"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Northwoods is a ministry dedicated to refreshing Christians and challenging them to search for the truth in Christianity, politics, sociology, and science
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour
The Rev. Micah Cronin, believed to be the first trans-identified dean for an Episcopal Church cathedral, preaching at All Saints' Cathedral of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Aug. 30, 2026. | YouTube/AllSaintsMKE
A Wisconsin cathedral has installed what is believed to be the first trans-identifying dean in the history of The Episcopal Church.
The Very Rev. Micah Cronin, a woman who identifies as a man, took the helm of All Saints' Cathedral in Milwaukee on Aug. 16, according to Episcopal News Service. The cathedral draws an average of just 70 worshippers on a given Sunday.
Cronin is married to a woman who goes by the Rev. Elias Henry, also a trans-identified pastor, who serves at The Corner House, a Lutheran, LGBT-affirming campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Cronin laid out her story in an introductory email to the congregation last month: raised Methodist, she joined TEC at 19, the same year she decided to self-identify as trans.
“For clarification, this means that I was raised as a girl. For my whole adult life, I have been known and loved as myself — Micah,” wrote Cronin. “The churches I was raised in were not able to receive me as I am. But as a young person, I heard through the grapevine that the Episcopal Church would accept me.”
“I knew that no matter what I had to follow Jesus. The small Episcopal parish I walked into years ago made it possible for me to do that, through their kind, steadfast, gentle acceptance, and above all, their love.”
Cronin's appointment lands amid a decades-long freefall for The Episcopal Church. Like most U.S. denominations, it's bleeding members, and its progressive turn has driven much of the exodus.
When TEC consecrated the Rev. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop in 2003, scores of congregations voted to leave in protest.
In 2010, the denomination reported that the number of active baptized members in their churches had dropped just below 2 million. By 2023, that number decreased to approximately 1.547 million people.
In a church where Jesus is glorified, the numbers grow. Where numbers diminish, it is often because God has removed His candlestick - The Holy Spirit, because of error.
For its 2024 Parochial Report, released last October, TEC omitted a membership tally, explaining that there were questions about how to properly chart the numbers.
The report noted 19,624 baptisms of children and adults in 2024, a considerable decline from 2014, when the denomination reported over 28,000 total baptisms.
In 2024, three Episcopal dioceses in Wisconsin were merged into a single regional body, in large part because the entities had suffered considerable membership decline.
The decision, which was given final approval by the 81st Episcopal Church General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, was technically a reunification, as the three dioceses were initially founded as one statewide body in 1847.
At the time of the reunification, the new Diocese of Wisconsin included 101 congregations and approximately 11,500 baptized members, with Bishop Matthew Gunter serving as its leader.
This aerial photo taken on Oct. 29, 2021, shows smoke and fire in Thantlang, Chin State, where more than 160 buildings were destroyed by shelling from junta military troops, according to local media. | STR/AFP via Getty Images
The Rev. William, a Baptist pastor in Myanmar’s Chin state, has been killed by the country’s military junta, along with a fellow Chin Christian, Nam Ceu, according to international advocacy groups. The pastor had led his congregation for more than 25 years.
The pair had been arrested in May and held by the military since then, according to the U.S.-based International Christian Concern (ICC). The two men were accused of aiding the Hakha Chinland Defense Force, an armed group fighting the junta.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been in conflict since a 2021 coup, when the military overturned the second consecutive election victory of the party led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The takeover widened a decades-long fight between the military and ethnic armed movements, which have long contested government authority along the country’s border regions and demanded autonomy, into a nationwide war. New pro-democracy resistance groups have since allied with established ethnic forces, some of which comprise Christians.
The Rev. William, who did not use a surname, was killed on June 4, and a funeral service was held on Aug. 26 in Chungcung, reports the Maryland-based Burma Research Institute.
The Rev. William’s church, Chungcung Baptist Church, was looted and burned in October 2021, and the village around it has faced repeated violent raids since the military junta seized power that year. The village consisted of about 300 houses.
