Thursday, September 17, 2009

"Escape for your life"




THE EXECUTIVE JUDGMENT AND FINAL CLEANSING
2 Peter 3

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.


Many have forgotten the reality of the Biblical flood. Even Christians try to explain it away as being merely a parable. Noah, they maintained means rest. Therefore, Noah was to bring rest to the people. The flood is symbolic of Christ washing sin away and we rest with Noah from all work. They made great mention that nowhere does scripture say Noah tried to reason with the people, or called them to come into the ark. God simply washed sin away and all that was left was righteousness.

Now any honest Bible student would see that this fulfills Peter's prophecy that; "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

It also contradicts Hebrews 13:7 when "by faith, Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is accorded with faith."


Noah: "This one will "comfort" us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed." Gen. 5:29

The word used as "comfort" is "nacham" meaning: give forth sighs, to breathe strongly, be sorry, full of pity, seeking comfort, trying to ease, even has a sense of repentance and avenge.

Noah was one who would sigh and cry for the abominations of his people. This sounds very much like Ezekiel nine to me, where God commissions an investigative judgment before the executive judgment-- for judgment was about to befall upon them.

Ezekiel 9.4-5 And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.
And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:

The message of Noah was a judgment message.

God says, "My Spirit will not always strive with man I will give him 120 years." Gen. 6:3

For 120 years Noah preached the message, calling people to repentance and to come into the ark of safety. But they would not. They hardened their hearts with the deceitfulness of sin. They hardened their hearts in rebellion. Therefore they could not enter the provision God made for their "comfort" -- all Noah's sighing and pitying could not ease their terrible end.

As far as human wisdom could see, the event predicted by Noah was not likely to occur. Rain had never fallen. Why would the God who had created such a beautiful earth destroy it with by a flood. I'm sure if Noah had set up a web page or started preaching today, it would be declared as the ultimate exhibit of paranoia. How could Noah preach such a message if he was resting in the love of God?

It wasn't sins that were drowned, it was people who hardened their hearts and would not listen.

This is no parable-- this is history! As it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the time of the end. (And so it is)

2 Peter 3.8-9
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

God sends a message of warning before destruction comes. That is His consistent pattern throughout the Bible. Prepare thyself to meet thy God! Get ready — watch and pray, put on the whole armor, resist the devil and draw very close to THY GOD — the ONE WHO CREATED HEAVEN AND EARTH!

Before the destruction of Sodom, God sent a message to Lot, "Escape for your life; look not behind you, do not stay in the plains but escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed." (Gen. 19:17) The same voice of warning was heard by the disciples of Christ before the destruction of Jerusalem: "When you shall see Jerusalem encircled with armies, then know that the desolation of it is near. Then let them who are in Judea flee to the mountains." (Luke 21:20,21)

There is to be a coming out, a decided separation from the wicked, an escape for our very lives. As it was in the days of Noah, as it was in the days of Lot; as it was in the days of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, so it will be in the last days.

2 Cor. 6.17 "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,"

It is very interesting that the message preached from the churches in our day is the VERY OPPOSITE to the message Revelation tells us to preach.

The message we hear now is ecumenicalism — let's join with all other's who profess to be Christians regardless of their beliefs and doctrines. The Bible says "Come out of her, My people that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues." Revelation 18:4

There can be no compromise between God and the world! "You can not serve God and mammon" Matt. 6:24 There must be an active separation from sin or God's people will lose their way and will not hear His voice.

Like the people living in Sodom, the people are dreaming of prosperity and peace and pleasure. "Escape for your life," is the warning from the angels of God. But other voices clamor to drown out the voice of warning. "Don't get excited; there is no cause for alarm: The multitudes cry, "Peace and safety" while Heaven declares that swift destruction is about to come upon the world. The night before the fire fell on Sodom, the citizens rioted in pleasure, they threatened Lot and his visitors demanding sinful pleasure, they scoffed at Lot as he sought to warn his family of the coming doom; but those people died in the flames! That very night the door of mercy was forever closed to the inhabitants of Sodom. God will not always be mocked; "Behold the day of the Lord comes, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it" Isaiah 13:9.

The majority of the people will reject God's mercy, and will be overwhelmed in swift and irretrievable ruin. But those who heed the warning shall dwell "in the secret place of the Most High" and "abide under the shadow of the Almighty." His truth shall be their shield and buckler. Psalm 91

The time has come to prepare to meet God. The call of the Spirit in our heart of hearts must be answered. Everything in the life must be squared by the Spirit with the Word of God, His law and the everlasting gospel.

As radical developments take place in the formation of the Papal New World Order, radical, deep and thorough preparation for what is ahead must be made. All other preparation is in vain if we fail in the spiritual preparation. We must learn to really communicate with our Master and Savior making Him supreme in our lives. There must be time for heart searching, and heart cleansing through the power of Christ's blood.

Come out of her my people, that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues.

2 Peter 3:10-12 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

Luke 21.35-36
For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.

The Bible tells us that after Noah and his family entered the ark and the door was shut, seven days went by before anything unusual happened. The obedient ones inside the ark had to depend upon God's Word — for it seemed the predicted event would not transpire. Outside the inhabitants of the preflood world had their last parties, celebrating the stupidity of this paranoid old man and the deluded family members who locked themselves up in the ark. Silly, foolish people to limit their freedom in such a strange fashion and to think they expected other rational, people to do the same.

The flood did come! Filled with anguish the rioting crowd now began to shriek in anguish. "Oh, for a place of safety! O, had we only listened and obeyed we would now have rest from this dreadful fear."

Soon the party will end! Just like it happened to King Belshazzer, throwing a party while the enemy was at the gates, trusting that even yet all was peace and safety, so the party-pleasure- crazed world lives for self-indulgence imagining itself safe and secure while the greatest of enemies is at the gate and invading every stronghold, and God will soon step in to end it all.

Yes, there is a judgement. The investigative judgment is now in progress. The executive judgement will soon take place.

In light of the seriousness of the times what will we do. How will we choose to live? Soon the verdict will be pronounced — will it be like Belshazzer "You are weighed in the balance and found wanting." Or "Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord"

2 Peter 3.13
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.

A righteous heaven is only righteous if the inhabitants are righteous. Thus, those who would be citizens there need much more than the legal aspect of forgiving of sins. They need the blood of Christ to cleanse them and the Holy spirit lead them into harmony with God's law. For the will must be united with the Will of Christ, rebellion cannot enter heaven.

2 Peter 3.14
Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation;

The Lord is longsuffering:
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Today! Harden not your hearts in rebellion, Today! Harden not your hearts because of the deceitfulness of sin! Today is the day of salvation. Christ is longsuffering, not wanting any of us to perish but that we should all find repentance in Him and be following Him in loving obedience to His commands.

But now Peter gives us an interesting warning.
2 Peter 3:15-18
Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him has written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.

It is Paul's writings today, that are being twisted to mean God no longer has a written standard, a moral code. It is Paul's writings today, that are being twisted to mean grace does away with faithful and steadfast obedience to God's moral law.

Peter points out that Paul has given the true light, but people would wrest it to their own destruction. People would take the precious blood of grace that was to cleanse us from sin and trample it under foot by declaring obedience to God's law is not necessary. (Hebs. 19)

2 Peter 3.18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.





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Getting God to do their dirty work


Tuesday 15 September 2009


Frank Furedi

Getting God to do their dirty work

In seeking to use religion to force people to change their eco-unfriendly behaviour, greens are debasing both religious belief and scientific truth.


We live in world where the cynical manipulation of people’s fears and anxieties often overrides informed public debate. Principles and beliefs seem to have become negotiable commodities, and all too often the search for truth gives way to doing ‘whatever works’. In recent decades religious figures have, at various times, embraced the authority of science, therapy and the environment as a way of communicating their messages. Indeed, the old statement ‘our faith demands…’ has increasingly given way to the claim that ‘the research shows…’. If Christian fundamentalists can reinvent their dogma in the language of ‘creationist science’, how long before atheist scientists seek to justify their moral crusade in the language of religion?

