AND THE THIRD ANGEL FOLLOWED THEM, SAYING WITH A LOUD VOICE, IF ANY MAN WORSHIP THE BEAST AND HIS IMAGE, AND RECEIVE HIS MARK IN HIS FOREHEAD, OR IN HIS HAND. *** REVELATION 14:9
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Runaway convert to stay in Florida
Runaway convert to stay in Florida
Updated: Friday, 21 Aug 2009, 10:12 PM EDT
Published : Friday, 21 Aug 2009, 9:15 PM EDT
By MIKE SCHNEIDER Associated Press Writer
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - An Ohio teen who says she ran away from home because she feared punishment for converting from Islam to Christianity will stay in Florida while custody issues are being settled, a judge ruled Friday.
Rifqa Bary, 17, will remain in foster care until another hearing Sept. 3, Judge Dan Dawson said. Authorities are still deciding whether the case should stay in Florida or return to Columbus, Ohio, where the teen lived with her parents and two brothers.
Asked at the hearing if she wanted to say anything, Rifqa Bary replied, “I love my family. I love them so much ... yet I’m so in fear of my life.” She then expressed her devotion to Christianity.
Her father, Mohamed Bary, told the judge that Rifqa would be able to practice Christianity if she returned home.
“She is my daughter and I love her,” he said. “I love her and want her to come home.”
The teen’s mother, Aysha, broke down and cried as she told the judge, “I love my daughter and need my daughter back.”
The judge encouraged both sides to try resolve the custody issues and granted a request by Rifqa to visit with one of her brothers.
Before the next hearing, he said, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement will finish investigating how the teen came to Florida and whether she is in any danger.
She disappeared July 19 and police used phone and computer records to track her to the Rev. Blake Lorenz, pastor of Orlando, Fla.-based Global Revolution Church. Authorities said the teen had met him through an online Facebook prayer group.
The girl has since been assigned to a foster family approved by the Florida Department of Children and Families and is not with Lorenz, authorities said.
The girl’s family is originally from Sri Lanka and emigrated in 2000 to seek medical help for Rifqa, who had lost sight in her right eye when she fell and struck a toy airplane on a couch at home. They say they have never threatened to harm her.
The case has attracted the interest of politicians and Christian activists who view it as a test of religious liberty. A handful of Christian activists protested outside the juvenile court building.
Gov. Charlie Crist praised the judge’s decision, and Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner said that “no one, child or adult, should have to fear for their lives because of their religious choices.”
A spokesman for the Bary family, Shayan Elahi, said police officers in Ohio had found no reason to believe that Rifqa Bary would be in danger if she returned home.
The case was “a family matter that is being blown out of proportion by some people who want to tie it to a larger maligning of a religion, and that should not be the case,” Elahi said.
Source: http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/faith_news/082109_Runaway_convert_to_stay_in_Florida
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Feeding a More Diverse Market
FLAVORS OF HOME Evergreen Farm, owned by Sun Yi and Chong Il Kim, grows Korean pears on trees supported by trellises.
By KEVIN COYNE
Published: August 21, 2009
Hamilton Township
Aaron Houston for The New York Times
Aaron Houston for The New York Times
It also produces white peaches.
THE pear trees are trained to grow up and over the long rows of trellises that stretch across this old soybean farm near Trenton, and as they have matured in the dozen years since Chong Il Kim planted them, they have formed a leafy arch just tall enough to let his maroon Ford pickup pass beneath.
Mr. Kim, 59, bounced gently along behind the wheel one recent morning, the shady aisle reaching ahead of him like the nave of a church. The round, green Korean pears he was inspecting were approaching the size of tennis balls. In a matter of weeks, they would be worth as much as $3 apiece to fans of Asian fruit, who find nothing to match their flavor in domestic varieties.
“Looks good so far,” Mr. Kim said, and when he reached the end of one corridor of pears, he turned and drove slowly down another, enveloped by his crop. From the distance beyond a tall tree line rose a steady hum: the river of traffic along the New Jersey Turnpike, which marks the western border of his 140-acre orchard. “This is good here, better than California.”
Elsewhere on Evergreen Farm, other fruits were ripening, too. The plums were ready to pick, and the season’s first customers had arrived for them the previous Sunday. The peaches would soon be ripe, then the grapes and the apples. But the pears are the marquee fruit here — covering about 70 percent of the orchard and, since it opened to the public three years ago, luring a steady stream of mostly Asian customers with the chance to pick for themselves a taste of their old home.
“When someone’s going to eat one for the first time, I say, ‘Just close your eyes and imagine you’re tasting a melon from another planet,’” said Dan Ward, a fruit specialist with the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. “‘Sprightly’ is the word I sometimes use to describe the sensation of that first bite. It releases a lot of juice in your mouth.”
Korean pears are rounder, greener, crisper, sweeter, juicier (“sparkly” is another adjective Mr. Ward likes) than the more familiar varieties, and closer in texture to an apple. They are also much costlier: a serve-to-guests luxury, not a brown-bag-lunch commodity, the kind of specialty crop for a specialty market that has altered New Jersey’s agricultural landscape in recent years.
Every license plate in New Jersey is a reminder of the state’s historical role as the market garden for New York and Philadelphia, before suburbanization gobbled up the fields, and refrigerated transport allowed produce to travel here from distant locations. Sweet corn and tomatoes still define summer in the state, but they have been joined by cilantro, bok choy, calabaza, jalapeños and Mr. Kim’s pears.
“Those are the kind of crops that really are well suited to New Jersey,” Mr. Ward said. “Niche-marketed crops with high value that really have an advantage in being produced locally.”
As the state’s population has diversified, so has its diet and its produce-buying, according to a three-year federally funded study about ethnic agriculture by a group of Rutgers researchers. “One of the surprising results of our survey was that the four key groups, which represent several million people on the East Coast, spend much more of their food dollar on fresh produce compared to the average American,” said Bill Sciarappa, a Rutgers extension agent in Monmouth County, referring to the shopping habits of those with Puerto Rican, Mexican, Asian Indian and Chinese ancestry.
And they’ll go farther to get it. “They’ll travel 20 miles to get their specific fruit or vegetable,” Mr. Sciarappa said.
When the pears are ready at Evergreen Farm, by early to mid September, the customers soon follow, Korean and Chinese mostly, from as far as Virginia and Connecticut. Asked how many pears the farm sells in a year, the general manager, Alexander Joo, said, “That’s confidential.”
“A lot of people come,” said Mr. Joo, 39, a former Seventh-day Adventist minister. (Mr. Kim is also a Seventh-day Adventist, so the farm is closed on Saturdays, the denomination’s Sabbath.) “They come a long way to be here, so they bring food, have picnics.”