William leaves behind a wife and five children.
“We grieve with his family, his congregation, and our Chin brothers and sisters everywhere. This was an extrajudicial killing, carried out without due process or trial," Rev. Dr. Robin Stoops, Burma Research Institute board chairman and former associate general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, said in a statement. "But grief demands action. We call on the international community, and especially the United States, to hold those responsible accountable."
Stoops traveled through Chungcung village during a visit before the 2021 military coup.
The conflict has brought airstrikes, shelling, mass displacement and interruptions to humanitarian aid in Chin, Kayah, Kachin, Karen and parts of Shan states, where roughly 2 million Christians make their home.
The military controls only about 14% of the country’s territory.
The killing took place amid attacks on churches carried out by Myanmar’s soldiers.
Troops burned St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Kachin to the ground just ahead of the congregation’s planned Saint Patrick’s Day celebration in March 2025.
The cathedral fire came days after soldiers had already flattened a high school, the priest’s residence and the diocesan offices on the grounds, on Feb. 26 that year. Airstrikes had destroyed Sacred Heart Church in Mindat, Chin state, on Feb. 6. Less than a month later, an airstrike on March 3 destroyed the pastoral center at St. Michael’s Catholic Church, part of the Banmaw Diocese in Kachin.
Rights groups say the strikes on churches, Buddhist monasteries and other worship sites are retaliation against communities suspected of aiding ethnic resistance fighters.
The resistance groups have overrun hundreds of junta outposts, and the military has faced defections and surrenders in its ranks. The advocacy group Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust previously said the offensive brought hope to the pro-democracy movement but triggered a harsh crackdown by local commanders.
Ethnic Burman Buddhists make up most of Myanmar’s population, though the country is also home to a range of ethnic and religious minorities. Between 20% and 30% of ethnic Karen people are Christian, and Christians form a majority in Chin and Kachin states.
Decades of persecution have pushed many to flee Myanmar for neighboring India and Thailand, with some resettling in the United States or Australia, while many others remain in refugee camps near the border facing years of uncertainty.
Zelensky's mafia collapsing.
Since yesterday nobody can find the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.
After millions of dollars been found in his office, he is hiding.
He is accused of covering scam call-centers that were stealing money from elders in the USA and Europe.
I already told you they steal about $1 BILLION PER MONTH
$12,000,000,000 a year.
Scammers of Ukraine have profit bigger than Space X and Tesla.
In Ukraine thousands of scam call-centers and all of them are controlled by law enforcement and intelligence agencies: Prosecutor’s Office, SBU, GUR, Police...
Power structures collect the money, but the whole cashflow goes up - to the President’s office. To Zelensky.
Zelensky is the head of mafia.
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According to Grok:
Diana Panchenko claims Zelensky heads a mafia with Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko hiding after millions were found in his office, tied to protecting scam call centers stealing $1B monthly from US/Europe elders, exceeding SpaceX/Tesla profits, and run via law enforcement agencies.
NABU's "Operation Carthage" exposed a senior PGO official leading a bribery ring shielding fraudulent call centers and laundering proceeds, with searches at Kravchenko's premises and his deputy's; PGO denies he's missing and says he's working, while confirming investigative actions.
Scam call centers are a documented major industry in Ukraine generating up to $1B/month per GI-TOC estimates, often protected by corrupt elements, with recent PGO-led crackdowns shutting down dozens alongside ongoing NABU probes into high-level graft.
NABU is Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau,
The Liberal practice of creating slush funds for its supporters
CARNEY’S SPACEPORT SCAM
Carney gave a $200M Lease to a near-BANKRUPT company of LIBERAL INSIDERS.
For a GRAVEL PIT he calls a “Spaceport”.
The Lease was BACKDATED for NO WORK, INFLATING worthless shares.
The Board Chair IMMEDIATELY sold shares making $1.8M.