Well, Lord May, president of the British Science Association, has risen to the occasion with his call last week to mobilise religion as part of the crusade against global warming. May said that mainstream religions should play a key role in convincing people to become more aware of environmental issues and to change their behaviour in order to ‘save the planet’. By making this opportunist demand for the effective rehabilitation of God, an atheist moral entrepreneur has shown that it is possible to debase both religion and science at the same time.

May’s call to use religion to promote the cause of climate change awareness is the logical conclusion to a project – environmentalism – which in every respect is a moral crusade. Back in September 2003, the late American writer Michael Crichton characterised environmentalism as a powerful new religion. He was possibly thinking of the Lord Mays of this world when he said that ‘environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists’.

Old-fashioned religious themes are continually recycled by greens. Some environmentalists may joke about ‘green sins’ but they are deadly serious when they denounce evil polluters and deniers. In this contemporary urban religion, the carbon footprint symbolises human transgression, though absolution can be gained through carbon offsets. Green judgements on our diets, our procreation habits and our everyday behaviour are possibly even more intrusive than the pronouncements of medieval religious figures. Old-fashioned prophecy and divination have given way to speculation and alarmist warnings based on computer models. And the medieval inquisition that targeted heretics and witches has got a new lease of life in the current crusade against sceptics and so-called deniers.

Many intelligent observers of today’s green theocracy argue that it represents an answer to humanity’s need for religion. No doubt we all need to believe in something, but the current embrace of religion by Lord May and other green-leaning atheists is driven by simple opportunism rather than a genuine crisis of belief. The attempt to recruit God to the anti-climate change campaign is driven by a desire to influence all those people who currently are not responding to the moral crusade to save the planet. The turn to God is underwritten by a strong feeling of contempt towards both religion and the public.

Many environmentalists believe that ordinary people are too selfish and too stupid to pay attention to the lofty message about saving the planet. Leading green commentators bemoan people’s short-termist and irrational behaviour. One British eco-columnist wrote about how ‘depressed’ he felt about ‘the epidemic of mass denial’ in Britain, where ordinary people simply refuse to take climate change seriously. ‘Up to a point, laws can be passed to combat climate change, and offenders who don’t conform can be punished’, he casually observed, before noting that, in the end, people will have to understand ‘the dangers and threats we face’ (1).

Activist-scientists like May seem to believe there are two ways of influencing the public: by making fear appeals or using a form of moral blackmail. Apocalyptic warnings about the future of the planet have become the bread and butter of the crusade against climate change. These alarmist messages are promoted in the most simplistic and emotive terms. ‘I liked it. It does emotionalise the debate, but it seems that it has to do that’ – that was the verdict of Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. American environmentalists often give a deeply contemptuous assessment of their audiences. According to one green activist, ‘the “issue” of climate change must be defined for Americans’ in ‘uncomplicated, black-and-white terms’ (2).

And what could be more black-and-white than a divine commandment? Religion is seen as the ideal tool with which to convey a simplistic, good-and-evil message to a public that is apparently made up of simpletons. Lord May may have been talking about fundamentalist religions when he said that ‘under stress you reduce complex doctrines to simple mantras’. But that also captures his own approach to public communication.

In a sense, what May and his fellow green religionists are trying to do is rehabilitate a caricatured version of God. They want to mobilise a God who can both influence and scare ordinary folk. From this standpoint, God is imagined to be some kind of classic bogeyman. ‘A supernatural punisher may be part of the solution [to tackling climate change]’, May is reported to have said. He is also quoted as saying: ‘Given that punishment is a useful mechanism, how much more effective it would be if you invested that power not in an individual you don’t like, but in an all-seeing, all-powerful deity that controls the world.’

May’s seeming desire to sanctify environmentalism and stigmatise transgressors was immediately taken up by Andrew Brown, editor of the ironically titled ‘Belief’ section of the UK Guardian. ‘I have argued before that greenery will only succeed if it takes on some of the characteristics of some religions’, noted Brown. One characteristic he alludes to is the coercive dynamic of moral pressure. In short, adopting the green religion is not an option that ‘adults freely choose’. ‘If you are a convinced green, you will certainly not bring your child up to believe that they can decide once they are 18 whether the environment needs saving’, argues Brown, before concluding that adults, also, should not have this choice (3). So, no room for any faint-hearted liberals in this new green religion.

Tolerance for other, competing views has never been the hallmark of the environmentalist crusade. Time and again, the critics of the politics of environmentalism are dismissed for daring to question the wisdom of ‘The Science’. Their questions are dismissed with the phrase: ‘The debate is now over.’ Or as David Miliband, in his former capacity as the UK secretary of state for the environment, said: ‘The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over.’ Now, intolerance of dissident views on the issue of climate change is underwritten by religious dogma. Religion promises to endow greens’ hostility towards critics, sceptics and deniers with the legitimacy of the sacred word.

Back in 2003, when Crichton characterised environmentalism as a religion, many greens regarded it as an insult to their cause. That was then. Today some environmentalists want their views to be officially recognised as a religion. Recently, Tim Nicholson, head of sustainability at the UK property investment company Grainger, appealed against his dismissal from his job on the grounds that his employers did not respect his strong environmentalist convictions. He sought protection under the law in the same way that other employees seek redress against discrimination on the basis of their religion. It can be only a matter of time before campaigns are launched to gain official recognition that sustainability is a holy doctrine.

The degradation of belief
Manipulating religious convictions in order to force people to alter their behaviour is not only disdainful of the public – it is disdainful of belief, too. It reveals a simplistic, functional understanding of how religion works. Since the nineteenth century some secular thinkers have regarded the decline of religion as a big problem from society. Although they themselves were not believers, they regarded religion as a force for stability and were concerned about how people would behave if they lacked faith. Such concern about moral confusion and the erosion of discipline often leads thinkers to conclude that society needs some kind of a religion. This outlook was clearly expressed by the well-known American cultural commentator Daniel Bell in the late 1970s:

‘What holds one to reality, if one’s secular system of meanings proves to be an illusion? I will risk an unfashionable answer – the return in Western society of some conception of religion.’ (4)

Bell used his words carefully. His phrase ‘some conception of religion’ suggests a pragmatic conceptualisation of the problem. Not this or that religion, but any religion is preferable to the secular uncertainties facing society, he argued. As far as Bell was concerned, it did not matter what people believed, just so long as they gained some meaning from it.

For Bell, religion had an important function: providing some kind of moral order in society. However, once religious belief is perceived from this narrow and simply functional perspective, it can be mobilised to serve a variety of ends, some of them honourable and many of them dishonourable. Using religion to try to change people’s attitudes towards the environment is only the latest attempt by mainstream activists to harness the power of God to realise their secular objectives.

The functional model of religion overlooks the historic process through which a system of belief emerges, the experiences and community interaction that belief systems are built on. Real religions – as opposed to artificially created ones – are organically linked to the lives of people. Religious beliefs are internalised through the customs and practices of everyday life. Such beliefs help people to make sense of their world and give meaning to life. The idea that religion and God can be invented because ‘we need it’, or because a moral crusade needs the authority of some supernatural being, fails to comprehend the historical, social and cultural contexts within which religion emerges. It also debases the idea of religious belief. Religious belief involves intuition, spirituality, faith and reason. For better or worse, the world’s religions need to be seen as some of the most important moral, intellectual and cultural accomplishments of human civilisation. To treat religious conviction as some kind of tool of public relations degrades this historic form of belief.

