By Bob Barney

Matthew 6:9-13- TPT Bible Version...

Our Father in heaven,
    may your name be kept holy.
¹⁰ May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
    as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us today the food we need,
¹² and forgive us our sins,
    as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
¹³ And don’t let us yield to temptation,
    but rescue us from the evil one.

This is the second installment on an article I wrote about the misconception that many have about forgiving others.   It seems that most think that Christ told us to forgive what evil things people do to OTHER PEOPLE.  He did not.  Check the Lord's Prayer (above again) and notice that big "US" in it.   He did not say others!  Jesus did not say, "as we have forgiven those who sin against them, or him, or her.   We are to forgive those who sin against us!

Consider the following examples:

Barbara Bush revealed how she fell into a deep depression and considered suicide while her husband George had a decade-long affair with a younger aide, explosive new biography reveals.... Read More

Former First Lady and family matriarch Barbara Bush was once described as 'a silver-haired pearl draped howitzer'. But a combination of blows in her life in the mid-seventies sent her spiraling into a depression that almost led to her taking her own life. Among the causes of her despair was a woman who would stay by her husband George's side for more than 12 years. Her name was Jennifer Fitzgerald (circled in main, sitting beside George and in front of Barbara in 1975) and she was his aide – and according to some, his mistress, reveals Susan Page, author of The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty out next Tuesday. When George was assigned to head the embattled CIA in 1975, Barbara 'fell into darkness'. 'Barbara Bush found herself falling into the worst personal crisis she had faced since daughter Robin had died more than two decades earlier,' writes Page. 'Overwhelmed by pain and loneliness, she contemplated suicide. She would pull over to the side of the road until the impulse to plow into a tree or drive into the path of an oncoming car had passed'. Barbara is pictured with George in 1987, bottom left, and in 1978, top right. 

Stark begins by quite vividly painting a picture of Pope Urban II's speech in 1095, in a French meadow, in which he read from a desperate letter sent by the emperor of Byzantium, who was rightly concerned about the war-like Seljuk Turks – an army within 100 miles of Constantinople. Among other things, the torturing of Christians was becoming a battle tactic of the Muslims. I think this would sound familiar, right now, to Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem.

From there, Stark presents an engrossing tale of the myths and facts of the Crusades. For example, he says clearly that despite what some other historians have said, the Crusader armies were not made up of "the dregs of society" due to terrible economic conditions. Actually, says Stark, there was a period of economic growth in Europe during this time, and not only nobility funded the military excursions, but so did commoners.

Stark also addresses, in skillful fashion, the nuance of this sweeping story. Describing the brutality of a small contingent of Crusaders – "German knights" – who were bent on murdering Jews they found along the way, the bishop of Speyer sheltered that town's Jews (all but 12, who failed to heed warnings and were butchered), illustrating that down through history, while Christendom has a stained record with the Jews, many Christians have come to the aid of the Jews.

It is the encounters that the Crusaders had with Muslims hordes, however, that are most epic (a side-note for the immature reader: Several of the leaders of the Crusades had names that sounded like something straight out of Saturday Night Live: Walter the Penniless, Emicho of Leisingen and so forth).

Recounting an engagement near Tiberias between Crusader forces and the infamous Saladin, Stark adds rich texture to "God's Battalions":

"Then, as the sun rose and with the wind at their backs, Saladin's forces set fire to large collections of brush, and the smoke made it difficult for the Christians to keep track of their units," Stark writes. Carnage then ensued, and, "All of the Templars and Hospitallers taken captive were beheaded; the other captives were enslaved."

Stark does such a good job of fleshing out historical detail, it's difficult to name a favorite portion of the book. However, he shows us that truly, history repeats itself endlessly. In Chapter 10 ("Crusaders Against Egypt"), he shows the reader how critical this ancient land was to stability in the Middle East – just as we are learning in painful ways today.

"God's Battalions" is a wonderful historical record, and readers and historians alike should read it with the gusto it deserves, for the lessons contained in it are instructive for our time. Congratulations to Rodney Stark for harnessing history in such spectacular fashion.

