April 26, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read only one chapter in the Acts of the Apostles, but it is a giant chapter.

April 26: Acts 7 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

Acts 7 begins with Stephen’s speech to the Sanhedrin and ends with the Stoning of Stephen.

Vitamin D – one weapon to combat the coronavirus.

 

The organization Grassroots health put out the results of 212 people that had the COVID-19 virus, roughly 50 each having a critical or severe or normal or mild outcome. The results were stunning. Nearly all with a high level of vitamin D level in the blood had a mild outcome, as opposed to those with a vitamin D deficiency.

Up to now vitamin D deficiency has mostly been a concern for the people with the following risk factors, but not as a virus fighter.

  • Osteoporosis or other bone disorder
  • Previous gastric bypass surgery
  • Age; vitamin D deficiency is more common in older adults.
  • Obesity
  • Lack of exposure to sunlight
  • Having a darker complexion
  • Difficulty absorbing fat in your diet

It should be fairly simple and fast to expand this analysis to a larger sample of people that also include people with antibodies to COVID-19 but never showed any symptoms.

If this holds true, we did the exact wrong thing by keeping people indoors in hope to slow the spread. Instead we should have encouraged people to be outdoors as much as possible, still practicing hygiene and social distance, give vitamin D to all over 65 (4000 IU), to all obese and people of dark complexion.

This is by no means the only suggestion, but it is one more weapon in the arsenal to combat this virus.

April 25, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read one chapter in the Acts of the Apostles and two chapters in 1 Samuel.

April 25: Acts 6, 1 Samuel 14, 1 Samuel 15 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

Acts 6. To better serve the needs of widows seven people were chosen, among them Stephen. They would later be called deacons.  Stephen spoke boldly about Jesus, in the Spirit, and was seized and so a trial began.

In 1 Samuel 14  Jonathan Defeated the Philistines. Saul’s made an oath that no one was allowed to eat until nightfall. Jonathan didn’t know that, so he ate, and Saul wanted to put Jonathan to death but his men refused the King’s order, and thus Jonathan’s life was spared.

1 Samuel 15, the chapter where Saul is rejected as King.

It is more dangerous to live in a state with a Democrat Governor than it is with a Republican Governor, at least in regard to COVID-19

Taking a snapshot of the COVID-19 cases as of Apr 23 I was curious to see if there were any differences in infection and death rates between states that has a Democrat Governor and those states that has a Republican Governor. And indeed there is, there are nearly three times as many cases (2.89) in states with a Democrat Governor as there are in states with a Republican governor, and the death rate is 62% higher, a more telling statistic.

There could be many reasons for this discrepancy, but here is some food for thought: The indoor environment is where most viruses spread, elevators, staircases, central ventilation, mass transportation just to name a few. This is typical of the urban environment. Living in rural areas on the other hand, much more time is spent outdoors, in sunshine, which kills the virus nearly immediately and fresh air is very good for basic health. Therefore to issue a nationwide ban to stay inside was the wrong thing to do. Cleanliness, social distancing and get outside as much as possible would have been much better. Go out, plant your garden, take your boat out for a weekend spin or visit your cottage in the woods. If you don’t have a cottage just take a walk in the woods and listen to the sounds of spring, but don’t put canned music in your ears. If you don’t have any woods nearby, use any area not crowded.  That is one way to eliminate cabin fever.

Here are the statistics, state by state.

Democratic governor      Cases                  Deaths

New York                             268,581                 20861

New Jersey                         100,025                 5428

California                             39620                    1531

Pennsylvania                     37053                    1685

Illinois                                   36934                    1688

Michigan                              35291                    2997

Louisiana                             25739                    1599

Connecticut                        23100                    1639

Washington                        12753                    711

Virginia                                 11594                    410

Colorado                              11262                    552

North Carolina                   7854                       281

Rhode Island                      6256                       189

Wisconsin                            5052                       257

Nevada                                4208                       189

Kentucky                             3481                       191

District of Columbia        3361                       139

Delaware                             3308                       92

Minnesota                          2942                       200

Kansas                                  2734                       113

New Mexico                       2379                       78

Oregon                                 2127                       83

Maine                                   937                         44

Hawaii                                   596                         12

Montana                             442                         14

Total:                            647,099                   40,983  Death rate 6.33%

 

 