But the corruption of religion is not the only outcome of today’s cynical attempt to invent a new green God. When so-called atheists, scientists and secular thinkers demand that their views should be treated as sacred, they degrade the status of scientific reasoning, too. Science emerged through an intellectual struggle to free humanity from the tyranny of sacred dogma. Belief in science is unlike pre-scientific belief. A belief in the power of science to discover how the world works should not be taken to mean that science itself is a belief. On the contrary, science depends on an open-minded and open-ended attitude towards experimentation and the testing out of ideas. Indeed, science is an inherently sceptical enterprise, since it respects no authority, other than evidence. As Thomas Henry Huxley once declared: ‘The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such.’ ‘Scepticism is the highest of duties’, said Huxley, ‘blind faith the unpardonable sin’. That is why Britain’s oldest and most respectable scientific institution, the Royal Society, was founded on the motto: ‘On the word of no one.’ And that includes the green God.

The proposed marriage between phoney religion and phoney science represents the worst of both worlds. It both corrupts religion and gives rise to a new religion of corruption, where ideas are turned into sacred texts with which to hector and blackmail the public. Those of us with genuine convictions – whether scientific or religious – have a common interest in challenging this debasement of religious belief and scientific reasoning.


Frank Furedi’s latest book, Invitation To Terror: The Expanding Empire of The Unknown, is published by Continuum Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Visit Furedi’s website here.





(3) Will we establish a green religion?, Andrew Brown’s blog, Guardian


(4) The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, by Daniel Bell, Heineman (London), 1979

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EU leaders' pre-G20 summit in Brussels


Thomson Reuters
HIGHLIGHTS-EU leaders' pre-G20 summit in Brussels
09.17.09, 02:45 PM EDT



BRUSSELS, Sept 17 (Reuters) - The following are comments by European Union leaders in connection with their meeting on Thursday in Brussels, held to prepare for next week's Pittsburgh summit of the Group of 20 developed and emerging economies.


GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL:

On a global tax on financial market deals:

'Such a tax is reasonable on an international level. We will see if we find a common European position on that tonight.'

'For me what is paramount is that no bank and no financial institution can blackmail states.'

'Second, that we accomplish limits on bonus payments and uniform rules.'

'Third, that we draw lessons from the crisis and work on a charter for a sustainable economy.'

'I am optimistic that we can make clear that bonus payments have to be linked to long-term performance and linked to bank profits.'


BRITISH PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN:

On bank bonuses:

'There is no going back to the bonus structure of the past. I believe we will be able to agree on the structure of how the bonuses should be examined in the future. I am confident that at Pittsburgh there is a common will to achieve action on something that has angered the populations of almost every country.


On economy, stimulus:

'Recovery cannot be taken for granted ... I will tell my colleagues this is no time for business as usual.'

'The greatest risk we face is being too complacent about the future.'

'Until the recovery is established, all countries must implement ... stimulus packages that have been announced, not just this year, but throughout 2010.'

'So I propose that we continue and cement the more than 5 percent of global GDP, or more than $2.5 trillion, of fiscal action in the coming year.'

'With the creation and preservation of jobs uppermost in our minds in Pittsburgh and in the coming year, we must be ready to commit to even greater levels of economic cooperation.'

'I will propose tonight that the Pittsburgh summit should agree a historic global compact for long-term stability and jobs. It will be unprecedented political commitment from all G20 countries to continue to act together for the benefit of all countries and all citizens.'

'In short I am proposing an agreed process of international cooperation, with political leadership using the international institutions to create the foundations of a new system of managing our global economy.'


SWEDISH EU PRESIDENCY'S FREDRIK REINFELDT

'We need to formulate exit strategies ... the solution cannot be highly indebted countries.'

'We will discuss the return of the bonus culture ... we need to deliver on this ... it is time to say enough is enough.'

'I hope tonight we can say the bonus bubble has burst.' Keywords: EU G20/

(Brussels newsroom +32 2 287 6841, fax +32 2 230 5573)





Because there was no shepherd


Ezekiel 34


1And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

2Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?

3Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.

4The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.

5And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered.

6My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them.

7Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD;

8As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock;

9Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD;

10Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them.

11For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.

12As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.

13And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.

14I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.

15I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord GOD.

16I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.

17And as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he goats.

18Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?

19And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.

20Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD unto them; Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle.

21Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad;

22Therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle.

23And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.

24And I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the LORD have spoken it.

25And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.

26And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.

27And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them.

28And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid.

29And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.

30Thus shall they know that I the LORD their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord GOD.

31And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord GOD.
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Jimmy Carter: attacks on Barack Obama fuelled by racism

Jimmy Carter has claimed that many of Barack Obama’s most vocal critics are racist and have been spurred into increasingly bitter attacks on his policies by their revulsion at the election of America’s first black president.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 4:52PM BST 16 Sep 2009



Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn arrive at the inauguration of Barack Obama Photo: AP


In a blistering attack on the Right after watching Mr Obama endure a summer of hostility, the former US president singled out Joe Wilson, the congressman who shouted “You Lie!” while Mr Obama was making a speech on health care to the US Congress last week.

That attack, Mr Carter alleged, was also “based on racism”.


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In comments that could provoke a contentious debate on race the White House is eager to avoid, Mr Carter went further than African-American congressmen who had begun to make the connection between Right-wing attacks on Mr Obama and his election as America’s first black president.

“I think that an overwhelming proportion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, he’s African American,” Mr Carter, 84, told NBC.

“I live in the South, and I have seen the South come a long way,” said the native Georgian. “But that racism inclination still exists, and I think it has bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but across the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.”

The comments mean that Mr Carter has become the most prominent voice to level a direct charge of racism at Mr Obama’s critics.

It has emerged since last week that Mr Wilson was among a small group of Republicans who supported a campaign to keep the Confederate flag flying over South Carolina’s capitol building.

The flag is regarded by African Americans and many others as an offensive symbol of the pro-slavery South. Mr Wilson was also once a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which racism watchdog groups regard as a “neo-confederate” organisation.

But Mr Wilson’s son, Alan, said: “There is not a racist bone in my dad’s body. He doesn’t even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won’t comment on former President Carter, because I don’t know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it’s just not in him.”

During months of raucous protests against his health care reform plans and other initiatives, Mr Obama has been compared to Hitler, the Joker from the Batman films and the anti-Christ.

Opponents have called him a Nazi, a socialist, a communist and questioned his nationality. Demonstrators toting guns have appeared outside the president’s town hall appearances while a handful of preachers have led congregations in prayers that Mr Obama would die.

“Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national programme on health care,” said Mr Carter. “It’s deeper than that.”

Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, has been forced to address the race issue, telling CNN: “I don’t think the president believes that people are upset because of the colour of his skin.”

His remarks demonstrated the administration’s keenness to bury a debate that would divert attention from the president’s already overloaded agenda.

Organisers of the conservative “tea party” protests against the president have insisted their opposition is based merely on dislike of the president’s “big government” policies.

Brendan Steinhauser, a co-ordinator for FreedomWorks which organised the first large-scale protest against Mr Obama in Washington over the weekend, said accusations of racism were nothing more than a ploy to muffle dissent.

“It is an intimidation tactic. When you make that attack and call someone racist or homophobic it is a way to kind of silence them,” he said. “The idea that people are trying to bring race into this is absolutely ridiculous.”

Democrats have however pointed out that signs at anti-Obama rallies have gone beyond politics.

A sign at the Washington protest depicting a lion read: “The Zoo has an African [lion] and the White House has a Lyin’ African.”

Charles Rangel, a veteran black congressman from New York, said earlier this month: “Some Americans have not gotten over the fact that Obama is president of the United States. They go to sleep wondering, ’How did this happen?’ ”

For other Democrats, Mr Wilson’s unprecedented breach of decorum during an address by the president to a joint session of Congress led them to express what they had been feeling for weeks.

Mike Honda of California, chairman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said: “There’s a very angry, small group of folks that just didn’t like the fact that Barack Obama won the presidency.”
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Jimmy Carter And Human Rights: Behind The Media Myth


Jimmy Carter And Human Rights: Behind The Media Myth


Media Beat (9/21/94)

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon


Jimmy Carter's reputation has soared lately.

Typical of the media spin was a Sept. 20 report on CBS Evening News, lauding Carter's "remarkable resurgence" as a freelance diplomat. The network reported that "nobody doubts his credibility, or his contacts."