TOTAL CORRUPTION.
Icelanders give cold shoulder to EU’s ‘bureaucrats and warmongering’ (VIDEO)
RT explores the reasons why people in the island nation chose to keep the European Union at arm’s length
Rachel MarsdenPublished 31 Aug, 2026 09:37
Icelanders appear to have found a way to have their cake and eat it by rejecting a proposal to restart integration talks with the EU, RT’s Rachel Marsden reports.
In a referendum on the weekend, almost 53% of voters in the northern Atlantic nation supported maintaining the status quo rather than exploring the possibility of EU membership.
The small island country already has access to many of the benefits offered by the economic bloc, but cannot be dictated to by Brussels on key domestic policy issues, such as access to fishing resources or immigration policy.
Watch the video to learn more.
Germany is heading for a revolt at the ballot box
The AfD is projected to win Saxony-Anhalt on a program that rejects the establishment agenda, but can it beat the political firewall?
The AfD enters the Saxony-Anhalt election with a ten-point plan for rapid reform as the political establishment resorts to surveillance, raids, ban proposals, and economic threats to stop it.
A few days before the September 6 state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD is on the verge of becoming the first party outside Germany’s postwar political cartel to govern a German state. Two months ago, at its state party conference in Magdeburg, the party presented a clear and ambitious 100-Day Program. The party entered the final days of the campaign united, confident, and focused on the concerns of ordinary German citizens. The ten-point plan offers a practical course for immediate action should the AfD assume government responsibility. It seeks to restore order and protect the homeland.
The establishment has answered this program with threats rather than arguments. The state Office for the Protection of the Constitution (a fittingly Orwellian name for such a dystopian organization) has classified the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt as a ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ party since 2023, allowing an agency controlled by the Interior Ministry to spy on the strongest opposition party and infiltrate it with informants. Days before the vote, leading SPD (Social Democratic Party) and Green politicians renewed calls to ban the AfD’s state branches in Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. Ten days before the election, police searched 15 properties in an investigation into the alleged continuation of Artgemeinschaft, a Germanic neo-pagan association banned in 2023 as a ‘right-wing extremist’ organization. Two AfD parliamentary candidates were among those targeted. The legal merits of the case will be decided later, but the political images were broadcast before voters enter the polling stations. The message was plain: The state will place every possible obstacle before a party it cannot defeat at the ballot box.
What are the AfD’s ten proposed measures that have caused such panic?
First, the AfD will terminate the state broadcasting treaties and begin the reform of public media. The present compulsory fee forces every household to finance television and radio organizations that regularly treat opposition to mass immigration, hysterical climate policy, European centralization, and the war course against Russia as signs of moral or political deviance. The AfD wants a leaner, cheaper, and fully transparent system that informs citizens instead of lecturing them. This proposal strikes directly at one of the establishment’s main instruments of power, which helps explain the fury it has caused.
Second, the program promises deportations from minute one. An AfD government would use every legal instrument available to ensure that people who have received orders to leave Germany are actually returned to their countries of origin. Temporary detention would prevent those scheduled for removal from disappearing before deportation. Borders must be controlled, German communities must be protected, public resources must serve those entitled to them, and laws must be enforced. A state that announces deportations but fails to carry them out teaches both citizens and foreigners that its rules are empty words. The AfD intends to end that practice immediately.
Third, asylum seekers who are allowed to remain will have to perform mandatory community service. Anyone supported by society will be expected to make a contribution to it. Centralized accommodation in suitable facilities will become the rule, while placement in private apartments will be restricted to exceptional cases. This will improve oversight, security, and the orderly administration of the asylum system while respecting the taxpayers who finance it.
