He Died for Us, and He Lives!

We’re just about to begin Holy Week, which culminates in celebrating the greatest event in human history. Christmas would not celebrate an important birth had not the resurrection also happened some thirty-three years later.

While we go through this life depending on faith more than knowledge, there are some things that are evidence for our faith. And we can use those things to strengthen our faith, but they don’t replace it.

Dr. Jeremiah J. Johnstone talks with Glenn Beck about the 
Shroud of Turin, with a replica displayed behind them.
Screenshot from here.

A couple of months ago, Glenn Beck interviewed Pastor Jeremiah Johnstone, an evangelical pastor who has specialized in the study of Christ’s death and resurrection (BlazeTV version here, YouTube version here). He tells that, when he defended his dissertation at Oxford, his supervisor, a good person and scriptural expert, was going to give him full marks, but hesitated and asked, “Do you actually believe the resurrection of Jesus happened?” Johnstone answered that, yes, going by the evidence, the most likely explanation was that it really happened. And this brilliant scriptural scholar says, “I don’t see it that way.”

The hesitancy to believe—among pastors and biblical experts—is something I’ve been aware of for some years. Only about half of pastors believe in the literal resurrection of Christ, our Lord and Savior.  I don’t know what they hang their faith on, if not that. It must take some mental gymnastics to preach of Christ, but only as a historical figure worth admiring for his teachings.

Evidence doesn’t seem to convince some people. And the people it would likely convince probably already have faith. But that is not always true. Sometimes the evidence opens an unbelieving mind up to think, “What are the ramifications for my life if this is true?” And whatever brings people closer to Christ is for the good.

Johnstone’s purpose on Glenn Beck’s program was to provide evidence for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Until the last few years, I hadn’t thought much about this. Catholic relics may or may not be interesting museum pieces, but I wouldn’t see them as necessary for faith. And many are inventions, albeit old ones by now. As Glenn says, you could make a forest of the supposed authentic crosses of Jesus.

Back in the 1980s, the Shroud was carbon dated as a forgery made around 1200 AD. That is pretty damning evidence. But it turns out the sample piece used for that carbon dating was taken from a repair patch. The Shroud has survived at least three fires, and has singe marks to prove it. There are multiple places where new fabric was woven in to make repairs.

More recent sampling—avoiding the repairs—has been different. Now there are newer techniques and technologies for dating. They used a something called WAXS—wide-angle x-ray scattering—comparing the Shroud of Turin to a shroud from Masada, both showing decay approximating 2000 years.

Experts in some 60 scientific and scholarly disciplines have studied the Shroud. There was careful examination of the pollen found on the Shroud. One would expect, since it has traveled quite a bit, that it would have pollen and other microscopic bits showing its European locations. But it turns out most of the pollen actually shows plants from the Israel area, and not just any plants from there, but plants that bloom and have pollen in the spring—at the time of Passover, which is when Christ’s death and resurrection took place.

Another remarkable thing is that the image on the Shroud is a negative, as in a photographic negative. If it were a forgery, it was made as a negative centuries before the invention of photography and any understanding of photo negatives. In other words, if it were forged, it was done in a way that neither the forger nor anyone seeing it would understand what they were seeing. Also, there is no evidence of paint, oxidation, or added pigmentation. The image isn’t stained through. A linen thread has between 70 and 150 fibers; the image penetrates only about 3 fibers, although I believe blood stains penetrate through.

I don’t know for certain that the Shroud of Turin is authentic. But when I listen to Pastor Johnstone and others who have studied it, my mind is certainly open to the possibility that it is.

If it is authentic, there are some things we can know about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The image on the Shroud is of a bearded man of Semitic features. His shoulders were dislocated, which Johnstone explains would have been the result of the weight of the body on the outstretched arms.

The image on the Shroud has 30 to 50 puncture wounds on the head, as could have been caused by a crown of Bethlehem thorns. Johnstone demonstrates that the crown was more of a helmet than a wreath, as often depicted. The thorns are long and sharp. Even a single poke would cause significant pain.

Crown of thorns replica made with Bethlehem thorns;
9-inch nail replica in the background.
Screenshot from here.