For Jimmy Carter, the pact he negotiated in Haiti is the latest achievement of his long career on the global stage.

During his presidency, Carter proclaimed human rights to be "the soul of our foreign policy." Although many journalists promoted that image, the reality was quite different.

Inaugurated 13 months after Indonesia's December 1975 invasion of East Timor, Carter stepped up U.S. military aid to the Jakarta regime as it continued to murder Timorese civilians. By the time Carter left office, about 200,000 people had been slaughtered.

Elsewhere, despotic allies — from Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines to the Shah of Iran — received support from President Carter.

In El Salvador, the Carter administration provided key military aid to a brutal regime. In Nicaragua, contrary to myth, Carter backed dictator Anastasio Somoza almost until the end of his reign. In Guatemala — again contrary to enduring myth — major U.S. military shipments to bloody tyrants never ended.

After moving out of the White House in early 1981, Carter developed a reputation as an ex-president with a conscience. He set about building homes for the poor. And when he traveled to hot spots abroad, news media often depicted Carter as a skillful negotiator on behalf of human rights.

But a decade after Carter left the Oval Office, scholar James Petras assessed the ex-president's actions overseas — and found that Carter's image as "a peace mediator, impartial electoral observer and promoter of democratic values...clashes with the experiences of several democratic Third World leaders struggling against dictatorships and pro-U.S. clients."

From Latin America to East Africa, Petras wrote, Carter functioned as "a hard-nosed defender of repressive state apparatuses, a willing consort to electoral frauds, an accomplice to U.S. Embassy efforts to abort popular democratic outcomes and a one-sided mediator."

Observing the 1990 election in the Dominican Republic, Carter ignored fraud that resulted in the paper-thin victory margin of incumbent president Joaquin Balaguer. Announcing that Balaguer's bogus win was valid, Carter used his prestige to give international legitimacy to the stolen election — and set the stage for a rerun this past spring, when Balaguer again used fraud to win re-election.

In December 1990, Carter traveled to Haiti, where he labored to undercut Jean-Bertrand Aristide during the final days of the presidential race. According to a top Aristide aide, Carter predicted that Aristide would lose, and urged him to concede defeat. (He ended up winning 67 percent of the vote.)

Since then, Carter has developed a warm regard for Haiti's bloodthirsty armed forces. Returning from his recent mission to Port-au-Prince, Carter actually expressed doubt that the Haitian military was guilty of human rights violations.

Significantly, Carter's involvement in the mid-September negotiations came at the urging of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras — who phoned Carter only days before the expected U.S. invasion and asked him to play a mediator role. (Cedras had floated the idea in an Aug. 6 appearance on CNN.)

Carter needed no encouragement. All summer he had been urging the White House to let him be a mediator in dealings with Haiti.

Carter's regard for Cedras matches his evident affection for Cedras' wife. On Sept. 20, Carter told a New York Times interviewer: "Mrs. Cedras was impressive, powerful and forceful. And attractive. She was slim and very attractive."

By then, Carter was back home in Georgia. And U.S. troops in Haiti were standing by — under the terms of the Carter-negotiated agreement — as Haiti's police viciously attacked Haitians in the streets.

The day after American forces arrived in Haiti, President Clinton was upbeat, saying that "our troops are working with full cooperation with the Haitian military" — the same military he had described five days earlier as "armed thugs" who have "conducted a reign of terror, executing children, raping women, killing priests."

The latest developments in Haiti haven't surprised Petras, an author and sociology professor at Binghamton University in New York. "Every time Carter intervenes, the outcomes are always heavily skewed against political forces that want change," Petras said when we reached him on Sept. 20. "In each case, he had a political agenda — to support very conservative solutions that were compatible with elite interests."

Petras described Carter as routinely engaging in "a double discourse. One discourse is for the public, which is his moral politics, and the other is the second track that he operates on, which is a very cynical realpolitik that plays ball with very right-wing politicians and economic forces."

And now, Petras concludes, "In Haiti, Carter has used that moral image again to impose one of the worst settlements imaginable."

With much of Haiti's murderous power structure remaining in place, the results are likely to be grim.




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What is Liberation Theology?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd8VrbHkhjQhttp://

BereanBeacon
April 06, 2008

Mrs. Waite's program is on every Saturday at about 4:15 p.m. Eastern (sometimes 4:20 p.m.) for 15 minutes. It is on Radio Station WNQM in Nashville, TN. It is also put on the Internet at the follow...

Mrs. Waite's program is on every Saturday at about 4:15 p.m. Eastern (sometimes 4:20 p.m.) for 15 minutes. It is on Radio Station WNQM in Nashville, TN. It is also put on the Internet at the following URL--http://wwcr.com/wwcr_listen.html When you get on that URL, select WNQM - Nashville, TN Program Guide Windows Media Player Real Media Player MP3 Players to tune in on her program.The Bible For Today.900 Park Avenue.Collingswood NJ 08108.Dr. D. A. Waite, Th.D., Ph.D..Pastor of the Bible For Today.Baptist Church.Orders - 1-800-John 10:9.or 1-800-564-6109.Q & A - 1-856-854-4452.or 1-856-854-4747.Fax - 1-856-854-2464.http://www.biblefortoday.org/ .BFT@BibleForToday.org

Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

At its inception, liberation theology was predominantly found in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. It is often cited as a form of Christian socialism, and it has enjoyed widespread influence in Latin America and among the Jesuits,...

Christian socialism Christian left social justice, poverty human rights
Marxist Edward Bellamy *
Tony Benn
Phillip Berryman *
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dorothy Day
Toni Negri
Leo Tolstoy
Mary Ward
Catholic Worker Movement
Christian Socialist Movement
Liberation theology- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberati...

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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Most Americans Dismiss Scare Tactics in the Health Care Reform Debate

Posted: 09/16/09

A majority of Americans believe many of the claims about health care legislation are distortions or "scare tactics," according to a new Bloomberg poll.

Take the so-called "death panels" charge raised by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others. The House bill calls for "advanced care planning consultations" that would reimburse doctors for talking with patients once every five years about end-of-life care. Sixty-three percent of those polled believe the "death panel" moniker is a distortion or scare tactic compared to 30 percent who said it is a legitimate criticism.

Republicans such as House Minority Leader John Boehner and anti-abortion groups have charged that reform legislation would allow taxpayer-funded abortions. Sixty-one percent dismissed that as a distortion compared to 33 percent who said it was legitimate.
Critics have warned that an overhaul would lead to health care rationing, although many supporters of reform counter that rationing, in effect, already exists because of insurance company policies and the inability to afford health care. Those polled called this charge a scare tactic, 59 percent to 35 percent.

The idea that the government would pay for health care for illegal immigrants – which prompted South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's shout of "You lie" during President Obama's speech to Congress last week -- was rejected by 58 percent of respondents, while 37 percent thought it was legitimate.

The knock on the health plan that drew the highest level of concern was the charge that reform would lead to socialized medicine, something that 43 percent said was a legitimate fear. But 52 percent called it a distortion.

Overall, the poll found 48 percent backed Obama's push for a health care overall compared to 42 percent who opposed it, with 10 percent undecided.

Obama's health care speech to Congress on Sept. 9 elicited the following response: 62 percent of those who expressed an opinion of Obama's plan answered that their views remained the same. Twenty-two percent said they were more likely to support the plan as a result of the speech, while 10 percent said they were less likely to do so.

The poll indicates that a majority of Americans are mostly pessimistic, 56 percent to 39 percent, that a health care plan will be passed in 2009. As for the economy, 54 percent to 44 percent say the government has the ability to help the it recover.

The poll of 1,004 adults ages 18 or older was conducted Sept. 10-14. It has an error margin of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.



