Friday, September 07, 2012

At European Pastor’s Conference, a call for relevant community ministry

Aug. 31, 2012 Silver Spring, Maryland, United States

ANN staff

Seventh-day Adventist pastors in Europe say a renewed emphasis on relevant, relational outreach will connect with communities there, despite the region’s growing secularism.

The enthusiasm for simple, creative approaches to evangelism came during the European Pastors Conference last week in Rogaska Slatina, Slovenia. Sponsored by the Adventist Church’s Trans-European Division, the conference is held every five years and highlights spiritual growth, continuing education and fellowship.

Some 1,200 pastors, their spouses and lay workers rallied around the theme, “Making God Known in Europe” during four days of lectures, workshops and worship. Thousands more followed the conference via livestream and social media.

In his keynote address, Trans-European Division President Bertil Wiklander told attendees that while many Europeans deny their need for God, such a lifestyle is ultimately “dysfunctional.”

“To make God known in Europe is our great challenge and calling,” he said.

Other presenters urged pastors not to confine their ministry to the pews. Dennis Meier, a pastor from Hamburg, Germany, referenced metaphors from Matthew 5 in his presentation. “As Adventists, we tend to be more comfortable with the metaphor of the light on the hill than the salt of the Earth,” Meier said.

“With our established buildings and our structured worship times there is a danger of us becoming isolated,” he added.

When pastors minister outside church walls, they need to be aware that their efforts and motivation will likely face scrutiny, said Adventist world church Vice President Lowell Cooper.

“A trustworthy God will never be made known by untrustworthy people,” Cooper said in a presentation that highlighted the significance of humility, integrity, respect and accountability in pastoral ministry.

Derek Morris, editor of the church’s Ministry Magazine, said he found a lecture by Biblical Research Institute Director Artur Stele particularly compelling.

“I grew up in Europe, so I am aware of some of the challenges they are facing with postmodern, post-Christian people,” Morris said.

“[Stele] talked about how the New Testament uses more than forty words to describe sharing the good news about Jesus and mentions fifteen different places, such as the market place, cafe, temple, by the river, someone’s house. So the message is to share Jesus in every way and in every place,” he said.

Secular Europe is not unlike the environment the Apostle Paul faced ministering to Greco-Roman culture in the 1st Century, said Adventist recording artist and Pastor Wintley Phipps.

“I think Paul left us a theological heritage that we have lost sight of – that revealing Christ to the world around us, in us, is the true purpose of the church,” Phipps said.

Veteran Adventist evangelist Mark Finley challenged church members not to let fear of failure hinder efforts to share Jesus. “I’d rather try and do something great for God and fail, than do nothing for God and succeed,” he said.

European Adventists launched at least two new pilot outreach projects this year. In February, Bible stories came alive for community members who visited a three-dimensional exhibit in Reykjavik, Iceland. The church’s display traced Biblical history from Creation to Jesus’ resurrection.

Later, in Hungary, Adventists launched a health club and Bible university to respond to basic physical and spiritual needs. Leaders in the country also hosted “Jesus7,” an outreach series broadcast on television nationwide that they say offered lasting answers amid financial instability in the country.

Now, pastors in the region are calling for increased support for more such innovative approaches to evangelism.

“Those who try new methods need confidence and trust and a platform where they can share their experiences,” said Janos Kovacs-Biro, Trans-European Division Ministerial Association director.

“We need a lot of encouragement from church leadership,” Kovacs-Biro said, adding that health, the Sabbath rest and social justice issues such as human trafficking and domestic violence can be effective ways of connecting with a secular audience.

Training seminars for pastors to learn these new methods of outreach and service should be among church administrators’ top priorities, he said.

--with reporting from tedNEWS


Source: © 2012, Adventist News Network

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Kristy Smith: Instead of a church service, community service

1:58 PM, Aug 29, 2012


Written by
Kristy Smith

Put your action where your faith is.

That wasn’t the message preached Aug. 26. Rather, it was the one acted upon that day in place of formal worship by members of Coldwater Free Methodist Church. Instead of attending their usual 10:45 a.m. contemporary worship service, individuals, couples and families gathered at 10 a.m. to kick off a special “Love in Action” morning of community service.

Love in Action followed on the heels of a spring, church-wide study of Rick Warren’s “40 Days of Love” and Tom Holliday’s “The Relationship Principles of Jesus.” The preaching, teaching and small study groups helped introduce and prepare the hearts of the congregation for more relationship-based service.

“We’ve been taking the church through the umbrella theme of ‘radical renewal’ and this is part of it,” said Pastor Nelson Brandymore. “Usually ‘radical’ is thought of as synonymous with ‘extreme’ but for us, ‘radical’ means to grow deeper with our roots into Christ. We’re just setting up Love in Action and letting God use the stuff of everyday life to do His work in us and through us.”

Back in June, Brandymore asked Lindsey Karbon, 20, a student at Trine University, to find community work assignments and to coordinate sign-ups for them. “I already had a head start because I participated in a servant camp back in middle school, so I knew places in the community that need help,” Karbon said.