Mr. Kim grew up on his father’s orchard an hour south of Seoul, and came to the United States in 1986 in search of more land and new markets. “Too cold,” he said of the first place he tried, Middletown, N.Y. “For Korean pears, it can’t be too cold.”
Shamong, in Burlington County, was more hospitable. Mr. Kim and his wife, Sun Yi, spent 10 years on 10 acres there, planting some of the first Korean pear trees in the state, before shifting the operation to this Mercer County community in 1997. New Jersey no longer budgets enough to fund comprehensive crop counts, but Mr. Ward of Rutgers estimates that there are 200 acres of Asian pear in the state, with more than half of them at Evergreen, the largest grower and — on Sundays in the last weeks of summer and the first of fall, when the cars and buses start streaming in from the neighboring Turnpike — certainly the busiest.
“Almost harvest time,” Mr. Kim said as he bumped slowly beneath another verdant arbor of pears, and the river of traffic rolled by in the distance.
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A sampling of farms that grow produce favored by different ethnic groups and that allow customers to pick their own. Always call ahead to see what’s ready.
EVERGREEN FARM
1023 Yardville-Allentown Road, Hamilton Township; evergreenfarm.us; (609) 259-0029. Closed Saturdays.
Korean pears, Korean peaches and grapes, Chinese cabbage, jujube fruit.
DEWOLF’S FARM
58 West Colliers Mill Road, New Egypt; (609) 758-2424.
Bitter melons, cilantro, Asian long beans, Thai peppers, jute leaves, Thai eggplants, bitter balls (African eggplant), sweet potato leaves.
HALLOCK’S U-PICK FARM
38 Fischer Road, New Egypt; http://www.hallocksupick.com/; (609) 758-8847.
Jamaican hot peppers, bitter balls, kittley (Jamaican eggplant), water greens, sweet potato leaves, jute leaves.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/nyregion/23dinenj.html
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Mass. Under Tropical Storm Warning
AP
Also See: Check Out Hurricane's Location and Projected Path
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that Bill could bring "extremely dangerous surf and life-threatening rip currents" to parts of the U.S. East Coast over the weekend before making a direct hit on Canada's Maritime Provinces as a tropical storm on Sunday.
Officials declared a tropical storm warning for the Massachusetts coast, including Obama's planned vacation spot of Martha's Vineyard, though the storm's eye was expected to stay offshore and pass that island before the president arrives on Sunday.
The warning, which also includes Nantucket, means meaning tropical storm-force winds of 40 mph or more could hit in the next 24 hours.
Bill was expected to start weakening Saturday night, but the Canadian Hurricane Center issued tropical storm and hurricane warnings for parts of the province of Nova Scotia.
A ferry service between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland announced it would shut down Sunday morning due to severe weather.
In Bermuda, the storm mostly spared the pink-sand shores though it cut power to about 3,700 customers and flooded some roads along the northern coast. The airport was closed overnight and all ferry service was canceled until Sunday.
Bermudians and tourists awoke to some water on the roads, rain and gusting winds.
"It was something to behold. I've never been in a hurricane before," said Kenny Mayne, 50, of Connecticut, a vacationer who hopes to head back to the U.S. on Sunday.
Heavy surf pounded Bermuda but neither the island's main hospital nor its urgent care center reported any patients with storm-related injuries.
"Believe it or not we've had a very quiet night with Hurricane Bill," said Lieutenant Dana Lovell of the Bermuda Fire and Rescue Service.
At the 9 Beaches resort on Bermuda's western coast, general manager Robin Gilbert said about 10 guests slept on mattresses in the lobby because they were worried about staying in beachfront cabanas overnight. The resort had no power for about 12 hours, but there was no damage.
On Friday night, the streets of Bermuda's capital were mostly empty and blanketed with rain. Luxury boutiques boarded up their windows. At the bar of the Fairmont Hamilton Princess hotel, a few guests sampled the "Dark 'n Stormy" cocktail as Bill's outer bands raked the island.
Canadians, meanwhile, were getting ready for a blow.
Mark Perry, a government worker in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said his family had readied for severe weather with batteries for flashlights, extra water and propane for the barbecue.
"We're concerned enough that we're going to tie things down, move the lawn furniture into a safer spot," Perry said.
Another Halifax resident, James Burchill, said he learned a lesson from last storms: he bought a manual can opener because power cuts made his electric model useless.
"Most of the time they blow past," Burchill said. "But they can do a lot of damage."
At 11 a.m. EDT Saturday, the center of Bill was about 435 miles south of Nantucket and about 710 miles south-southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Hurricane force winds extended as much as 85 miles from the Category 2 storm's center, and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 275 miles.
On the U.S. East Coast, forecasters warned of offshore waves of 20 feet or more and rip currents at the beach during one of the summer's last weekends.
Bill was the first Atlantic hurricane this year after a quiet start to the season that runs from June through November. It peaked as a Category 4 hurricane with 135 mph winds on Wednesday.
Who Receive the Seal?
The seal of the living God will be placed upon those only who bear a likeness to Christ in character.
Those whom the Lamb shall lead by the fountains of living waters, and from whose eyes He shall wipe away all tears, will be those now receiving the knowledge and understanding revealed in the Bible, the Word of God. . . .
We are to copy no human being. There is no human being wise enough to be our criterion. We are to look to the man Christ Jesus, who is complete in the perfection of righteousness and holiness. He is the author and finisher of our faith. He is the pattern man. His experience is the measure of the experience that we are to gain. His character is our model. Let us, then, take our minds off the perplexities and the difficulties of this life, and fix them on Him, that by beholding we may be changed into His likeness. We may behold Christ to good purpose. We may safely look to Him; for He is all-wise. As we look to Him and think of Him, He will be formed within, the hope of glory.
Let us strive with all the power that God has given us to be among the hundred and forty-four thousand.
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Everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life
25And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither?
26Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.
27Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.
28Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
29Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
30They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work?
31Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.
32Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
33For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
34Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.
35And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
36But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.
37All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
38For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
39And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.
40And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
41The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.
42And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?
43Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves.
44No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
45It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.
46Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.
47Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
48I am that bread of life.
49Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
50This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
51I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
52The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
53Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
54Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
55For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
56He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
57As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
58This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
59These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Catholic Inquisition and The Torture Tools
BereanBeacon
Most people have some knowledge of the holocaust. The 6 years of torture and atrocities that the Jews suffered under Hitler and the Nazis during the Second World War. While in no way downplaying the terrible events of the holocaust, such a massacre does not compare to the severity to the torture and murder that took place under Papal authority during the 605 years of the Inquisition. From the beginning of the Papacy, until the present time, it is estimated by credible historians that more than 50,000,000, men and women have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy charged against them by Papal Rome. This Video contains actual photographs of some of the instruments of torture that were used. Since we consider this Video on the Inquisition one of the more important message that we have given, please make it known to others, and if possible post the link on your own website.