Source:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/09/16/most-americans-dismiss-scare-tactics-in-the-health-care-reform-d/
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Living off the grid – how to escape the spies all around us

February 9, 2008
Living off the grid – how to escape the spies all around us

At the wheel, at the till and at the computer keyboard we are all being watched. Here's a few ways to keep your life private



Nick Rosen



Britain is the undisputed leader in the free world at snooping on its citizens. We are watched everywhere we go: driving to work, walking the dog, shopping, taking the train.

We are constantly under surveillance, by camera, by the chips in our debit, credit or store cards. When we telephone or e-mail our friends, numerous agencies and private companies instantaneously know what we are doing and where we are doing it from. We can barely turn on a light or the oven without someone, somewhere, tracking our every move.

We believe that we cannot escape this casual surveillance of our lives so we casually accept it. But thousands of people are finding ways to avoid the day-to-day tracking by stepping wholly or partly outside the system and its control.

I spent a year travelling around Britain meeting people who live “off-grid” and learning how to avoid the invasive sweep of corporate data-hounds and sidestep the intrusive gaze of closed-circuit television cameras.


Related Links
Analysis: bugging as easy as a walk in the park
Brown clears use of bugging tapes in court
Lawyer asks: was MP recorded for the FBI?


Four years ago there were an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the exact figure is unknown as there is no central registration system – but there are probably nearer 6 million cameras now.

There are up to ten on every bus and dozens at every station, so avoid London Transport if you want to evade the cameras. Most CCTV runs from speed cameras, which are less prevalent in the countryside. Maps of them are available on car websites.

Tinted car windows keep your face off camera but your numberplate will still give you away. Numberplate recognition computers are a classic example of “function creep”: cameras and computers installed for one purpose – congestion charging – are now used for another.

At night, use an infra-red light bulb to illuminate your numberplate. CCTV, like all video cameras, operates in that part of the spectrum near infra-red, so such a bulb above the number will flood the camera and is legal at the time of writing.

There is no legally enforceable code of practice on how these cameras should be used nor any widely accepted recording standards. Only one law governs CCTV cameras: for health and safety reasons they must be above head height – at least 2.5m (8ft) from the ground.

Since we are literally watched from above, covering the head provides a level of anonymity and privacy, as everyone who wears a hoody knows.

Just as intrusive as surveillance cameras is the use and misuse of personal data. Sometimes the two forces, government and private, come together, as in that delightful question on the electoral registration form that asks you to tick here if you do not want your data sold for marketing purposes.

From NHS records to store cards, utility company records to social networking websites, our data is being sliced, diced and resold. So how can we take back control?

For a start, you can swap your store loyalty card with a friend’s (once you have spent all the points) so that you will get credits for your purchases but the retailer will not know whose data is being collected. You can do the same with Oyster or other travel cards – the transport authorities will still have the aggregate data they need for management but they cannot track your individual movements.

You can switch from plastic to cash and barter and give or get free goods via Freecycle (www.freecycle.com). There may be tax issues here – it depends which accountant you ask.

Utility companies are huge holders of personal data but tens of thousands of people escape their clutches by living without mains services – water, power, phone line or sewerage. By paying council tax they remain eligible to use the NHS and schools.

For town residents with an existing electricity supply, it does not yet make economic sense to cut off power. In the city the most common kinds of off-grid dwellings are boats, vans and tents in parents’ gardens. The last need planning permission but normally nobody bothers to seek it. Finding acceptable spots in cities to live full-time in a camper van is possible but not easy.

Thousands of people live on urban canals and rivers, paying the minimum £75 a year to British Waterways for a “continuous cruiser” licence. They use no mains power nor need to pay council tax, and so evade the growing army of planning officers checking on the size of your patio extension.

Back on dry land, it is possible to dispense with your water supplier by having a borehole drilled in your garden, however small. You do not need a permit if it is not for industrial use. It will cost a few thousand pounds but for a large family on a water meter it makes economic sense, as well as limiting the amount of data accessible by the water company.

There are ways to ensure virtual invisibility online. The off-grid community uses encryption to ensure that its e-mails are not spied upon by governments or criminals. Hushmail (www. hushmail.com), based in Canada, offers a free service that allows users to conceal the source of their e-mails and encrypts them.

These codes automatically bring users to the attention of electronic eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency of the United States, which assumes they have something to hide (which usually they do not) but it does protect them from casual surveillance.

You can browse the web in relative anonymity by using Xerobank (www. xerobank.com), which passes your clicks through an anonymous “data cloud”, hiding the data normally revealed as you use a computer.

Facebook, which is owned by Microsoft, was recently criticised for teaming up with retailers to discover what its members were buying and then sending e-mails to those shoppers’ online “friends”, advising them of the purchases. This was done without the permission of the individuals involved and often without their knowledge.

There are ways of setting your privacy options within Facebook so that you would not be spied on and “outed” in this way but the settings are hard to find. The simplest way of dealing with the threat from social networking sites is to use an assumed identity when you join. It may be against their rules but the chances of being discovered are low and the worst that can happen is that your identity is closed down and you have to rejoin.

It is more of an effort to live off-grid, requiring a time-consuming vigilance as you monitor your communications and shopping habits to ensure that you are not giving away too much information. But I would rather spend my energy in positive action than in merely worrying, which is what most civil libertarians seem to do.

Nick Rosen is the author of How to Live Off-Grid.
Find out more about off-grid living at http://www.off-grid.net/

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Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3338076.ece

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Public trust in US media eroding: Pew study


Public trust in US media eroding: Pew study

September 15, 2009


Public trust in the US media is eroding and increasing numbers of Americans believe news coverage is inaccurate and biased, according to a study released on Monday.

Just 29 percent of the 1,506 adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press between July 22-26 said news organisations generally get the facts straight.

Sixty-three percent said news stories are often inaccurate, up from 34 percent in a 1985 study, Pew said.

Sixty percent of those polled said the press is biased, up from 45 percent in 1985. Just 26 percent in the latest survey said that news organisations are careful their reporting is not politically biased.

Seventy-four percent said news organisations tend to favor one side in dealing with political and social issues. Eighteen percent said they deal fairly with all sides.

Pew said Republicans tend to be more critical of the news media than Democrats although negative attitudes toward the news media were also increasing among Democrats.

Fifty-nine percent of those who identified themselves as Democrats said news organisations are often inaccurate, up from 43 percent just two years ago.

Two-thirds of the Democrats polled said the press tends to favor one side rather than to treat all sides fairly, up from 54 percent in 2007.

Just 20 percent of those polled said news organisations are independent of powerful people and organisations and only 21 percent said they are willing to admit their mistakes.

The poll found television remained the dominant news source for the public, with 71 percent saying they get most of their national and international news from television.

Forty-two percent said they get most of their news from the Internet compared with 33 percent who cited newspapers.

Fifty-nine percent rated news organisations as "highly professional," down from 66 percent two years ago and 72 percent in 1985.

Sixty-two percent of those polled said news organisations are being fair to the Obama administration while 23 percent said media coverage has been unfair.

Forty percent said the major cable news outlets -- CNN, Fox News and MSNBC -- were their main source for national and international news with 22 percent saying they relied on CNN, 19 percent on Fox and six percent on MSNBC.

Seventy-two percent of Republicans view Fox News positively compared with just 43 percent of Democrats.

Those polled were starkly divided along party lines when it came to The New York Times.

Republicans viewed the Times negatively by a margin of 31 percent to 16 percent while Democrats viewed it positively by 39 percent to eight percent margin.

Sixty-eight percent of those polled said it would be a major loss if large national newspapers like the Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal were to stop publishing.

The survey had a margin of error of between plus or minus three percentage points.




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Eyewitness: Guatemala food crisis

Page last updated at 12:49 GMT, Monday, 14 September 2009 13:49 UK
Eyewitness: Guatemala food crisis


Children in eastern areas of the country are suffering from malnutrition


Guatemala has been hit by severe food shortages, with some 54,000 families living in the east of the country facing a critical situation.

President Alvaro Colom last week declared a "state of public calamity" to try to mobilise funding to tackle severe food shortages in the country.