Republican governor     Cases                    Deaths

Massachusetts                  46023                    2360

Florida                                  29648                    987

Texas                                    22393                    576

Georgia                                21883                    881

Maryland                             15737                    748

Ohio                                      14694                    656

Indiana                                 13039                    706

Tennessee                          8266                       170

Missouri                               6384                       243

Alabama                              5832                       201

Arizona                                 5769                       249

Mississippi                          5153                       201

South Carolina                   4917                       150

Iowa                                      3924                       96

Utah                                      3612                       35

Oklahoma                           3017                       179

Arkansas                              2599                       45

Nebraska                             2124                       47

South Dakota                     1956                       9

Idaho                                    1836                       54

New Hampshire                1670                       51

West Virginia                      981                         31

Vermont                              825                         43

North Dakota                     709                         15

Wyoming                             453                         7

Alaska                                   337                         9

Total:                           223,781                       8,749      Death rate 3.91%

April 24, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read one chapter in the Acts of the Apostles and three chapters in 1 Samuel.

April 24: Acts 5, 1 Samuel 11, 1 Samuel 12, 1 Samuel 13 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira were lying to the Holy Spirit and fell down dead. This lead to great fear and great power in the Church. An Angel of the LORD came during the night and freed the Apostles that had been jailed the previous day. They went back to the Temple courts and got called in to the Sanhedrin again for the crime of preaching about Jesus, but Gamaliel gave them good advice, they listen and after flogging the Apostles they let them go.

In 1 Samuel 11 King Saul rescued Jabesh Gilead. Then the people reaffirmed Saul as King.

1 Samuel 12 contains Samuel’s speech at Saul’s coronation.

1 Samuel 13  the real trouble began, Saul offered an unlawful sacrifice, so God would no longer fight for them, Saul’s kingship would be taken away and God would choose a king after his own heart. The weapons for the army were taken away from the Israelites and the Philistines took control of the iron trade.

Ramadan will begin tonight after sundown – or will it?

In 2020 the month of Ramadan will begin at sundown tonight Apr 23. Will it? That depends on what kind of Muslim you are. If you are a Sunni Muslim it begins right at sundown  on Apr 23. If you are a Shiite you also have to see the crescent moon after sunset, in the twilight. This usually occurs one day later , so for most Shiites Ramadan starts Apr 24. Ramadan starts every year 10 or 11 days earlier than the previous year, so in a century Muslims have 103 Ramadan months, and also 103 years.

During Ramadan you must observe a total fast from sunrise to sunset if you are a Sunni, if you are a Shiite you must fast from dawn to the end of twilight. The fasting is total, no eating, no drinking even if there is risk of dehydration during the hot summer days. As an extra prohibition, no sexual relations or vomiting is permitted during this time, and if you are temporary ill you must make up the time later so the total time of fasting is 30 days. This has its problems in northern latitudes if Ramadan occurs in the Summer, especially near or above the polar circle, you could go for more than a month without eating or drinking, so they have set a time limit for fasting, it doesn’t begin before 3 A.M. and doesn’t end after 9 P.M. sun time, not standard or daylight savings time.

All Muslims are encouraged to pray five times a day, kneeling down with the face near the ground facing Mecca. Muhammad and his followers used to face Jerusalem, but when they moved to Medina they changed direction and faced Mecca to distinguish them from the Jews, who faced Jerusalem.

During Ramadan these prayers become mandatory. Normally a Mosque looks like this during Ramadan prayer

This year is different. You are supposed to pray at home, but when do you start your prayer? It matters greatly when you do it. Luckily there are apps available that will tell all the proper time to start your prayers for over 3 million locations.

The times are FAJR (crack of dawn), Sunrise, DHUHR ( a couple of minutes past the Zenith of the sun, ASR (afternoon), Maghrib (Sunset), ISHA (end of twilight) and finally QIJAM (night prayer) which is voluntary for all except for Sufis which have to recite all 99 names of Allah starting right at midnight sun time. The noon prayer is very important, it must be started a couple of minutes after the sun passes its Zenith. To pray right through noon would be offensive to Allah.

Being a Christian am thankful to be able to go to the throne of grace, praying directly to God the Father in the name of Jesus at any time of the day or night. The door is always open.

 

April 23, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read one chapter in the Acts of the Apostles and two chapters in 1 Samuel.

April 23: Acts 4, 1 Samuel 9, 1 Samuel 10 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

Acts 4. Peter and John were arrested and hauled before the Sanhedrin, were told not to speak about Jesus anymore. Their response? “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” They were let go and continued telling about Jesus and his resurrection, and a good time was had by all, sharing all things.