Fourth, an AfD state government will redirect public money away from party networks and ideological pressure groups. It will end funding for party foundations, including its own, and cut state support for the asylum and integration industry, the climate rescue industry, gender programs, and projects such as ‘School without Racism – School with Courage’. These organizations are presented as independent parts of civil society, yet many promote the establishment’s political slogans and campaign against the AfD. Taxpayers are thus forced to finance bodies that instruct them how to vote and denounce them when they refuse. The AfD would break this cycle. Public money would return to the people of Saxony-Anhalt and serve roads, schools, families, public safety, and other real needs instead of an army of activists protected from the economic conditions imposed on everyone else.
Fifth, the AfD promises a thorough reform of the driving-license system and direct subsidies for apprentices. Obtaining a license in Germany has become punishingly expensive and tangled in needless rules. Young people often face bills of several thousand euros for compulsory lessons, examinations, and administrative fees. In large cities, this may be an inconvenience. In the countryside, it can decide whether a young person can accept an apprenticeship, reach a workplace, visit a doctor, or build an independent life. Saxony-Anhalt contains many rural communities where buses rarely run, railway links have disappeared, and the distances between homes, vocational schools, and employers are long. The AfD therefore plans to make the process cheaper and more practical while retaining serious safety standards. Direct help for apprentices will allow young workers to travel reliably between their homes, training centers, and workplaces. The measure recognizes a fact that politicians in Berlin often ignore: In rural Germany, personal mobility is essential for work, education, medical care, and everyday life. A government that demands effort from the young must also remove the barriers that prevent them from making that effort.
Sixth, the AfD will establish special classes for children of refugees and asylum seekers. These pupils will be taught material from their home countries to prepare them for eventual return and reentry into their national school systems. The measure will also protect the learning environment for German students and reduce the strain on teachers who are expected to overcome language barriers, cultural conflicts, and serious differences in educational level without adequate support. At schools affected by violence and persistent disruption, the AfD will deploy professional private security services. Teachers should teach, students should learn, and parents should be able to send their children to school without fear. The present system often conceals disorder because officials worry more about damaging the image of ‘diversity’ than about protecting children. Violence is softened into ‘conflict’, intimidation becomes a ‘challenge’, and falling standards are blamed on a lack of funding. The AfD rejects this evasive language. When a school is unsafe, security must be restored. When students cannot follow lessons, they must receive suitable instruction. A functioning school serves children through discipline, knowledge, and clear rules.
Seventh and eighth, the program calls for a cultural renewal that honors German traditions. Rainbow flags will be removed from schools because classrooms should not serve as advertising space for deviant sexual orientations and leftist political campaigns. The black-red-gold federal flag will fly in their place. This will teach children that Germany is their shared country and that belonging to it carries duties as well as rights. The state’s existing #moderndenken (modern thinking) campaign will give way to #deutschdenken (German thinking). The new initiative will affirm German history, culture, regional character, and national identity. The AfD also rejects the attempt to define Saxony-Anhalt chiefly through the Bauhaus movement, whose international style sought to strip art and architecture of much of their inherited ethnic and regional character. It will instead place more emphasis on the older heritage of the land and the people who formed it. This has provoked a flood of claims that the AfD threatens art itself. The charge confuses the withdrawal of state favor with censorship. Artists may continue to create what they wish, but they will no longer possess an automatic right to public money. The German nation has the same right to preserve its own culture that every other people is told to exercise with pride.
Ninth, the AfD will reduce the number of ministries in the state government. Too many ministries produce more offices, titles, press departments, and senior posts for loyal party functionaries without producing a better government. A smaller administration will lower costs, shorten lines of responsibility, and make it harder for ministers to hide failures inside a maze of agencies and committees. The government should concentrate on the essential services that affect daily life.
Tenth, the party will establish a parliamentary committee of inquiry into the Covid-19 period. It will examine lockdowns, school closures, restrictions on movement and assembly, pressure surrounding vaccination, and the exclusion of dissenting experts from public debate. The committee will determine where officials exceeded their lawful powers, where measures became disproportionate, and who was responsible. The purpose is accountability. Rights that disappear during a declared emergency are unlikely to remain secure during the next one unless abuses are named and punished. The same political class that now warns that an AfD victory would endanger democracy has shown little interest in examining how quickly it suspended ordinary freedoms during the pandemic. The committee would place documents, decisions, and responsibility before the public.