The crown of thorns was not a usual practice of crucifixion; there is only record of this one instance. It was an added misery, mocking our Savior as “King of the Jews,” which the Romans posted on a sign above him. You might recall, the Jews who called for His crucifixion protested that it should say He called himself King of the Jews, implying that He wasn’t really. But the Romans didn’t acquiesce to that wish; they left the mocking label that identified him accurately.

There was a lot of blood on the Shroud. It was identified as human blood, type AB, which is rare; we know it as universal receiver blood. It’s possible to differentiate between blood spilled while alive and post-mortem blood. There was blood related to the scourging; this torture was so severe that many crucifixion victims did not survive it to be hung. They’ve counted over 372 wounds from the scourging—where two Romans used flagrums, causing six wounds per strike. The count does not include the sides of the man, because the image is two-dimensional.

Glenn Beck holds a replica of a Roman flagrum, used for scourging.
Screenshot from here.

There’s blood where the nails were placed. These were 9-inch nails, and the Romans knew how to place them for maximum pain; in the hands only would not have held the weight of the body, so they placed nails in the wrist, where nerve endings would cause even more pain. The feet, or ankles, are nailed together with one nail. Excruciating doesn’t begin to describe the pain our Savior went through on the cross—only shortly after his ordeal in Gethsemane, which caused sweat like blood from every pore, beyond the endurance of a normal mortal.

So, blood from those sources was shed during life. But there’s blood near a wound in the side, where the Romans used a short sword, or lance, to ensure his death (rather than breaking leg bones, as was typical, but that would happen to go against prophecy—not that the Romans knew this). This blood, mixed with water, was post-mortem blood. And, while Pastor Johnstone didn’t mention this, I’ve understood that the water mixed with blood coming from that piercing of the side, up and into his heart, showed that His heart had burst. Jesus literally died of a broken heart.

Glenn Beck holds a replica of a spear or lance used to wound
Jesus in the side, penetrating up into His heart, to ensure death.
Screenshot from here.

The image shows a man with bent knees. That would have been his position when rigor mortis set it, which lasts about 40 hours. Dr. Johnstone estimates that Jesus would have been dead for 39 hours, rising just before rigor mortis ended and decay set in.

One of the fascinating things the Shroud may be telling us is of the flash moment the resurrection happened and the image was created. Pastor Johnstone says,

Another scientist, another school has given five years to study this, just the amount of electromagnetic energy or even radiation it would take to produce an image on a shroud like this. But the fascinating thing is the timing, because, when they sample it, it takes a lot of time to get the image on the shroud, but then the shroud would burn up almost instantaneously.

So we know the image of the Shroud, based on five years of study on light—and again, you can read all this; it's fascinating—we know that it happened in one 140th of a billionth of a second, and it took 34,000 trillion watts of energy emanating from the body in a flash of one 140th of a billionth of a second to produce that image. So in other words, God took the first selfie.

I don’t know how they figured out how to measure those things. But, wow! I’m picturing the tomb, with that flash of light emanating from it. I don’t know whether the angels who rolled the stone away were there before or after that moment. I’m picturing them rolling the stone away first, so they could have entered and witnessed the moment. So I’m picturing a bright flash coming from inside, through an open doorway, rather than smaller streams of light escaping around the not-quite-airtight stone. (I’m trying to think how to paint this, although it would be better if a real artist gave it a try.)

The tomb, with the large stone to be rolled away, was not the typical tomb. Usually such family tombs would be about a meter square with indentations cut into the stone, like fingers, where multiple bodies could be laid. The bodies would remain until decomposed, about a year, and then the bones would be collected and placed in an ossuary. We saw this age-old process practiced in a cemetery we toured in New Orleans a couple of years ago.

But this larger tomb would have been for a wealthy man—or a king. It is believed to have been newly purchased by Joseph of Arimathea, for himself and family. It had never been used. And the Shroud, measuring 14 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 7 inches wide, would have been what Joseph of Arimathea had prepared for his own eventual death.