Richard's Play List: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list...
http://www.bereanbeacon.org
intro@bereanbeacon.org
Rome's Desire for World Domination by Tom Friess - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_eu7u...
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Questions for Catholics are:
What was the first message preached by Peter that resulted in the conversion of 3000 orthodox Jews in Acts 2 and another 5000 in Acts 4?
If the Eucharist teaching was introduced in Acts why weren't the Apostles charged by the rulers for breaking an OT law and what were they charged with?
(Leviticus 7:27 Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.
Leviticus 17:10,11 And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Leviticus 17:14 For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.) What were the apostles arrested for?
Since many left Jesus in John 6:66 because of John 6:54, why wasn't there a similar occurrance in Acts 2 and Acts 4 and the rest of the book of Acts?
These were instructions given to the converted Gentiles. Why wasn't the Euchariest doctrine included in them?
Acts 15:20,29 But that we write unto them [converted Gentiles], that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.
Quotes by Evolutionary Scientists Against Evolution - http://www.warneveryone.com/evolution...
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KJV1611 Bible - http://www.youtube.com/results?search...
The Czech Republic Legacy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBWC3K...
605 années d'Inquisition - avec sous-titres en français - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFniD2...
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Thursday, August 20, 2009
Behind all the rhetoric there is no change

Less than a month into his tenure in office, President Obama signed another astronomical stop-gap $787 Billion Stimulus Package to revive the languishing U.S. economy.* Remember that his predecessor George Bush had also demanded (or there would be riots in the streets) a similar Billion Dollar Bail-Out in September of 2008. Just, More of the Same!
Well, folks if you haven't noticed the Hard-Sell is back. 'W' is gone, but, the pushy, overbearing, "I know what's right for the country" rationale is alive and well in the new Obama Administration. It reminds me of the proverb: "The more things change, the more they remain the same". It's like Deja Vu, all over again!
Health Care, wait, no! Health Insurance Reform.
Public Option, wait, no! Government Option.
Town Hall meetings, shouts, brown-shirts, nazis, un-Americans, etc.
Where and when will it end?
The Hard-Sell never ends, it only demands more concessions when you give in to its ruthless and relentless assaults or manipulation.
The government now owns banks, car companies, insurance companies, etc.
Now, it wants to control your health? A state controlled health monopoly? Hold the Pickle!
If you thought it was difficult dealing with AT&T, way back then? Wait until they establish the AH&P (American Health and Pharmaceuticals)?
Yes, I want to change my doctor! Please hold, I will transfer you to that department......Please press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish, ....Now if you live in Alabama press 1, in Alaska press 2,...
And to think that we have almost 4 more years of change to go? Heaven help us!
MORE BOONDOGGLES, MORE $800 TOILET SEATS, MORE $300 SCREW DRIVERS....
How about 8 new Corporate jets for Congress to ferry back and forth from their nation building, sightseeing, fund raising and campaigns?**
The rhetoric continues, and frankly I don't have the time or the interest in listening to more of the same: Hard Sell!
*http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/02/17/Signed-sealed-delivered-ARRA/
**http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26000.html
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Man stabbed at Pathfinder camporee
BY ERIN CROWLEY • of The Northwestern • August 17, 2009
One man sustained minor injuries after being stabbed late Saturday night at Camp Scholler on the Experimental Aviation Association grounds.
For the past week the EAA campgrounds have been occupied by more than 35,000 Pathfinders in town for an international camporee held every five years.
Sgt. Steve Brewer of the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department said two males were having a physical confrontation with each other when one male pulled a knife and cut the other party. He said officers responded about midnight to the call.
The 38-year-old victim was taken to Mercy Medical Center where he was treated and released. No names are being released due to an ongoing investigation, Brewer said.
Lt. Lara Vendola of the Sheriff’s Department said the victim was stabbed in the neck and on one of his hands.
The suspect, 36, is expected to be charged Monday, Vendola said.
George Johnson, associate communication director for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America, said that the Pathfinders are cooperating with authorities on the matter and that it will be up to the Pathfinder clubs that they are a part of in New York whether or not the two men will remain a part of the organization.
This is the third time since 1999 that the Pathfinders have come to Oshkosh for their international camporee. Pathfinders at the gathering worked on service projects throughout the area this week, including work at the Little Oshkosh playground at Menominee Park, the Paine Art Center and Gardens, the Sheldon Nature Area in the town of Algoma and Heckrodt Wetland Reserve in Menasha.
Erin Crowley: (920) 426-6681, ecrowley@thenorthwestern.com
Source: http://www.thenorthwestern.com/article/20090817/osh0101/308170021
President holds national `call-in' on health care reform with religious leaders
Posted: 08/19/2009 07:04:19 PM PDT
PASADENA - In a speech broadcast live Wednesday to All Saints Church and congregations nationwide, President Barack Obama called on people of faith to make their voices heard in the push for universal health care.
The "40 Minutes for Health Reform" call-in and audio Web cast drew more than 100 people to All Saints in an event notably lacking in protests or disruptions.
The president, whose remarks were punctuated by applause from the All Saints audience, struck some familiar notes on "affordable and accessible" health care.
But this time he urged people of different religious denominations to come together and "knock down ... the false witness" of opponents and the "extraordinary lies" circulating.
"It's time for any man or woman of faith ... to show the way," he said. "One thing we all share is the moral conviction that this goes to the heart of who we are as a people."
The president spoke of the "misinformation" circulating on health care proposals.
He cited "distortions" that had people wrongly believing illegal aliens would be covered when they are "specifically not," and false rumors that abortions would be funded. He also discredited the portrayal of voluntary counseling for the elderly on living wills or end-of-life wishes as "death panels" promoting euthanasia.
No one in America should be denied coverage because they are ill or have a pre-existing condition, Obama said, and no one should be "pushed to the edge of ruin" when insurance doesn't cover the cost of care.
A handful of speakers told of personal problems with health care, and rabbis and pastors from around the county gave a round-up of what their congregations were doing to push the cause of universal health care
Among them, Jim Wallis of Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace, said there was "deep concern" among people of faith about the nature of the debate.
"The shouting, even hatred," he said. "We're in danger of losing the moral core of this debate."
A "steady moral drumbeat" must come from the faith community, he said, and a "clear call for truth-telling in this debate."
The Rev. Susan Russell of All Saints said the national project was to inform and encourage religious communities to "come together around the issue and step up and speak out" about the need for universal access to affordable health care.
Led by Faith in Public Life, the program is organized by, among others, the Episcopal Church, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Sojourners, the National Council of Churches in Christ and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
Tim Moffett, a former All Saints parishioner, said he hadn't been sure what to expect of the event.