Discover how real and relevant Bible prophecy is to you with Jim Fletcher's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine): How to stop worrying and learn to love these end times"

Jim Fletcher has worked in the book publishing industry for 15 years, and is now director of the apologetics group Prophecy Matters. His new book, "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" has just been released by Strang’s Christian Life imprint.

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Explosive new book lifts lid on gay priests in Vatican...

Four in five homosexual?

Use male prostitutes...

NJ dioceses names 188 priests accused of sex abuse...

Our hertitage at The Plain Truth goes all the way to Ben Franklin! Honest!

Plain Truth

Nearly all of Franklin’s printing and writing was undertaken for profit, but in the two months before his retirement in 1748, he devoted his press to a political cause: pressuring the Quaker-dominated Assembly to establish a militia for defense against marauding attacks by the French. Franklin employed all the skills he had learned as a writer and printer to promote self-defense, including broadsides, blank forms, lottery tickets, and pamphlets. He thus initiated a media campaign that brought together speech (meetings and sermons), printing, and manuscript (the signing of forms, petitions, and lottery tickets, as well as the writing of speeches and pamphlets.

The laboured and long-continued Endeavours [to make] Provisions for the Security of the Province having proved abortive, I determined to try what might be done by a voluntary Association of the People. To promote this I first wrote and published a Pamphlet, entitled, PLAIN TRUTH, in which I stated our defenseless Situation in strong Lights, with the Necessity of Union and Discipline for our Defense, and promis’d to propose in a few Days an Association to be generally signed for that purpose. The Pamphlet had a sudden and surprising Effect. I was call’d upon for the Instrument of Association. And having settled the Draft of it with a few Friends, I appointed a Meeting of the Citizens in the large Building before-mentioned.

The House was pretty full. I had prepared a Number of printed Copies, and provided Pens and Ink dispers’d all over the Room. I harangu’d them a little on the Subject, read the Paper and explain’d it, and then distributed the Copies which were eagerly signed, not the least Objection being made.

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

'Enemy' Obama gave sinister advice to President-elect Trump to avoid exposure of his administration's rampant abuse of surveillance practices, claims Corey Lewandowski in bombshell new book. CLICK HERE FOR MORE

A little-known Ernest Hemingway story written back in 1956 about wartime Paris has just been published for the first time. 

The themes and trappings of 'A Room on the Garden Side' are familiar for a Hemingway narrative: Paris, wartime, talk of books and wine and the scars of battle.

But the story itself has remained virtually unknown beyond the scholarly community for decades.

The brief, World War II-era fiction appears this week in the summer edition of The Strand Magazine, a literary quarterly that has released obscure works by Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck and others.

'Hemingway's deep love for his favorite city as it is just emerging from Nazi occupation is on full display, as are the hallmarks of his prose,' Strand Managing Editor Andrew F. Gulli wrote in an editorial note.

Ernest Hemingway's story 'A Room on the Garden Side', which he wrote back in 1956 about wartime Paris, has just been published for the first time. He is pictured above in 1950 

Kirk Curnutt, a board member of The Hemingway Society, contributed an afterword for the Strand, saying that 'the story contains all the trademark elements readers love in Hemingway.'   MORE

Stevie Nicks may be recognized as one of the most iconic female singers in rock ‘n’ roll, but a new book focusing on the Fleetwood Mac vocalist is attempting to demystify the star.   Stephen Davis, who recently published an unauthorized tell-all titled “Gold Dust Woman,” previously collaborated with Mick Fleetwood on his 1990 memoir titled “Fleetwood."

Davis tracked down numerous sources who worked with both the band and Nicks herself. All requested anonymity for baring all and some still work for her.   Davis told Fox News one of the most surprising discoveries he uncovered was Nicks’ sheltered childhood before she skyrocketed to fame.

Stevie and her mother Barbara at the 1998 Grammy Awards.  (Ron Galella)

“Her father was a business executive and they moved all over the Southwest and West Coast when she was growing up,” he explained. “So she would change schools every 2-3 years. And her mother kept her at home.