Church members committed during August to various work sites, including nursing homes, the community hospital, a domestic violence shelter, a pregnancy center, a school, local parks and at least one area business. Random acts of kindness were encouraged along with positive interacting and pre-arranged maintenance assignments.

Before dispatching his congregation to do good on Aug. 26, Pastor Brandymore prayed with them. “Lord, we’re simply learning to be your servants. All we have tried to do is put it together and the middle is up to you. Bring across our pathways anyone you think needs to experience our love.”

Bob and Justine Hostetler signed up to engage in painting and gardening at Branch County’s Shelterhouse for victims of domestic violence. Their two children, Salena, 11, and Tate, 9, accompanied them.

“It’s fun to help people and show those in our community that we care,” Salena said.

Justine Hostetler said she appreciated the chance to encourage her children to think beyond themselves and more about others. She said she likes how volunteering together strengthens family ties and said it reinforces that “God blesses us not so we can be selfish with what He gives us, but so we can share it with others.”

At Lakeland Elementary School, shelving needed to be moved into the library and hundreds of books put into place. Church members Terry and Sue Andress said they were excited to help with the project. Sue, who serves as Responsibility and Thinking Process Coordinator at Lakeland, enjoyed the opportunity to bless her school and its students.

“This is an answered prayer for me,” she said. “While some people may think I am a nice person, hopefully they will realize it’s because of the Jesus in me.”

Handing out bottled water in Parkhurst Park, Leah Horn, 20, summarized the Love in Action experience: “It’s nice to be volunteering in the community because that’s where we’re called to be as a church.”




China earthquakes damage 20,000 homes, leave 50 dead (+video)


China earthquakes: Southwestern China was hit with a series of shallow, damaging earthquakes Friday. The quakes damaged an estimated 20,000 homes and buildings in rural China.

By Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press / September 7, 2012

Damaged cars are seen in Luozehe town, Yiliang County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Friday, Sept. 7, 2012. A series of earthquakes collapsed houses and triggered landslides in a remote mountainous part of southwestern China.

(AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhou Hongpeng)























BEIJING

A series of earthquakes collapsed houses and triggered landslides in a remote mountainous part of southwestern China on Friday, killing at least 50 people with the toll expected to rise. Damage was preventing rescuers from reaching some outlying areas, and communications were disrupted.

The quakes started with a 5.6-magnitude shock before 11:30 a.m. along the borders of Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, and another equally big quake struck shortly after noon followed by more than 60 aftershocks, Chinese and U.S. government seismologists said. Though of moderate strength, the quakes were shallow, which often causes more damage.

Hardest hit was Yiliang County, where 49 of the 50 deaths occurred, said Yunnan province government agencies and state media. Another 150 people in the county were injured, said Zhang Junwei, a spokesman for the provincial seismology bureau.


China Central Television showed roads littered with rocks and boulders, and pillars of dust rising over hillcrests — signs of landslides. Footage showed a couple hundred people crowding into what looked like a school athletic field in Yiliang's county seat, a sizeable city spread along a river in a valley bottom.

With some roads impassable, rescuers had yet to reach some outlying villages and towns, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Though quakes in the area occur frequently, buildings in rural areas and China's fast-growing smaller cities and towns are often constructed poorly. In 2008, a magnitude-7.9 quake that hitSichuan province, just north of Yunnan, killed nearly 90,000 people, with many of the deaths blamed on poorly built structures, including schools.

Xinhua said Friday's quakes destroyed or damaged 20,000 homes. The Yunnan seismology bureau said and more than 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes. All told, Xinhua said, 700,000 people had their lives disrupted by the quake.

In Luozehe, a town in Yiliang near a zinc mine, residents and state media said boulders hurtled off hillsides and houses collapsed.

"It is scary. My brother was killed by falling rocks. The aftershocks struck again and again. We are so afraid," Xinhua quoted miner Peng Zhuwen as saying.

A government official in Jiaokui town said a large number of houses had collapsed.

"The casualty number is still being compiled. I don't know what was like for the other towns, but my town got hit badly," he said. Like many Chinese officials he refused to give his name.

Mobile phone services were down and regular phone lines disrupted. Phones were cut off to clinics in four villages in Qiaoshan, another town in Yiliang, which has about half a million people.

Xinhua said thousands of tents, blankets and coats were being shipped to the area.

It said that so far no casualties had been reported in neighboring Guizhou, but that homes had been damaged or destroyed there.

Friday's quakes were relatively shallow, about 6 miles or 10 kilometers deep, creating an intense shaking even at a lower magnitude.

By comparison, the 7.6-magnitude quake that struck Costa Rica this week was 25 miles (41 kilometers) below the surface, and combined with strict building codes, that kept damage and deaths to a minimum.


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Hunting The Lost Symbol



Uploaded by Soulshroude on Jan 22, 2012

A companion piece to Dan Brown's bestselling novel, The Lost Symbol, this Discovery Channel documentary explores American history and many of the book's Washington, D.C., locales to find the facts behind the legends of our nation's Masonic past.