"I expected the same old, same old," he said. "But it wasn't. I got more clear facts ... and now I want to keep the conversation going."
For more information on the faith-based effort, visit visit faithforhealth.org /join-the-call.
Dante Grant, 5, star on drums
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UajWSg-IMU&feature=player_embeddedhttp://
By Michael Stringer
SEE a video of a five-year-old drumming star set to take centre stage at a community fun day and talent show later this month.
Already a YouTube hit, Dante Grant goes to the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Lewisham High Street that is organising the fun day.
He has been drumming since he was just one.
He is now going to lead the way for young people in Lewisham to show off their talents at Ladywell Fields this month.
Dante’s father Hewitt says his boy understood rhythm from an early age.
Hewitt said: “When Dante was about one year old we noticed him turning things over like pots, pans and bins and start banging on them like drums.
“When he was one-and-a-half we bought him his first toy kit but that was not strong enough.
"Another toy kit later, we knew we had to get him a proper set – toy kits don’t have the hi-hat symbols that he controls with his left foot.
"We bought him a reduced-size real kit and he has never looked back. People love to see him play at church.”
Dante, who is featured on YouTube in the video entitled “UK’s best young drummer, surely!”, will be launching the first Ladywell Fields Summer Festival on Sunday, August 23, playing on stage from 11am.
The free day will see a talent competition, live music, poetry, comedians including Richard Blackwood and choirs, along with a puppet theatre, a bouncy castle, arts and crafts, parachute games and a football tournament for those aged 12 and over.
There will also be a health exhibition and free health checks available, as well as barbecues and vegetarian food.
Dr Petula Peters, who is helping organise the event, said: “It will be a great day for Lewisham and a chance for families to have fun and young people to show off their talents.”
Email: michael.stringer@slp.co.uk
Source: http://www.wimbledon-today.co.uk/tn/News.cfm?id=32157
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The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
by the Watchman
Dana G Smith
The Study we covered this week is called the ‘Grapes of Wrath’. It is found in Revelation chapter 14. The angel of God who has a sickle is told to ‘thrust in thy sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe’. It is here we get a picture of the harvesting of the earth and the winepress into which the grape go into. It is the ‘great winepress of the wrath of God.’ The Apostle Paul spoke that he knew the ‘terror of the LORD, therefore he persuaded men.’ He persuaded them to repent, seek God, believe in Jesus Christ, follow him, and keep his commandments.
Revelation 14:17 And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.
18 And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
19 And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
20 And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.
Revelation 15:1 ¶And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.
But no mention of the Grapes of Wrath would be complete here without a reflection of the movie directed by John Ford. It starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad and a great character actress Jane Darwell as his mother, Ma Joad. This is a black and white picture that was directed by John Ford and in his style, it reflected the hard times of the depression era 30’s. This is about one of many who were poor, lived in the midwest and farmed. Because of the poverty, drought, and shifting sands, they cannot farm, make money, pay bills, or live. So this family depicted is one of many who were forced off family farms and went west to California to get a job. Along the way you see the utter deprivation and depression of the times. The homeless, hopelessness, yet the love of the family and the knowing that in all this suffering there was a Great God who was in charge of all things. Even though you may not understand it, the suffering was part and partial of the whole of the depression era times. It is here that when a nation faces the horrors of bad and evil times that society believes that the ‘wrath of God’ is revealing itself against all men everywhere. It was this thought during the ‘grapes of wrath’ depicted in the movie. Today, though, would we understand this as the ‘wrath of God’ or are we fully and totally oblivious to the God of heaven and his commandments! Are we totally and fully, completely ignorant of Him! Is society today in America the one who looks back on the times of the 30’s and does not see the ‘grapes of wrath’ but a time of conspiracies and bankers who brought tough times? Where is God in today’s troubles? Where is the society that used to believe in the God of the bible, his son, and feared his commandments, thus they strove to keep them! I tell you where it is, dead and buried long ago in unbelief and modernism that brings a society to selfishness and pride before God! Pride goes before a fall, and America is headed right towards it!
Moreover, according to some sources John Steinbeck who wrote the book had a tough time finding a name. He finally came up with ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, adapting the title from the line of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’. The lines go as follows:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
The line in this hymn of the republic is also found in the scripture above, verses 19-20 of Revelation 14.
One worthy reviewer of the movie wrote that in Chapter 25 of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ the situation was such that there was a “purposeful destruction of food to keep the price high”.
Thus you find the phrase the ‘grapes of wrath’. Here is the lines from the book that depicts this:
…and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
There is no doubt that this movie has been one of my favorites, even though it is black and white. A poignant story, but one that reflects, I believe a future America. The times we have been living in ease, comfort, and luxury are coming to an end. There will always be rich, even to the last day! But today we are seeing the plots of the rich and powerful as they manipulate the markets, the money, the economy, the nations, the justice system, and bring their will upon all people.
I believe that a depression era is coming yet again. This time it will be far worse than ever thought. It will occur not only in America, but worldwide. But living in America, it is hard to imagine the picture of the 30’s that we see in the movie, “grapes of wrath.” My family lived in Catalina Island off the coast of California. They were not wealthy, but they had food, shelter, and a livelihood. My grandfather worked for the government, and many of our relatives lived in California itself. They too, lived fairly well. My other grandparents did not live as well. They knew hardship, scarce food, and tough times on the farm. Times were tough, very tough, and people had to scrape to survive. Yet in all this, there is a hope for us today!
This is where we must today listen to the Word of God, obey it, keep it, and walk in what the LORD Jesus has commanded us to do. We must also keep the faith of Jesus and his testimony! The closeness that obedience to the Word of God brings to the life of the believer is real. When we obey the Word, we obey God, when we obey God, the relationship with him is in the light. For we walk in the light, as he ‘YSHUA or Jesus’ did! Jesus did what the Father asked of him! It is through that obedience of walking in the light as he Yshua is the light, that fellowship truly begins and continues to every avenue of our lives.
Ephesians 5:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Jesus revealed the Father unto the people and had followers who later became the Apostles. These were in the world, but when they found the LORD, or he really found them, the True living God was revealed to them through Y’SHUA. He gave them the ‘Words of life’, testifying of the Father, his love, and redemptive purposes for all men. It was those Words they received and Jesus whom they loved and followed.
John 17:6 ¶I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.
