that the U.K.-based public service contracting giant Serco may have been behind the bombings in Belgium:

"Abel Danger (AD) alleges that Serco’s European External Action Service coordinated the 22 March 2016 bomb attacks in Brussels as part of the UK's Brexit protection racket where EU leaders will be forced to outsource EU security to Serco and the UK Cabinet Office even if British voters decide to leave the EU."

It's bad enough that radical Muslims bent on exporting their theology are now engaging in war and terrorist acts in various countries all around the world but the notion that some or much of that is being aided by Western capitalist interests is even more troubling, yet it has become obvious that there were some such false-flag interests behind the planning and execution of the massive 9/11 attack and several other subsequent ones, such as the 7/7 bombing of the London subway.

Though it has not yet been widely reported by the mainstream media, the Belgium bomb nearest the offices of the European Union went off at exactly 9:11 a.m. local time, which probably was some kind of psychological warfare message as well as a sweet payoff for someone betting on it in the spot-fixing betting games alleged by Abel Danger.  

Canadian budget needs second look

Here in Canada we have a new government that seems to have a lot of good intentions but deeper inspections of its new budget raise a lot of questions not only about a rising string of deficit budgets but also about the deliverability on rising expectations, and maybe a counterproductive attack on high-income taxpayers. We'll see.

The next issue of The Daily Twigg hopefully will take a second look at the new Canadian budget, which had so many tweaks in it that it demands a deeper analysis, such as giving a billion-dollar bailout to Bombardier.

Certainly the new style and tone of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are still looking good but some of the substance or lack thereof may be questionable.

B.C. faces corruption too

And here in B.C. we see that the Christy Clark regime is doing a great job of covering up the messes and scandals left by former Liberal Party premier Gordon Campbell, who departed before he was ousted for similar corruption and incompetence (e.g. the big project over-runs exposed by Yuile and others) and so was rewarded with the position as Canada's High Commissioner in London where he probably is now yet another minion servant of the old elite big money and the global cabal of central bankers.

Still the link between donations to the B.C. Liberal Party and subsequent awards of government contracts to donors is becoming increasingly clear as in this recent column by Dermod Travis of Integrity B.C., which I reprinted in this blog recently, and my Tweet saying Travis deserves a Webster Award [a B.C. journalism thing] for it was widely retweeted including by @RealLailaYuile including a link to a facebook posting of it by fellow independent blogger Norm Farrell of http://northerninsights.blogspot.ca/ .

Even B.C. NDP leader John Horgan seems to be belatedly joining the fray by posting a Tweet from @jjhorgan alleging that the Clark government has been lax in failing to clamp down on extensive money-laundering in B.C. real estate:

‏"Christy Clark's govt ignores money laundering from same industries that provide them billions in revenue. http://bit.ly/1UlgnFB  #bcpoli "

So while British Columbia thankfully is still a rare outpost of sanity, peace and sort-of-okay government, it's also not immune to corruption and crime and yes even some terrorism (such as the attempted bombing of the B.C. Legislature on Canada Day 2013 by John Nuttall, a recovering drug addict, simpleton and novice Muslim who was both aided and then thwarted by agents of the RCMP and possibly Canada's CSIS).

Planet X threatens Earth?

What is the world coming to? Well in recent days a friend introduced me to the Planet X scare, in which a giant rogue planet named Nibiru is believed to be on a collision course with Earth as early as April or May this year or no later than next year, and there are theories that that was spoken of in the Third Secret of Fatima. But supposedly it is part of God's plan, which I for one highly doubt.

Nonetheless a Google search will turn up oodles of theories about extraterrestrial races using dozens of names and whether you like it or not we must admit that the Bible also speaks of things like "war in space" in Daniel 10:12-14 and aliens or giants breeding with the daughters of men in Genesis 6:4 so the concept of alien life forms wanting to harm us should not be as strange as it now seems to most people.

But an invisible planet suddenly wiping out Earth? No. No way.

Exegesis offers clues to time of Second Coming

I can say that because it has become apparent to me after about 40 years of intensive Bible studies that a great many Bible prophecies have already come true exactly as predicted (e.g. Isaiah 7:14 predicting the coming of Jesus and Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 predicting his death, and Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream accurately predicting a series of world empires in Daniel 2, and the return of the Jews and other Israelites to the land of Israel in Isaiah 11, Jeremiah 16:15, Ezekiel 20, 36 and 37, and Zechariah 12, 13 and 14).

So the unerring record of those prophecies makes me confident that the remaining unfulfilled ones will come true soon too, notably the rebuilding of the Jewish synagogue in Jerusalem which is a necessary precursor to the prophesied war of Armageddon (in Daniel, Revelation and several other books).

How can the future King of the North occupy the temple as in Dan. 11:31 and commit the abomination of desolation spoken of by Jesus the Prophet in Matthew 24:15 unless it is first re-built? The plans for it exist, and the site for it is sitting vacant only a stone's throw away from the Islamic Dome of the Rock, but the political will is not yet in place.

The sudden rebirth of the nation of Israel, described as God's fig tree in Matthew 24:32 and several other places, happened suddenly in 1948 and right on the schedule in Daniel 9, for example, so it should follow that the rest of prophecy will be fulfilled on schedule too. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by hostile armies but occupied by a supposedly friendly foreign army you can know the return of Jesus is near.

And to make a long story short, and though no man knows the day or hour, I have come to believe that the return of Jesus will happen 2,000 years or two prophetic days after either the baptism or crucifixion of Jesus Yeshua in about 32 AD, plus or minus about 4 years (for Herod's pogrom).

Yes previous predictions by others of the return of Jesus have been quite wrong but I'm not daunted by that because it's so increasingly obvious now that the universe is unfolding exactly as it should and world affairs are unravelling exactly as warned of and predicted in The Holy Bible, so He will come on time and thereby save mankind from annihilating itself.

God has given all of us free will so you are not required to agree with me on that or anything but if you do wish to earn an eternal soul then you probably do need to heed the instructions for attitudes towards others and towards God that are provided in detail in the Bible, though they do require some work to discern.

Meanwhile, have a Happy Easter, and if you decide to do Passover too, just to be safe, its date this year is on April 22.