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Thursday, September 06, 2012

France shooting: Four dead after gun attack on British car in French Alps near Grenoble

Three people were found shot dead inside a British-registered BMW following a gun massacre that also left a male cyclist dead and a young girl fighting for her life at a French alpine beauty spot near Chevaline, in the French Alps.











By Gordon Rayner, Henry Samuel and Duncan Gardham
11:30PM BST 05 Sep 2012

The latest on the France shooting can be found here

Three of the bodies were found inside a British-registered BMW estate car, while the body of a male cyclist was found nearby in what was described as a “dramatic” crime scene.

The girl was found seriously injured next to the car when emergency crews arrived at the woodland car park near Chevaline, close to Lake Annecy in the French Alps.

Items found in the car suggested that the victims were British.

A British cyclist is understood to have discovered the bodies at 3.50pm yesterday, and is now helping police despite being badly shaken.


AFP/Getty Images)

One police source said the cyclist had “stumbled across a massacre”, adding that the dead appeared to have been victims of a “deliberate assassination”. Cartridges found at the scene appeared to show that the gunshots came from outside the vehicle.
The Foreign Office said that it was investigating the reports in order to dispatch staff from the nearest British consulate in Marseille to Grenoble where the young girl was in hospital. It could not say for certain if the victims were British. The British embassy in Paris was liaising with UK police.

One theory being investigated is that the occupants of the car may have been targeted because they were in an expensive vehicle, and were tricked into pulling off the road before robbery turned to murder. Police believe the cyclist who was found dead may have tried to intervene when he witnessed an armed robbery taking place.

Eric Maillaud, the investigating prosecutor from Annecy, said: “Two men and two women are the victims. The car is a British-registered BMW estate. One of the male victims was a cyclist. He was found near his bike in his cycling gear. The other man was in the driving seat of the car. The two women were in the back of the car.

“It is a dramatic crime scene like we see on the TV. There is a large number of gun cartridges at the crime scene.”

A police spokesman said a “young girl probably under the age of 10” was airlifted to hospital after being “seriously injured by gunfire”. The spokesman added: “We are looking at the possibility that the three dead people in the car and the young girl were all from the same family. A full multiple murder investigation is under way.”

No firearms were found either inside or near to the vehicle, the officer said.

Firemen who were the first officials to arrive on the scene found the three bodies in the car, which had bullet holes in the bodywork.


Annecy prosecutor Eric Maillaud answers to journalists on the road leading to the scene of the shooting (AFP/Getty Images)


Didier Berthollet, the mayor of Chevaline, told a local newspaper that “the victims were not from the village”. He added: “We have never seen such horror on our doorsteps before. The police have interviewed everyone in the village hoping to find a witness. There are only 70 homes, so it didn’t take them long.”

Residents reportedly saw a white car leaving the area at speed between 3pm and 4pm. The car park in the Combe d’Ire forest, which is four miles from the nearest house, is often used by walkers who leave their cars there before setting off. Earlier this summer the Foreign Office warned British tourists driving on the Continent that they were regarded as “easy targets” by gangs which staged accidents to make them stop before robbing them. A French police officer said: “It’s the time of year, the thieves go for tourists who they see as rich.”

Lake Annecy is a popular Alpine resort and attracts thousands of British and foreign tourists every summer. The second largest lake in France, it is marketed as a place of “serenity and relaxation”. Known as the “Venice of the Alps” the area is popular with cyclists, water skiers, hikers and campers.

France recently tightened its laws on illegal firearms amid a worrying rise in the use of guns by criminals. In July a gunman using an assault rifle shot dead two people and injured five at a nightclub in Lille after being turned away. In March, Mohammed Merah, who claimed to be linked to al-Qaeda, killed four people at a Jewish school and three soldiers in southern France. He was killed after a 32-hour siege in Toulouse.

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Obamanation - Jon McNaughton



Published on Aug 29, 2012 by

Obamanation (One Painting That Says It All)

I chose to use an undisclosed studio so I could paint privately, without interruption, to focus on the task of embedding in a single painting all the subtle, mindless, radical and dangerous atrocities of the Obama administration.

I am just one person, a citizen of this country using my first amendment rights to speak out through my art. This is my declaration that we have never had a president do more to harm our country than Barack Obama.

To those who scoff or wish to trivialize this painting, I challenge you... I DARE YOU... study the links of the various symbols and metaphors that you see. There are over 60 in the painting. No person can analyze this image and learn about these facts and still, in good conscience, vote for Obama in 2012.

I do not hate Obama, but I hate the fact that I had to paint this picture. Has the painting gone too far? I knew when I did this that most Obama supporters would reject what I have done. But as a Conservative, I'm fed up with the corruption in Washington. And I'm sick of the political correctness that has derailed our country!

My art is an expression of the times in which I live and people will know how Jon McNaughton felt about being alive in America in 2012.

Take the Challenge! If you still choose Obama, congratulations...you're a part of the Obamanation.

Go to www.jonmcnaughton.com

McNaughton Answers Questions Regarding "Obamanation."