The replica that Dr. Johnstone displays in Glenn’s studio—an exact photograph to scale—is about as close to examining the actual Shroud as most of us will get. The Shroud is kept in Turin, Italy, and the Archbishop there, at this point, has decided that in this coming jubilee year it will not be displayed. There are new and improved ways to safeguard such an item while making it viewable, but so far that is not being done.

As we said, the image is a photo negative. The positive shows white hair—"like wool”—which we would assume is different from His earthly hair color. I’m fascinated by the images that come from the Shroud. An image, even a photo, doesn’t always give us a full idea of how someone looks. But it’s something.

This is the actual image, turned into a positive, from the Shroud.

Image of the face on the Shroud, turned from negative to positive.
Screenshot from here.

There’s an AI rendering—I’m not sure which of these, below. The one on the left comes up in the video on BlazeTV, but the one on the right is used in the same place in the video on YouTube, near the 10-minute mark. The conversation between Glenn and Jeremiah is this:

GB: What is the most famous icon painting of his face that's, like, split in half, right?

JJ: Yes, this is fascinating, because I actually have a dear friend, Doug Powell, who's taken that icon in the image of the shroud, and he's put it in Midjourney AI to produce what I think is the best, closest image of the face of Jesus. And it is a Semitic man; it is a man from the land of Israel.

AI-generated images based on the Shroud; left is from BlazeTV; right is from YouTube.

I don’t know either way. The left one feels more peaceful; the right one looks a bit angry, although it could be pained expression or simply not smiling. Jesus would definitely look like a man from Israel. Johnstone mentions iconography from coins and early depictions that look more like the image on the Shroud than the weaker, less manly medieval depictions, and that seems true to me.

The summary of all this is that the real Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion, was buried in a borrowed tomb, and rose from the dead on the third day.

What evidence do we have that he rose and physically lived again? Many testimonies in the scriptures. Mary Magdalene was first to see him. Then there were the remaining eleven except Thomas, and then there were the disciples again with Thomas. He ate fish and honeycomb with them, showing that He was not just a spirit; He had a physical body. In the interim, there had been the two men on the road to Emmaus.

And then there is the long period of time, up until Pentecost (50 days after Passover, if I understand right) teaching and training His disciples, setting up His Church, during which some 500 people witnessed him.

In the Book of Mormon, He visited the people on this continent sometime after the resurrection—and were told they were whom He had referred to as His other sheep of another fold, and that there were others He would visit as well. There are similar such stories from various places around the world: northern America, Central America, Russia, Africa. In the Book of Mormon, the record shows He had them come and see Him up close, and witness the wounds in His hands and feet and side. He taught them. He blessed the children. And He set up their church structure, as He had done with the apostles in Jerusalem. I would think He did similar teaching and instruction with any other scattered sheep He visited.

In 1820 He was seen by Joseph Smith, a 14-year-old boy in upstate New York. And there are multiple times Joseph Smith and others witnessed our Lord and Savior as a resurrected being. One notable visit was after the Kirtland, Ohio, Temple dedication, April 3, 1836, after which there were also visits from Moses, Elijah, and Elias, conferring their priesthood keys with laying on of hands—meaning they had physical bodies as resurrected beings as well. (There’s a good video covering both ancient and more modern encounters with the risen Lord, here.) 

There are many stories of people interacting with Him in near death experiences. And in dreams. (I had such a dream once, although mine was clearly only a dream, not a vision, for which I had to spend some time working out the symbolic meaning, but I couldn’t describe His appearance afterward.) I have known of people in our day who testify with knowledge that He lives and has a tangible body. It may be that there are more such experiences than we know, but they are not spoken of because of their sacredness.

It seems much more likely to me that the resurrected Jesus lives, and it’s all real, than that thousands of accounts, both historical and more recent, are all a lie. That is logic and reasoning. But beyond that, there is the Spirit speaking to me, telling me that He lives, and He went through what He did because He loves me—and loves all of our brothers and sisters who have lived or will live on this earth.