8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
I am convinced that those things coming cannot separate us at all from the LOVE of God which is in Christ Jesus. I am fully persuaded that the LORD God can and will take care of those who call upon him, walk in his ways, and are obedient to his will for them. This is one of the greatest times coming, even amidst suffering and despair. Even among those who see death, destruction, plagues, famines, and even the rise of the beast, this will be a time of provision by the LORD God for his own. We will learn to walk the coals of fire, the valley of the shadow of death will be visited, and for some, that valley will be death for them as they face martyrship for the LORD. But in all this the believe who will stand by faith, trusting in the LORD, will find a presence, a comfort, and a voice leading them through all the dangers and toils of the day.
As the elect of God, keeping his commands, doing as the LORD says too do, and walking in his faith, while keeping his testimony on our lips, the world will see the light of the LORD in us. I tell you this, not one soul, not even the devil can lay a charge against Gods Elect who fulfills his command to ‘live by faith’. There is no time, not even another ‘Grapes of wrath’ scenario that will separate us from the LOVE of God in Christ. No time of suffering, killing, or even martyrship can stop Gods LOVE from reaching and keeping us! Nothing, Nothing at all! God is faithful, he cannot lie, he cannot fail, he will not let anyone who trusts in him down! The Apostle Paul says it best in Romans below!
Romans 8:33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.
34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Further it is time folks for us to rise to the occasion today! Put off procrastination and let your faith become yea and amen in Him who has delivered us into his heavenly kingdom through Christ. Let us rise, walk, and be healed. Let us rise, walk, and be full of faith! Let us greet the morrow with the Son of God alive in our hearts and the Spirit of God empowering us for his service. For whether we live, or whether we die, we are the LORD’S. Not one soul, not one devil, not even the beast himself can touch us if we are fully in HIM who has called us, saved us, and is currently keeping us in Him through Jesus Christ our LORD!
Philippians 3:13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
15 ¶Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.
16 Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.
17 ¶Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.
18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)
20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:
21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
May the LORD bless you and keep you my friends,
Source: http://watchman-news.warn-usa.com/zao-mirror/?p=1114
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Economic Collapse Of 2008 An Inside Job
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh9AC0jCGjY&feature=player_embeddedhttp://
Everybody Knows
NOTE: Elements within the U.S. Government have been threatening web site administrators all over the internet and forcing them to take down the following article because it’s exposes the Bush/Cheney cabal’s involvement in the coming economic collapse of 2008. Everyone make copies of this article and send it everywhere so everyone will be fully aware of how the economic collapse was engineered to happen on purpose.
Leonard Cohen: “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes, Everybody knows.”
PROTOCOLS FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN AMERICA
by Al Martin
And this is how the U.S. Treasury would handle an economic collapse. It’s called the 6900 series of protocols. It would start with declaring a force majeure, which would immediately be interpreted by the marketplaces as a de facto repudiation of debt. Then the SEC and the various regulatory exchanges would anticipate the market’s decline, hour by hour — when Japan’s markets opened the next day, what would happen when the European markets, and all the inter-linkages of the global markets. On the second day, US Special Forces would be dropped in by parachute in the cities where the twelve Federal Reserve district banks are located. The origin of these protocols comes from the Department of Defense. This is contingency planning for a variety of post-collapse scenarios. Those scenarios would include, obviously, military collapse, World War III, in other words, and its aftermath. What we’re talking about now is aftermath — how the aftermath would be handled.
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ARTICLE CONTINUES…
Source: http://blog.puppetgov.com/2008/05/20/economic-collapse-of-2008-an-inside-job/#comment-6642
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Your deeds define you
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Who Burned the Witches?
8/08/09
Since the Enlightenment, rationalists have liked to cite witch burning as a prime example of medieval ignorance and religious (usually Catholic) bigotry run amok. (Leftists today still denounce it as a cynical plot by the strong against the weak.) Writing history that way was simple: Historians catalogued horrors, disparaged religion (or at least someone else's religion), and celebrated the triumph of science and liberal government. The history of witchcraft seemed a settled issue in 1969 when Hugh Trevor-Roper published his classic essay, "The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries."
But a clamor of new voices has since reopened the controversy. Members of the growing neopagan revival -- 200,000 strong in America today -- claim witches burned during the great witch-hunt as their martyred forebears. In 2000, a consortium of pagan leaders demanded a special apology from Pope John Paul II on the Jubilee Day of Pardon. They mourned a "pagan Holocaust" of nine million secret nature-worshippers exterminated by Christians 500 years ago under the Inquisition.
Sixty years ago, one of the neopagan movement's founders, Gerald Gardner, coined the term "the Burning Times" to describe this time of persecution. Although Gardner's historical expertise has since been questioned, neopagan proponents Margot Adler and Starhawk (nee Miriam Simos) are still preaching Gardner's teachings because, they say, "invented history is satisfying myth."
Nine million women burned is a figure conveniently larger than the Jewish Shoah, yet it was actually invented out of whole cloth by American feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1893. Radical feminists have made much of this mass "gynecide," as antipornography activist Andrea Dworkin has called it. The feminists see witches as the natural enemy of patriarchy, rallying around them as Old Leftists did around the leaders of the Spanish Republic. For them, as for pagans, playing the politics of victimization strengthens solidarity.
Meanwhile, those of a Green stripe, a group that overlaps with the pagans and radical feminists, charge that suppressing witchcraft deprived medieval people of alternative medicine and estranged them from ancient Earth wisdom. In their 1973 book, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, feminist and environmentalist writers Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English argued that witches were actually midwives targeted by their rivals, male physicians. Ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant has blamed patriarchal science for "the death of Nature" in her book of that title.
Although the general public has yet to notice, recent academic research has largely demolished both the old Enlightenment certainties and the new neopagan theories. Archival studies conducted in different regions of Europe over the last few decades have more accurately measured who killed how many of whom under what circumstances. Using the tools of anthropology and psychology, historians have reconstructed the social context in which the witch-hunts happened. They have a clearer picture now of how witchcraft theories developed and on what intellectual basis.
A Multitude Of Myths
For example, historians have now realized that witch-hunting was not primarily a medieval phenomenon. It peaked in the 17th century, during the rationalist age of Descartes, Newton, and St. Vincent de Paul. Persecuting suspected witches was not an elite plot against the poor; not was practicing witchcraft a mode of peasant resistance. Catholics and Protestants hunted witches with comparable vigor. Church and state alike tried and executed them. It took more than pure Reason to end the witch craze.
Nor were witches secret pagans serving an ancient Triple Goddess and Horned God, as the neopagans claim. In fact, no witch was ever executed for worshipping a pagan deity. Matilda Gage's estimate of nine million women burned is more than 200 times the best current estimate of 30,000 to 50,000 killed during the 400 years from 1400 to 1800 -- a large number but no Holocaust. And it wasn't all a burning time. Witches were hanged, strangled, and beheaded as well. Witch-hunting was not woman-hunting: At least 20 percent of all suspected witches were male. Midwives were not especially targeted; nor were witches liquidated as obstacles to professionalized medicine and mechanistic science.