What do you hope to accomplish?
Someone once said, "there is nothing more irritating than being awaken from a sound sleep"—I hope to wake up a few. If anyone is undecided about voting for Obama, please study the painting, take the challenge, share it with your friends and help us to expose this man and vote him out of office this November.

Are you doing this for the money?
No. I paint what is important to me, but I know there are many who feel the same as I do about Obama. I am a professional artist. I make my living providing a service and I get paid to do it. The vast majority who view my work never pay a nickel. They pass it around on the Internet with their friends or see it on someone's wall.

This is just propaganda.
It seems funny that when a liberal artist paints a political motif it is called artistic expression, but when a conservative does the same thing critics call it "propaganda." When I think of propaganda I think of early twentieth century war posters commissioned by the Nazis and Communist regimes. It usually conveys a negative meaning, so I know why my critics like to use it to describe me. But I am not the government! I am simply one individual, a citizen of this country using my first amendment rights to speak out through my art.

Do you think this is art?
What is art? There are many certified art experts who would love to tell you the answer. Their opinions mean little to me because I only paint to satisfy my desire to share a message. For me, art has a way of communicating both thoughts and feelings that words fail to adequately express. If my art causes another to think and to feel, it is a success. I use metaphor and symbol because it leaves more for the viewer to discover, but for the few who choose to take the time to study I have the interactive website where I meticulously explain my images. I paint realistically because it communicates to the broadest audience. I paint political and religious subject because they are close to my heart. Whether someone from the history books could have painted it better means nothing to me. My art is an expression of the times in which I live and people will know how Jon McNaughton felt about being alive at this time in our history.

Is the original for sale?
Yes, and prints are also for sale on the website.

A Crumpled U.S. Constitution under the foot of President Obama?


Click here to learn more: http://wp.me/poJ0l-Zs


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Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Self-Proclaimed Messiah Who Built Religious Movement, Dies at 92


United Press International
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, right, with his wife, Hak Ja Han, married 2,075 couples at Madison Square Garden in 1982.

By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: September 2, 2012

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean evangelist, businessman and self-proclaimed messiah who built a religious movement notable for its mass weddings, fresh-faced proselytizers and links to vast commercial interests, died on Monday in Gapyeong, South Korea. He was 92.


J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Mr. Moon, center, with his wife in 1997. He founded the Unification Church in 1954.


Bob Child/Associated Press

Mr. Moon leaving prison in Danbury, Conn., in 1985 after serving time for tax evasion.


Bob Child/Associated Press

Mr. Moon receiving an honorary degree from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, which was saved from bankruptcy by a group tied to him.

Yonhap, via European Pressphoto Agency

Mr. Moon in 2009.


His death was announced on his church’s Web site, which said he had been battling complications from pneumonia, including kidney failure.

Mr. Moon courted world leaders, financed newspapers and founded numerous innocuously named civic organizations. To his critics, he pursued those activities mainly to lend legitimacy to his movement, known as the Unification Church, although his methods were sometimes questionable. In 2004, for example, he had himself crowned “humanity’s savior” in front of astonished members of Congress at a Capitol Hill luncheon.

Mr. Moon was a leading figure in what Eileen V. Barker, a professor emeritus of sociology at the London School of Economics, called “the great wave of new religious movements and alternative religiosity in the 1960s and 1970s in the West,” a time when the Hare Krishna and Transcendental Meditation movements were also gathering force.

Mr. Moon, said Professor Barker, an expert on new religious movements, was “very important in those days — as far as the general culture was concerned — in the fear of cults and sects.”

Building a business empire in South Korea and Japan, Mr. Moon used his commercial interests to support nonprofit ventures, then kept control of them by placing key insiders within their hierarchies. He avidly backed right-wing causes, turning The Washington Times into a respected newspaper in conservative circles.

An ardent anti-Communist who had been imprisoned by the Communist authorities in northern Korea in the 1940s, he saw the United States as the world’s salvation. But in the late 1990s, after financial losses, defections and stagnant growth in the church’s membership, he turned on America, branding it a repository of immorality — “Satan’s harvest” — and repositioned his movement as a crusade for moral values.

As Mr. Moon approached 90, not long after he survived a helicopter crash in 2008, three of his sons and a daughter began assuming more responsibility for running the church and his holdings. (According to reports at the time, Mr. Moon and 15 others, including family members, were injured when their helicopter crashed on a mountain near Seoul. There were no fatalities.)

In its early years in the United States, the Unification Church was widely viewed as little more than a cult, one whose polite, well-scrubbed members, known derisively as Moonies, sold flowers and trinkets on street corners and married in mass weddings. In one of the last such events, in 2009, 10,000 couples exchanged or renewed vows before Mr. Moon at Sun Moon University near Seoul.

A Focus on Marriage

Such weddings were the activity most associated with Mr. Moon in the United States. They were in keeping with a central tenet of his theology, a mix of Eastern philosophy, biblical teachings and what he called God’s revelations to him.

In the church’s view, Jesus had failed in his mission to purify mankind because he was crucified before being able to marry and have children. Mr. Moon saw himself as completing the unfulfilled task of Jesus: to restore humankind to a state of perfection by producing sinless children, and by blessing couples who would produce them.