Lida Escobar is a field monitor for the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in Guatemala. She sent this update on the situation there to BBCMundo.com.


In the eastern city of Jalapa I was astonished by what I saw.
There were many many children with severe malnutrition problems.

We found 22 children with marasmus and kwashiorkor [two nutrient deficiency diseases] in the hospital.





Lida Escobar has visited some of the areas worst affected by the crisis








Kwashiorkor is a type of malnutrition in which the children swell because they retain liquids because of protein deficiency.

Their hair can also become discoloured and they develop some skin lesions.

Marasmus is another form of malnutrition in which the skin barely covers the bones because of a protein and calories deficiency.

The children become very thin, lose hair and can become very irritable.

In Jalapa, the children are not only suffering from malnutrition but they also have to fight other diseases like bronchial pneumonia, gastrointestinal problems and diarrhoea.

They lose their appetites and their bodies don't absorb the nutrients when they eat. As their body defences are low, they get sick very easily.

I also went to Chiquimula, in the town of Jocotan.

I visited two nutritional treatment centres which have been treating children from the indigenous area known as Chorti.

We found eight children recuperating there, most of them with Marasmus and Kwashiorkor.

The crisis has very complex causes.






Some children have developed these conditions because of the lack of food, but some because they have related diseases and are weak.





The mothers say the children have fever and nausea and that, since they are not hungry, they don't give them anything to eat.

The Chorti community have access to medical services through non-governmental organisations contracted to the ministry of health.

To reach them, you have to drive and the walk for two hours through a mountainous area.

In some cases there is help available, but there are problems with education.

We found one girl that was very cold and about to die.

We asked the mother why she hadn't taken her to the centre and she replied that they only take their children to the centre when the local shaman cannot do anything else to help.

In the most vulnerable areas, the WFP helps with a project in which we exchange food for work.

This gives the community an opportunity to work in projects like soil conservation, reforestation, growing vegetable, fertilising and training.

We also provide young children, lactating mothers and pregnant women with Vitaceral, which is a mixture of corn with fortified soy, micronutrients and fortified biscuits.

It's very sad to see the children with marasmus and kwashiorkor.

They just stare into space and it makes you wonder what they are looking at. What is their future? What are they thinking about?


Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8254841.stm
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'Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman' by Jon Krakauer

BOOK REVIEW
'Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman' by Jon Krakauer

The author of "Into the Wild" and "Into Thin Air" looks into the tragic death of a football star-turned-soldier in Afghanistan and the U.S. Army's maneuvers to conceal what really happened.



By Dan Neil

September 11, 2009


Pat Tillman, unlikely football hero and unlikelier warrior, went to Afghanistan and got accidentally wasted by the men in his own Ranger platoon. It happens. Among the many shadows Jon Krakauer illuminates in his compelling and dispiriting book, "Where Men Win Glory," is the commonness of fratricide in high-tech warfare. Thus the military's bleak poetry of misadventure: FUBAR, SNAFU, Charlie-Fox.

But the story here isn't Tillman's unexceptional death, or exceptional life for that matter, but what Krakauer sees as a political crime committed by the Bush administration's propaganda machine as it tried to make Tillman a martyr in the global war on terror.

Tillman saw it coming. In a moment of foreboding, he said to a friend: "I don't want them to parade me through the streets." And yet that's exactly what happened.

From the day Tillman enlisted in June 2002, the Pentagon's perception managers coveted his story: the granite-chinned NFL star who walked away from millions to fight for his country after 9/11. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- who had opened the clandestine Office of Strategic Influence in October 2001 and was the Pentagon's most enthusiastic propagandist -- sent Tillman a laudatory note and advised Secretary of the Army Thomas White to "keep an eye on him."

Frustratingly, Tillman wouldn't cooperate. He refused requests for media interviews and quietly disappeared into the enlisted ranks of the Army's elite Rangers.

Krakauer -- whose forensic studies of the Emersonian Man in books such as "Into Thin Air" and 'Into the Wild" yield so much insight -- has turned in a beautiful bit of reporting, documenting Tillman's life with journals and interviews with those close to him. And yet a full understanding of Tillman's motivations eludes Krakauer, and us.

Why did Tillman walk away from his fortune-kissed life? Yes, honor and duty; yes, family tradition -- Tillman's great-grandfather served at Pearl Harbor. His younger brother, Kevin Tillman, enlisted with Pat and served in the same Ranger platoon; indeed, Pat thought his brother was under fire in the engagement in Khost province where he died.

But these things, honor and duty, are the virtues in which male aggression often cloaks itself. Honor and duty could have just as easily obliged Tillman to resist the war in Iraq, which he called "illegal as hell" and an act of "imperial whim."

It's clear that Tillman had a certain moral vanity. In a journal, Tillman writes: "My honor will not allow me to create a life of beauty and peace but sends me off to order and conformity. My life becomes everything I'm not. . . . I follow some philosophy I barely understand. . . ."

Perhaps the closest to the bone Krakauer gets is a borrowed quote from Nietzsche: "I love him who makes his virtue his addiction and his catastrophe. . . ."

Within hours of Tillman's death on April 22, 2004, the propaganda apparatus of the Pentagon and Bush White House swung into high gear. According to Krakauer, "approximately 200" e-mails raced among staffers, some discussing the political leverage to be gained in the Tillman affair. The next day, the White House released a sober tribute to the fallen hero.

By April 25, the Army Chief of Staff's Office of Public Affairs was gloating about the "extremely positive" stories in the national media, noting that interest in the Army was higher than it had been "since the end of active combat last year."

Meanwhile, the 2nd Ranger Battalion was expediting the paperwork to award Tillman a Silver Star -- the nation's third highest award for valor -- using two falsified eyewitness accounts of the incident.

The fact that Tillman had been killed by his own comrades shooting in a wild panic, and that everyone up and down the chain of command knew it, scarcely mattered. Washington was set upon a " G.I. Joe" narrative: Tillman died while charging uphill toward the enemy, attempting to lay down covering fire for men caught in a Taliban ambush.

The historical context that Krakauer provides is important here. At the time of Tillman's death, the American public's mood was souring on the war in Iraq. It was increasingly evident that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that U.S. forces had unleashed the genie of civil war. On April 28, CBS' "60 Minutes" ran the story about the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, U.S. Marines were engaged in a fierce rear-guard action as they attempted to withdraw from Fallouja.

Rumsfeld and his image generals needed a win. Tillman's death gave it to them.

Indeed, they were following a script. On March 23, 2003, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy bumbled into the military city of Nasiriyah, Iraq. In the ensuing chaos, the Humvee that Private Jessica Lynch was riding in crashed, and she was badly hurt. Iraqi forces took her to a nearby civilian hospital and on the night of April 1 a Special Ops team mounted a rescue (which was conveniently videotaped).

The subsequent story of Private Lynch -- "a petite blond supply clerk [who] fearlessly mows down Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she runs out of ammo, whereupon she is shot, stabbed, captured, tortured and raped" -- was concocted by Jim Wilkinson, a Bush loyalist who was pulling double-duty as the director of the Office of Strategic Communications for Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Iraq-Afghanistan theater. Wilkinson fed the story to the Washington Post among others and, as Krakauer says, "sat back, and watched his fabulation go viral."

It would take many months before the true story of Lynch's ordeal became public, but by then it didn't matter. War fever had been stoked. Operation Iraqi Freedom had rolled on.

The lessons learned in the Lynch affair -- the initial bogus story carries vastly more weight in public opinion than the eventual corrective -- was applied to the Tillman case with a vengeance. Also at work was the deep reluctance on the part of the military -- any military -- to admit to friendly fire.

"When Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan," Krakauer writes, "his Ranger regiment responded with a chorus of prevarication and disavowal. A cynical cover-up sanctioned at the highest levels of the government, followed by a series of inept official investigations, cast a cloud of bewilderment and shame over the tragedy, compounding the tragedy of Tillman's death."