This revised set of facts should not entirely comfort Catholics, however. Catholics have been misled -- at times deliberately misled -- about the Church's role in the witch-hunts by apologists eager to present the Church as innocent of witches' blood so as to refute the Enlightenment theory that witch-burning was almost entirely a Catholic phenomenon. Catholics should know that the thinking that set the great witch-hunt in motion was developed by Catholic clerics before the Reformation.
But the great witch-hunt was nonetheless remarkably slow in coming. Many cultures around the world believed for millennia -- and still believe -- in witches. In typical folklore, past and present, witches are night-flying evildoers who inflict harm on others by supernatural means, such as curses, the evil eye, and magic substances. Witchcraft is usually thought of as an innate power, unlike sorcery, whose magical spells must be learned. What Christianity uniquely added to those traditional beliefs was Satan. God's enemies were said to join Satan's band of demons through a pact and worship him at monstrous bacchanals called "sabbats," where they parodied the liturgy.
The Church inherited Roman and Germanic laws regarding maleficent magic, laws that treated witchcraft as a crime. But to St. Augustine, concrete witchcraft consisted of idolatry and illusion rather than harm to others. Following Augustine, an anonymous ninth-century text, Canon Episcopi, became part of the Church's canon law, declaring that belief in the reality of night-flying witches was heresy because there was no such thing as an actual witch. Although the idolatry and heresy associated with witchcraft resided only in the will, not in actual deeds, they were nevertheless sinful, Augustine wrote. Punishment was in order -- but not burning.
The High Middle Ages of the twelfth and 13th centuries saw the bloody suppression of heretics, notably the Cathars in Provence. Measures against Jews, magicians, and sexual deviants also grew harsher. These groups were associated with a stereotyped set of blasphemies, orgies, and outrages, including infanticide and cannibalism. Starting in 1232, the papal Inquisition dispatched roving specialists to detect and punish heretics outside existing legal systems.
Then, the idea that witchcraft was a reality rather than a heretical illusion suddenly made a comeback. The inquisitors who had cut their teeth on heretics were devouring accused witches as well by the end of the Middle Ages. This was not simply a matter of shifting scapegoats to suit market demand. In a society that feared supernatural menaces working through human conspiracies, the sinister folk figure of the esoterically schooled magician apparently fused with that of the petty village wise-woman or cunning man to create the new phenomenon of the diabolical witch.
After the first wisps of this change in the late 14th century, the flames burst forth around 1425 in the Savoy region, in what is now southeast France, and in the canton of Valais in Switzerland, near the borders of France and Italy. About 500 more witch trials followed before the Reformation began in 1517.
The Witch-Hunter's Baedeker
Meanwhile, witch-hunters' manuals multiplied, most notably the infamous Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), published in 1486. Its authors, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer, were experienced Dominican inquisitors who had burned 48 witches in one diocese alone and had obtained a papal bull approving their mission. Reversing the old principle of the Canon Episcopi, Sprenger and Kraemer proclaimed that not believing in the reality of witches was heresy. Witches regularly did physical as well as spiritual harm to others, they wrote, and allegiance to the devil defined witchcraft. Sprenger and Kraemer exhorted secular authorities to fight witches by any means necessary.
Malleus Maleficarum (notice the feminine possessive of "witches") was a vicious misogynist tract. It depicted women as the sexual playmates of Satan, declaring: "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable." Ironically, Sprenger also had a deep devotion to Mary. He helped to shape the modern rosary and founded the first rosary confraternity.
Malleus Maleficarum did not cover its ground completely, failing to discuss the actual pact that witches made with the devil, the sabbat, familiars (imps in animal form who aided witches), and night-flying. But those elements did not always appear in witchcraft cases. By itself, the Malleus started no new witch-panics, but it was freely used by later witchcraft writers, Protestant and Catholic alike. The Spanish inquisitors were nearly alone in scoffing at its lack of sophistication.
The demonologists who absorbed the Malleus were highly cultured men, such as the Protestant Jean Bodin, "the Aristotle of the 16th century," and his contemporary, the Jesuit classicist Martin del Rio. Those theoreticians pounded home the principle of the crimen exceptum: Because witchcraft was so vile an offense, accused witches had no legal rights. "Not one witch in a million would be accused or punished," Bodin boasted, "if the procedure were governed by ordinary rules." Anyone who defended accused witches or denied their crimes deserved the same punishment as witches, Bodin wrote.
Socially elite persecutors, demonologists, and judges relentlessly hunted witches with the zeal of modern revolutionaries pursuing a political utopia. No cost was too great, because witch-hunting served the greater good of Christendom, in their view. They believed that witchcraft inverted society's key values, disturbed godly order, challenged the divine right of kings -- the ancient doctrine that rulers derive their right to rule from God -- and diminished the majesty of God. It was thought that witch-hunting saved souls and averted the wrath of God by purging society of evil as the End Times loomed.
Commoners, by contrast, simply wanted relief from the evildoers of folklore who, they believed, were harming them, their children, their cattle, and their crops. It was grassroots complaints that started most witch-hunts. If authorities were too slow to act, peasants were capable of lynching suspected neighbors.
Although maleficium -- physical harm -- loomed much larger than diabolism in common people's accusations against suspected witches, their folk beliefs cross-fertilized the learned ones of Bodin and others in complex ways. Through sermons, gossip, trial accounts, and luridly illustrated "witch-books" (especially popular in Germany), everyone learned what witches did and how to detect them.
Witches Everywhere
The 30,000 to 50,000 casualties of the European witch-hunts were not distributed uniformally through time or space, even within particular jurisdictions. Three-quarters of Europe saw not a single trial. Witch persecution spread outward from its first center in alpine Italy in the early 15th century, guttering out in Poland, where witchcraft laws were finally repealed in 1788. The center had generally stopped trying witches before the peripheries even started.
The Spanish Road stretching from Italy to the Netherlands was also a "witch-road." The Catholic-ruled Spanish Netherlands (today's Belgium) saw far worse persecutions than the Protestant-ruled United Provinces of the Netherlands, which had stopped burning convicted witches by 1600. There were early panics in the German cities of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, as well as in Lorraine, France, and parts of Switzerland and Scotland. The Rhineland and Southwest Germany suffered severe outbreaks, with German ecclesiastical territories hit hardest. Three-quarters of all witchcraft trials took place in the Catholic-ruled territories of the Holy Roman Empire. But Catholic Portugal, Castile and Spanish-ruled Italy, and the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe saw virtually none. The panic in Salem, Massachusetts, was as bad as anything in England, but there seem to have been no executions in the Latin colonies of the New World.