Marriage was a key part of achieving salvation, and for a couple the marriage was as much a commitment to the church as it was to each other.

In a ceremony involving 2,075 couples at Madison Square Garden in 1982, for example, the men wore identical blue suits and the women lace and satin gowns. Mr. Moon was said to have made the matches, based on questionnaires, photographs and the recommendations of church officials.

Often the couples had met only weeks earlier or could speak to each other only through an interpreter. Many had to remain separated for several years, doing church work, before they were allowed to consummate the unions.

Mr. Moon struggled against bad publicity. He was sent to prison on tax evasion charges and accused of influence-buying and of maintaining ties to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He denied both allegations. In the late 1970s he was caught up in a Congressional investigation into attempts by South Korea to influence American policy. There were battles with local officials over zoning for church buildings and tax-exempt status.

As his church grew more prominent in the 1970s and ’80s, it became embroiled in lawsuits over soliciting funds, acquiring property and recruiting followers. Defectors wrote damaging books. From 1973 to 1986 at least 400 of the church’s flock were abducted by their family members to undergo “deprogramming,” according to an estimate by David G. Bromley, a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and an expert on Mr. Moon. The church denied that it had brainwashed its followers, saying members joined and stayed of their own free will.

Mr. Moon said he was the victim of religious oppression and ethnic bias because of his Korean heritage. Established churches were angered, he said, because they felt threatened by his movement.

“I don’t blame those people who call us heretics,” he was quoted as saying in “Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church” (1977), a sympathetic account by Frederick Sontag. “We are indeed heretics in their eyes because the concept of our way of life is revolutionary: We are going to liberate God.”

Prominent people were paid to appear at Moon-linked conferences. The first President George Bush did so after he left office. Others, like former President Gerald R. Ford, Bill Cosby, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Jack Kemp, attended banquets and gatherings, sometimes saying later that they had not known of a connection between Mr. Moon and the organizations that invited them.

Personal setbacks marked Mr. Moon’s later years. In 1984, a son, Heung Jin, died at 17 from injuries sustained in a car crash. Another son, Young Jin Moon, who was 21, committed suicide in 1999 by jumping from a 17th-story balcony at Harrah’s hotel in Reno, Nev. In 1995 Nansook Hong, the wife of his eldest son, Hyo Jin Moon, who at one time was Mr. Moon’s heir apparent, broke from the family and wrote a book characterizing her husband as a womanizing cocaine user who watched pornographic movies and beat her, once when she was seven months pregnant.

Ms. Hong portrayed the entire Moon family as dysfunctional, spoiled and divided by intrigue and hypocrisy. (She also wrote that the church believed that the spirit of Heung Jin had returned for a time in the body of a Zimbabwean man who traveled the world and, with Mr. Moon’s sanction, beat straying church members.)

From early on Mr. Moon was revered by his followers as the messiah, and in 1992 he conferred that title on himself. He also declared that he and his second wife, Hak Ja Han, were the “true parents of all humanity.”

Mr. Moon founded the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954 and began organizing it on a large scale in the United States in the early 1970s. It eventually claimed up to three million members worldwide, but historians of religion dispute that number, estimating a membership of 50,000 at the church’s height in the late 1970s, with only a few thousand in the United States. Membership has been difficult to evaluate more recently; church officials give different estimates and often define membership differently, according to an individual’s level of involvement.

Building an Empire

Mr. Moon’s organizations established connections with African-American religious leaders, and he made forays into culture and education, establishing a ballet company in South Korea and financing a ballet school in Washington. In 1992 an organization with ties to Mr. Moon rescued the University of Bridgeport, in Connecticut, from bankruptcy, pouring in $110 million in subsidies over a decade and taking effective control. Mr. Moon received an honorary degree.

The university’s administration denied that the church had influence, but critics of the arrangement contended that students were being lured into church training with the promise of scholarships, noted that the church had opened a boarding school on campus for members’ children, and said that the church had used the university to import money, in the form of tuition, as well as followers, in the form of the many foreign students who attended.

For a time Mr. Moon lived in an 18-acre compound in Irvington, N.Y., which Ms. Hong described as having a ballroom, two dining rooms (one with a pond and waterfall), a kitchen with six pizza ovens and a bowling alley upstairs. The church owned another estate, Belvedere, in nearby Tarrytown. Farther north along the Hudson River, the church founded the Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, N.Y. On its Web site, it sometimes is referred to as “U.T.S.: The Interfaith Seminary.” Mr. Moon’s business ventures in South Korea at one time or another included construction, hospitals, schools, ski resorts, newspapers, auto parts, pharmaceuticals, beverages and a professional soccer team. He also had commercial interests in Japan, where right-wing nationalist donors were said to be one source of financing.

In the United States, Mr. Moon had interests in commercial fishing, jewelry, fur products, construction and real estate. He bought many properties in the New York area, including the New Yorker Hotel in Midtown Manhattan and the Manhattan Center nearby.