The final polls put the AfD at around 42%, almost twice the CDU’s 22%, with the Left Party near 13%. Depending on how many small parties fail to clear the 5% threshold to enter the state parliament, the AfD could even win an absolute majority of seats.
Ulrich Siegmund, who received 99.5% support in his election to the executive board, has nevertheless called for humility, discipline, and hard work until the last ballot is cast. Against him stands the whole machinery of the old order. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned that an AfD government would frighten away foreign investors. This is nonsense: Investors care about affordable energy, public safety, skilled workers, and reliable rules, all areas in which the established parties have failed. Leftist activist groups are urging voters to cast tactical ballots for the SPD and Greens solely to deny the AfD a majority. Commentators have discussed whether civil servants and police officers might refuse orders from an elected AfD government. German law does not permit refusal merely because a superior belongs to the AfD, but we all know that German law means nothing when push comes to shove.
The major parties maintain their firewall and would rather form a coalition across old ideological divisions than allow the strongest party to govern. The AfD’s answer remains its program: a concrete plan to govern from the first day and break with decades of failed establishment rule. The old parties had decades to solve these problems. Their rule brought higher costs, weaker public order, open borders, more crime, failing services, and contempt for national identity. Now that voters are turning away from them, they call the voters dangerous. Saxony-Anhalt has the chance to show that ballots still outrank secret-service files, media campaigns, ministerial warnings, and political threats.
‘It makes no sense’ for Moscow to attack NATO – Finland’s president
But the bloc must keep supporting Kiev because “if Ukraine loses, we lose,” Alexander Stubb has said
Published 30 Aug, 2026 07:27
Finnish President Alexander Stubb has said that he doesn’t believe speculations that Russia is planning to attack NATO countries.
Russia has repeatedly rejected claims that it has aggressive designs against the bloc, saying that they are only made by Western politicians to distract the public from problems at home and justify growing military spending.
During his interview with the German tabloid Bild on Saturday, Stubb was asked to weigh in on the assessment by the Defense Ministry in Berlin that Russia could invade NATO territory by 2029.
“If someone had such a crystal ball – wonderful. But I just don’t see any evidence or facts for it,” he replied.
“First, I have intelligence findings. And secondly, we have a deterrence – and this deterrence is stronger than that of any other military power anywhere in the world,” the Finnish president added.
Given NATO’s conventional forces, missile arsenals and nuclear weapons stockpiles, “it does not make sense for any power in the world to test the resolve of this alliance,” he said.
According to Stubb, Russia is also preoccupied with the Ukraine conflict.
“I simply don’t see that they could now suddenly mobilize forces for two fronts,” he noted.
“I’m not saying: ‘Relax.’ You should always prepare for the worst to prevent it,” the Finnish president said.
He accused Moscow of waging “information warfare” against the West, saying that “Russia wants us Europeans to sit here and discuss: Will Russia escalate?.. Will Russia attack NATO and Europe?”
Stubb again urged NATO to continue its support for Kiev amid the ongoing conflict with Moscow. Finland joined the bloc in 2023, abandoning its longstanding policy of neutrality.
“We have to understand, you in Germany and we in Finland, that Ukraine is the best security guarantee we have against Russia. If Ukraine loses, we lose,” he argued.
Moscow maintains that a conflict with NATO is only possible if the bloc launches an aggression against Russia first.
Earlier this week, Moscow told the UK that its military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond could become legitimate targets for Russia if Kiev continues to use British-supplied weapons for strikes on Russian territory.
Russian officials also previously warned that if Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania knowingly help to facilitate Ukrainian drone attacks against northwestern Russia, Moscow could consider them complicit in those actions and would have the right to self-defense under the UN Charter.