"She took a lot of classes like ballet, tap dancing and acting, but mostly she stayed home and learned to play guitar, spent a lot of time in her room and wrote her first song when she was 16. And then she really didn’t have a steady boyfriend until she met Lindsey Buckingham at 19… So she had a much more sheltered childhood than most rockers seemed to have.”

When she left the family home, the Phoenix-born aspiring artist waited tables and cleaned people’s homes in Los Angeles for about five years. She reportedly showed up to audition for Fleetwood Mac wearing a waitress outfit.

Nicks failed to impress the group — at first.

“The band didn’t even really want to hire her,” claimed Davis. “Fleetwood Mac had been around for almost 10 years at that point. Their guitar player had to quit so Mick Fleetwood heard Lindsey Buckingham, who was Stevie’s boyfriend, playing the guitar, and tried to hire him to be the new guitarist for Fleetwood Mac.

NOW IN PRINT   PART 1 of a 4 Volume Series, The Entire Bible in the order it is supposed to be read..  The First three volumes (The Old Testament) in the order JESUS READ!   All His words in RED (including what Jesus spoke as Yahweh in the Old Testament!   NO BIBLE IS LIKE THIS--- with full commentaries.

The most unique Bible you have ever read. First, the Old Testament is divided into the correct order as Jesus read (yes modern Bibles are not arranged in the right order, or have the correct amount of books). Next, this Bible has every word of God in RED in both the Old Testament and New! The author's own translation trying to marry easier to understand English with the style of the King James. This Bible has revolutionary translation of many words mistranslated in the King James and later English Bibles. If you want to discover WHO God is, what is God, and what you were created for, this Bible will open your minds to the most beautiful story never told.

Peter's Bones are not in Rome. Peter NEVER went to Rome!

It’s arguably one of the most significant discoveries in the history of the world, accomplished by an improbable collection of characters through a complex series of improbable developments. 

Yet few are aware of the find – for reasons that become evident as the saga is told – and even fewer know the whole story and the threads the players wove into the events of World War II and their influence on its outcome.

John O’Neill

The discovery was the bones of the Apostle Peter, a scientifically verified find that was authenticated only recently under the leadership of Popes Benedict and Francis. The search also uncovered startling new evidence – hidden for nearly two millennia – of a thriving Christian community rooted in belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ at a time of intense Roman persecution.

The storyteller, in the newly released book “The Fisherman’s Tomb,” is perhaps as improbable as the story. Yet, like the characters, perfectly positioned.

John O’Neill is known as the face of the Vietnam swift boat veterans who many believe prevented John Kerry from being elected president of the United States in 2004. (O’Neill and the more than 200 veterans who came forward still stand by their story despite the establishment media’s boilerplate dismissal of “discredited claims.”)

O’Neill, a retired Houston lawyer, was co-author of the New York Times bestseller that rocked the 2004 election, “Unfit for Command,” the bible of the campaign of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and “The Fisherman’s Tomb,” is his first book since then.

This time, amid a cynical culture that disregards the claims of Christianity as myth, he endeavors to set the record straight and tell for the first time the whole truth about the 75-year search for Peter.

It’s the story of a risky, top-secret endeavor launched in 1942 that never could have been accomplished without the help of a humble, enormously wealthy and generous Texas oilman whose lifelong insistence on anonymity and his belief that he was a partner with God in his vocation made him a perfect accomplice.

It was O’Neill’s friendship with the son and other descendants of the late oilman, George W. Strake Sr., his familiarity with oil exploration as a senior partner for a large international law firm in Houston, personal interest in archaeology, lifetime of researching complex global matters and faith in God that compelled him to write the book.

“Sometimes a story finds an author rather than the reverse,” writes O’Neill in the foreword, noting he had resolved not to write again after “Unfit for Command,” despite many offers.

“It’s a shocking combination of all kinds of serendipitous circumstances, and it’s hard not to attribute it to anything but God wanting the story out,” said O’Neill in an interview with WND.