At one time or another he controlled newspapers including Noticias del Mundo and The New York City Tribune; four publications in South Korea; a newspaper in Japan, The Sekai Nippo; The Middle East Times in Greece; Tiempos del Mundo in Argentina; and Últimas Noticias in Uruguay. In 2000, a church affiliate bought what was left of United Press International.

The extent of his holdings was somewhat of a mystery, but one figure gives a clue: Mr. Moon acknowledged that in the two decades since the founding of The Washington Times in 1982, he pumped in more than $1 billion in subsidies to keep it going.

The church said its various operations earned tens of millions of dollars a year worldwide.

In their book “Cults and New Religions” (2006), Mr. Bromley and Douglas E. Cowan wrote that according to church doctrine, a member “recognizes Moon’s messianic status, agrees to contribute to the payment of personal indemnity for human sinfulness, and looks forward to receiving the marital Blessing and building a restored world of sinless families.”

Self-Proclaimed Messiah

Sun Myung Moon was born on Jan. 6, 1920, in a small rural town in what is now North Korea, according to his official biography. When he was 10, his family joined the Presbyterian Church. When he was a teenager, around Easter 1935, according to Unification Church lore, Jesus appeared to him and anointed him God’s choice to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth.

A secular education beckoned, and in 1941 Mr. Moon entered Waseda University in Japan, where he studied electrical engineering. Two years later he returned to Korea and married Sun Kil Choi, who bore him a son. In 1946, leaving them behind, he moved to Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea, to found the Kwang-Ya Church, a predecessor of the Unification Church. He was imprisoned by the Communist authorities, and later said that they had tortured him.

He was freed in 1950 — by United Nations forces, his official biography says — and was said to have walked 320 miles to Pusan, on the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. There, as the account goes, he built a church with United States Army ration boxes and lived in a mountainside shack.

Despite the centrality of marriage in his developing theology, Mr. Moon divorced Ms. Choi in 1952 (something that was glossed over in the official biography) and the following year moved to Seoul, where he founded the Unification Church in 1954. Within a year, about 30 church centers had sprung up.

Before the decade was out, he published “The Divine Principle,” a dense exposition of his theology that has been revised several times; in her book, Ms. Hong, his daughter-in-law, said it was written by an early disciple based on Mr. Moon’s notes and conversation. He sent his first church emissaries to Japan, the source of early growth, and the United States, and began building his Korean business empire.

Rumors of sexual relations with disciples, which the church denied, dogged the young evangelist, and he fathered a child in 1954. In 1960, Mr. Moon married the 17-year-old Hak Ja Han, who would bear him 13 children and be anointed “true parent.”

He embarked on world tours over the next decade and in 1972 settled in the United States, seeing it as the promised land for church growth. “I came to America primarily to declare the New Age and new truth,” he is quoted as saying in the book “Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church.”

He took an interest in politics, urging that President Richard M. Nixon be forgiven for his role in the Watergate crisis. Church leaders plotted a strategy to defend the president and held rallies in support of Nixon that drew thousands to Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden and the National Mall.

Mr. Moon’s interests expanded into film when a church-linked company backed the 1982 movie “Inchon,” a $42 million Korean War epic notable for bad reviews and the casting of Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

A Litany of Scandals

In the late 1970s, Mr. Moon came under the scrutiny of federal authorities, mainly over allegations that he was involved in efforts by the South Korean government to bribe members of Congress to support President Park Chung-hee. A Congressional subcommittee said there was evidence of ties between Mr. Moon and Korean intelligence, and that the church had raised money and moved it across borders in violation of immigration and local charity laws.

Then, in October 1981, Mr. Moon was named in a 12-count federal indictment. He was accused of failing to report $150,000 in income from 1973 to 1975, a sum consisting of interest from $1.6 million that he had deposited in New York bank accounts in his own name, according to the indictment.

“I would not be standing here today if my skin were white and my religion were Presbyterian,” Mr. Moon said after the charges were announced. “I am here today only because my skin is yellow and my religion is Unification Church.”

He called the case a government conspiracy to force him out of the country.

Mr. Moon was convicted the next year of tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was assigned to kitchen duty.

As his church’s fortunes declined in the United States, Mr. Moon revised his pro-American views. In a 1997 speech, he said America had “persecuted” him. He also attacked homosexuals and American women.

Mr. Moon and his church largely dropped from public view in the late ’90s and 2000s, but once in a while they attracted attention. In 2001, a Roman Catholic archbishop from Zambia, Emmanuel Milingo, married a Korean woman in a multiple wedding performed by Mr. Moon. The archbishop then renounced the union.

One of the more bizarre moments in Mr. Moon’s later years came on March 23, 2004, at what was described as a peace awards banquet, held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington. Members of Congress were among the guests. At one point Representative Danny K. Davis, an Illinois Democrat, wearing white gloves, carried in on a pillow one of two gold crowns that were placed on Mr. Moon and his wife.

Some of the members of Congress said they had no idea that Mr. Moon was to be involved in the banquet, though it was hosted by the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, a foundation affiliated with the Unification Church.