The regional tolls demonstrated the patchwork pattern of witch-hunting. The town of Baden, Germany, for example, burned 200 witches from 1627 to 1630, more than all the convicted witches who perished in Sweden. The tiny town of Ellwangen, Germany, burned 393 witches from 1611 to 1618, more than Spain and Portugal combined ever executed. The Catholic prince-bishop of Wurzburg, Germany, burned 600 witches from 1628 to 1631, more witches than ever died in Protestant Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland combined. The Swiss canton of Vaud executed about 1,800 witches from 1611 to 1660, compared with Scotland's toll of between 1,300 and 1,500 and England's toll of 500. The claim of some Catholic apologists that Elizabeth I executed 800 witches a year is gross slander. In Southwest Germany alone, 3,229 people were executed for witchcraft between 1562 and 1684 -- more than were executed for any reason by the Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman Inquisitions between 1500 and 1800. (All three of these Inquisitions burned fewer than a dozen witches in total.)
The most-dreaded lay witch-hunter was Nicholas Remy, attorney general of Lorraine, who boasted of sending 900 persons to the stake in a single decade (1581-1591). But the all-time grand champion exterminator of witches was Ferdinand von Wittelsbach, Catholic prince-archbishop of Cologne, Germany, who burned 2,000 members of his flock during the 1630s.
Let no one argue that witch-hunting was a predominantly Protestant activity. Both Catholic and Protestant lands saw light and heavy hunts. Demonologists and critics alike came from both religious camps.
Regional Influences
Local factors, not religious loyalties, determined the severity of witch persecutions. Roman law on the continent was harsher than English common law. Prosecuting maleficium alone, as England and Scandinavia did, yielded fewer victims than prosecuting diabolism (Scotland and Germany) or white magic (Lorraine and France). Unlimited torture in Germany induced more confessions than the limited torture in the Franche-Comte region in France. English third-degree methods such as sleep-deprivation were also effective ways of raising the number of convictions.
Ignoring denunciations procured through torture preserved Denmark from Germany's dreadful chain-reaction panics in which accused witches would in turn finger other witches. "Spectral evidence" from accusers' dreams was a significant prosecution device in Salem. Finding a witch's mark insensitive to pricking "or a witch's teat," on which familiars allegedly fed, secured convictions in Scotland and England; uncertainty about the credibility of witch's marks won acquittals in Geneva. Child witnesses -- often-malicious liars -- proved deadly in Sweden, the Basque country in Spain, Germany, and England (the hysteria resembled that surrounding the sex-abuse charges brought against U.S. day-care centers during the 1980s).
Professional witch-finders had dire impact. The best known of these freelance accusers was England's Matthew Hopkins, who doomed up to 200 people from 1645 through 1647. But special inquisitors or investigative committees were also lethal. Local judges were usually harsher than professional jurists from outside the community. Reviews of convictions by central authorities spared accused witches in Denmark, France, Sweden, and Austria. An informal appeal from ministers outside Salem halted the panic there.
Witch-hunting was typically part of broader campaigns to repress unruly behavior and impose religious orthodoxies. The hunt played out in a world of shrinking opportunities for ordinary folk. Early modern village economies were often zero-sum games, where the death of a cow could ruin a family. Peasants were locked into face-to-face contact with their neighbor-enemies. Feuds could last for generations.
The poorest and most common targets of the witch-hunts, social subordinates and even children sometimes turned the tables by accusing their wealthy superiors of witchcraft.
Women were more prominent than men at witchcraft trials, both as accused and as accusers. Not only did Sprenger's image of women as the more lustful and malicious sex generate suspicions; the fact that women had a lower social status than men made them easier to accuse. In most regions, about 80 percent of the alleged witches killed were female. Women were then as likely to be accused witches as men were to be saints or violent criminals. That was because women typically fought with curses instead of steel. Although the stereotype did not always fit, the British witch was usually seen as irascible, aggressive, unneighborly, and often repulsive -- hardly the gentle healer of neopagan fantasy. Her colorful curses could blight everything down to "the little pig that lieth in the sty." She magnified her powers to frighten others and extort favors. If she could not be loved, she meant to be feared.
Alternatively, the witches of Lorraine were said to be "fine and crafty, careful not to quarrel with people or threaten them." Effusive compliments were signs of suspected witchcraft in Lorraine, and suppressed anger could be ominous. Being innocent of the impossible crimes associated with witchcraft did not necessarily mean that witch-hunt victims were "nice." Some were prostitutes, beggars, or petty criminals. Austria's Zauberjaeckl trials (1675-1690) punished as witches people who were actually dangerous felons. The Magic Jacket Society prosecuted in those trials was a Baroque version of the Hell's Angels, recruiting waifs whom it controlled through black magic, sodomy, and conjurations with mice. The prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Austria, graciously forbade executing members of the society who were under the age of twelve. But 200 others were put to death.
Panic And Torture
Witch-hunting could be endemic or epidemic. Its dynamics varied. Small panics (fewer than 20 victims) tended to occur in villages worried about maleficium. Their victims were often poor, obnoxious persons whose removal the rest of the community applauded.
If small panics fed on long-smoldering fears about neighbors, large ones exploded without warning, killing people of all classes and conditions and rupturing social bonds. The worst examples of this were in Germany, where unlimited use of torture (in defiance of imperial law) produced an ever-expanding wave of denunciations. To object was to court death.
Large witch-panics started with the usual obscure suspects and worked up the social scale to prosperous citizens, reputable matrons, high-ranking clerics, town officials, and even judges. The longer a panic lasted, the higher was the proportion of male and wealthy victims.
According to the Dutch Jesuit Cornelius van Loos, confiscations from suspected witches in large panics could "coin gold and silver from human blood," Youngsters were legally old enough to burn as soon as they could distinguish "gold from an apple." Children as young as nine were burned in Wurzburg, including the bishop's nephew, and boys ages three and four were imprisoned as Satan's catamites.
Some of the German trials were marred by collusion, bribes, and rape. Unspeakable tortures were routine -- 17 different kinds were authorized by "the Saxon lawgiver," Benedikt Carpzov, during the 17th century. Confessing "without torture" in Germany meant without torture that drew blood. Nearly all who underwent this broke, even the blameless.
Yet witches sometimes did turn themselves in and confess spontaneously, the equivalent of today's "suicide by police." The same melancholy, frustration, and despair that they claimed had driven them into the devil's arms brought them willingly to the stake. They had apparently come to believe the wish-fulfillment fantasies of pleasure and revenge enacted in the theaters of their minds. Nevertheless, they still hoped to save their souls through pain.