1 Samuel 9. Saul  was a tall and handsome man, his father had lost some donkeys, so he sent Saul and his servant to look for them. Not finding them for three days they went to the prophet Samuel, God tells Samuel to meet them, and so they meet up, and thus Saul was chosen to be King.

In 1 Samuel 10 Saul was Anointed King and proclaimed King over all Israel.

Earth day 2020, the 150 year birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. Lenin. A Limerick.

We celebrate Lenin’s old birth day

in what is now renamed the Earth Day.

It’s a globalist plot;

it’s the climate change: Not!

It’s capitalism besmirch day.

When I came to the U.S. as a green card immigrant  from a beautiful, clean Sweden in the spring of 1968 I was horrified at what I found. In Sweden they were worried about the fact that some lakes were fertilized four times more than the agricultural fields, acid rain killed the trouts in the already acid lakes and  seeds laced with Mercury as a preservative killed off most of the eagles and owls. None of this seemed to bother the Americans. Coming in to Rochester in N.Y the stench from the dead fish washing up on the shore of lake Ontario was strong, I read of a river catching on fire in Ohio and the smell of coal burning power plants without scrubbers was bad, almost as bad as in the coal and steel region of Germany. It was also the height of the Vietnam wars, and people were protesting. Many of the protestors were communists at hart, and they also turned to pollution. The aerosol pollution led to a decrease in global temperatures, so the mantra was: The ice age is coming! The worst prediction I read was that the global temperatures would be then degrees Fahrenheit lower by the year 2000! Most predictions were not that wild, but they all pointed down, ice age, here we come! The urge to clean up the pollution grew stronger and the Earth Day movement was formed, but they had to find just the right day to have the first. Since this was to become a global movement they decided on the birthday of Lenin, his 100th, very fitting for a globalist movement.  That was 1970 in Philadelphia, featured Ira Einhorn (The Unicorn Killer) as master of Ceremonies.

Now fifty years later the mantra has changed to climate change, specifically carbon pollution and carbon footprint. As the scientists were wrong then, the ice age is coming soon, so they are wrong now. The rise in CO2 causes climate change all right, and it would be really bad unless something else also changes as the CO2 concentration changes. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, much stronger than CO2, and they both add to the greenhouse effect, but only at temperatures below freezing. In the tropics there is 50 times as much water vapor as there is CO2, so the tropics is not affected at all by rising CO2 levels. In the Arctic the situation is quite different. Water vapor is also a condensing gas, and forms clouds in the atmosphere. Clouds cool by day and warm by night, but the effect of cooling by day is much larger than the cooling by night, so clouds act as the major temperature regulator on earth. That is why the temperature was about the same as now when the CO2 level was over 10000 ppm, 25 times as large as now hundreds of millions of years ago. There is zero risk of overheating, there is no “tipping point” on the warm side, the clouds tale care of that. On the other hand we know that because we have too little CO2 in the air we will have a new ice age. When will it come? Not in the next thousand years, in fact, by increasing the CO2 levels we will delay the onset of the next ice age. What will happen at the Poles? There will be less cold in the winters, it will snow more but the summers will be about the same, melting more snow.

As to the corona virus the scientists predictions have so far been way off the mark, which just goes to show that making models before all facts are known produces faulty predictions every time. As Yogi Berra once said: “’It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future’” “… never make predictions – especially about the future”.

 

April 22, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read one chapter of the Acts of the Apostles and four chapters in 1 Samuel.

April 22: Acts 3, 1 Samuel 5, 1 Samuel 6,  1 Samuel 7, 1 Samuel 8 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

In Acts 3 Peter healed a crippled man sitting at the Beautiful Gate with these words:  “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” Then Peter preached at Solomon’s Portico.

1 Samuel 5, the Ark of the LORD brought nothing but trouble to the Philistines.

So in 1 Samuel 6  the Ark was returned to Israel together with a guilt offering of five gold tumors and five golden rats.The Ark was brought back as far as to Kirjath Jearim.

1 Samuel 7. Samuel grew up and became Judge over Israel. He subdued the Philistines at Mizpah, and there he raised his Ebenezer (stone of help). He judged Israel all the days of his life.

1 Samuel 8. Samuel’s sons were not following the Lord, so Israel demanded a King. Samuel complained to the LORD, but He answered : Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king.”