Land and Bible

 By  Professor Michael Shlomi June 2026 Michael Shlomi is a policy analyst specializing in geopolitical and diplomatic affairs with a focus on the Middle East EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Iran presents the world — and the United States in particular — with a carefully constructed image of unified sovereign authority. A single leadership, a coherent state, a government that speaks and acts with one voice. This image is a strategic fiction. Beneath the surface of the Islamic Republic lies a deeply fractured polity: a collage of competing factions, rival institutions, conflicting ideologies, and irreconcilable agendas — each pulling the country in a different direction. This analysis maps those factions, examines their internal dynamics, and draws the critical policy implication: that any diplomatic agreement reached with Iran’s current negotiating representatives may be structurally incapable of binding the forces that actually govern the country. Understanding who Iran really is may b...

“Deity of Christ” believers have claimed that Isaiah saw Jesus, the “second person of the Godhead”, in Isaiah’s vision of God recorded in Isaiah 6. The deity-of-Christ claim is that John 12:41, “Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him” means that when Isaiah saw God sitting on his throne in a vision, Isaiah saw Jesus.  For video/podcast version, click here . There are many interpretive problems that the deity of Christ claim creates, e.g., why didn’t Isaiah see the trinity or the Father on the throne? Israel’s God is the Father (Exo. 4:22, Deut. 32:6, Mal. 2:10, John 8:54, etc.). The prophet Isaiah – he himself who saw the vision - declares several times that Israel’s God is the Father. For example, two times in Isaiah 63:16, and also 64:8: “You, O LORD, are our Father.”   But the key interpretive error in the deity-of-Christ claim is that John 12:41 “Isaiah… saw his glory” does not refer to the Lord God’s glory, but to the glory of the Servant of the Lord...