And if this is all true, then what I need to do is try to live like Him—not the going through crucifixion, but the obedience to the laws of Heaven, the living a life of integrity, love, truth, and mercy—so that when we see Him in the flesh, we shall be like Him. Compared to what He went through for us, His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

I have for some years celebrated Easter by concentrating on the scripture stories of Holy Week, and the art and music—some of the most glorious music ever written (see here, here, here, and here, for example). I celebrate Easter with eggs and bunnies and chocolates too, because those things are available, and fun, and remind us that spring is a time for rebirth, which we celebrate as symbolic evidence of the resurrection.

This year I hope my testimony here today may help someone celebrate Easter with more recognition of the grandeur of the most glorious day ever to have happened—until He comes to live among us again for the prophesied thousand years.

Please enjoy this video I found touching: "Greater Love."

Seeing Through a Glass Darkly

We’ve known we’ve been lied to for quite some time now. At least since COVID, which was a wakeup call. But for many of us, we knew well before then.

Now, at last, the Deep State is in the process of collapse, and the lying media is spiraling earthward.

However, we’re not on the other side yet, where we have a new system and means to gain truth—if that is something we ever get to before Christ reigns personally on the earth and rights all the wrongs.

So, for now, we’re “seeing through a glass, darkly” [I Cor. 13:12]. We’re getting only hazy views. I offer three examples today.

 

Border Detention Story

I have a friend whom I love, even though I’m learning that her views are much more liberal than mine; she’s been in a state of alarm since the November election, while I see pleasant surprises almost daily as a result of that election. She passed along a story on Facebook. It was detailed, and emotion-inducing. I found the original here. 

A woman named Jasmine Mooney, an actress turned entrepreneur from Canada, was renewing her work visa, as she had done multiple times, when she was detained and imprisoned. I had not seen news stories anywhere. I searched. It pops up in mainstream legacy (leftist) media sources. No conservative or independent journalists even mention it—not even to refute it. That may mean it simply isn’t worth the time. But I was curious, just out of respect for my friend who believes it really happened as told; could such a thing be happening, or are there other details?

Jasmine Mooney, after returning to Canada after her detention,
image from here

Almost all of the news articles reference Mooney as the source, or people who heard the story from her (parents and friends). That seemed odd. Eventually I did find one with an additional reference: a Newsweek story that went so far as to get a statement from an unnamed ICE spokesperson verifying that ICE had detained the woman, as per rules from the executive order “Securing Our Borders” of January 21.

The story, in short, is that this woman went to the border crossing at San Isidro, in southern California, expecting to be able to get her TN visa application processed there (TN visas are temporary work visas related to the NAFTA agreement). But instead she was sent to a jail cell, and then, days later, sent to another holding center in Arizona before getting released and sent back to her Canada home 10 or so days later.

She was detained March 3 and held until either March 10 or 14, and maybe returned home March 17; the dates seem uncertain to me. She published her very long story—about 3900 words—March 19. During her detention, her family and friends contacted media and government officials to make her plight known, which she says may be the reason for her eventual release.

She had processed work visas before, at that same location, and thought she wouldn’t have a problem. But, instead of just sending her away or telling her how and where to complete her paperwork, they treated her like a criminal. And we should all be outraged.

I have questions that maybe all the media who handled the story didn’t have. And that may be because I don’t believe the Trump administration is going out of their way to make life miserable for law-abiding well-intentioned individuals.

So, according to Mooney’s story, she had no reason to believe she’d have trouble getting this TN visa. But she had had her previous one revoked. A TN is a is a temporary noncitizen work visa that is granted for specific jobs and requires a time period with an ending date. Her previous one got revoked, and she went home to Canada for several months (I don’t know how long). But this was a new job with a new company, so she thought this wouldn’t be a problem.

But her story is that she is an entrepreneur. She sells a tonic called Holy! Water, a company she started—so she isn’t a new hire at a new company. And it appears the previous company was also her selling a tonic at a company of her creation. (One question about that previous visa problem had included the fact that hemp is an ingredient; I don’t know if this new company also has that possibly problematic ingredient, or whether that was really an issue, as she suggests.)

So it doesn’t look like she was hired by a new company; she’s just calling herself a new company.

And she’s in Canada, has had a problem with her previous visa, but assumes she can easily get a new one—not by getting it in her own country before traveling to the US, but by traveling to Mexico and coming in at the southern border without yet having the visa. And she does this just six weeks after President Trump’s “Secure the Border” executive order, which changes things significantly.