A few brave men spoke up for justice. In 1563, Johann Weyer, a Protestant court physician, drew attention to the cruelty of the trials and the mental incompetence of many of the accused. English country gentleman Reginald Scot mocked witchcraft as popish nonsense in 1584. In 1631, the Jesuit Friedrich von Spec, confessor to witches burned at Mainz, proclaimed them innocent victims. Van Loos, witness to the horrors of witchcraft trials at Trier, had his manuscript confiscated in 1592 before it could be published and was himself imprisoned and banished.
Ironically, a Spanish inquisitor named Alonso Salazar y Frias mounted the most dramatic challenge to witch-hunting. In 1609, a panic among French Basques in the western Pyrenees on the Bay of Biscay spilled over into the Navarra region in Spain, where six accused witches went to the stake. But Salazar, who had been a judge in that trial, became skeptical as the panic widened to engulf 1,800 suspects, 1,500 of them children. Basque witches' confessions included such incredible details as familiars in the form of costumed toads that child-witches herded with little crooks during sabbats.
Salazar cross-checked testimony, had supposed magic substances tested, and applied logic to conclude that the alleged witches were simply an artifact of witch-hunting. "There were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about," he reported in 1610. With stubborn practice, Salazar wrested a decision from his superiors that freed the accused in 1614. The Spanish Inquisition never executed another witch; nor did it permit secular authorities to do so after an outbreak in Catalonia that saw more than 300 witches hanged between 1616 and 1619. What could have erupted into Europe's worst witch-panic was extinguished by one man.
Cooling Ashes
Slowly, the critics were vindicated, and ashes cooled all across Europe during the 18th century. This was no simple triumph of Enlightenment wisdom. Witch beliefs persisted -- as they do today -- but witches no longer faced stakes, gallows, or swords. The great witch-panics had left a kind of psychic weariness in their wake. Realizing that innocents had been cruelly sent to their deaths, people no longer trusted their courts' judgments. As Montaigne had written 200 years earlier, "It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them."
After a 20th century unmatched for bloodshed, the world today is in no position to disparage early modern Europe. Witch-hunts have much in common with our own political purges, imagined conspiracies, and rumors of ritualized child abuse. Our capacity to project enormities on the enemy Other is as strong as ever.
The truth about witch-hunting is worth knowing for its own sake. But the issue has added significance for Catholics because it has provided ammunition for rationalists, pagans, and radical feminists to attack the Church. It is helpful to know that the number of victims has been grossly exaggerated, and that the reasons for the persecutions had as much to do with social factors as with religious ones.
But although Catholics have been fed comforting errors by overeager apologists about the Church's part in persecuting witches, we must face our own tragic past. Fellow Catholics, to whom we are forever bound in the communion of saints, did sin grievously against people accused of witchcraft. If our historical memory can be truly purified, then the smoke from the Burning Times can finally disperse.
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Sandra Miesel is a writer and medievalist. This article originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of Crisis Magazine.
Source: http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6627&Itemid=48
The Knights Templar, Knights of Malta and Blackwater’s Erik Prince
The Knights Templar, Knights of Malta and Blackwater’s Erik Prince
By Mitch Cumstein
In a declaration under the penalty of purjury, a former employee of Erik Prince’s Blackwater defense contracting firm said Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.”
The accuser, only known as John Doe #2 in court documents because he claims he has been threatened with “death and violence” by managers of Prince’s company, wrote that “Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Chrisian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.”
This mention of the Knights Templar is an interesting one because it shifts the focus of Iraq from a quest for oil to that of a holy war. Remember when Pres. Bush got laughs for referring to the “war on terror” as a “crusade.” And this isn’t the only time Prince and his company Blackwater have been linked, albeit tenuously, with these shadow elements of the Catholic church and Christian fundamentalists.
The European Parliament published a report by Giovanni Claudio Fava, a Socialist Group legislator, claiming that there are connections between Blackwater and Malta. Malta is where the Knights of Malta, another right-wing element of the Catholic Church similar to the Knights Templar, once lived and still maintain control of Fort St. Angelo.
The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill has also written about connections between Prince, Malta and Pres. Bush’s rendition program in which terrorist suspects were sent to other countries for the purpose of torture. The program, according to Scahill was run by Cofer Black, who is allegedly a Knight of Malta himself and used Malta in the rendition program.
Black is the current vice chairman for Blackwater. At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, Black was director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center.
According to a referenced Wikipedia entry:
[Black] was the United States Department of State coordinator for counterterrorism with the rank of ambassador at large from December 2002 to November 2004. After leaving public service, Black became chairman of the privately owned intelligence gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc., as well as vice chairman for Xe.
Xe is the current name of Blackwater and Total Intelligence Solutions has been dubbed as Prince’s private CIA.
But all of this “evidence” is largely hearsay and circumstantial at best. The reason for this could be that a common thread between the Knights Templare, the Knights of Malta and Blackwater is that there appears to be a concerted effort to confuse and obfiscate exactly what these groups are doing, or whether they’re even separate entities.
One tactic Prince employs to confuse people is setting up several supposedly different corporate entities. According John Doe #2, “[T]he various Price companies did not observe any corporate formalities or otherwise operate any of the Prince companies as independent entities. Instead, the Prince companies all operated as a single company.”
One of those companies is Greystone Limited headquartered in Barbados where Prince can avoid paying taxes and government scrutiny. The Virginia Pilot published a story last month stating that Greystone was operating in Iraq working for the International Republican Institute. The IRI is funded by the US government. After the slaughter of innocent Iraqis on Sept. 16, 2007 in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square by Blackwater employees, according to a court case filed against Blackwater, Blackwater was banned from operating in Iraq by the Iraqi government. And when Blackwater’s contract expired earlier this year, it was not renewed by the US State department, yet, Blackwater, under the name of Greystone Limited still operates in Iraq today.
There’s no definitive proof that Prince, Bush, Knights Templar or the Knights of Malta are conspiring to wage a modern-day crusade, but there’s something going on here, and it’s certainly worth an intensive investigation by the Dept. of Justice. This might be happening, as court documents trickle out of the US District Court in Virginia indicate. However, it’s illegal for the Dept. of Justice to speak about whether there even is an investigation, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
The US District court has consolidated five cases against Prince and his various companies into one. The cases accuse Prince of murder, conspiracy, gun smuggling, child prostitution, war crimes and waging a crusade against Islam for the purpose of global Christian supremacy. Tomorrow there’s a court date scheduled, so stay tuned, this could get really interesting really quick.
More information
I’ve created a page containing an archive of court documents relating to the cases against Prince here.
You can purchase Jeremy Scahill’s book “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” here from Amazon.
An interesting tidbit about the Knights of Malta is that they’ve have been given observer status by the United Nations under the entity called the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is based in Rome, Italy and has diplomat relations with about 100 countries, but not the US.
Blackwater Wiki
Knights Templar Wiki
Knights of Malta Wiki