At the banquet, Mr. Moon said emperors, kings and presidents had “declared to all heaven and earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s savior, messiah, returning lord and true parent.”

He added that the founders of the world’s great religions, along with figures like Marx, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin, had “found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons.”




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Two Lawyers In The Presidential Office

Posted by Rose Colombo on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:00:00 AM

It's amazing that the American people would vote for two lawyers and if elected could socialize America by implementing big government programs and increasing taxes for people who earn $250,000 which isn't a lot of money today and doesn't even buy a house. Obama says he'll redistribute taxes to the poor and tax the rich, but $250,000 businesses can't hire more people. Good grief, he's redistributed money to himself by abusing his position when he bought his home according to Judicial Watch who filed a complaint with the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee. He also redistributed funds to his anti-American terrorist friend Ayres through a corrupt group who he advised. He also gave millions of tax dollars to his convicted felon friend that was meant for improvements of inner city housing projects in poor Black neighborhoods, but the Black people said that they never saw a dime and lived in apartments infested with mice and cockroaches. There's even a lawsuit pending because a three year old boy died due to the unsafe conditions according to the news. So, what happened to all those tax dollars?

Obama is telling you that he's a socialist by exposing his plan to redistribute the wealth through taxation. Hannity and other reliable news sources and Judeo-Christians are warning Americans that they could lose their freedoms forever if they vote for far left liberal lawyers. Good grief, this reminds me of the movie, "Devil's Advocate" when Al Pacino said that the attorneys would rule the world! Now I know why people say that fiction is scarier than the truth.

Our Constitution guarantees that our government must ensure that there will be three separate branches of government and that the people shall be protected by the inclusion of a system called Checks and Balances. The Trial Lawyers are probably the most well-funded lobbyists in Washington D.C. Lawyers protect themselves by lobbying for or against laws that affect their profession. It is a conflict of interest for lawyers to act as the President of the United States and slants the scales of justice in favor of those who work within the legal system. And, it's even more blatant if the Vice President is also a lawyer. Although, Clinton was a lawyer when elected as President of the United States, as well as, the First Lady, Hillary, and the Rose Law Firm was under investigation during his term of office, the American people didn't understand the fact that lawyers are slanting the scales of justice in favor of all those who work within the Justice Department. Perhaps, you will recall how clever President Clinton behaved like a lawyer when questioned under oath and stated that it all depends on what the word "is" means. Most legislatures are lawyers. Judges are lawyers. Supreme Court Justices are lawyers. District Attorneys and Public Defenders are lawyers. And now, the country could possibly be run by not one lawyer, but two lawyers! Good, grief, America, how can you expect to maintain the Scales of Justice if the lawyers are making the laws, interpreting the laws, and enforcing the laws and using Executive Orders to dictate the laws for you and me but holding themselves above those laws by protecting their own in secret. The allegations are staring American in the face and much evidence is present exposing Obama's connection to anti-American terrorists by reliable news reporters and his own admission. If that doesn't scare you then just the possibility of two lawyers controlling the oval office should frighten you to death. And, what about the conflict of interest when appointing U.S. Supreme Court Justices? The far left would definitely appoint more of their own for life time positions that make supreme laws of the land.
Lawyers have their own justice system. Lawyers believe that they are above the law and they shouldn't be subjected to the same court system as the rest of the people. They discipline their own through secretive State Bar hearings which is the same system that the judges use. The judges judge their own and rarely has a judge been removed from the bench no matter how egregious the public may have felt the wrongdoing in U.S. history without oversight committees.

Several years ago, a major newspaper published a survey and stated that lawyers were voted last even below used car salesmen according to the people. So, if the American people don't trust lawyers then why on earth would they want to vote two lawyers into the highest office in the nation and leave themselves vulnerable to abuse by eliminating the rule of Checks and Balances?

Of course, there are some excellent lawyers, but there are some very corrupt lawyers, too. So, how will the people know what to expect if they don't even know how to prevent themselves from being taxed to death through redistribution. The lawyers will exercise Executive Orders and create laws that will take away your freedoms because far left liberals don't like people who speak out. They don't like Judeo Christians who read the Bible, or preachers who discuss marriage according to the Bible; or kids who pray in school to God. In fact, they don't like God. How will the people be able to fight all three branches of government since the majority of legislatures are liberal lawyers who are deadset on promoting more government, more taxes, and more laws that reign in your civil rights? Obama claims to be a Christian, but he votes that it's okay to abort American babies for any reason by stabbing them in the head and sucking out their brains and if they live outside of the womb then it should be legal to kill them after birth. Obama's a lawyer who has failed to defend the life of living American babies, so how can he say he's a Christian or is that for convenience, too, like wearing the U.S. flag on his lapel?

And, Senator Biden wants to know why people don't think that the far left believes in God. God and the Far Left 101.