She says she was familiar with that location, because she had gotten a visa there before, accompanied by an attorney. This time she did not get an attorney’s help, even though there had been problems with her visa in the past.

Then she’s held, she says, in very bad conditions, like a prisoner, and as though she had been kidnapped.

Or, I’m speculating, not knowing her (even as an actress I do not recognize her or the things she was known for), but we don’t have anyone corroborating anything except that she was detained at the border according to US policy.

She claims growing friendships with other women detained in these inhumane conditions, all with heartrending stories, about 140 who had overstayed visas and had tried and failed to reapply. One was a woman from India who had previously overstayed a 10-year visa by three days before heading home. Then, later, she got a new valid visa to come to the US to finish her master’s degree—but when she arrived she was handed over to ICE because of the previous three-day error. I have a hard time believing that ICE is hunting down people with valid visas in hand over a previous three-day error. Can anyone corroborate that story?

Women—who had all their belongings confiscated and were placed in bare rooms with nothing but a toilet—had access to pen and paper to send letters with Mooney when she was released, and several of whom had phones, which were used and shared to get word out.

So, what is true? I don’t know, but, possibly because of my biases, I look at this story—which I admit, if I had different biases, would seem plausible and therefore appalling—and I say it doesn’t pass the smell test. A story that long, in a publication that has to decide on space and timing issues, is published within days of her release—even though her health had deteriorated with the bad food and water conditions. And no one follows up with the questions and corroborations. And only Trump-hating publications mention the story, either before or after her release. Hmm.

Why would she lie? I don’t know why she personally would. But possible motives would be attention to her that would lead to attention for her product; or hatred of the US and/or President Trump and his administration. Or both or something else.

The point is, you might not be able to trust a story, just because someone is telling it.

 

JFK Files

The long-told government version of the Kennedy assassination is that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot from a grassy knoll into the motorcade and killed President Kennedy. End of story. Except, there are questions.

People are poring over the files released last week, sometimes with the help of AI. And what we get are more questions than answers.

Glenn Beck covered many of the questions in his Wednesday night special this week.  One of the things he did was to experiment, using a gun that is the same make and model as the Oswald weapon—on a ranch in Oklahoma. The first shot, with everything stationary, Beck hit the target. Then the firing pin broke. They came back the next day, with a more modern but similar weapon, and had the target moving. And the ranch terrain wasn’t as smooth as a Dallas street, so it was a tougher shot. It was still doable—for a decent shooter, not necessarily a skilled sniper.

So it could have happened that way.

Except that there were three bullets. But one bullet was supposed to have gone through Kennedy’s back, turned upward, then exited and then hit the person next to him. And film shows the body moved as though hit from the front, at least with one bullet, which has always led to questions.

Oswald had been on CIA radar for a long time. They tracked his daily actions leading up to the assassination, always knowing where he was—except on that day. That day, oddly, they didn’t have any idea where he was or what he was up to.

And the gun—it was built, I believe, by US manufacturers—for Greece, because of help from the CIA. And it required specific ammunition, which would therefore have to have been accessed from Greek sources—or from the CIA.

Glenn Beck chalkboard referring to JFK assassination theories,
screenshot from here

The newest info was not in the JFK files. Here’s from the description box of the Glenn Beck video, and then we’ll look at the transcript:

Glenn speaks to Shane Stevens, the grandson of Billie Sol Estes — a Texas businessman with alleged ties to LBJ. In January, he gave a digital copy of a secret family audiotape to "The Alex Jones Show." The conversations alleged that then-Vice President Johnson hired Mac Wallace to kill JFK. But was the tape real, or an elaborate AI hoax? Glenn’s team asks a JFK expert to verify its authenticity and for the first time ever, Shane plays the chilling confession live in-studio.