Even more against all odds is the story itself.

George W. Strake

It took Strake becoming immensely wealthy through the unlikely discovery of the country’s third largest oil field during the Great Depression in an area near Houston every other “wildcatter” had given up on, O’Neill noted. It required the uncovering of clues through the digging of a grave for a deceased pope, the courageous vision of his papal successor to pursue it – the gamble of disproving church tradition or providing earth-shattering, faith-building evidence – and a workman falling through a floor into an unknown, wondrous underground realm of color-rich Roman antiquities. And it couldn’t have been done without a brilliant, uniquely equipped, female pioneer archaeologist who entered the project as a devoted scientist with no religious faith and finished it as a believer.

The archeologist, Margherita Guarducci, was a genius, O’Neill said, and “probably the only person who could have decoded everything to find Peter.”

According to church tradition, Peter, one of the three disciples closest to Jesus, was executed in Rome and chose to be crucified upside down, because he thought himself unworthy to suffer precisely as Jesus did. But until Guarducci’s find, there was scant evidence the great apostle had even been in Rome.

The discovered bones, at a site predicted by church tradition but dismissed by naysayers, were of a robust 65-year-old man who bore the marks of violent crucifixion.

Guarducci homed in on the site after deciphering coded inscriptions that declared: “Peter is here.”

Without attribution or credit... Read the Rest

A worthwhile book to read by Michael H. Exton (Author).. Mr Exton has written for The Plain Truth and shares many of the same views as ours.  We recommend the book, it's only $10.00 on Amazon....

Imagine a world where people actually focus on doing the right things to create a healthy immune system, rather than doing the wrong things and expecting medications to save us. This book shows how to do those right things, and in the process, create a sickness-free, disease-free, strong, energetic, healthy body!   ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

At 13:25 minutes into this program, Joe Kovacs' Shocked By the Bible is discussed

The Plain Truth IS NOT Affiliated with WND - WE NEVER SELL ANYTHING from ourselves, not accept any advertising whatsoever!  However, when we do see something we think worth buying, we pass it along!

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Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carl Gallups’ explosive book “The Rabbi Who Found Messiah: The Story of Yitzhak Kaduri and His Prophecies of The Endtime” ignited furious debate around the globe.

“The feedback from people who have read the book and/or seen the movie has been overwhelmingly positive,” Gallups said.

“The only negative feedback is from people who falsely assume the conclusions which they believe the book may draw,” he said. “But, they haven’t read it yet. I think most people will be pleasantly and greatly surprised when they read through the book. There are some, however, who would prefer this story not get out to the world.”

Chuck Missler, founder of Koinonia House Ministry says that in the book, Gallups “explodes one of the biggest bombshells of our lifetime.”

“The implications of these astonishing declarations from the most venerated ultra-orthodox rabbi in Israel impacts every one of us – not just those of the traditional Jewish faith. This is a must-read for anyone who takes God seriously,” he said.

Did the 108-year-old Rabbi Kaduri, the most famous rabbi in Israel’s modern history, really see the Messiah in a vision before he died in January 2006? Very few of his followers deny the claim. Apparently Kaduri himself disclosed the revelation on several public and heavily documented occasions.

But, there are two other questions of a much more controversial nature. The first matter revolves around a supposed death note that the elderly rabbi reportedly left with his followers.

The note was said to have contained the name of the Messiah whom he had met in his vision. Furthermore, it is reported that Kaduri left specific instructions for the note to be locked away and not to be opened and read until one year after his death. According to several reports, Kaduri gave the instructions in his Yom Kippur synagogue message in October 2005 before a congregation of witnesses.

A little over one year after Kaduri’s death, Israel Today ran a story documenting that Kaduri’s note was opened and posted on his website at Kaduri.net. The story was featured on the cover of Israel Today’s print magazine and was posted online in April 2007. The story said the Kaduri note cryptically identified the name of the Messiah as Yehoshua, the Hebrew word for Jesus.