How will you stop liberal lawyers from passing laws since they make the laws and execute the laws? Obama wants to keep the borders open and continue to let Mexican illegals cross over, but opens the door for anti-American terrorists to get fake American ID Drivers Licenses. Since Obama favors giving driver's licenses to illegals then he's technically breaking the law. Illegal means that some thing's wrong and it ain't legal! Good grief, I had to hand over my Driver's License just to get into Disneyland and Sea World, but it's okay to drive around illegally with fake Driver's Licenses? What law school teaches this? Any politician who doesn't want to close our borders, especially during war time or after our citizens have been attacked and threatened doesn't have the safety of the American people at heart. Anti-American terrorists and suicide bombers can get drivers licenses with fake Spanish surnames and create chaos, It's possible that suicide bombers could enter the U.S. illegally with fake IDs and we would have to suffer the consequences just like on 911. I'm sure that Ayres would jump for joy unless he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when it occurred like other innocent victims who died on 911. But, we must remember that Ayres is a friend of Obama who he respects as a professor.

Obama doesn't mention that 3,000 Americans were tragically killed by radical Moslim suicide bombers, but he does mention that our solders killed civilians in Iraq. He doesn't sing praises about our military men and women who fought for our freedom so that blood would be shed on terrorist soil rather than American soil. Thank God, for President Bush who knew that the terrorists wanted to enter our country with fake ID's and create chaos and blood shed on our soil, so how much is saving American lives worth to the American people? Yet, I don't hear Obama praise President Bush and Senator McCain for protecting us and winning the surge nor do I hear him singing praises for U.S. military men and women, only praises for his scary friends. Far left liberals, especially lawyers know how to make laws that would eliminate our freedoms. The far left lawyers will continue to create more laws that undermine the U.S. Constitution and deny us our freedoms while pushing for socialism and marxism and the end of democracy through redistribution, open borders and fake licenses.

So, if you don't care that the far left liberals such as Obama, who don't want to place their hands on their hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance or wear their U.S. flag on their lapel which he stated with his own lips while his wife said this is the first time she's been proud of our country, and allegedly refused to place his hand on the Judeo Christian Bible when he took office as senator, then change is what you will get. America will be changed forever. Americans should be demanding that Obama produce an authentic birth certificate, not just take his word for it that he was born in Hawaii. If he was born in Hawaii then the U.S. would have a birth certificate, but he does have a Indonesian birth certificate. So, how can Obama become President without a legitimate birth certificate? Why not just hand over the Presidency to anyone if that's the case such as an illegal alien because we don't know who they are, either.

Obama is a typical lawyer. He doesn't answer the questions. He says what you want to hear. He says, "Trust me," and the sheep follow someone who says he's the one. Good grief, the American people need to wake up fast and read, research, and watch the videos that let you listen to Obama and his wife and his anti-American terrorists friends who hate Americans.

May America wake up and May God Keep His Hand on Our Country, our Military, and our Citizens. May the people reject a man who hasn't produced a U.S. birth certificate and refuses to publish his Thesis and respects anti-American terrorists who want to kill more Americans and bomb more buildings. Do your homework, America. Check out the videos and audios and listen to Obama and his wife and their anti-American friends produced by Hannity, My Space bloggers, and news reporters.....listen to the words that come directly out of their mouths before bad mouthing Palin and McCain. At least, they are true Americans, General Powell.



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Child Indoctrination of the Homosexual Agenda



Uploaded by seedsofgrace on Feb 4, 2010
----PLEASE READ BELOW-----

History is repeating itself dating back pre-flood (Noah's Day) and pre-fire destruction (Sodom and Gomorrah).

There was climactic homosexuality prior to the flood destruction and Sodom/Gomorrah destruction. Now... there is climactic homosexuality today, now in 2010.

Where does that leave us?

At another cycle of destruction, but this one will be the last.

Read this:

2 Peter 3:10
"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."

Turn to Christ Jesus, while there is still hope and time.


A clip from the new rosie o'donnell show that indoctrinates kids of the homosexual agenda.
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AMERICA’S SECRET ESTABLISHMENT


Memorandum Number One: Is There A Conspiracy Explanation For Recent History?

The reader anxious to get into the story of The Order should go directly to Memorandum Number Two. This section concerns methods, evidence and proof. Essential, but perhaps boring for most readers. During the past one hundred years any theory of history or historical evidence that falls outside a pattern established by the American Historical Association and the major foundations with their grantmaking power has been attacked or rejected - not on the basis of any evidence presented, but on the basis of the acceptability of the argument to the so-called Eastern Liberal Establishment and its official historical line.



Read more http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres10/SuttonBones.pdf

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Democrats Unveil Platform Backing Gay Marriage, Abortion

Tuesday, 04 Sep 2012 06:24 AM


Democrats have unveiled a party platform at their national convention that echoes President Barack Obama's call for higher taxes on wealthier Americans while backing same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

Delegates will officially adopt the platform on Tuesday.

The document reflects the president's argument that his work is unfinished, saying there is more to do and calling on Democrats, independents and some Republican to come together again and continue what has been started.

The platform says the economy is growing again, al-Qaida is weaker "than at any point since 9/11" and that the manufacturing sector is growing.

The document backs same-sex marriage and abortion rights. The Republican platform, approved last week, would ban all abortions and gay marriage.


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