OK, so what is said on that audiotape? This is confirmed to be Clifton C. Carter, former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, speaking to Billie Sol Estes (and, while the online transcript says Mac Wallace, it sounds to me like “Mike”):

Well, Sol, it’s been a pretty touch-and-go situation. Lyndon and I have had quite a few unpleasant words here lately over the deal that he hired Mac Wallace to assassinate the president. It’s been hectic in every way, but we’ve lived through it this far, and I guess we’ll continue to do so. Lyndon should have never issued that order to Mac. But we’ve had our differences, and I’m true blue to Lyndon, as I’ve always been, and tried to carry out every order that he’s ever given me, but this is one I’ll probably never be able to forget.

There’s another couple of sentences from the description box that kind of summarize what we’re looking at:

Glenn argues that the JFK assassination isn’t just history — it’s a warning. From Benghazi to 9/11, COVID origins to Trump’s Russia probe, the same patterns of secrecy and deception persist. If the CIA or deep state got away with a coup in 1963, what’s stopping them now?

Which brings us to our third issue for today, the Signal chat scandal.

 

Signal Chat

There’s a lawsuit going on related to this already. I’m not sure of the pretext for that. No classified information was shared; no crime was committed. But maybe someone was hoping there would be, and some people will believe there was, just because of the gravitas the lawsuit seems to provide.

So, there was a chat group involving several top administrative officials on the encrypted platform called Signal. This is a common app. I’m in three Signal groups, all related to being a precinct chair—not terribly secret, but quick and easy for handling group chats (much better than the messy way my phone handles group texts). And, while one complaint is that text messages can be auto-deleted, mine remain, because that’s the default setting.

Mike Waltz, National Security Advisor, took the heat for the “accidental” invitation to join the chat group given to enemy news journalist for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg (known for peddling the fake Russia-gate scandal, among false accusations of that type).

Here’s where things get murky in the world of trying to learn the truth. I’m looking only at “friendly” sources here, supposed conservatives, yet there is still plenty of murkiness to be found.

First I hear the general conservative news and commentary sources. They’re appalled that anyone could be so careless as to let this happen. But they’re also relieved that the story is a nothing-burger. No state secrets were shared, and the mission spoken of was successful. After the mission, Goldberg announces he had been lurking on the chat but wouldn’t want to share state secrets by sharing—but then he goes ahead and shares. He has, by this time, removed himself from the chat.

I’m waiting to hear more, because this “accidental” thing doesn’t ring true. Mike Waltz has never met Goldberg; he did not have his phone number. He had one staffer who could also have been the accidental inviter, about whom I see a thing passed along on Facebook, claiming that the staffer, Alex Wong, the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, is the culprit who added the enemy journalist. This source is passing along what Laura Loomer says (there have been so many sensationalist stories that Loomer has been wrong on that I read with some skepticism). Here’s what I read:

Alex Wong is Chinese, and he’s married to Candice Chiu Wong, also Chinese, who was one of the lead prosecutors of J6ers — under both Obama and Biden.

Candice served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for D.C., led the Violence Reduction and Trafficking Offenses Section, and was nominated by Biden to the U.S. Sentencing Commission — where she helped hand down extreme punishments to political dissidents.

She also clerked for far-left SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor — no surprise there.

Alex Wong himself worked for Covington & Burling LLP — the same firm President Trump stripped of ALL security clearance and federal contracts on Feb. 25, 2025, for their central role in the weaponization of government against Americans.

Further down it adds this:

This entire thing smells like a coordinated setup.

A Chinese-connected security advisor.

A DOJ insider wife loyal to Biden.

A disgraced law firm with a history of targeting conservatives.

A hostile journalist embedded in a secure chat.

All in the middle of a military op?

Then it calls for an investigation and for heads to roll.

I’ve never heard of Wong. I didn’t have any context to know whether this was true. But it seemed more likely than the “accidental” invitation version.

Alex and Candice Wong, image from KeyWiki

 

But then, in the comments, there’s a link to this Substack piece by @Amuse. It details Wong’s actual family history:

Born in New York to Chinese immigrants who fled communism, Wong is a product of the American meritocracy. His parents, Grace and Robert Wong, were among the thousands who left Hong Kong in the waning days of British rule, uneasy with the prospect of Chinese Communist Party dominance after the 1997 handover. Both were deeply skeptical of the CCP, having witnessed from afar the slow strangulation of freedom across the mainland. They came to America in the late 1970s seeking stability, liberty, and opportunity.