It would take three years for a semblance of the truth to come out and even then the Army allowed only that Tillman was "probably" killed by friendly fire. "No one has found evidence of a conspiracy by the Army to fabricate a hero, deceive the public or mislead the Tillman family about the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death," Secretary of the Army Pete Geren told the media in 2007.

Krakauer's book, which must be counted as the definitive version of events surrounding Tillman's death, reveals Geren's statement to be a lie, plain and simple. And yet as Aeschylus said, "In war, Truth is the first casualty."

dan.neil@latimes.com


Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/afghanistan/la-et-book11-2009sep11,0,628992.story

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The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair


1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

3And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.


Genesis 6: 1-8.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

After Census Severs Ties, ACORN May Face Scrutiny of Housing Grants


ACORN Housing Corporation received $1.6 million in federal money to provide housing services to low-income communities in this fiscal year

FOXNews.com
Saturday, September 12, 2009


Conservatives have cheered the Census Bureau's decision to sever ties with ACORN because it had lost confidence in the group, but the hidden-camera videos that prompted ACORN to fire four workers this week could raise more questions about the federal funding ACORN receives for housing outreach.

ACORN Housing Corporation received $1.6 million to provide housing services to low-income communities in this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, according to USASpending.gov, a federal government Web site for tracking government grants.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development Grants has given $8.2 million to ACORN in the years between 2003 and 2006, as well as $1.6million to ACORN affiliates.

HUD could not be reached for comment.

The hidden-camera videos, released this week, showed workers in two separate ACORN housing offices apparently helping a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute evade the IRS and apply for an illegal housing loan for a brothel. A 25-year-old independent filmmaker, James O'Keefe, posed as the pimp in the undercover expose, which was conceived by a friend, 20-year-old Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the offices shown in the videos had received any of ACORN's federal grant money for housing services.

The Census Bureau notified ACORN on Friday in a letter that it is severing all ties with the group for all work having to do with the 2010 census.

"Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN's affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts," read a letter from Census Director Robert M. Groves to the president of ACORN.

"Unfortunately, we no longer have confidence that our national partnership agreement is being effectively managed through your many local offices. For the reasons stated, we therefore have decided to terminate the partnership," the letter said.

ACORN responded Saturday by blaming FOX News and conservatives for fueling the controversy.

"By its actions, Fox is not a news outlet but rather an advocacy organization for rightwing interests that seek to defeat healthcare reform and stymie solutions to the foreclosure crisis," the group said in a statement to FOXNews.com. "That said, with regard to the Census, ACORN has always said it would encourage full participation in the decennial count, and we will continue to do so."

ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis claimed that the videos capturing her former workers were "doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist 'filmmaker' O'Keefe and his partner in crime."

Lewis said ACORN will take legal action against FOX News and those involved in the making for the videos. ACORN offices in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, among other places, were also targeted, she said.

"I am appalled and angry; I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated," she said.





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Paulsen Says Church’s Health Focus 
Can Help Heal the World

Adventist Church moves to strengthen global health partnerships.


PROMOTING PARTNERSHIP: Jan Paulsen, president 
of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, addresses the Global Conference on Health and Lifestyles in Geneva, July 7. Conference organizers are seeking to bolster partnerships with the World Health Organization, which, like the Seventh-day Adventist Church, works to improve health globally.



Seventh-day Adventists should partner with other health organizations in offering primary health care globally, a request that urges the denomination’s members and institutions to shed individualistic approaches to offering care in communities, General Conference president Jan Paulsen said July 7.

Paulsen’s remarks came on the opening day of a global health conference, which is exploring ways to achieve public health goals through partnerships and the role faith-based organizations (FBOs) play in such an effort. Church health leaders also hope to demonstrate the role spirituality and wholistic living can play in primary care and find common 
ground when working with partners. (For the full text of Paulsen’s remarks click here.)

Recently the World Health Organization (WHO), a United Nations agency, has sought to bolster partnerships with FBOs, which deliver as much as 40 percent of primary care in some nations.

On July 6, Adventist Church officials met in a high-level conference with WHO leaders in Geneva to explore effective ways of partnering, particularly by implementing the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Leaders from both organizations have met several times in the past two years, their work culminating in the Global Conference on Health and Lifestyle in Geneva.

In his keynote address Paulsen urged community involvement as a way for Adventists to express their own values in an age of globalization. Such involvement, he said, would define the public’s perception of the church’s approach to primary care.

“An individualistic, inward-looking conception of Christianity is utterly at odds with the Savior who reached out to restore blind men’s eyes, cured lepers, and healed an emotionally broken woman,” Paulsen said. “We cannot express our faith, our desire to imitate Christ, in seclusion.”

Paulsen spoke to some 500 world church leaders in a packed lecture hall at the University of Geneva, the site of the conference.

During his half-hour speech, Paulsen said the church would continue to prioritize facilitating, funding, and supporting professional medical health care through its network of more than 600 hospitals, clinics, and dispensaries. The denomination’s 150-year health focus also emphasizes health education, advocacy of vegetarianism, and living alcohol- and drug-free.

Paulsen also addressed concerns that partnerships would be at odds with the church’s mission, saying, “Some have been critical, and rightly so, of an eschatological perspective that serves simply to reconcile us to current miseries. Awaiting [Christ’s return] is not a passive exercise, but something that demands action [in] the present.”

The church’s emphasis on health, Paulsen said, should not just be one of treating disease, defining what is healthful to eat or drink, or the training of medical professionals.

“Our approach to health is a concept that encompasses all that contributes to the fullness and completeness of human existence,” he said.

A WHO officer noted that the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the past has sometimes acted in a closed manner, but said he welcomed the partnership.

“I think the Adventist Church is ready for official relations with us,” said Ted Karpf, an officer with the Department of Partnerships and UN Reform at the World Health Organization.

“The church is here as partners to begin with, so some change has happened already,” Karpf said.

Addressing the gathering, Jean Duff, executive director of the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty, recognized the Adventist Church as “a faithful partner in mobilizing their health assets and congregational infrastructures” to collaborate in an interfaith antimalaria program in Mozambique.

Several of the church’s health ministries leaders said they welcomed Paulsen’s comments.

“I think he set a new direction,” said Chester Kuma, associate Health Ministries director for the church’s South Pacific region. “He provided a great challenge to the church, getting us back to basics. It’s a good reminder about compassion and helping the poor.”

Elie Honore, Health Ministries director for the church’s Inter-American region, said Paulsen’s comments weren’t aimed only at church health leaders but at many segments of the church. “We have education represented here [at this conference], and ministry, as well as leadership,” Honore said.

“He reminded us of the questions we should be asking. We’re not going to just stick to ideas or theories but open our eyes to the community and fulfill our mission as a church.”

The Global Conference on Health and Lifestyle continued through July 10. Other speakers and workshop presenters included David Williams, professor of public health at Harvard University; Sir Michael Marmot, director of the International Institute for Society and Health; and Alex Ross, WHO director for the Program on Partnerships and United Nations Reform.



—Reported by Ansel Oliver, assistant director for news, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

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Christ’s Healing in a Changing World


By Jan Paulsen

What is the future of Seventh-day Adventist health ministries as it faces the challenges of a rapidly changing global environment? Following is an adaptation of the keynote address given by General Conference President Jan Paulsen on July 7, 2009, at the Health and Lifestyle Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.


The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the rise of the “prophets of secularization”—sociologists and political thinkers who predicted the decline of religious faith as a force in society. They simply took for granted that the more people were exposed to economic, scientific, and political advances, the more quickly they would shake off the old-fashioned shackles of faith. The death of religion was simply a matter of time.

The obituaries, though, were premature. We find ourselves today in a world where religious belief is clearly a significant and, in many places, a growing force in society. Instead of “secularization theory,” sociologists are now more likely to speak of a “post-secular” age.