Subsequent interviews with David Kaduri, Rabbi Kaduri’s elderly son, disclosed the controversy around the reported death note. David Kaduri denied the authenticity of the note, even claiming it was not written in his father’s handwriting. Yet, according to Israel Today’s reporting, several of Rabbi Kaduri’s followers confirmed the note to be authentic.

Gallups noted that in the WND Films documentary movie “The Rabbi Who Found Messiah,” film producer George Escobar includes footage of David Kaduri and others vehemently denying the authenticity of the note.

“There is actually one clip of David Kaduri denying that his father ever even mentioned the Messiah – at all,” Gallups said. “That, indeed, is an astounding claim, since there appears to be a myriad of witnesses, in print, who say otherwise.”

Read more

Temple of Baal, Palmyra, Syria, prior to its destruction by ISIS

Experts in Israel are expressing concern that the United Nations’ goal is warping toward the promotion of idolatry after word was released that the organization is playing a key role in the image of a third pagan god – the goddess of “extra-marital relations.”

First it was part of the re-creation of the Roman triumphal arch that once welcomed travelers to the Temple of Baal.

Then it was the re-creation of a statue of the goddess Athena which once stood in Palmyra.

U.N. officials, and funding, have been insiders on each of those projects.

Joe Kovacs, author of “Shocked By The Bible 2,” says the whole sad spectacle is part of an old story.

“The promotion of pagan gods is certainly nothing new, and it again shows we’re all living in what I call ‘Opposite World,'” he explained. “It’s a world where most people do the very opposite action of what God has instructed. Our Creator tells us to have no other gods but Him, but folks do the opposite, honoring false gods.

“The Bible says Solomon, one of the wisest men who ever lived, built shrines to pagan gods such as Molech, a pagan god to whom people would burn their children alive in fires. It’s just sickening. Even God-fearing Christians today don’t realize they’re doing the very opposite of God’s instructions when they decorate trees with silver and gold and stand them up in their homes and churches every December. God personally says in the tenth chapter of Jeremiah not to do that precise heathen custom, and yet people have been tricked into decorating trees with all sorts of silver tinsel, gold garland and hanging ornaments, and they have no scriptural basis for it. For those interested in eternal life, we need to wake up and start obeying the instructions of our Maker, and stop all this pagan worthlessness.”

You’re not being told the entire truth about the Bible’s contents. Learn Scripture on the spirit level as well as the physical level in the best-selling “Shocked by the Bible 2” — autographed at WND!

Read more at  http://www.wnd.com/2018/01/u-n-brings-back-image-of-3rd-pagan-god/#SfsMxJqUpQJZ8PAh.99

My good friend and WND colleague Joe Kovacs has followed up his wildly popular and fun book, “Shocked by the Bible,” with a sequel – “Shocked by the Bible 2,” of course – that is much more challenging, raising tough questions for most Christians.

One of the things I love about Kovacs’ new book is his use of red letters for all of the words spoken by Jesus – whether they are in the New Testament or Old.

“What?” you ask. “Words of Jesus in the Old Testament? Jesus didn’t speak in the Hebrew Scriptures.”

Well, as Kovacs accurately points out, if you believe the Bible, Jesus is and was and always will be the Word of God. He is the Creator of all things (John 1). Thus, whenever God has spoken to man, it was, in fact, Jesus who was doing the speaking – whether it was to Adam, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon or Elijah. In addition, the Greek Scriptures make it clear that the Father and Son are one – always have been, always will be.

The problem, of course, is that most followers of Jesus don’t consider the clear implications of what the Bible tells us – that Jesus is eternal, that He and the Father are one, that He is the maker of all things and, literally, the Word of God – the one who spoke all things into existence.

In fact, I suspect most Christians have been taught to believe, whether they realize it or not, that God the Father was, without putting too fine a point on it, the God of the Old Testament, while Jesus came to Earth with a whole new plan of salvation, rather than one that was revealed as early as Genesis 3:15, a passage often referred to as the proto-evangelium, or “first gospel.”

Rediscover the Kingdom of God, a key forgotten element of the gospel, in Joseph Farah’s “The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians and the End of the Age.”