Then the piece continues about his wife and her family history, which was similar, with parents who left Hong Kong because of Beijing’s encroachment on civil liberties. Then we look at work history, which is clearly not that of a Chinese asset:

Wong graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in literature and French, then earned his law degree from Harvard, where he served as Managing Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He clerked for Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a legal icon of the conservative movement, and later advised Mitt Romney on foreign policy. As a senior advisor to Senator Tom Cotton and later as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for North Korea in the first Trump administration, Wong crafted some of the toughest, most clear-eyed policies against Chinese expansionism and North Korean belligerence….

He helped formulate the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, pressed for maximum pressure sanctions against Pyongyang, and was instrumental in organizing the Trump-Kim summits.

Then his wife’s work history:

Also a Harvard graduate, Candice clerked for Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit. She served for nearly a decade as a federal prosecutor, leading efforts against human trafficking and violent crime. Her lone involvement in a January 6 prosecution? A violent rioter who confronted police and endangered lives—not a peaceful protester swept up in bureaucratic zealotry. In 2022, she was nominated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, earning confirmation with bipartisan support.

I did a quick online search. Wikipedia shows Alex Wong more like the Substack version, while it does include that his name was mentioned in relation to the Signal story. A KeyWiki online bio of his wife is also closer to the Substack version, although, in addition to clerking for Sandra Day O’Connor and for Kavanaugh when he was a circuit court judge, she did also clerk for Sotomayor. It may be that, when a young lawyer gets a chance to clerk on the Supreme Court, you take that job regardless of for which justice. So that wasn’t a lie, but among the rest of the info, it’s not as damning as implied.

So that leaves me wondering how the name got added, if not by Waltz or Wong, neither of whom, it seems to me, would do so intentionally and probably couldn’t have done it accidentally. I was picturing some Deep State CIA operative getting hold of the phone of one of them, and physically doing that.

But then, I heard more discussion on Glenn Beck's Thursday radio show (we seem to be thinking along similar lines this week). Apparently Signal is an app that is government approved—in fact, it comes pre-installed on the devices of government officials—even though there is already an encrypted secure app for them to use. Maybe Signal handles group chats more easily.  Signal was recommended—pushed?—by CISA during the Biden administration; CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which reporter Michael Schellenberger showed to have been involved in censorship projects, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, the Hunter Biden laptop, and the COVID lab leak theory.  And we know (confirmed by the JFK files) that the CIA has been spying on Americans and trying to manipulate policy for many decades—maybe since its inception, but at least since Eisenhower. And they don’t have to “wiretap” physically anymore; they can do so much with phones and various devices. So—because they have been unworthy of trust—we have to ask, did the CIA use a backdoor or some other tech means to put Goldberg on the group chat, hoping to make the administration look careless and/or nefarious?

Glenn Beck talks about the history of Signal:

Signal itself has an interesting background. It was developed by an organization called Open Whisper Systems. They received millions of dollars in government funds…to create Signal. The funds flowed from—wait for this one—the Open Technology Fund, a government organization that was created back in 2012, under the Obama Administration, under Radio Free Asia.

Coincidentally, funding for Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was cut by the Trump administration March 15, as unneeded relics of the Cold War. [However, a judge has stepped in to temporarily bar Kari Lake, President Trump’s senior advisor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, from moving ahead with shutdown plans there.] 

And coincidentally, the Signal issue came up the day before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence met for hearings, making all the discussion about this issue, rather than whatever the hearing had been set to discuss.

 

So, what is the takeaway from these three stories? When a story comes out, step back, wait for more information, and think it through from a couple of additional points of view. We may not get to the truth right away, maybe not ever in some cases. But we’re less likely to be taken in by lies. The challenge is to be skeptical without becoming cynical. Cynicism takes away hope.

We’re in a revolutionary time of taking back our constitutional republic, and there’s a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the beasts that are losing power, so that means things look messy for a while. But this is a very hopeful time.

So, I guess, hang on and enjoy the ride—like you might “enjoy” a roller coaster that’s a couple of levels too intense for you.