But there is another powerful force of the twenty-first century, a force that is wholly a product of recent decades. Unlike religious belief, it is newborn, it is brash, it has few moorings in the past: I am speaking about the process of globalization, which is re-creating humanity’s social structures within a span of time that is quite simply breathtaking. Globalization acts as a vast, dynamic “transport system” that carries ideas, values, and people and deposits them anywhere and everywhere. Barriers of language, culture, and geography are no longer as meaningful as they once were. No institution—public or private, religious or secular—remains untouched.

Globalization is a fact; it is happening; it’s as unavoidable and unknowable as its ultimate consequences. Religion, similarly, is a reality that is with us. It’s here, and it’s a powerful force both within the lives of individuals and in the societies where they live. These two forces—globalization and religion—live together, interact with each other, and are often intertwined.

Guiding Values
For the health ministries of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, surveying the changing global landscape on which it conducts its mission, these are significant issues.

As we walk into the future, there is no question that our commitment remains strong. We continue to place a high priority on facilitating, funding, and supporting professional medical and health care through our network of more than 600 hospitals, sanitariums, clinics, and dispensaries; through nutrition and other health programs; and through our advocacy of vegetarianism and alcohol- and drug-free living.

But while our commitment is clear, I believe it’s time to reflect in more depth on the values that should anchor us as we step onto the shifting ground of our changing world. And more than this, to ask ourselves what values we can, in turn, imprint upon this terrain. What unique mark can we make?

We need to ask ourselves: What does a distinctively Adventist approach to health ministries look like? What does it offer that isn’t already being offered by any number of alternate providers?

Let’s consider briefly four strands of thought woven throughout Adventist heritage and identity that are central to the health ministries of our church and which, I hope, will continue to guide us into the future. Obviously, this is not a finite list of values, but can perhaps serve as a starting point for an ongoing conversation.

Theology of Connection
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Matt. 25:35, 36, NIV).

For Seventh-day Adventists, our model for relating to other people finds its beginning and end in Christ’s radical identification with humanity. An individualistic, inward-looking conception of Christianity is utterly at odds with a Savior who reached out to restore blind eyes, cure lepers, and heal an emotionally broken woman.

Quite simply, we cannot express our faith—our desire to imitate Christ—in seclusion; our values and our beliefs find their true meaning only within the context of human relationships. In the words of my former teacher Jürgen Moltmann, “Likeness to God cannot be lived in isolation. It can be lived only in human community” (J. Moltmann, God in Creation, p. 222).

So what does it mean to live in connection with others? It means that your problems are not yours alone; they are also mine. It means having a sense of solidarity with humanity that makes me vulnerable, also, to its hurts and pain.

Living in connection with others means seeing the large problems of society as collective human problems. I begin to see that poverty, for instance, is not just the result of random circumstances or arbitrary luck. If I live in comfort and someone else lives in distress, could there be a material relationship between these two conditions? Perhaps there is. In admitting this, my sense of isolation diminishes and my sense of responsibility for others grows.

How will this value express itself within the health ministries of our church? By deliberately placing ourselves in those places where there are “gaps” in access to health care; in offering service that pays no heed to a person’s religious, economic, or cultural background; in avoiding “parochial” thinking by forming creative partnerships with others who share our goal of relieving human suffering—be it a government agency, another faith-based organization, a local church or mosque. It means being motivated by self-giving love, not the desire for financial profit or increased influence.

Ultimately, living in connection with others means that “when we see human beings in distress, whether through affliction or through sin, we shall never say, This does not concern me” (The Desire of Ages, p. 504).

Theology of Human Dignity
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26).

Whatever the Imago Dei means—and who has a complete definition of it?—it touches the whole person. God made us in His image—physical, spiritual, moral, social, emotional, intellectual beings.

But for Seventh-day Adventists, the immeasurable worth of every person derives from more than just this stamp of the Divine given at Creation. Human dignity springs not just from our origins but also from our potential and our destiny. This concept profoundly shapes the way we deal with people. In all our healing ministries, we see in each person not just “what is,” but “what is possible.”

It means also that we must, at times, have the courage to “wade into the fray,” to recognize and condemn structures or practices that diminish the dignity of our fellow human beings. This isn’t new territory for us. Hear the words of former General Conference president Arthur Daniels spoken about the ministry of Ellen White: “Slavery, the caste system, unjust racial prejudices, the oppression of the poor, the neglect of the unfortunate,—these all are set forth as unchristian and a serious menace to the well-being of the human race, and as evils which the church of Christ is appointed by her Lord to overthrow” (Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, p. 473).

Simply put, acknowledging the image of God in humanity means that we value people above everything else—and this fundamental premise runs throughout all we are and do as a church.

Theology of Hope
“Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5, KJV).

For Seventh-day Adventists hope is a grand theme, an essential part of our spiritual “genetic blueprint.” But for us, hope doesn’t just point forward toward the grand epilogue of human history—the “what is to come.” Hope is the lens through which we view past, future, and present.

Our hope looks backward to the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection and finds there its touchstone. It’s a hope that looks forward to the moment of ultimate transformation—when all things are made new—and finds there its ideal, its motivation. And it’s a hope that looks outward to the realities as we meet them today and asks, What then can we do to start bridging the gap between what is and what is to be?

Some have been critical, and rightly so, of an eschatological perspective that serves simply to reconcile us to current miseries—an “apocalyptic lethargy.” But for Seventh-day Adventists the renewal of all things is not just a future event in history; it’s a process of renewal that begins now. Awaiting the “blessed hope” is not a passive exercise, but something that demands action in the present.

The healing ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is primarily about awakening hope—physical and spiritual. Although physical needs are often the most apparent, they are indivisible from emotional and spiritual needs. In ministering to the body, we can never ignore the spirit; and the most basic need of the spirit is hope.

Theology of Wholeness
“The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power” (1 Cor. 15:42, 43).

In Christ’s death and resurrection, we see vividly and starkly displayed the extreme contradictions of the human experience: the corrosive power of sin, and the creative power of God; the decay of fallen humanity, and God’s ability to renew and transform; the agony of separation from God, and the triumph of God claiming His own. In the death and resurrection of Christ this dialectic between decay and wholeness provides an unparalleled display of God’s creative and redemptive power.

Bringing wholeness out of decay, healing out of sickness, finding peace in chaos, bringing light into the darkness—this is the task that the followers of Christ have been given.

For Seventh-day Adventists, “wholeness” has another dimension. Our spirituality embraces the whole of human life; it recognizes that “the relation … between the mind and the body is very intimate” (The Ministry of Healing, p. 241), that we don’t live our lives in “segments” where physical health is merely a “piece” that can be separated from the totality of our existence.

Our approach to health is not just limited to the treatment of disease, or to defining what we eat or drink, or to training medical professionals; it’s a concept that encompasses all that contributes to the “completeness” of human existence.

Health ministry is therefore indivisible from our commitment to education, to human rights, to humanitarian work, to environmental care, to our desire to be a force for good in our communities. All these commitments find their beginning and end, their meaning and objective, in our spiritual mission, which gives life and force to all we do as a church.

A Good Life
This is where we stand today—at the edge of a new world that we can’t yet fully imagine, where the shifting plates of technology, economics, and politics are still re-creating our global landscape.

What will tomorrow look like? I don’t know; but I know that it’s not to be feared.

How will the health ministries of the Seventh-day Adventist Church impact tomorrow? I pray it will hold strongly to its commitment to create connection, promote human dignity, and offer hope and wholeness; that it will continue, in a multitude of ways, to help people achieve a “good” life.

In that simple word “good” lies an immense range of ideas—the ability to live fully, to love deeply, to breathe freely, to experience joy and the absence of fear, to know a hope that exists outside the bounds of what is finite and that will take us into God’s eternity. This is the good life Christ holds out to us; this is what defines the mission we have been given.

Jan Paulsen is president of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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P.S. Just who is Jürgen Moltmann?
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Jürgen Moltmann (April 8, 1926 -) is a German theologian and Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He is most noted as a proponent of his "theology of hope" and for his incorporation of insights from liberation theology and ecology into mainstream trinitarian theology.
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Galatians 1:6-9*
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